Skeptics Sound Off After Learning the Scientific Truth Behind Haunted Homes

A Reddit thread alleging a scientific reason behind a number of hauntings is gathering steam, but not everyone is convinced by the alleged truth.

A post on the "Today I Learned" subreddit claims that "many haunted houses have been investigated and found to contain high levels of carbon monoxide or other poisons, which can cause hallucinations. The carbon monoxide theory explains why haunted houses are mostly older houses, which are more likely to contain aging and defective appliances."

While plenty in the thread agreed that the idea made sense, the OP credited Wikipedia with the information, leaving plenty of others hesitant to concede. The page, titled "Haunted house," details a number of theories that aim to explain so-called hauntings—including recreational drugs, vermin, noisy appliances and more—but it fails to link out to any sources at all, let alone reputable ones.

The entry's section on CO begins verbatim to the Reddit post, and adds that it also makes sense as to "why more hauntings are reported in the colder months." It says it also explains "feelings of being watched, hearing footsteps or voices, seeing 'ghosts', headaches, dizziness, and sudden death or illness of people or pets, and also strange behavior in pets such as excessive barking or meowing."

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According to Johns Hopkins, much of that is in line with typical symptoms of CO poisoning, which include, headaches, dizziness, weakness, nausea and vomiting, rapid heartbeat, shortness of breath, seizures, chest pain, cardiac arrest, loss of hearing, blurry vision, disorientation, loss of consciousness or coma, respiratory failure, and death.

However, the top search results in Google for CO as a scientific explanation for hauntings all point to the same story cited by Smithsonian Magazine, originally published in the American Journal of Ophthalmology in 1921, which documents a family moving into an old house and experiencing supposed paranormal activity. They heard mysterious footsteps, disembodied voices, and sometimes felt like someone was pinning them to their beds. At the same time, their houseplants were dying and the children felt weak and experienced headaches. The furnace was reportedly found to be faulty, flooding the house with CO. When it was repaired, the so-called hauntings were said to stop.

But there's little that pops about other popular hauntings, such as the location that inspired The Conjuring, and whether they were checked for Carbon Monoxide levels, or if paranormal investigators on popular shows like Ghost Adventures carry a monitor in addition to the rest of their equipment.

However, some commenters shared similar experiences.

"This has been my suspicion since I was little," one admitted. "My grandpa's house had supernatural style things happen in it. Most of the things that happened took place in the room that ended up being mine when I moved there. One night I saw something and totally freaked out. I was around 12-13. I ended up doing some research (to keep myself from being scared), and found some books on hallucinations due to gas leaks etc. I asked my uncle to check because we had a hole in the floor in my room. He didn't find any leaks or anything but I don't know that he checked well since I was at school when he did that. To this day, I'm convinced that that house had issues that caused hallucinations."

"I lived in an old house that my friends swore was haunted," another recalled a similar experience. "I experienced several 'plagues' (hundreds of flies showed up all at once on a single window, thousands of fleas appeared out of nowhere one day, and i was always unusually depressed/low energy when i was there, among others). Turned out there was no subflooring so my house was just sitting above wet dirt and I had mold poisoning."

For now, we'd say this one is still up in the air.

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