It’s not the ghosts, it’s the noise.

Haints are barely noticeable in today’s chaos circus.

Today, I am thankful for the two excellent writers I usually read before anything else.

First, I cannot recommend @The Biological Imagination enough as a subscription for anyone who is human and doesn’t fully understand the biology behind being human.

If I had been exposed to learning biology in this way when I was in nursing school, my life would have been enormously easier. The intricacy of subject matter is served so expertly inside a delicious peanut-butter and jelly sammich, you can’t help but eat it and want more.

His recent piece on menopause is one of the best I’ve ever read regarding the subject. This sub is worth the time and money you spend reading it.

Menopause - The second adolescence we were never taught

On to the second writer I seem to gravitate towards without even knowing it.

We all know I’m a fan of odd news. Because of my attraction to odd news, the algorithm puts me slap in the middle of odd news alley and I get pieces from the freelance writer, Elizabeth Rayne, most often in the form of something she’s done for Popular Mechanics, sprinkled in with my feed often.

As I have mentioned before, Popular Mechanics is not the magazine my gear-head daddy used to buy at the hobby shop anymore.

(Side quest and extra points to anyone who can remember the scent of a true hobby shop. A place dedicated to model building and slot cars and everything cool that people used to do with their spare time because they had a little and could actually do things they enjoy. I still have the wooden box my daddy carried his slot cars and parts around in. The sharp, metallic smell that came with the little motors burning through copper still lingers inside the box. No slot cars, sadly, but the memories are forever.)

So anyway, Elizabeth Rayne writes precisely the kind of thing I dig when when I’m searching for something to read that doesn’t have the stench of filthy gubmint fingers on it.

Elizabeth Rayne is a creature who writes. Her work has appeared in Popular Mechanics, Ars Technica, SYFY WIRE, Space.com, Live Science, Den of Geek, Forbidden Futures and Collective Tales. She lurks right outside New York City with her parrot, Lestat. When not writing, she can be found drawing, playing the piano or shapeshifting.

I can get lost in her articles and I often go down rabbit holes I had no idea existed. I spent an entire day learning about the Weilbark Culture after reading her piece on a coffin falling through a hole in a seaside cliff in Poland, circa 1899.

It was fascinating. Also, I neglected everything I needed to do that day and my therapist says that’s not healthy, but my therapist is clearly plotting to make sure there is little to no goblin joy in my life, so there’s that.

The most recent thing I read from dear Elizabeth was about haunted places.

I’m not sure I believe in ghosts in the same realm that other people speak of ghosts. I don’t really believe a spirit is trapped anywhere, what I do believe is that time lines cross sometimes and the scary AF things I’ve seen that I would attribute to ghosts were most likely me, scaring the beejesus out of myself from another dimension, and laughing maniacally at the jump scare from the other side.

(Side quest number two: I once scared my little brother in the shower so bad, he fainted a little. I had a very mean/weird streak in me when I was younger and I did terrible things like scare a little kid so bad he died for a minute. I’m not proud of it, but it happened, and I laughed so hard I almost choked, which is totally what I deserved. Side quest and dark confession complete.)

The ghosts Elizabeth writes of can be attributed to ‘infrasound,’ which is apparently a frequency that occurs from a miasma of sounds we can’t hear but we can feel. These infrasound frequencies make human beings feel uncomfortable - creepy, if you will.

(Them spirits is trying to make us shit our pants, Roy. They got that there brown noise tuned on us!)

Infrasound is a mental health concern these days and I’m here for that part of this article, 100%.

I don’t know if I’m just old and cranky, or if I just have zero tolerance for a cacophony of screaming anymore. I am definitely more sensitive to sound than I have ever been in my life. I could easily tune out drunks at a bar when I was young and whipping out alcoholic treats to feed their annoying-ness with the nectar of annoying.

Fast forward to current day and if I have to hear more than one mfer yell my name more than one time in one day on any given day I’m going to commence slapping people.

Stop. Yelling. At. Me. As a matter of fact, could everyone in line at the Family Dollar just simultaneously shut the fuck up, please? Holy crap that place is haunted for sure if sounds are the haints.

Between the extremely loud speaker phone conversations hovering in the air and the person checking us out singing like they were performing in Vegas, I was toast by the time I got my dang laundry detergent and left. I felt haunted. If I hadn’t known for sure the liquor store was l louder and more full of individual drama on speaker phone, I would have stopped there, too.

(Third and final side quest: If you or someone you love stands in public and screams a full, hour-long conversation on speaker phone, may all of you contract herpes in the eyeball and perish. Honest to God, it’s the rudest, most ridiculous thing in the world to force me to listen to your conversations on speaker phone. Quit it. I hate talking on the phone and you forcing me to be party to it incinerates my ability to stop myself from snatching that phone away from you and stomping on it.)

Clearly there is something valid to sound theories. If it’s ‘haunting’ we’re using as the word to describe it, then so be it. Who knew ‘haunted’ and ‘annoying as hell’ were interchangeable adjectives?

Well now you do. (I have not done Elizabeth’s article justice and I hope you will read her and The Biological Imagination and enjoy their work.)

Until next time, be quiet and listen to the muzak without bellowing along while you’re standing in line at the Family Dollar. Wait until you get home to turn it up and groove on The Sound of Silence. Be safe out there.