A tale of the Supernatural – or something else?

In 1968 we were living at the top of the Sir John Soane’s museum in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Holborn, London having just returned from 2 years in New Zealand.  Believe me, the museum was the spookiest of places at the best of times.

However, I decided to take a hot bath one evening and settled in for a good soak.  Something very strange happened that night.  Something that I will never forget.  Something that has stayed with me, clear as day for the past 46 years.

The water in the bath started to build up into waves, waves with a period of about a second.  The amplitude of the waves increased very quickly over maybe 10 seconds or so, and they were so high at the walls of the bath that they actually collapsed over just like a wave in the sea.  As you can imagine this was a bit unsettling for a 14 year old kid who just wanted a soak, and I sat up with a start.  The waves stopped!!  A bit shaken I laid down in the bath again, and no sooner had I sunken myself in my nice hot bath again – the waves started up!  Big waves, breaking on the walls again – shit!  Sat up again, and they stopped.  This was weird.  Even I could see this was weird.  And at 14 with a highly active imagination and no Physics background – this was Supernatural and something spooky was going on in the Museum that night.  I laid down in the bath again – same thing happened.  This was all too much, got out and pulled the plug out – pretty shaken.

That evening stayed with me for quite a while.  I think I told my parents who I believe told me I was talking rubbish, and that’s how it stood for maybe 20 years or so until I thought about it again – this time armed with a First Class Honours Degree in Physics, Maths and Astronomy from the University of  Sussex.  The Supernatural event became a natural event, but probably a very rare event.  I must say that in the few baths I took since that day (preferring showers nowadays) I have never been able to repeat the observation – but this is what I think happened.

By pure luck (bad luck?) I had filled the bath to the point where it was in resonance with my heartbeat pumping the blood around my body.  I had created a resonant cavity and the little “pushes” into the water caused by my heartbeat pumping the blood around were at resonance with the bath/water “cavity”.  As for any resonant system, when pumping energy into the system at the resonant frequency there is a rapid build up in amplitude, whether it’s a voltage, or a wave amplitude.  Very quickly the waves built up in the bath until they were splashing off the walls like a mini-storm at sea.

So that’s what I think happened with my increased Physics knowledge and my scientist hat on.  But it could have been a Ghost of course 🙂 🙂

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