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52 Broken Technology of Ghost Hunting

The Broken Technology of the white noise. But mostly, ghost hunters use technique, he published his findings in a 1967
pre-existing technology: not just EMF meters, book called Radio Contact with the Dead. A few
Ghost Hunting but also run-of-the-mill digital recorders, used years later, a Latvian psychologist named
to capture electronic voice phenomena, or EVP. Konstantin Raudive further developed and
An investigator records her or himself asking elaborated on Jürgenson’s techniques, releasing
The best tools for tracking down
questions in an empty room, with the hope that his own book on the science of recording the
spirits have always been the ones upon playback ghostly voices will appear. voices of the dead in 1971.

fallible enough to find something. All of this technology—both the custom Raudive’s transcriptions included some
and the repurposed—works along more or less disturbing messages from the beyond. One voice
the same principle: generating a lot of static and told him: “Here is night brothers, here the birds
Colin Dickey random effects, hoping to capture random noise burn.” Another reported: “Secret reports ... it is
and other ephemera. The ghost hunter, in turn, bad here.” But Raudive confessed that the
looks for patterns, momentary convergences, ghosts didn’t always speak so clearly. He
serendipity, meaningful coincidence. For the claimed that spirits would speak in multiple
The small, Syracuse, New York-based company believer, this is where ghosts live: in static, in languages, sometimes in the same sentence.
K-II Enterprises makes a number of handheld glitches and in blurs. Sometimes they would speak backward.
electronic devices—including the Dog Dazer (a Ghost hunting was born out of a love of Deciphering EVP became a matter of sifting
supposedly safe, humane device that deters technological failure. In 1861, William H. through any acoustic anomaly that shows up on
aggressive dogs with high-pitched radio Mumler, a jeweler’s engraver, was studying the a tape, however minor or incoherent, and then
signals)—but it is best known for the Safe new trade of photography when the shadowy torturing that noise into some kind of meaning.
Range EMF. The size of a television remote, the figure of a young girl appeared on a plate he was Electronic voice phenomena have
Safe Range EMF detects electromagnetic fields, developing. As Crista Cloutier describes in The continued to rank among the most prominent
or EMF, measuring them with a bright LED Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult, “evidence” offered of paranormal activity, it
array that moves from green to red depending Mumler knew it to be an error, a consequence of seems, precisely because humans are hardwired
on their strength. Designed to locate potentially accidentally reusing a plate that hadn’t been to dredge meaning out of chaos. Evolutionarily,
harmful EMF radiation from nearby power lines sufficiently scrubbed of its previous exposure. we have long needed to discern the sight or
or household appliances, the Safe Range has But then he showed the curiosity to a sound of a predator despite its camouflage,
become popular for another use: detecting Spiritualist friend of his. “Not at that time being which has led us to look for patterns where they
ghosts. inclined much to the spiritual belief myself, and might not be immediately evident. The quirks
Since its appearance in the show Ghost being of a jovial disposition, always ready for a and shortcomings of technology plays directly
Hunters, where the ghost hunter Grant Wilson joke,” he later admitted, “I concluded to have a into this biological need: throwing out random
claimed that it has been “specially calibrated for little fun, as I thought, at his expense.” static and noise that is primed to be transmuted
paranormal investigators,” the Safe Range He told the Spiritualist that the image into meaningful signals. Ghost hunters work
(usually referred to as a K-II meter) has become was authentic, and that no one else had been through confirmation bias. Looking for proof of
ubiquitous among those looking for spirits. around when he’d taken the photograph. His the paranormal, they will find it in anything, but
Search for it on Amazon, and many listings will friend took the joke all too seriously, and in most readily in static, gibberish, and errata—
refer to it as a “ghost meter,” an indispensable short order, Spiritualist publications had technological noise in which we’re hardwired to
tool in the ghost hunter’s arsenal. It isn’t alone reprinted Mumler’s mistake as proof of life after find false positives.
among EMF meters: Of the best-selling EMF death. Mumler himself soon changed his tune, The only thing that’s changed recently is
meters on Amazon, two out of the top three are claiming he’d discovered a “wonderful the proliferation of consumer electronics
explicitly marketed as ghost meters. phenomenon that really needed investigation,” associated with ghost hunting. In an age of
and began offering to make spirit photographs iPhones and Fitbits, ghost hunters are just one
Scanning the various product descriptions and in earnest. For ten dollars (normal sittings cost more niche market, lapping up the latest and
reviews, though, what becomes clear is that the about a quarter at the time), he’d take your greatest gadgets for sale. But there’s one crucial
K-II Safe Range is a relatively unreliable photo, with the proviso he couldn’t guarantee a difference: most purveyors of consumer
electromagnetic field meter. It operates only on ghost’s materialization. electronics keep their consumers happy by
one axis (you have to wave it around to get a Mumler’s inadvertent invention of spirit constantly refining them until they’re free of
proper reading), and it’s unshielded, meaning photography cemented a connection between bugs. Ghost tech works the other way, by
that it can be set off by a cell phone, a two-way ghosts and technology that endures to this actively engineering glitches—the more, the
radio, or virtually any kind of electronic device day—and specifically, the ways that mistakes better.
that occasionally gives off electromagnetic and accidents of technology appear as uch seekers can easily be written off as
waves. The reviewer Kenny Biddle found he manifestations of the paranormal. Consumer kooks and outliers, but there’s something
could set it off with, among other things, a technologies from photography to telegraphy to paradigmatic in their use of faulty devices. The
computer mouse and a camera battery pack. radio to the internet are almost always rise of the internet and other new technologies
Yet it’s precisely because it’s not immediately seized on by believers as offering promised a new Information Age, one in which
particularly good at its primary purpose that further proof of the paranormal. In 1953, three data, truth, and knowledge were the new
makes it a popular device for ghost hunters. children were watching Ding Dong School one currency, where the future would be built on
Erratic, prone to false positives, easily afternoon on Long Island when the ghostly face information itself. Twenty years on, there’s an
manipulated, its flashy LED display will light of an unknown woman appeared on the screen. endless labyrinth of conspiracy theories, fake
up any darkened room of a haunted hotel or The face would not dissipate, even after the memes, trumped up stats, and fabricated
castle. Which is to say, its popularity as a ghost television was turned off, and their father was evidence. The world’s knowledge is just a
hunting tool stems mainly from its fallibility. forced to face the television to the wall “for Google search away, but it comes to us
The K-II isn’t the only consumer- gross misbehavior in frightening little children,” inextricably intertwined with the world’s
electronic item used by ghost hunters. Often it’s as The New York Times reported. The television bullshit.
sold in kits that contain other devices, such as a died completely a day later, but not before its The 21st-century media consumer is
Couples Ghost Hunt Kit, with two of paranormal nature had made it a minor always working to sift through the noise in
everything, so you can build “trust and lasting celebrity. search of a signal. Whether it’s a cousin’s anti-
memories when the two of you, alone in some For Friedrich Jürgenson, it was a vax Facebook post, the endless Farmville
spooky stakeout, look to each other for cassette recorder. In the late 1950s, Jürgenson, a requests that have to be filtered out of a feed, or
confirmation of your findings and reassurance!” painter and filmmaker, was experimenting with the colossal avalanche of half-truths and lies
There are devices that have been engineered recording birds in his garden; when he played dumped during this election, most people’s
specifically for ghost hunters, like a ghost box, them back, he heard voices on the tape that he primary challenge online these days is blocking
which works by randomly scanning through FM claimed belonged to his dead father and wife, out the endless assault of static, trying to torture
and AM frequencies to pick up spirits’ words in calling his name. After several years refining his it into some kind of meaning. []