My husband, José, and I have a rather peculiar hobby. On weekends, when he’s not caught up in his endless loop of reels and memes, we usually talk about quantum physics, astronomy, black holes, and the possibility that other universes might exist.
We’re not physicists, nor do we pretend to be. We enjoy reading about the theories of Michio Kaku and Brian Greene, though I must admit that sometimes we end up understanding even less than before. We’re also big fans of industrial metal, so we can easily switch from listening to Rammstein to discussing parallel dimensions. A rather unusual combination, but one that works for us.
A while ago, during a conversation with some friends about supernatural experiences, a question came up that I couldn’t get out of my head afterwards: What if what we call the supernatural were simply a manifestation of a physical reality we don’t yet know how to explain?
I kept thinking about it for several days and remembered Parallel Worlds by Michio Kaku. It was a book I had started reading and, frankly, never had much intention of finishing. In it, Kaku talks about additional dimensions and the possibility that other universes might exist beyond our ability to observe them.
My curiosity got the better of me, and I ended up looking for information on the subject. That’s how I found an interview with Kaku published in 2022 by the Institute of Art and Ideas. I was particularly interested in an explanation that, according to Kaku, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg had once given him.
Weinberg used an analogy involving radio waves. In a room, signals from different stations can be present at the same time, but a radio only plays the station we’re tuned into. Kaku uses this analogy to explain how different quantum realities could coexist without us necessarily being able to interact with them.
Of course, this doesn’t prove that parallel universes exist. But I found it interesting to think that there are things around us we can’t directly perceive and can only detect with certain instruments. Could something similar be true of aspects of reality we haven’t discovered yet?
That got me thinking about ghost stories again. We all know at least one: a shadow crossing a hallway, a light appearing without explanation, or that unsettling feeling of being watched when we’re alone. These are experiences we often associate with spirits or supernatural presences.
I’m not saying that ghosts are inhabitants of other universes. There’s no scientific evidence to support that. But I wonder if some of these experiences might have explanations we haven’t discovered yet, rather than necessarily being supernatural.
This also reminds me of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, a story Kaku also mentions in his interview. I’ve always loved how, in that tale, the absurd makes sense within Alice’s world. And it makes me think about how many ideas that seem outlandish to us today might be viewed differently in a hundred or two hundred years. Although it’s also possible they’ll still seem just as outlandish.
Meanwhile, José keeps sending me reels, I keep reading about these theories, and every now and then we go back to discussing them. We don’t always understand everything or reach a conclusion, but I think that’s exactly the part we enjoy the most.
Perhaps many ghost stories are simply ways we find to explain our fears or experiences we don’t know how to interpret. Or maybe there are still things about the universe we haven’t even learned how to investigate.
I like to imagine another possibility, even though I have no proof: that some of those presences might be echoes from other worlds, existing in different realities and trying to make themselves known in ours. Perhaps that’s why we can’t see them clearly or understand what’s happening, but we can feel them.
It’s a rather imaginative idea, I know. But who knows? Maybe someday someone will find an explanation. And perhaps that person will be a visionary, or simply one of those people dismissed as mad in their own time.