Can electromagnetic fields make you hallucinate

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Can electromagnetic fields make you hallucinate?

• Located in Sudbury, Ontario, is the Consciousness
  Research Lab at Laurentian University
• Michael Persinger is a neuroscience professor who
  runs the lab and has a theory about ghosts
• This theory holds that certain patterns of
  electromagnetic field activity, both the earths
  natural kind and the man-made kind created by
  wiring and appliances and power lines can render
  the brain more prone to hallucinations (in
  particular the ones that involve an invisible,
  sensed presence)

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In his study published in 1988, Persinger
compared seven years of dated Fate magazine
haunting reports with geomagnetic activity for
those dates. He found a nice positive correlation
and wrote his findings in Neurosciences
Letters Three years later at the University of
Iowa, psychologists Walter and Steffani Randall
examined monthly fluctuations in solar winds
(which influence the earths geomagnetic
activity) to see if they mirrored monthly ups and
downs in humanoid hallucinations culled from
old Society for Psychical Research records
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• They found that both reports showed peaks in
  April and September with troughs in between
• Persinger then turned his attention to man-made
  electromagnetic fields (EMFs)
• In 1996, a Sudbury couple had contacted him about
  strange goings-on in their house. They heard
  breathing and whispering sounds and at one point
  felt someone touching their feet as they lay in
  bed

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• The man saw an apparition of a woman who appeared
  to move through the couples bed.
• Persinger and two colleagues drove out to the
  house and set up equipment to monitor EMFs in the
  various rooms.
• True to his theory, the house was an
  electromagnetic free-for-all. Wires were poorly
  grounded and circuits overloaded with electronic
  equipment. Not only were the EMFs most intense in
  the places where the couple had experienced their
  ghosts but they showed the telltale
  irregularities that Persinger has come to see as
  the hallmarks of haunt-prompting fields

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• Why would a certain type of electromagnetic field
  make one hear things or sense a presence?
• The answer hinges on the fact that exposure to
  electromagnetic fields lowers melatonin levels.
  Melatonin is an anticonvulsive if you have less
  of it in your system, your brain- in particular
  your right temporal lobe- will be more prone to
  tiny epileptic-esque micro seizures and subtle
  hallucinations these seizures can cause

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• Persinger adds that the emotions of bereavement
  produce stress hormones that may serve to raise
  the likelihood of these micro seizures even
  further
• The results of Persingers lab work suggest that
  you can indeed evoke that haunted feeling in a
  lab using EMFs. Of the approximately one thousand
  people who have had Persingers signature
  electromagnetic bursts applied to their right
  temporal lobes, 80 have felt a presence

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• In 2002, Persinger published a paper on
  lab-generated hauntings in the Journal of Nervous
  and Mental Disease. Forty-eight university
  students were exposed to complex one microTesla
  electromagnetic fields over the left temporal
  lobe or right, or both.
• A fourth group received sham pulsations.
• Those whose right brains were exposed were more
  likely to report feeling fear and sensing a
  presence than were left hemisphere or sham
  exposures. Disappointingly, no other researchers
  have replicated Persingers work.