For example the Mbira—an African thumb piano—the low frequencies created by this instrument vibrate and distort bottle caps which are nailed to it. These low distorted sounds are used to talk to spirits.
Infrasonic sounds are also linked to ghost sitings, from a more scientific/acoustic research perspective.
My research has lead to a realization about cities, and the low frequencies that are so predominant in urban centers. This came as a sonic vision of the urban soundscape prior to European contact. For the most part this was a space with very few low frequencies (besides the occasional thunderstorm), and most likely no infrasonic soundscape.
This vision went on to fast forward through time, with the soundscape changing in stop motion--so one could listen to the past 600 years in a single sound file. The low frequencies increased and dominated the soundscape, until finally I was left with our current urban soundscape--a low drone. When I stood back from this vision I realized that the stop motion sound file was the sound of the natural world dieing.
Cities can be looked at as dead places as far as nature is concerned. I don't mean to sound negative, but if we compare the landscape of, for example, a Northern Gulf Island off the coast of BC (where I am currently living) with downtown Toronto, well... nature looks extremely controlled and sculpted in the parks and other green spaces in the Toronto landscape (this isn't to say that one is better than the other, I enjoy what both spaces have to offer).
But... to say that nature is dead, I mean that nature as itself does not exist in cities. And the soundscape of nature is almost non existent due to the predominant sounds--infrasound and other low frequency sounds--created by engines, subways, etc.
So..let's assume for argument sake, that the natural world is dead in downtown Toronto, and lets also assume that infrasound did not exist in the pre-settler urban Toronto soundscape. Then, having assumed this, could the introduction of tactile sound be looked at as the sound created by the dead natural world--the ghosts and spirits?
We live in a wash of low frequencies that are looked at as the sound of the spirit world in many Indigenous cultures, and are beginning to be looked at as the sound of the paranormal in scientific research.
