Jes Alexander is a restoration architect who thinks he might have come up with an explanation for at least some residual hauntings. Paranormal researchers often have likened residual hauntings to tape recordings of events that are somehow triggered to play over and over again. In his article, "Residual hauntings (maybe) explained," Alexander notes that many old houses have all of the ingredients for a kind of large-scale recorder: a metallic recording "film" in the form of lead paint in the walls, electromagnets created by iron in the building's skeleton, and a power source from old wiring. The electric power also could come from the charged atmosphere of stormy nights, when ghostly activity is traditionally experienced. This particular kind of building structure might account for EVP as well, he says.
It would be worth some experimentation to find out if Alexander's idea is viable. I see some problems with the theory, however. I'm no electrical engineer, but it seems making a recording device work requires some rather precise arrangements of the components required. We could not, for example, throw magnetic tape, an electromagnet and a battery into a box and expect it to record and play back sound.
Residual hauntings have also been reported in places that do not fit Alexander's requirements. I would surmise that not all have lead paint, iron framing or bad wiring. In fact, one of the most famous cases of residual haunting -- the Underwood video from Gettysburg -- is outside.
I see problems with suggesting this as a source of electronic voice phenomena (EVP), too. As many paranormal researchers have experienced, EVP don't seem to be playbacks of a recording. They don't, for example, repeat the same things over and over. Rather, the voices in EVP often comment on what the researchers are doing and saying, and even directly answer questions. (The only way this might be possible is if EVP are some kind of temporal holographic recording we do not understand.)
So I think Alexander has an interesting hypothesis that should be tested, but I don't see how it can account for all residual hauntings.
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