Ghosts of St Andrews: Science in the Shadows

St Andrews — also known as “the home of golf,” the oldest university in Scotland, and also the town with the highest number of ghosts per capita in the UK. 

During a late-night study session in the King James Library, you may have felt a cold shiver down your neck. This is believed to be the ghost of David Murray, the university’s postmaster general, who hung himself from the balustrade in 1707. During an early morning run along East Sands, you may have seen a faint figure of a monk through the fog, or a shadow of a monk waving at you from the top of the Cathedral Tower. 

Ghost sightings are not uncommon, especially in a town as historic and eerie as St Andrews, but is there any science behind these claims?

One explanation for ghost sightings is hallucinations during sleep paralysis. As people move into rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, their brains prevent their bodies from moving. In this stage, people can find themselves awake but unable to move. A sensation of being pushed down often accompanies sleep paralysis, with many believing there is a dangerous person in their room. This could lead many sufferers to believe they have seen a ghost. 

Another common psychological explanation for ghost sightings is pareidolia — the brain’s tendency to impose meaning on random patterns. It is the same phenomenon that lets us see faces in clouds or figures in shadows. In low light, the visual processing pathways of the occipital lobe struggle to interpret ambiguous shapes, so the brain makes a best guess, often drawing on cultural expectations. In a centuries-old town like St Andrews, where ghost stories are part of the scenery, that best guess could easily be a phantom monk.

Context also matters. If you walk into a building on a ghost tour, expecting it to be haunted, your brain primes itself to notice and thus misinterpret ambiguous sensory input. This is known as top-down processing — our expectations shape what we perceive. In 2003, psychologist Richard Wiseman designed artificial haunted rooms at the University of Hertfordshire. Volunteers reported chills, the feeling of being watched, and even ghostly touches, all without any supernatural stimuli. Participants told that a room was haunted were twice as likely to report strange experiences as those told it was part of a safety experiment. Our perception has evolved to default to caution — seeing an imaginary ghost in the dark is, evolutionary speaking, safer than missing a lurking predator.

Still, pure science cannot fully explain why ghost stories endure. Research in cognitive psychology suggests humans are pattern-seeking and meaning-making creatures. When confronted with uncertainty, the ideas of a lingering presence can be comforting, even when frightening. Neurologist Oliver Sacks once described seeing his recently deceased mother in the street, a moment he recognised as a hallucination, yet one that felt profoundly real. Ghosts, real or not, are often expressions of memory and emotion, not madness. 

So next time you wander past the cathedral ruins at midnight and think you see a grey-cloaked figure in the mist, you might be witnessing a perfect storm of psychology, physics, and suggestion: dim light priming your pareidolia, a cold breeze triggering goosebumps, maybe even low-frequency vibrations from the sea air. It is far less romantic than a wandering spirit, but perhaps more fascinating. The real mystery is not what ghosts are — it is why, after centuries of explanation, we still find ourselves looking for them.

Illustration by Grace Robinson