Boiler Infrasound Triggers Stress Response, Study Finds
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- Rodney Schmaltz and colleagues at MacEwan University ran a study with 36 volunteers who listened to calming instrumentals or unsettling music, with infrasound (below 20Hz) played through hidden subwoofers half the time, and found participants could not consciously detect the sound but showed higher cortisol in their saliva and reported more irritation when it was on.
- The effect appeared whether the music was calming or haunting, with Schmaltz noting infrasound 'shifted their mood and their stress response in a negative direction' regardless of the soundtrack.
- Schmaltz, a psychologist who studies why people believe in pseudoscientific claims, said infrasound may supply 'a bit of bodily discomfort that a ghost or haunting explanation can then attach itself to' for those already primed to think in supernatural terms.
- The team previously tested infrasound at the Deadmonton haunted house attraction in inconclusive experiments, prompting the controlled follow-up published in Frontiers in Behavioural Neuroscience.
- Chris French, an emeritus psychology professor and author of 'The Science of Weird Shit,' called the findings 'plausible' for explaining haunted feelings, but said it would be 'a step too far' to attribute poltergeist activity like flying objects to infrasound, and noted that claims about infrasound causing visual hallucinations remain anecdotal only.
Why it matters: The study gives paranormal-believers a measurable physiological explanation for 'haunted' sensations — specifically, a cortisol spike occurring without conscious awareness of the sound. For homeowners, building managers, and engineers, it flags old boiler and ventilation systems as a fixable source of the 'vague discomfort' people report, though Schmaltz himself noted larger studies are needed to confirm the effect.
