We need to talk—just you, me, and that ghost looming over your shoulder. If it’s all the same to you, then I’d like to do so via ghost hunting equipment. For all its violent connotation, ghost hunting is a remarkably diplomatic engagement; respectable ghost hunters yearn for clear communication, not blind exorcisms, with ghosts. In giving chase to something so elusive, however, ghost hunters and their accessories journey through the fields of adolescence, physics, gastronomy, medicine, and pseudoscience. This article will cover standard ghost hunting equipment and techniques with scientific and supernatural explanations for the results.
Take Me to the Resting Place of Your Childhood
The back flap of adolescent phone books is scrawled with faded addresses. Simple games call upon lost souls. As entry-level hunts, these spiritual conversations involve household gear (and thus attract susceptibility to manipulation).
Bloody Mary, an unkempt savage of a woman, has every unfortunate right to be malevolent; her summons are oftentimes preceded by nightly fear-mongering, and any justifiably angered responses only feed these rumors. “I was horrified of Bloody Mary even though I tried it and nothing happened. I knew nothing would happen, but the way people talked about it made it stick,” Albiona Leka ’25 said. Bloody Mary can be reached via lavatory catoptromancy with dim candlelight. The aforementioned malevolence will be demonstrated upon three [or more] consecutive vocalizations of her name and may be attributed to Bloody Mary if the victim lacks a working mind.
Charlie, a poor soul of disputed origin, received many classroom consultations in the late-2010s for his ritual and academic pursuits demand much the same devices. Exchanges confine him to a yes-no binary on opposing corners of a quartered sheet. With two pencils balanced on the crease lines, a spinner is fashioned. After a question (“Charlie, Charlie, are you there?” starts.) is announced to the room, the uppermost utensil rotates. The Boolean value it finishes on indicates Charlie’s reply, given that the winds were not invited.
The Ouija Board, first patented as a “toy or game,” sold by “all first-class toy dealers and stationers,” trademarked by prominent toy manufacturers Hasbro, Inc., is—well, that’s enough of this child’s play. What had evidently been produced as a harmless contraption of juvenile entertainment is now a powerful instrument in the throes of ghost hunting, synonymous with only the most morbid consequences of paranormal contact.
Promise I Won’t Tell (Fingers Crossed)
William Peter Blatty is liable to defamation charges from the Ouija Board. Blatty publicly unveiled The Exorcist as a novel in 1971 and film in 1973 with a narrative resting in the hands of a young girl named Regan; her innocuous play with an Ouija Board culminates in an unsettling demonic possession. Reception for her subsequent superhuman feats of discus throws, contortion, and oculogyration has been very heartfelt. In universe, Regan garners religious attention with powerful cries and blood sprinklers and free cadavers. Meanwhile, Blatty’s audience had graciously organized Regan’s canonization as a champion in horror fiction.
By 2024, the Ouija Board and this new friend, Demonic Possession, had made courtroom appearances in 12 murder cases. PhD student Dorian Cole observed that 9 of these cases occurred after The Exorcist was released and accordingly explores the fictive work’s influence on the Ouija Board’s reputation in “Speak of the Devil: A History of the Ouija Board.” Cole also provides a fascinating investigation on the involvement of female sexuality and hysteria. Much to my chagrin, this does not concern us. The methodology for this infamous ghost weapon is more important:
On the Skeletons in Your Closet
As one can gather from its name, the Ouija Board is a board in shape. All 26 letters of the Latin alphabet are featured at least once on the piece—“Yes,” “No,” and “Goodbye” create duplicates. All 10 Arabic numerals accompany the print, albeit with a smaller frequency.
One pair of living humans collaborates with a planchette, a supplementary legged inverted-heart-ideograph, to interrogate an invisible force. They lay hands upon the planchette such that the invisible force may become articulate. The planchette is slowly drawn to the aforementioned characters in an excruciatingly slow means of communication that mirrors a silent spelling bee. Much of it is performative from the soft lighting, the planchette’s slow dances, the players’ breathless anticipation. All movements and their subsequent interpretations are met with shock. The humans signal the end of the invisible force’s spelled answers by bidding farewell and safely locking the board in the closet.
The invisible force was either a ghostly spirit or an ideomotor phenomenon from one or more of the humans’ expectations. Pop culture has assumed the former to be true; fictional works and nonfictional influencers repeatedly couple use of an Ouija Board with horrific outcomes. “I think a lot of the videos online are typically fake, probably Photoshopped or edited, but I feel like ghosts can be real in your own perception. It’s like manifesting. Don’t let skeptics ruin your whimsy!” Linsay Kim ’25 said.
And they lived happily ever after.
Hold My Hand as Tightly As You Can
If a childlike fear and/or wonder still lingers in your heart, then who am I to forsake you? Behold: seánces, which are honored with the highest ghost hunter turnout per session. This “standing room only” status was supported by their being a group effort akin to a press conference—four to six extant participants [and an optional spiritual medium] make circular seating arrangements in a candlelit sanctuary with a wooden table as the origin. So long as this circumference remains unbroken, its maintenance via either interlocked or pronated hands is irrelevant.
Before the ghost hunters can begin digging their nails into each other’s flesh (out of fear, excitement, and/or possession), they must come to a consensus on hospitality. Fortunately, their ghoulish guests have long been starving and are thereby open to any style of correspondence. In the absence of a medium, the Ouija Board is a safe and courteous selection for its relatively ergonomic design. Table rapping, table tilting, and pendulums fall behind the Ouija Board in convenience, but they can make it up with a little action-to-answer assignment such as a rightward tilt to affirmation. Should the visitors be unsatisfied, there are other applications showcased below.
The attendees complete the stage setting with an intimate atmosphere and cautiously posed inquiries. With such a welcoming backdrop, speculative presences react at ease by delivering cold drafts, commanding physical might, and whispering sweet nothings. Once the ghost hunters are finished branding either para- or social- psychological deduction on said reactions, they cleanse the room.
Those other applications are ready for you now.
LET’S LOCK EYES AND SMILE FOR THE CAMERA
Science has little business being here, but ghost hunters have nonetheless been helping themselves to various scientific mechanisms for the detection and documentation of ghosts’ supernatural abilities. “Devices like spirit boxes or EMF readers interpret vague frequencies into words—the need for such devices (and subsequent stretches in logic) to me invalidates the actuality of ghosts. Yet, this potential makes ghost hunting shows so interesting! Yes, it is all fake, but the excitement that shows bring can spark lots of genuine entertainment,” Tammy Lam ’25, the Vice-President of the Horror Culture Club, said.
As Lam suggested, spirit boxes are curious little devices of electromagnetic manipulation. Despite GhostStop’s, a well-established purveyor of ghost hunting equipment, distinction between spirit boxes and ghost boxes, the terms interchangeably reference glorified radios with workings akin to the preparations of a magician’s distasteful sleight-of-hand; prospective ghosts are offered various AM and FM frequencies that have been shuffled as cards without regard for the former’s susceptibility to static interruptions. Ergo, the aforementioned ghosts are free to construct any messages from all earthly soundbites, and relevant ghost hunters are free to deconstruct any grammatical phrases from the sequence of reconstructed soundbites.
Now, the second object of Lam’s ambivalence: EMF meters. EMF meters and ghost boxes subscribe to the same belief, placing acronymized ElectroMagnetic Fields at the metaphorical fingertips of ghosts. Give thanks to the hunters-turned-missionaries, for this was not always true.
The electromagnetic spectrum gorged on a multitude of essential wavelengths. Who can blame it? Humans have similarly laid claim to the bountiful radio waves, microwaves, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, x-rays, and gamma rays for telecommunication, gastronomy, remote control, sight, sterilization, screening, and medicine to be non-exhaustive. EMFs are evidently ubiquitous in this world and human technology, hence the introduction of EMF meters to measure the titular fields. With spiritualism on the mind, ghostly—denoting spectral and/or ghost town-esque—interference can trigger an EMF meter.
We might as well finish awarding the podium finishers for celebrated tools of the trade. Grant Clauser, a specialist in “audio, video, and smart-home devices” for the Wirecutter review platform at The New York Times, assessed the infamous trio of spirit boxes, EMF meters, and REM pods. As it happens, REM pods worship in the same house as their predecessors. The hypothetical Radiating ElectroMagneticity that critic Kenny Biddle expands from REM entails a likeness to the ghost box’s production of EMFs; presuming credible advertising, the gadget dispatches violent blares and light shows if and only if its own EMF is disrupted by phantoms.
Though I Haven’t the Foggiest Why
REM pods are good for more than that. In accordance with the notion that ghastly residency coincides with cold snaps, GhostStop’s REM pod is furnished with thermosensitivity. The very same blares and lights that wreak havoc for EMF disturbance shall play for heated fluctuations. That’s a bit much. Hunters averse to garish, multipurpose appliances may find solace through a dedicated item in close relationship with the comforts of daily life: the unassuming thermometer. Fortunately, thermometers are flexible enough to suit these hunters’ whims—they curate a numeric exhibition of the temperatures for specified phases of matter, thus alerting ghost hunters to cold fronts and incidental spirits.
Liquid and electric are the poster children for thermometer prefixes. Liquid thermometers are singly host to thermoresponsive mercury, kerosene, and ethanol to measure ambient temperature for the ordinary man. Meanwhile, electronic thermometers convert electric resistance to measure body temperature for the health-conscious man. Ever selective, ghost hunters have abandoned those institutionalized gauges in favor of the infrared laser thermometer gun. These ranged weapons measure emitted infrared wavelengths (The laser is purely decorative.) and are frequently handled by culinary artists to ensure safe consumption.
Cameras and Ghost Hunting
After familiarizing themselves with the culinarians’ weapon of choice, ghost hunters gained a gastronomic-esque desire for visual presentation. The lack of a privilege to tangible materials proved no trouble for the hunters who inquired about virtual rather than physical capture. This time around, their knock on the door of standardized inventions was answered by the camera. While ghost hunters utilize basic cameras to record their escapades, my duty focuses on the specialized mediums of spectrological recorders. My talented former classmate Sam Chin ’24 can provide you with the development of typical cameras.
If thermometer guns were a recipe, then thermographic cameras would be their realized dishes. Thermographic cameras remain faithful with a sensitivity to infrared radiation; however, they take liberties by substituting said radiation with thermal gradient maps instead of numeric values. A mindfulness for the belief that climatic chills and ghosts go hand in hand evokes a picture wherein cool tones illustrate paranormal activity.
Though thermographic cameras’ capabilities are nocturnal enough to register the associated nighttime ghouls, night vision cameras are better equipped for the eponymous task. Their images combat meteorological theories through a higher resolution with the potential to expose apparitions. Depending on the type, night vision cameras are either dedicated ISO amplifiers (if you had read Chin’s article, then you would know that a higher ISO brightens dark environments while adding grain) or electrical transductors and processors.
Meanwhile, motion cameras display the evanescent movements of specters through close pixel comparisons. Notwithstanding that ghosts possess neither the body nor heat required for those motion cameras dependent upon body heat, this world is susceptible to happen upon their interactions—some hunters test the limits of these influences with a twist flashlight on the verge of activation, an arrangement permissible for weaker ghosts or the slightest bug’s breath to easily flicker the light to entertain queries.
Fin.
Swallow Every Key Until There are No Leftovers
Ghost hunting is not a lawless pursuit. The ghosts themselves are not excused from due process, so their hunters cannot practice elitism lest they lose humanity. Ghosts & Gravestones, a ghost tour service, advises expectant ghost hunters to ask property owners for written permission and to carry some manner of personal identification to avoid legal problems.
By definition, haunted sites are the most attractive properties to ghost hunters. Here are two willing suitors.
When Steven King introduced ghost hunters to The Stanley Hotel despite their rocky start, sparks flew. In September 1974, King and his wife had been The Stanley Hotel’s sole guests. His slumber in Room 217 was disturbed by a cold-sweat-inducing nightmare: down the very hotel’s eerie halls, his son was “being chased by a fire-hose.” This terror was neatly packed and shipped to the Overlook Hotel in King’s memoir-esque novel, The Shining, within 3 years. After another 3 years, his tale of the haunted hotel’s driving a troubled author to the attempted murders of his wife and son was given the same treatment as Blatty’s The Exorcist.
Although His Exigency (from exigence, a work’s inspiration/motivation) was devoid of any ghost sightings, The Stanley Hotel and its other phantasmal rooms earn 400,000 yearly visits from hunters and non-hunters alike. The hotel embraces its supernatural reputation with many a tour, séance, and merchandise.
King’s fictional case is far from the only infamously questionable, localized familicide. The real Lizzie Borden “took an ax / And gave her mother forty whacks. / When she saw what she had done, / She gave her father forty-one”—at least, that’s what Mother Goose would like us to believe. Abby and Andrew Borden, Lizzie’s stepmother and father respectively, were killed on August 4th, 1892 with excessive, albeit under 40, hatchet blows. The Sun newspaper had promoted their mysterious assailant to an assassin for there was no sign of struggle, attempt at robbery, uncovered murder weapon, or ease of access. If Lizzie’s position as the daughter of an established New York millionaire had not granted her near-complete immunity to incrimination, then her position as the key of two total witnesses (the second was their maid) would have granted her prison time. This remained true when she was acquitted before she could even spend a full year in jail for inconsistent testimony.
The Borden family is plagued with a bloody legacy of mystery and psychopathy. 54,000 yearly visitors and the home-turned-crime scene’s staff indulge this paranormal reputation by endorsing testimonies, tours, souvenirs, and ghost hunting policies.
Your Naivety Has Just Fallen Head Over Heels
There’s plenty more where that came from, but I’m afraid that we’ve run out of introductory material. From the practicality of the apparatuses detailed above to the recreation of video games and cat toys, ghosts and their hunters can be spotted in most any domain. Nevertheless, genuine curiosity is all that’s really needed. Here’s some friendly advice for the road: “I think there’s ghosts in this school, and everyone should watch out,” Ashley Lin (D17) ’25 said. Stay safe out there.
Science has little business being here, but ghost hunters have nonetheless been helping themselves to various scientific mechanisms for the detection and documentation of ghosts’ supernatural abilities. “Devices like spirit boxes or EMF readers interpret vague frequencies into words—the need for such devices (and subsequent stretches in logic) to me invalidates the actuality of ghosts. Yet, this potential makes ghost hunting shows so interesting! Yes, it is all fake, but the excitement that shows bring can spark lots of genuine entertainment,” Tammy Lam ’25, the Vice-President of the Horror Culture Club, said.