"Ghost Wall Hitting": Will people blindfolded walking in the forest keep walking in circles?

"Ghost Wall Hitting" is a very old folk saying: walking in the wilderness at night, even though you're clearly moving forward, you always end up back where you started, unable to get out. It often happens when walking mountain paths, graveyards, or farmland—someone walks until midnight and suddenly realizes that what's ahead is something they've seen before.

Different places have different methods: some say bite your tongue, some say take off your shoes, some say light a cigarette, some say curse, and some say pee in front of you. Old folks also say that if you encounter it, stop first, don't panic, stand for a while, and it'll be fine once dawn breaks.

In 2009, a German research institute conducted an experiment, very simple: they found a group of volunteers and had them walk in one direction in a large forest and in the Sahara Desert in Tunisia. They wore locators and were only told to keep walking forward, deciding for themselves how to walk.

The result was that people walking on cloudy days or at night almost all walked in circles—some walked many circles without realizing it at all. Some thought they were walking in a straight line, but in fact they crossed over places they had just walked several times. When it was sunny with the sun out, they walked very straight.

The researchers' explanation is that humans don't have a direction-sensing sensor; we rely on what our eyes see to correct our course. Without reference points, even a slight difference in stride length between the two legs causes you to gradually turn. Later, they also had subjects walk blindfolded, and the circles they walked were only twenty meters or so wide. So if you really encounter Ghost Wall Hitting, don't force yourself to keep walking—stop, wait for dawn or for the moon to come out; that works better than anything else.

#Folklore #网络转载 #科学