Regular Episode
#184 – GHOST HUNTING GEAR
A quick editorial note before we dive in: the devices discussed below are real products used by real investigators — but as the conversation makes clear, none of them were designed for paranormal research, and there is no credible scientific evidence that any of them can detect a ghost. Links are provided for context, not endorsement.
🔬 From Believer to Skeptic (and the Value of a Loose Hinge)
Matt traces his intellectual journey from enthusiastic believer to increasingly skeptical investigator. After nearly 28 years of field work and interviews with claimants, he found himself no longer learning anything new — a good sign, he says, that the methodology itself might be the problem. He describes his first real “Scooby-Doo moment”: at midnight, at a reputedly haunted abandoned house from his childhood, a door slammed violently in his face. He ran — then stopped, went back, and discovered that the top hinge was loose, causing the door to close on its own every time it was pushed open. That experience, he says, turned out to be his most valuable piece of ghost-hunting equipment: a critical mind.
📡 EMF Meters: Detecting Everything Except Ghosts
The K-II (K2) meter is arguably the most iconic piece of ghost-hunting kit, popularized by shows like Ghost Hunters and Ghost Adventures. Matt explains the two broad categories of electromagnetic field detectors in common use:
– AC meters — designed to detect man-made alternating current fields from appliances, wiring, and electronics. The problem: wiring is inside every wall, and a human body standing near a wall will reflect that field back at the detector, producing readings that investigators often misattribute to a nearby spirit.
– DC meters — detect natural fields like the Earth’s own magnetic field, electrical storms, and the fields produced by living organisms. These are the meters some investigators prefer for ghost work, though Matt is skeptical of that theory too. The investigator’s own body generates a field, so the meter often just tracks the person holding it.
The broader problem, Matt argues, is that reality TV ghost hunting — he name-checks Zak Bagans of Ghost Adventures and Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson of Ghost Hunters — has convinced people they can learn valid investigation technique by watching television. EMF detectors were designed by and for electricians; using them to find ghosts is a category error from the start.
📻 Frank’s Box, the Spirit Box, and the Cauliflower Test
The Frank’s Box (also called a Spirit Box) was invented by Frank Sumption, whom Karen interviewed firsthand. Sumption freely admits the device is a deliberately broken radio — one modified so that random voltage sweeps it rapidly across AM or FM bands, producing a continuous stream of fragmentary speech, music, and noise. The idea is that spirits can use those audio fragments to communicate.
Matt and Karen actually own a Frank’s Box — a gift from Sumption himself — and used it in theatrical séances. Their finding: you don’t need to pre-load scary words into a hidden speaker. Auditory pareidolia and social conformity do the work for you. They would ask an audience to pick a target word — say, “cauliflower” — turn on the box, and wait. Once one person raised their hand claiming to hear it, several more would immediately agree. The box, Matt concludes, will “say” whatever you prime people to hear.
📸 Cameras, Orbs, and the Demon Dog of Brook Forest Inn
Ghost photography gets an extended treatment. Matt’s group used cameras primarily for documentation — methodically photographing every room before and after an investigation to catch changes — rather than hoping to snap a specter. Their standing rule: take multiple shots of everything, keep every image (even the boring ones), and leave the lights on.
On orbs: the circular balls of light that proliferated after the shift from film to digital photography are almost certainly out-of-focus dust particles. A mote of dust a few inches from the lens, struck by the camera’s flash, reflects light back as a blurry, apparently round shape. The faceted surface of dust particles means that when one facet lines up with the flash, the result looks eerily like a glowing sphere. Orbs, Matt notes, were essentially unknown in the era of film cameras — which is itself a significant clue about their origin.
The Brook Forest Inn in Evergreen, Colorado (also discussed in Karen’s book 📚 Would You Believe It? 💵) provides a case study in what happens when investigators ignore that advice. A visiting group, trained by Matt’s team and then left to their own devices, turned out the lights anyway, discarded all but one photograph, and sent Matt a deeply alarming-looking image of what appeared to be a demonic creature. After pulling their own daytime documentation photos of the inn’s walls, Matt’s group matched the shape to a framed print of an Italian lion sculpture. The “demon dog” was a photograph of a photograph, taken in the dark.
🌡️ Thermal Cameras and the Cold Spot Problem
Thermal (FLIR) cameras are expensive, visually dramatic, and deeply misleading in untrained hands. Matt’s key point: they measure surface temperature only, and they reflect off almost any surface — including walls painted with flat paint. A figure seen in thermal footage is often the residual heat impression left by a person who was leaning against a wall, or a reflection of warm objects on the other side of the room.
Matt and Karen describe appearing in a bonus episode of Ghost Hunters (Season 2 DVD) filmed at the Elkhorn Lodge in Colorado. The TAPS team spotted what looked like a human figure on their thermal camera; Matt’s group identified it as a reflection from items on another wall. The footage of Matt’s group explaining this was cut; Jason Hawes then appeared on camera and delivered the same explanation as though he’d figured it out himself.
The cold-spot theory — that ghosts draw thermal energy out of a room to manifest — also gets a physics workout. Matt, drawing on Navy training in refrigeration, points out that you cannot “add cold”: you can only remove heat. Any energy transfer produces heat as a byproduct, not cold. The math would suggest an implausibly large temperature drop would be required to do even trivial physical work. And as Blake notes, these supposedly otherworldly phenomena are being measured with very worldly instruments.
🎲 Miscellaneous Devices: Ovilus, Flashlights, Geiger Counters, and Clocks
The conversation covers several more items from the ghost hunter’s toolkit:
– The Ovilus — created by Bill Chappell, this device contains a small dictionary and spits out randomly selected words at random intervals. Chappell himself has noted (selectively, Matt observes) that it is “for entertainment purposes only.” Matt encountered a user at the Robert Murch Talking Board Historical Society who was convinced every random word was a spirit message. The device, Blake suggests, functions as “digital Tourette’s.”
– Flashlights — a peculiarly popular tool. Investigators deliberately loosen the cap until the light is right at the threshold of on/off, set it on the floor, and ask yes/no questions. The flashlight responds via thermal expansion and contraction of the metal housing. The physics of metal is not impressed by questions about the afterlife.
– Geiger counters — Matt’s view is succinct: if you walk into a location and your Geiger counter is generating heavy readings, the appropriate response is to leave immediately — but not for supernatural reasons.
– Clocks and the witching hour — the popular belief that 3 a.m. is a peak time for paranormal activity (sometimes framed as a demonic mockery of the Trinity, sometimes as the hour of a specific death) raises an obvious question: how does a ghost know what time zone it’s in, or how to account for daylight saving time?
The Brook Forest Inn also features in a remarkable audio anomaly — the group heard what sounded like a crowd entering the inn, glasses clinking, and conversation, all of which stopped instantaneously the moment they reached the top of the stairwell to investigate. No footprints in the snow outside, no disturbance inside. Matt’s tentative working hypothesis: acoustic effects from a snowplow on the highway outside, combined with the unusual sound-dampening properties of heavy snowfall, may have produced a compelling audio illusion. He doesn’t claim certainty — and the willingness to say “I don’t know” is, he argues, itself a prerequisite for good investigation.
📚 Further Reading
– 📚 Would You Believe It? 💵 by Karen Stollznow
🔗 Related Links
– Ghost Hunting (Wikipedia overview)
– Frank’s Box / Spirit Box
– Pareidolia
– Thermographic Camera
– Cheesman Park, Denver (formerly a cemetery; discussed briefly as a future episode topic)
– The Stanley Hotel, Estes Park
– Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP) (flagged for a future dedicated episode)
Note: ads inserted into the distributed audio alter the timestamps in unpredictable ways, so timing references in these notes are approximate.
In this episode of MonsterTalk, Karen and Blake are joined by Mathew Baxter (paranormal investigator, lecturer, magician and Karen’s husband) to talk about ghost hunting gear used by amateur investigators.
WARNING: I’m linking to some examples below, but we absolutely see no evidence that these tools are efficacious in investigating the ghosts & paranormal. The links to stores are informational — we would encourage you to NOT buy any of these tools to find ghosts.
Common Ghost Hunting Gear
K-II (K2) Meter
What’s this all about? (Great article by Kenny Biddle)
Flashlights
Not for seeing, but for talking!? (via RadioLab)
FLIR Cameras
Promoted by ghost hunters, very expensive ($$$ to $$$$)
Probably useful for Bigfoot hunting too
Useful for those pesky radioactive ghosts
Again, also useful for Bigfoot hunting
Cold spots. Warm spots. Like my wife, ghosts can never get the temperature quite right.
Despite the use by The Real Ghost Busters, we’re doubtful about the effectiveness of these traps without a properly functioning nuclear storage facility.
Music
- Monstertalk Theme: Monster by Peach Stealing Monkeys
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