• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

So-called "Spirit Boxes"

theprestige said:
It's interesting that even avowed skeptics can encouraged to adopt woo modes of thought. You inquire into the details of how the device functions, but you're letting them beg the question that the device actually exists as claimed.

Remember, they're not conducting a scientific inquiry, they're selling an entertainment. They don't actually need a channel-hopping radio scanner that produces unexplained audio that must then be investigated.

What they need - and probably what they have, this being the simplest explanation - is a prop that helps them tell a story about ghosts in the radio waves. It's probably just a simple audio playback device, playing a pre-recorded "EVP" track. Probably the only radio involved is the bluetooth on the MP3 player inside the box.

Talking about the science of radio is letting them beg too many questions unchallenged.

Here's a question: Did they buy their device off the shelf, or build it themselves? If they bought it off the shelf, you should be able to find the make and model, and inquire with the manufacturer about the technical details.

If they built it themselves, then you're back to square one, with a pile of begged questions and a prop for telling ghost stories. You might as well inquire into the science of the phaser Captain Kirk uses sometimes to stun and sometimes to kill.
Click to expand...

Per the show, many of their devices are either invented by or improved upon by an engineer named Bill Chappell, including the Spirit Box. I can't find anything on his bona fides via a cursory Google search, so I only have their word on that, but I was able to find multiple versions of the Spirit Box for sale on Amazon. All of them pretty much say the same thing; they scan at various speeds across radio frequencies. Some of them are fancier than others; they offer multiple speeds for the frequency scanning or offer the ability to "reverse scan" (not really sure what that does, mind you) across frequencies either alternately or simultaneously to scanning forward through frequencies, but almost none of them really say anything about the actual technical details. Different boxes have different ratings, but almost all the reviews are from people who buy it for the purposes of adhering to their belief that ghosts exist and the "voices" they hear are spirits trying to communicate.

My only goal with this is to inquire into any possible legitimate scientific knowledge of their devices. One of the few things that legitimately annoys me about the show is that they keep claiming to be as scientific in their "evidence" gathering as possible without offering any real information into the actual science of their devices. I could have similarly asked about their device called an SLS camera, which is essentially a very modified version of a Kinect motion sensor camera and can, to their way of thinking, map in a spirit that isn't visible to the spectrum our eyes can see but is visible in the ultraviolet spectrum, or some BS like that. I'm just trying to see if there has been any effort to actually debunk their claims of scientific inquiry on the show, basically.
 
Sabrina said:
Per the show, many of their devices are either invented by or improved upon by an engineer named Bill Chappell, including the Spirit Box. I can't find anything on his bona fides via a cursory Google search, so I only have their word on that, but I was able to find multiple versions of the Spirit Box for sale on Amazon. All of them pretty much say the same thing; they scan at various speeds across radio frequencies. Some of them are fancier than others; they offer multiple speeds for the frequency scanning or offer the ability to "reverse scan" (not really sure what that does, mind you) across frequencies either alternately or simultaneously to scanning forward through frequencies, but almost none of them really say anything about the actual technical details. Different boxes have different ratings, but almost all the reviews are from people who buy it for the purposes of adhering to their belief that ghosts exist and the "voices" they hear are spirits trying to communicate...
Click to expand...

I think it's compounded by the fact that everyone making a spirit box or an App is trying to corner the market and ripping on those other "crappy spirit boxes that don't work" - only their "special" spirit box works! Wink!

Spirit Box people seem to be a vindictive bunch.

https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/55774204/steve-huff-love-light-and-rape-porn

FYI, I have no idea if any of the allegations of this link are true but it seems someone is pissed that Steve Huff is making more money on SB's than they are.
 
Sabrina said:
[...]I usually don't hear what they hear when I do so), but I am curious how you can occasionally hear several words overlaid on the white noise that APPEAR to be strung into a semi-coherent sentence (although again, I don't usually hear the exact same thing these guys are hearing in the moment) from someone in what appears to be the same voice.
Click to expand...

Important bits highlighted. As others have said, audio pareidolia. It is EVP, the fact that they're using a specific white noise generator rather than the white noise naturally generated in the recording device is show rather than substance.

EVP is in the imagination of the listener.
 
Last edited:
As a ghost hunter let me give you the bottom line on Spirit Boxes:

They're worthless.

Here's a base model:


http://vi.raptor.ebaydesc.com/ws/eB...tegory=175837&pm=1&ds=0&t=1515002634000&ver=0

They're based on a basic radio scanner that sweeps through the different frequencies on the FM and AM bands. The "theory" is that spirits somehow select words from the radio spectrum to communicate with the living.

Let's start with the basics first: Nobody has proven that ghosts are real.

How the hell can you market a device, let alone use one in an investigation, that has not been independently tested in a way that confirms that it works? What was their control group? I ask only because the first thing you'd need was a ghost, and not just any ghost - a ghost that functioned in a controlled environment in order to test the functionality of this device. Right off the bat that is some Nobel Prize winning stuff before the tests even begin, face it, it's a game changer. To my knowledge, nobody has tried to use this to communicate with handicapped people who've lost their speech, or even people in comas.

So you've spent money on a device that has never been tested, nor proven to work. That's just stupid.

Moving onto the next question; why aren't EVP's good enough? I mean, if they're real then why waste money on a Spirit Box? Maybe folks should consider that the reason they can't get "quality EVP's" is because ghosts aren't real. Or at least admit that they're too lazy to sit with headphones and listen to hours of recordings for what might or might not be faint whispers from the dead.

I'll end my take with this...

The Spirit Box was designed for TV ghost hunting shows, and Youtubers have scarfed them up like iPhones. They are nothing more than half-assed instant gratification for thrill-seekers looking to creep themselves out in an abandoned house in the middle of the night. They have no scientific merit beyond the psychological study of why people waste money.:thumbsup:
 
Axxman300 said:
As a ghost hunter let me give you the bottom line on Spirit Boxes:
Click to expand...

Okay, this should be good....

Axxman300 said:
They're worthless.
Click to expand...

:jaw-dropp


Axxman300 said:
Here's a base model:


http://vi.raptor.ebaydesc.com/ws/eB...tegory=175837&pm=1&ds=0&t=1515002634000&ver=0

They're based on a basic radio scanner that sweeps through the different frequencies on the FM and AM bands. The "theory" is that spirits somehow select words from the radio spectrum to communicate with the living.

Let's start with the basics first: Nobody has proven that ghosts are real.

How the hell can you market a device, let alone use one in an investigation, that has not been independently tested in a way that confirms that it works? What was their control group? I ask only because the first thing you'd need was a ghost, and not just any ghost - a ghost that functioned in a controlled environment in order to test the functionality of this device. Right off the bat that is some Nobel Prize winning stuff before the tests even begin, face it, it's a game changer. To my knowledge, nobody has tried to use this to communicate with handicapped people who've lost their speech, or even people in comas.

So you've spent money on a device that has never been tested, nor proven to work. That's just stupid.

Moving onto the next question; why aren't EVP's good enough? I mean, if they're real then why waste money on a Spirit Box? Maybe folks should consider that the reason they can't get "quality EVP's" is because ghosts aren't real. Or at least admit that they're too lazy to sit with headphones and listen to hours of recordings for what might or might not be faint whispers from the dead.

I'll end my take with this...

The Spirit Box was designed for TV ghost hunting shows, and Youtubers have scarfed them up like iPhones. They are nothing more than half-assed instant gratification for thrill-seekers looking to creep themselves out in an abandoned house in the middle of the night. They have no scientific merit beyond the psychological study of why people waste money.:thumbsup:
Click to expand...

:jaw-dropp:jaw-dropp:jaw-dropp

I'll eat my words. What a pleasant surprise!
 
P.J. Denyer said:
Okay, this should be good....



:jaw-dropp




:jaw-dropp:jaw-dropp:jaw-dropp

I'll eat my words. What a pleasant surprise!
Click to expand...

Heh...I'm a lone Rhino.

20 years ago I would have been all over this thing, but I went back to college which required a few science classes, and it left me with a healthy respect for the scientific process. These days my focus isn't trying to prove that ghosts are real, but trying to figure out why people (honest people) see them. In the meantime I've learned a lot about plumbing, and heating, and construction, and human nature.

By the way, any ghost hunter/paranormal researcher of any stripe who tells you there is any bankable evidence for ghosts is trying to sell you something. The fact is that in 140 years of parapsychology the field is still at zero proof of anything fun or cool.
 
A Spirit Box is not the same thing as an EVP. Spirit Boxes scan radio frequencies and pick up snippets of actual broadcasts. It moves through bands so quickly that the snippets are short and strung together, but occasionally you get bits from two or more nearby stations that seem to make sense, or that you can use to manufacture sense. There are actual words, because those are the words that are broadcast on radio frequencies.

EVPs are where you take a recording of the ambient noise in an area, then use audio manipulation techniques to manufacture sounds that are not words, but can sound like them. Noise Reduction is a good option, since it generates weird artifacts that can easily be mistaken via the mechanism of audio pareidolia for actual speech. But it contrasts with the Spirit Box in that there are no actual original words in the recording.
 
Slept with a fan on last night because it was hot and, when I woke, over its quiet hum and rustle I could also hear that the TV had been left on downstairs. I could hear a number of voices talking, male and female, but not quite discern any of their words.

I lay for a while wondering if turning the fan off would let me hear them better or make them vanish. Yeah, they vanished. TV wasn't on.
 
arthwollipot said:
A Spirit Box is not the same thing as an EVP. Spirit Boxes scan radio frequencies and pick up snippets of actual broadcasts. It moves through bands so quickly that the snippets are short and strung together, but occasionally you get bits from two or more nearby stations that seem to make sense, or that you can use to manufacture sense. There are actual words, because those are the words that are broadcast on radio frequencies.
(snip).
Click to expand...

Oh, THAT explains the puzzling message I got from the spirits: "In other news, erectile dysfunction means let's listen to Lady Gaga. The Queen announced you can get debt relief from Trump's tweets." Load off my mind, man.
 
Axxman300 said:
These days my focus isn't trying to prove that ghosts are real, but trying to figure out why people (honest people) see them. In the meantime I've learned a lot about plumbing, and heating, and construction, and human nature.
Click to expand...
,

That's the aspect that I find interesting too. The only "Ghost Hunter" TV show I had any time for was Paranormal Home Inspectors (iirc) because alongside the 'Paranormal Investigator' and 'Medium' was a surveyor who pointed out things like the branches, rather than ghosts, that were scraping on windows, old heating ducts acting as a conduit for sound, and out of true drywall and substandard stairwell with no handrail that removed the need for a demon to be pushing you down the stairs. One third of the show wasn't complete BS which beat the others by a margin of approximately 33.3%.

Axxman300 said:
By the way, any ghost hunter/paranormal researcher of any stripe who tells you there is any bankable evidence for ghosts is trying to sell you something. The fact is that in 140 years of parapsychology the field is still at zero proof of anything fun or cool.
Click to expand...

Preaching to the choir my friend, preaching to the choir.
 
Jack by the hedge said:
I lay for a while wondering if turning the fan off would let me hear them better or make them vanish. Yeah, they vanished. TV wasn't on.
Click to expand...

Yup. I have an alarm that sounds like birds chirping. Once I've turned it off, it's not uncommon for me to continue hearing it in the white noise. This is probably helped by limited stimulation from other senses and me being groggy.
 
Bikewer said:
or just tuning radios “between” stations and recording the static for hours..
Click to expand...

Or looking and listening to the "snow" on a TV channel that was not in use in your area.

After a while, it can get a little spooky. There's really nothing there, but as others have stated, pareidolia happens.

Listening to that static, watching the snow on a TV screen - that's something only a few generations ever experienced. Old folks who didn't grow up with TV didn't experience it, younger kids who grow up with digital TV's or radio tuners don't experience it either.
 
Last edited:
There is also the phenomenon that the brain tries to fit patterns to randomness. Deaf people hear things and blind people see things because random neural events in the ear or eye nerves are interpreted by the brain into words or visual items. The brain will try and 'hear' words in random noise. It will interpolate between random words picked up in scanning to create phrases.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom