Detecting Ghosts With My Cell Phone????

Wow!  Did you know that there is a ghost detector for your iPhone or smart cell phone?  I just had to try it.  Within minutes of downloading and opening the program I was amazed.  Not one, but two different presences were shown to be in my living room with me, a weak one and a medium strength one.  The device also spit out the words “Peter” and “British” within five minutes of each other as I sat there.  I thought about it and I can’t believe it can be so accurate!  How did it know that I once watched a movie with a British actor named Peter Sellers in that very room?  In fact, the movie is still on the shelf in the corner of the room.  How could my phone know this unless there is a paranormal force at work here? 

Of course, these were not the only words it spit out while I was using it in my living room.  It also spit out “riding”, “wave” and “want”.  I think the spirits were also telling me they know I really want to go back to Costa Rica and ride the waves on their beautiful beaches.  After all, my photo album under the coffee table shows last year’s family vacation pictures where we did just that.  Maybe the spirits were watching over me when I was there and want to go back too? The accuracy of this ghost detector is amazing! 

Can you hear the sarcasm in my writing? Almost any group of randomly generated words will trigger some kind of memory or connection to our lives in some way. Before you get upset with me let’s sit back and think about what the company who makes this application has to say about it.  It claims the application works because it measures changes to quantum flux in the environment around you. Quantum means the smallest amount of physical matter that can exist independently.  Flux means the rate of change or flow. So, quantum flux means the rate of change of the smallest amount that can exist independently.  It represents really, really tiny changes in energy.

How does the ghost radar program measure this according to the company that designed it?  By using the sensors already built into the cell phone’s other programs.  Wait?  Let’s find out what all those sensors in our cell phone do before we make a determination about how accurate the ghost detectors and ghost radar in our phones is.

·         WiFi transceiver (to send and receive information wirelessly to the internet and other devices)

·         a touch sensor (built into the screen of your phone),

·         an accelerometer (used by your GPS to measure when you are motion)

·         a phone transceiver (handles broadcast and reception of sound waves from / to cell towers)

·         microphone (to pick up audio near device)

·         magnetometer (used to show compass directions in mapping applications)

·         gyroscopes (controls the orientation and spin in games and phone applications)

Now that we know what the application is using let’s look at the claims.  The company claims the software detects paranormal activity using the various sensors above on your cell phone device.  They claim the above sensors measure electromagnetic fields, vibrations and sounds to detect the presence of ghosts and won’t be fooled like other paranormal devices that also read “mundane bursts of electromagnetic fields, vibrations and sounds in our environment”.  It also claims that “any intelligent energy should be able to influence the readouts and communicate with you”. Hmmm an interesting concept but I have a couple of concerns with their claims. 

First, none of the above sensors measures electromagnetic fields.   Also, the vibrations the gyroscopes and accelerometer sensors measure are those occurring when the device is moved not changes in the environment around the location of the device.  Also the sounds it hears are the ones picked up by the internal microphone.  So, I am not sure how it can take readings at any distance from the device unless it is WiFi signals or phone signals from cell towers that it is reading.

My second problem with this claim is that by scientific use quantum fluxuations deal with changes in energy on very small level, small like moving electrons in atoms small-that’s REALLY small changes in energy.  I know cell phones have become sophisticated but do you really believe that your cell phone sensors have the technology and data capacity to take measurements on a subatomic level?  Also, I am not a scientist or a mathematician but I don’t need to be to study the formulas involved in measuring quantum flux to know that I don’t think the memory space and sensors of my cell phone have the capacity to take and store the very complex data they claim is collected to analyze these miniscule environmental energy changes. 

My third problem with this software is the companies claim that intelligent energy should be able to influence the readouts to communicate with us.  Honestly, I cannot imagine my Uncle Fred, even in the afterlife, having enough knowledge of quantum physics to manipulate this very sensitive sounding system of multiple sensors to alter the environment in precisely the correct way to generate the proper word to come from a preprogrammed word bank into my cell phone.  Frankly, I think it would be much easier for Uncle Fred to just call me from the beyond than to use one of these programs.

My last problem is that nowhere in the programs instructions, directions or on the company’s web site does it explain what specifically is being represented by each of the sets of numbers continually changing on the screen as you use the application.  Even direct questions are answered in a very vague way.  If this data was science based, they would be readily providing this information so that users could verify and double check the data with other devices.  By the way, if you run the same program on two different devices side by side they do not generate the same words and only seldom were blips showing paranormal presences in even similar areas of the screen (only about what you would expect from random positioning on a small choice of positions) .

So, as fun as it can be to play with the ghost radar and ghost detector programs on our mobile devices, remember they are just games. Although using scientifically based sensors and equipment, the “evidence” being presented on these in not based in any type of science and should not be considered proof of hauntings, the presence of ghosts or other paranormal activity.