The last few months have seen some significant displays of the aurora borealis visible from Great Britain and southerly locations where they are usually rarely glimpsed. Today physicists are certain we can explain them as massive coronal discharges of electrically charged particles from the Sun, and to some extent predict their appearance, often connected with sunspot activity.
Psychologist Michael Persinger theorised that electromagnetic and geomagnetic forces and discharges are associated with certain altered states of consciousness (e.g. temporal lobe seizures), generating the sensation of psychic experiences and stimulating hallucinatory apparitional encounters (see FT42:50-54, 201:39, 205:4, 270:40-43, 373:26). Others have also proposed visual apparitions may arise from subjective effects stimulated by external electromagnetic energy acting upon sensitive brains (see Electric UFOs (1998) by Albert Budden).
If true, we might thus expect an increase in ghost sightings at times of bright auroral displays. However, the evidence is far from clear-cut that electrically sensitive persons go on to hallucinate ghosts or anything else. Whatever the case, observers among traditional and indigenous societies living in northern latitudes were long prone to giving auroral displays ghostly explanations.
In the Arctic, Lapland, Siberia, and the furthermost parts of Scandinavia and North America, diverse cultures all embraced notions of the Northern Lights arising from a supernatural realm. In Canada, the Cree people conceived auroræ as the spirits of their departed ancestors
