this post was submitted on 10 May 2026
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[–] partofthevoice@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

In one case, apparently, the infranoise was at the right frequency to resonate with the eye and cause people to hallucinate. This was due to a fan in a basement, not an entire data center.

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

[citation needed]

I fully believe that at times infrasound can result in anxiety, nausea, etc. But, in 2026 so can reading the news. So can thinking that your health is being affected by a datacenter, resulting in you worrying and losing sleep.

This whole thing about the "resonant frequency of the eye" and that causing someone to hallucinate... that smells like utter BS. A much more likely explanation in a basement is carbon monoxide.

[–] fiat_lux@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 week ago

Ok, that's a paper that attempts to explain the feeling that a building might be haunted. There's nothing in there about causing people to hallucinate. They talk about the supposed "resonant frequency of the eye", but then they say:

The resonant frequency is the natural frequency of an object, the one at which it needs the minimum input of energy to vibrate. As you can see from above, any frequency above 8 Hz will have an effect and some sources quote 40Hz

If the values are that vague, then there is no resonant frequency. There may be frequencies that transmit vibrations to the eye, but with a big enough speaker you can cause anything to vibrate.

The closest the get to hallucinations is to say that "the eyeball would be vibrating which would cause a serious "smearing"of vision. It would not seem unreasonable to see dark shadowy forms caused by something as innocent as the corner of V.T.’s spectacles." So, no hallucinations, just some blurry vision that might vaguely count as an excuse for seeing a ghost if your eye is vibrating significantly. Notice that that's all just speculation, saying "this seems like it could be possible" rather than actually testing for that hypothesis.