It's Saturday, and Halloween magic has transformed the University of Alberta.
Huge, possibly fake black spiders the size of a child's head skitter about the stone walls of the Katz Pharmacy Building upon wispy webs. Little witches and warlocks wander the halls, wands in hand, pointy hats upon their heads, as learned warlocks use human skulls and glowing goos to indoctrinate them in the ways of necromancy (or possibly anthropology).
Meanwhile, down in the auditorium before some 200 impressionable youths, St. Albert sorcerer Michael Ng draws upon foul majicks to summon fireballs from flash paper, lightning from a handheld Oudin coil, and a torrent of soapy vomit from a jack-o-lantern.
"Lumos!" he says, as he enchants a wand with an illumination spell (via burning magnesium).
Instead of running for their lives from these evil enchantments, the kids squeal in delight at his tricks. They're not only learning science here at the U of A's School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, but they're having fun.
Halloween is a great way to teach kids about science, Ng says. He's had his Paul Kane chemistry students making glow-in-the-dark clothes this month to learn about atomic theory, for example, and showed kids how to make spooky slime last week at the school's annual Halloweenie Spooktacular Science Magic Show.
Halloween is a scary time of myth and magic, but it's also a chance to learn about science. When you have science, Halloween becomes a lot less frightening and a lot more fun.
Ghost-busting
Say it's late at night, for example. The house is full of creepy creaks and gibbering shadows. The light winks out. Something moves in the corner of your eye. You turn, and see a fearsome phantom aglow with eldritch light!
Is it a ghost?
That glow could be caused by phosphorescent, fluorescent or chemiluminescent materials, Ng says. When the electrons in these materials get supercharged with energy (either through UV light or a chemical reaction), they dump the energy in the form of light to get rid of it.
You can see phosphorescence if you sprinkle zinc sulphide (a white powder) over a glue-covered pumpkin. Turn the lights out (and/or expose it to UV light, such as that reflected by the moon), and the pumpkin will glow green.
Chemiluminescence happens as a result of a chemical reaction, such as in a glow-stick. Those mysterious glows you see in the wild could be fireflies or bioluminescent plankton, Ng notes.
Fluorescent substances such as quinine (found in tonic water) only light up when exposed to UV light, Ng continues. If you want some funky magic potions or lights, simply fill a bottle with tonic water and flick on the black light – the colourless water will glow electric blue.
Cathy Rogers, case manager for the Edmonton Paranormal Society, knows of many other non-supernatural explanations for ghosts. She and her team investigate hundreds of cases a year to find scientific explanations for purported hauntings.
Take orbs, for example – those mysterious ghostly objects that often show up in photos.
Almost all of them turn out to be a bug or spot of dust that the camera is misinterpreting as a weird glowing blob, Rogers says.
"To this date, I have never seen an orb that I couldn't decipher and say that's a bug or that's dust," she says, and she gets thousands of such shots each year.
Using interviews, video and infrared cameras, motion sensors, voice recorders, a radio scanner called a spirit box and experts from a wide array of scientific fields, Rogers and her investigators are able to help clients track down the sources of ghostly behaviours in their homes, whether it be a creaking floorboard, a settling structure, someone whispering or a squirrel in the walls.
Sometimes it's an unusually strong electromagnetic field.
Rogers recalls one recent case of a home in Millet where the owners complained of illnesses, apparitions and strange noises. The wicked high electromagnetic readings her team detected in one part of the basement likely caused all those symptoms, she says.
An electrician said that the wiring there was so bad that it was actually a fire hazard, she continues.
"Even if there was paranormal activity going on, this had to be fixed."
Once the wiring was fixed, the ghosts went away.
Many times, a ghost is a case of a resident's stress and fear turning ordinary events into paranormal ones.
"Most of the phone calls we get are from people who are losing their minds," she notes, terrified that their home is possessed. But if a person is stressed, they can become fearful and forgetful, making everyday phenomena – missing keys, a banging furnace – become sinister and suspicious.
That's why the first thing Rogers and her team do in any investigation is to teach their clients how to calm down and think rationally about their experience.
"It's more calming the mind as opposed to running out and grabbing a priest," she says.
The monster mash
In addition to ghosts at your door, you might encounter some other classic monsters this Halloween such as vampires and zombies.
Nature has many behaviours and medical conditions that mirror these mythological monsters, says Jennifer Bawden, science director at the Telus World of Science.
A vampire's sensitivity to light is a lot like porphyria, a genetic disorder caused by build-up of the ingredients that make up the protein porphyrin, which is a part of hemoglobin, she continues. People with the disorder experience burning pain and blistering skin when exposed to light.
There are a host of parasitoids (parasites that kill their hosts) out there that can turn animals into the living dead, Bawden continues.
The phorid fly can lay its eggs in honeybees, for example, Bawden notes. Infested zom-bees act wobbly and disorientated, and abandon their hives in the middle of the night before they die and release scores of larval flies. These parasites are one of the lead suspects in the mysterious cases of colony-collapse disorder now sweeping the U.S. bee industry.
The jewel wasp stings a cockroach in the brain and injects a neurotoxin that makes it totally submissive, writes neurobiologist Ram Gal of Israel's Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. The wasp cuts off the roach's antennae, drinks its hemolymph, and pulls on the stump to lead its victim to its nest. The roach follows submissively, "as if it was a dog led by his master's leash."
After laying an egg on it, the wasp entombs the roach in the nest. Once the egg hatches, the larvae digs into the roach and eats it alive, braaaains and all, before the roach finally dies five days later. The larvae then uses the roach's empty corpse for protection as it pupates.
The science of magic
Applying Halloween myths and magic to science is a great way to engage students, Ng says.
"The kids want to know how this stuff works."
Applying science to Halloween makes it less scary but not less mysterious, Rogers says. It's okay to think that there's a ghost in your home, but you shouldn't be too scared to live there because of it.
And since science never has all the answers, there's still room for some spooky situations. Rogers says her team sometimes detects strange voices on their recorders that seem to answer their questions, for example, and sometimes gets reports of furniture moving about on its own.
"They may not be all that frequent, but when they happen, it's pretty darn exciting," she says.
