Where Spooky Feelings Come From: teacher key

Ghosts, grade 12 edition, written for 12th grade and up. From a Victorian stage trick to a 2003 study of two famous places, researchers have separated what people report from what the evidence shows. The 2003 team also listed what a later study would need to sort out.

Read the book. Print this page for the key.

Questions and answers

1. What did the Society for Psychical Research's Census of Hallucinations do?
   • It tested rooms for infrasound
   • It asked thousands of people about unexplained experiences (answer)
   • It measured magnetic fields
2. What was found at Hampton Court about belief?
   • Believers reported significantly more unusual experiences than non-believers (answer)
   • Believers reported nothing
   • Everyone reported the same
3. Why was Edinburgh tested with people alone?
   • The vaults were too small for groups
   • Hampton Court had low statistical power because visitors were analysed as groups (answer)
   • The visitors were tired
4. At what pitch was the 2003 concert infrasound set?
   • 19 hertz
   • 17.5 hertz (answer)
   • 20,000 hertz
5. What did the concert's co-organizer call the result?
   • A tantalising but inconclusive result (answer)
   • A final proof
   • A mistake
6. What does suggestion mean for a setting that looks haunted?
   • The setting plants an idea that shapes what a person feels (answer)
   • The room gets louder
   • The lights go out

Words

• priming: getting ready
• Ganzfeld: blank-field effect
• pareidolia: seeing faces
• infrasound: very low sound
• suggestion: idea from setting
• census: big count