According to the overview for Haunt, an installation by London’s noted architectural firm Haque, para-psychologists have deduced several “empirical” environmental characteristics of haunted spaces: infrasound (frequencies below the threshold of hearing), fluctuations in humidity, fluctuations in temperature, air movement, electromagnetic fields. Herewith, a haunted space is created and invoked, what Haque dubs an non-visual architecture, by simulating (or creating?) the atmospheric conditions that commonly accompany these experiences.

A further desciption of the experiment cum installation:

The objective of the experiment was to determine whether infrasonic frequencies and magnetic field fluctuations similar to those found in supposedly “haunted” spaces can elicit physiological or psychological effects similar to those experienced in “hauntings”. During participation galvanic skin response of the participants was measured and they were required to note down any unusual phenomena they experienced, marking where these occured on a map of the room, and at what time. Each session lasted approximately 50 minutes. Participants were randomly placed in one of 4 groups though they were not informed of their group until the end of the experiment: those subjected to infrasound, those subjected to magnetic fields, those subjected to both and those subjected to neither.

They’re definitely charting interesting terrain in the domain of subjective experience, but also within the realm of invocation, creating an attractive atmosphere for nearby spirits, if your reality tunnel permits you to entertain such possibilities:

Responses from participants included a “sense of presence”, “chills on the spine”, “uneasiness in a particular part of the room”, “dizziness”, “glowing ball” hallucinations, seeing flies in the chamber, auditory hallucination of somebody coughing in various parts of the chamber and sensations of mist; though it is not clear yet what the causal relationship is since some of these sensations were reported in the chamber when neither the infrasonic nor the magnetic field equipment was switched on. Statistics are currently being carried out on the data and will not be fully known until the end of November 2005. As expected, it appears that belief plays an important role in eliciting “haunt” sensations.

For me, the question always comes back to the thing itself, what philosopher Immanuel Kant termed Ding An Sich, the enquiry into the dinstinction (if any) between the “thing-in-itself” and the experience of said thing. What is the difference (if any) between the haunt, the haunting, and the haunted?

[via we make money not art]