Can Ghosts Manipulate Your Senses?

Reading this might bring some long time listeners back to episode 11, "The Flirting Ghosts of Norway", except this piece takes place on Mackinac Island. Link

Located in Michigan, Mackinac island is a wildly popular tourist spot with some deliciously spooky places for those that like to wander off the beaten path. The island itself is right off of Lake Huron. Mackinac is a historically protected island, so there are no cars allowed. That means you have to get around by foot, bike, or horse-drawn carriage. The lack of cars, something we see  or use every day, only adds to the slightly eeriness that encases this strange little place.

While the island has tons of crazy EMF readings, strange physical experiences, and even its own Ghost Hunters episode, something even stranger has arisen thanks to an investigation by Dana and Greg from "This Week in Weird".

During their investigation at the island's famous hotel, the group began to smell a very strong...odor. And no, it wasn't sulfur if that's what your thinking. Dana describes the scent as "the kind of musk given off by a man who hadn't bathed in many, many weeks. Despite the odor becoming almost overpowering, I resisted mentioning it for fear of offending anyone in the group". Lucky for Dana, someone else brought up the horrible smell.

Dana, and the group, concluded it wasn't emitting from someone with the suite. Additionally, it wasn't the suite itself that had the smell, as they would have noticed it much sooner. Even weirder? Only two people were experiencing the scent. It purportedly lasted about five minutes before disappearing and not returning for the rest of the investigation.

The ghost that supposedly haunts the room, Harvey, a man who infamously killed himself due to unrequited love, seemed to be very depressed for obvious reasons. Both Dana and the group member figured it wouldn't be all too surprising for a man with severe depression to stop bathing.  What's more is, the other group member lost her sense of smell years ago.

So Dana was left with some hard questions..."How did a woman with no sense of smell, well, smell the phantom odor? And stranger still, how was it that she and I were the only two people to experience it? What does that say about a ghosts ability to effect us? Can they draw upon our memories, influence parts of our brain, even causing us to “smell” something that isn’t physically there?"

Dana comes to a very interesting conclusion, that maybe the presence of a spirit isn't always dictated by physical manifestations. What if they can simply be felt through the "otherworldly manipulation of the circuits in our brains".

So, what does this mean? That perhaps the last time you unexplainably smelled something, heard something, or even felt something it could have been a ghost manipulating your senses in order for you to feel your presence. Perhaps ghosts are so often translucent not because it is hard for them to manifest physically, but because they're manipulating our sense of sight.

This picture comes from Flickr User Marada and is licensed under Creative Commons