The History of Ghost Tech
By Vince Wilson

It was about 550 B.C. that the first recorded paranormal experiment took place. King Croesus of Lydia, according to Greek historian Herodotus, wanted to know if he should attack Persia. So, he sent seven messengers to the seven top oracles of the day. He told the messengers to wait one hundred days after they left and ask each oracle what the king was doing that day. The king was making a big bronze kettle full of turtle and lamb soup a la Croesus. Well, five oracles got it wrong, one was almost right but only the Oracle of Delphi was dead on.

I count the grains of sand on the ocean shore
I measure the ocean's depths
I hear the dumb man
I likewise hear the man who keeps silence.
My senses perceive an odor as when one cooks
Together the flesh of the tortoise and the lamb,
Brass is on the sides and beneath,
Brass also covers the top.

With the Delphi Oracle’s clairvoyant accuracy assured the king asked if he should go to war. The Oracle replied, “…An empire will be lost that day.” The king went to war, sure of his victory. To bad it was Croesus’ empire that was lost. Doh!

As mentioned in the story about Croesus of Lydia, paranormal science dates back to ancient times. However, it really wasn’t until the 18th and 19th centuries that parapsychology became more than just an amateur’s pursuit. Works such as The Secrets of the Invisible World by Daniel Defoe brought a logical and scientific aspect to ghost theory. There would be a lull in this outlook for some years with the coming of the spiritual movement.
Say what you will about Harry Price, he is one of the people who helped bring paranormal research into the modern age. Price was the John Kerry or Ivana Trump of the paranormal world in the 1930’s when he married into a lot of money. This made him what we all hope to be in this field – a researcher with unlimited funds at his disposal! Although well financed, his initial equipment list seems a little low tech by today’s standards:

• Felt overshoes
• Measuring tape
• Tape, electric bells, lead seals and other items for making motion detection tools
• Dry batteries and switches
• Cameras
• Notebooks and drawing pads
• Ball and string, chalk
• Basic first-aid kit
• Mercury for detecting vibrations

Although the above list may leave the “ghost nerd” in you a bit unsatisfied it was a good start for the early 20th century.

Harry Price may have been the father of ghost tech but it was Joseph Rhine who really brought science to paranormal research. Rhine was born in 1895 and conducted psychical research at Duke University beginning in 1927. He was the creator of the term Extra-sensory Perception or ESP and founder of the Foundation for Research on the Nature of Man (FRNM. Which was later re-named The Rhine Institute on the anniversary of his one-hundredth birthday). Although never involved in the ghostly aspects of paranormal research, Rhine nevertheless is greatly responsible for bringing a greater deal of respect to the field with his thorough and scientific methods. Working with colleague Karl Zener, Rhine developed the famous ESP card deck symbols.
In the 1960’s and ‘70’s ghost tech started to take a more high-tech approach. A researcher and former secretary for SPR (the Society for Psychical Research) by the name of John Cutten created the first viable electronic ghost detection device. His “ghost hunter” used vibration, light, sound and temperature sensors to trigger a standard camera, an infrared camera and tape recorder. When one of the sensors was activated a buzzer would alert researchers.

Groups like FRNM, SPR and the Psychical Research Society (PRS) would not only start a long-standing tradition of memorable acronyms in paranormal research groups but also establish paranormal research as a legitimate scientific field. A scientific field with cool gadgets too! In the 1980’s and ‘90’s researchers like Loyd Auerbach and Troy Taylor would revolutionize ghost technology with their research into electromagnetic field detectors, IR thermometers and the like. They and others would mark the end of 20th century paranormal investigating. However, it wasn’t until the influence of a certain California town that the public really took notice and ghost tech was taken into the 21st century. That infamous town of course is Hollywood…

Yes, yes, yes I will mention Ghostbusters in just a bit, but first lets look into the movies that established ghost hunting on the big screen. The Legend of Hell House from 1973 is one movie that stands out in my mind in that it is the first movie I can think of that used scientific principles (albeit a bit of stretch) to rid a house of ghostly activities. Then there was Poltergeist and The Entity in 1982 that took it to the next level. With their depictions of actual “paranormal researchers” the public was hooked. Universities across the country were barraged with requests by news agencies for information on any parapsychology classes they might have. Of course no one has ever caught a rapist ghost in a can of liquid helium or used a psychic to pull a family member through a TV. Other than that, the equipment at least wasn’t too implausible. That of course would all change in 1984 with the release of (you guessed it) Ghostbusters!

Ghostbusters was the movie that changed everything for paranormal researchers forever. With it’s paranormal lingo (“…free-floating, full-torso, vaporous apparition.”) and really cool, if somewhat dangerous gadgets the movie changed the public’s perceptions of ghost hunters from background supporting characters to the stars of the show. Now, don’t get me wrong, this is my all-time favorite movie. I can quote the film line by line. I am just getting tired of being asked where my proton pack is. Yeesh. Paranormal Research just became really cool overnight. Although nowadays I get compared to X-Files characters more often than Egon (whew!) I still cannot be featured in a news article without the Ghostbusters’ theme song by Ray Parker Jr. playing in the background or someone saying, “who ya gonna call?” There simply are not any unlicensed nuclear accelerators, PKE meters or “ghost traps” for us to use. But, if you read Ghost Tech, you can find out what they do have though…

What does the future of ghost hunting hold for us? A lot I hope! It is now the 21st century and there are a new generation of ghost hunters out there that are pioneering new techniques and technologies never tried before!
Biofeedback

A new technique being used by the Maryland Paranormal Investigators Coalition is utilizing biological feedback from the investigators themselves!

We have hooked up both sensitive and non-sensitive investigators to a heart-rate/blood pressure monitor and a body voltage sensor attached to a standard Multimeter. The body voltage meter checks the electrical resistance of your body against any electrical current in the air. An external electric field will induce an electric field within our bodies. In this sense, our bodies act as antennas picking up fields from all kinds of sources. Delicate biological cellular processes (like brain function and heart muscle contraction) operate on the scale of microvolts. Simply touch this sensor with a finger and know instantly what effect external fields are having inside your body.
I have been talking about how environments must be altered when affected by an outside stimulus such as ghosts. Well, what about the effects of ghosts on human beings? We have all heard of people being affected emotionally by certain kids of hauntings (i.e. feelings of dread, sadness, even extreme happiness, etc.), but how does a haunting affect someone physiologically? This is the purpose of this experiment.

In the future I imagine using an EKG for this type of an experiment. An EKG (or Electrocardiogram) is a diagnostic test that analyzes the electrical activity of the heart. A brainwave monitor would also be great for this. These sorts of apparatus have been used in psi testing for years. In the 21st century I can see them being used for ghost hunting as well.

Robotics

Ta-da! Presenting the Ghost Tech Robo-Cam! I built it from all-terrain R/C truck parts. It has four-wheel drive, stainless steel spring-loaded shocks, all-terrain puncture proof tires, sensor array (compass, clock and temperature gauge), a 2.4-gigahertz wireless infrared camera and mounts for another camera or other peripherals. Its low profile allows going into places people couldn’t otherwise go into. I used R/C truck parts instead of R/C car parts because car parts are less agile and go too fast. What good is a robotic surveillance device that drives around at scale 120 mph? You’ll miss everything!

The reason I designed and built this little guy (we consider “him” a member of the team and refer to him as a he) was to go into places that would be much too dangerous for a person to go into. Now, I don’t mean the dark closet where Max Shrek’s Nosferatu is hiding in and waiting to attack an innocent ghost hunter. I mean weak floorboards, small crawlspaces and unsafe mines. We have also built a Blimp-Cam to go on investigations where locations may be even to rough or inaccessible for the Robo-Cam. I got the idea for the Blimp-Cam from a location in Maryland’s Ellicott City (not necessarily the most haunted city in the Mid-Atlantic area). The Patapsco Female Institute is supposed to be haunted by a little girl who died at the school. She is said to stare out the second story window with dark, sad eyes. However, as you can see from this picture, there is no second floor! A fire gutted the institute years ago. What better way to investigate a non-existent second floor than with a flying remote controlled video camera! We have only used it on the USS Constellation as of yet.

A colleague of mine in Pennsylvania named Craig Teleshe has built his own robotic ghost hunter. Craig owns www.ghost-tech.com and has built a very impressive robotic monitoring system himself! Ghunter (Ghost + Hunter): the robotic paranormal investigator!

From Craig’s website:

“Ghunter started his life as a Hero Jr. robot, designed by Heathkit in the early 80s as a robotic companion. Unfortunately the processor of this Hero Jr. was fried when I received him, so all I was left with was a base with wheels and a drive system and a power supply board. He sat in my basement for a while till I came up with this grand idea! What if I could use the base and mount a video camera on top of it to be used ghost investigations.
“After a few different design ideas, a dozen trips to Radio Shack and a months work, Ghunter was up and running. Ghunter has the following functions:

o Digital Radio control at 433 Mhz
o 8mm Camcorder modified to see in near darkness (infrared).
o Digital camera, which can be activated via radio control.
o Infrared motion detector, which can activate the digital camera.
o A sixteen LED infrared emitter. (Creates a very nice bright picture)
o Mini Pinhole camera for remote viewing of robot functions on receiver.
o 2.4 GHz video transmitter hooked to the Pinhole camera.

“The transmitter controls the drive system to move the robot, a button to activate the digital camera remotely, activates the infrared system, which will take pictures when motion is detected (don't want to be driving the robot around when this is active of course) and activates the infrared LEDs on front of the robot if lighting conditions are too low.
“Ghunter’s power system is 2 large 13-amp 6-volt batteries wired in series to produce 12 volts. These batteries will run all of the devices and the robot for about 6 hours which it plenty of time to conduct an investigation. I have not officially taken Ghunter out on and investigation yet, but his time is coming.”

Now Ghunter is a little too bulky for dangerous locations with weak floorboards and small crawl spaces, but it does serve another purpose: remote observation of locations without a human presence. Have you ever heard of a place that where more activity happens when the family goes out then when they were home? How about the family that didn’t even know there was a ghost in their home until someone took a picture of the front of the house and saw a ghostly face in the window when the pictures were developed? It happens. The Ghost Tech Ghost-Cam, Blimp-Cam and Ghunter are the first in what is no doubt part of the future of robotic ghost hunting!

Ghost Tech

Sometime a few years ago Stan Suho developed the Geophysically Equipped Instrument of Scientific Testing. Otherwise known as G.E.I.S.T. What Suho had done was design a computer-based monitoring system capable of monitoring, recording and testing the environment without the bothersome presence of human beings. Using a “polling device” Suho was able to attach multiple instruments (EMF meters, Geiger Counters, Thermometers, etc.) to a single laptop. Recently Justin Faulk of www.ghostgadgets.com has gone one step further.
Justin developed ARCADIA or the Analog Reading Computer Aided Digital Input Analyzer. From Justin’s website:

“There have been several other scientific based groups that have interfaced computer logging systems to natural field meters before, but ARCADIA takes it a step further. All previous systems of its kind have only logged continuous streams of data, leaving hours of digital or analog data to sort through. Personally, I hate data review, so I have someone else do it for me - the computer, in real time. Data from each channel is sent through a device-specific algorithm, developed from hundreds of hours of control runs. With this algorithm, Arcadia can actively distinguish what should naturally occur in a given field (static magnetic fields, temperature, humidity, etc.), and therefore can ignore the data in a stable environment. When an anomaly becomes apparent to the system, Arcadia will log the data from the anomaly digitally, which can be further analyzed later.” Mr. Faulk adds, “Now, Arcadia has been modified to log everything for specific time blocks, do various types of DSP on the data sets, and calculate statistical data for each block (standard deviation, mean, range, etc.). That way, a true mathematical analysis can be implemented, including probability values, etc., for submission to peer reviewed journals.”

Cataloging Data

The better groups of ghost hunters and investigators of the strange and unusual are pioneering new techniques and technologies to find the answer to the ultimate question. No, it’s not 42.

Are ghosts real?

Keeping your information to yourself isn’t going to help anyone. Not even you. You need to share. Also, you will need to keep very good notes and absolute control over your investigation. As I mentioned before, the Maryland Paranormal Investigators Coalition has developed some very good forms for cataloging data on hauntings. I strongly suggest that you download those forms (available at www.ghosttech.net) or create your own. Forms and ruled notebooks will keep your notes nice and tidy. When I first started I used to wads of paper in my pockets with all my notes on them. Now I bring a tote bag with clipboards and extra pens.

Some researchers into the paranormal are researchers in other fields as well. Recently I have been discussing techniques with a teacher of archeology and the techniques they use to document areas in digs and historical investigations. I hope that ghost investigating will become more commonplace and more acceptable. It would be great if more members of the scientific community would become interested in ghost hunting.