So, you've just moved into your new home. Beautiful house, fantastic location, and you got it for a good price. The previous owners seemed very keen for a quick sale. Wondering why? Well, could it be that they thought it was haunted? Stranger things have happened. Beautiful properties have become houses of horror thanks to unexplained happenings. Some families decide to move out. Others learn to live with their ghosts, or resort to exorcism.

Or, in the case of the actor Nicolas Cage, they simply don't sleep in the house. In 2007, he shelled out $3.5m for LaLaurie Mansion, reputedly the most haunted house in New Orleans. "At any given moment," said Cage, "I have five or six ghosts surrounding the house, all looking up at this haunted temple, and I'm in there. We'll [his family] come over and have dinner there but nobody sleeps there." The property is now up for sale.

MIT researchers report the identification of a mechanism in the brain that's tied to the experience of déjà vu, French for "seen already." The neuroscientists studied how subregions of the hippocampus--a part of the brain responsible for creating memories--contribute to our ability to differentiate between distinct places that are very similar. To conduct their study, the scientists observed the behavior of genetically-engineered mice in similar chambers, one with a floor that could shock them. (Yeeowch!) From the MIT News Office:

Researchers believe that a set of neurons called place cells fire to provide a sort of blueprint for any new space we encounter. The next time we see the space, those same neurons fire. Thus we know when we've been somewhere before and don't have to relearn our way around familiar turf.

But if we enter a space very similar to one we have seen before, a new but overlapping set of neurons creates the blueprint. When there is enough overlap between the two sets, we experience an eerie feeling of déjà vu--a French phrase that literally means, "already seen."

This is a photo taken by designer Neil Sandbach at a farm in Hertfordshire for inclusion in some Wedding Stationery he was preparing for a couple due to host their wedding at the venue. When Neil opened up the photo on his computer he was surprised, and not a little spooked, when he noticed a blurry white figure that he was certain wasn’t visible when the photo was taken, as there was nobody else around.
 

 

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