Solving the Mystery of the Taxi Ghost Story: How a Passenger Disappears from the Back Seat

Preface
- A cab picked up a customer on a remote mountain road late at night. The cab driver chats with the customer for a while, then looks in the rearview mirror and sees that the customer, who was supposed to be in the back seat, has vanished without a trace...the standard ghost story.

- As I mentioned briefly in a previous article, the mystery of this kind of ghost story should arise from the same mechanism as the UFO/ET/Bigfoot/Missing-411 mystery.

- In other words, the mystery of the cab ghost story can be solved by interpreting it as follows.


Unraveling the Taxi Ghost Story
- The cab ghost story probably occurs by the mechanism of "abnormal EMFs that occur frequently in mountains, etc. → temporary disorientation → hallucination of the customer".

- In other words, there were no such customers from the beginning, nor were they given a ride. However, the driver suffered a temporary loss of consciousness due to the abnormal EMF(*1) that occurred near the scene. As a result, he found the customer on the shoulder of the road with his hands up and assumed that he had picked him up. (Whether he actually stopped the car and opened the door, or simply assumed he had experienced such a simulated experience, depends on the circumstances.)

- After driving for a while and recovering from the disorientation by moving away from the strong EMF area, the hallucinations of the guests also disappeared as the hallucinations faded.

- This hypothesis is potentially disprovable. Since cabs these days automatically record conversations with customers to prevent problems, any such ghost incidents can be replayed and confirmed. If the voices and images of ghost customers were recorded, this hypothesis of mine would be disproved. But I know of no such case and it should not happen in the future.

Extra
- Cab drivers are said to prepare cigarettes as a countermeasure against such "ghosts.

- This is similar to a fisherman's legend (*3) that if you burn a TOMA(Roof of a ship woven with dead grass) when a ghost ship appears, the ghost ship will disappear.

- If these legends are not groundless, the following inferences can be made.

　　- Smoke has the effect of awakening us from hallucinations by being inhaled.

　　- Smoke has a slight discharging effect (*2), which reduces the effect of EMFs.

- If my hypothesis is correct, there are more effective ways to prevent this than smoking. A metal helmet (preferably one that covers the entire head) on the head should do the trick.


(*1)
- Cars are shielded to some extent against static electric fields. However, they are less effective against pulsed electric fields caused by transient phenomena. In other words, because the wavelength of the electric field is short, it can easily penetrate through windows.

(*2)
- As proof, I have posted below a video of lightning running along the path of the plume left by the rocket that launched it.




Rocket-Triggered Lightning



(*3)
ref: Sekiyama Moriya, "Ghosts and Specters of the Sea in Japan" 『日本の海の幽霊と妖怪』、中央公論新社、2005-06

Thanks
- Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

(2022-04-04)