TESTING, TESTING

My apologies for the interruption in my regular posting schedule, but my husband had major surgery and I’ve been a bit busy.  But while he was recovering, our kids came to stay for overlapping periods of time to help out, and on one random day, my oldest son queried, “Did you know that there are apps for finding ghosts?”

WHAT?

No, I did not.

But I do now.

A quick search led me to a surprising number of apps that promise to “locate ghosts” and “measure paranormal activity” and “analyze energy readings looking for unusual patterns” and I could not resist downloading a bunch and checking them out.  I focused my research on free apps with the highest ratings, and avoided those apps that were deliberate pranks, such as the one that will add a ghost to any photo.  I have a new ghost in my house who really wants my help, so he agreed to be my test subject, ostensibly to butter me up.  His name is Joe.

Our testing protocol started with me downloading an app and testing it first without Joe, running around my house to use the app in several ghost-free rooms and on my fridge, microwave, TV, lamps, and radio.  This was followed by a real test standing in front of Joe while he did stuff in his ghostly way.  These tests complete, I then asked Joe to get angry.  Anger — in humans alive or dead — has a high energy output, and I wanted to give each app a fair chance to detect Joe.  A second round of testing with Joe in this state and we were done and on to the next app.  Here are the results:

Ghost Radar Classic

I started with this one because the reviews were spectacular and full of the phrase “this really works!” and OMG Trevor Moran and Shane Dawson made a video of themselves using this app and OMG it’s gotten like over a million views (yes, if I could have typed that last sentence with bubblegum-colored ink, I would have).  With such glowing and infallible endorsements, how could this app NOT work?  To be thorough in my research, I watched the video (a two-parter!) while the app downloaded. The app claimed to “search your environment for Quantum Fluctuations” that showed up as blips on the apps’ radar screen.  These blips indicated the presence of ghosts, and the directions stated that when you saw a blip, you were supposed to talk to the ghost, because ghosts are intelligent, and their “intelligence energy” would “influence the reading” and make words appear on the screen.

The app found ghosts positively everywhere in several ghost-free rooms of my house, and words “from the beyond” appeared on my screen, even though I did not communicate with the ghosts that weren’t there.  These words included: daughter, bar, current, part, farther, meal, classic TV, and hollow.  My favorite part of the app, tho, was the “feature” that made the ghost blip stay in the same spot on the radar screen, even when I turned to face a different direction.  My second favorite part was that no ghost appeared for more than a few seconds, which is, in my experience, not at all how ghosts behave.

The real test of the app, tho, came in a confrontation with Joe.  I stood about four feet away from him and pointed my iPad camera directly at him.  A blip appeared on the screen in a spot indicating a ghost to my left — a blip that stayed in that spot even when I turned 90^o to point my iPad straight at the blip.  Undaunted, I turned back to Joe and asked him to “speak to me” through the device.  He attempted this and the word ‘leaf’ appeared on my screen, which made Joe laugh hysterically, as ‘leaf’ was not at all what he was thinking.  I asked him to get angry, which he did, and the app didn’t detect him at all.  My rating: EPIC FAIL.

Ghost Detector Camera

This app touted itself as a “scary paranormal activity tool & spirit radar” and worked by detecting EMF (electromagnetic field) waves.  The app ran for 60 second bursts of detection, followed by a string of ads, and seemed to be rigged to only detect “danger” in the last ten seconds of its cycle, and not every time.  It detected “danger” in my TV when it wasn’t on, and in my tomato seedlings, but these results were not replicated in a second trial.  Shockingly, it sensed absolutely nothing when I stood in front of angry ghost Joe and pointed my iPad camera straight at him.  My rating: EPIC FAIL.

Ghost Hunting Tools

The 5-star review from Melxx93 who has been on a real paranormal investigation team for many years really sold me on this app, since he knows “what’s a fake app and what’s not.”  This app worked as an EMF meter, calibrated to detect paranormal activity between two and six milligaus, and an EVP (electronic voice phenomenon) detector, calibrated to receive FM signals through my iPad’s microphone.  The instructions cautioned me not to tilt my device too fast, which I was careful not to do.

It was difficult to understand the many meters on the screen, but as I tested the app in several ghost-free rooms, there was no denying the ghost in my refrigerator and the one in a space heater.  Words like: kind, peck, rot, captain, thousand, alley, mist, limp, lost, count, and shot appeared on the screen at random, and when I spoke out loud, the name Luke appeared.

Completely underwhelmed by this app, I had a glimmer of hope that it might actually work in the face of a real ghost, as the indicator bars rose as I stood before Joe.  But alas, their rise lasted less than a second and as Joe got angrier and his energy output increased exponentially, the bars shrank to nothing.  My rating: EPIC FAIL.

Ghost Sensor — EM4 Detector

I liked the look and layout of this app the best, and it claimed to be more accurate and more sensitive than any other app of its kind.  It also claimed to be able to detect both “positive” and “negative” ghosts, and to differentiate between them, which I thought was a nice feature.  One reviewer did a side-by-side comparison of the app and a real EMF meter and claimed to get the same results with both, which, if true, was impressive.

In my own testing, I found this app was not as wildly inaccurate as the others, and only gave me a false positive in the kitchen near the microwave, and in the living room when “Game of Thrones” came on the TV.  In the real test in front of the real ghost Joe, the ghost detector meter registered just below “Max” (arm of the meter swung to the right and four out of five lights lit) and stayed between two lights and four lights the entire time I stood in front of Joe.  It did not ever register “Max,” even when Joe was angry, but  also never dropped to “Min.”  My rating: The best of the bunch, and worthy of A SOLID C+.

All of these apps (and many more like them) prominently feature the disclaimer, “For entertainment purposes only,” and I think if you are either really gullible and/or wanting “evidence” that your house is full of ghosts and/or in charge of a junior high sleepover, these apps could be quite entertaining, what with their sophisticated meters and wild inaccuracies.  I, however, was looking for an app that actually worked as intended, and did not find one that did so reliably.

In the end, I was left where I started: believing that no app could possibly do what I do as a psychic medium.  I am the real deal, and if you really are concerned about paranormal activity, contact me to find out what is going on!  Email me a picture of the outside of your home, I will take a look, and the initial consultation is free!  Just like all those apps that won’t tell you anything!