Latest / Eye Opener Society / “Essential Ghost Hunting Equipment: Ghost Hunting Equipment and What You Really Need to Investigate the Paranormal”
Transcript
- 0:00Hello, everybody. This is Anne Lund, coming to you from the Haunted and Waiting
- 0:04podcast here on the Eye Opener Society.
- 0:07First of all, I always want to thank Gary for allowing me this opportunity to
- 0:12share my vision and my passion for the paranormal, specifically ghosts.
- 0:17So let's talk about this month's topic, and basically that is tools of the trade
- 0:23and what ghost hunters really use, including myself.
- 0:27So let's start about talking about equipment. And one of the things I really
- 0:33want to start with is a story.
- 0:36This was a very interesting story that I had just kind of come across in my
- 0:41readings, and it was about the Fox sisters.
- 0:44And you'll understand as I tell you the story why this kind of relates to what
- 0:48I'm going to address today.
- 0:51Basically, there were three sisters, Maggie, Kate, and Leah,
- 0:54and they all lived in Hydesville, New York.
- 0:58And they are known for here, at least in this country, in America,
- 1:03for sparking the spiritual movement.
- 1:05And this was in about 1840s, I want to say 1848, when the two of the sisters,
- 1:11Maggie and Kate, claimed that they could communicate what it goes through,
- 1:14these rapping sounds in their home.
- 1:16And they claim that this spirit identified himself
- 1:19as this murdered peddler that was buried in their
- 1:23basement wall so when they reported this the towns the people in the town actually
- 1:28went into the house with their consent obviously and dug up their cellar and
- 1:33importantly they found bone fragments in a wooden box believe it or not in their
- 1:38house the oldest sister leia,
- 1:41she then joined this kind of story situation and they began conducting these
- 1:47seances regularly in their house and charging money for it.
- 1:51And it grew national attention and widespread belief in spirit communication.
- 1:57And that's basically what the gist of this podcast is about.
- 2:01Now, what it was, was they would sit around this table and they would ask these
- 2:07yes, no questions, and they would get a response of tapping for yes or no.
- 2:13Now, I don't know if it was like two taps for yes and one for no,
- 2:16but apparently this tapping went on and on.
- 2:19Sadly, though, in 1888, Maggie, one of the sisters, she confessed that she was
- 2:24actually doing this with her toe.
- 2:26She was able to crack her toe, and it made it sound like there was wrapping
- 2:30under the table. And so this is just a situation, but.
- 2:34It was debunked. It wasn't true. And then later on, they found out that this
- 2:38box of bones that was in the box was actually just a collection of different
- 2:43animal bones, like chicken bones, a cow bone, or what have you,
- 2:46that they put aside as being like this peddler.
- 2:50But this is how we're going to start with communicating with the dead and some
- 2:54of the tools and some kind of creepy stories that I came across as I explain every tool.
- 3:01Now, The most common and famous tool of all is obviously the Ouija board.
- 3:06Okay, so originally patented in 1891 by a gentleman named Elijah Bond.
- 3:13It was originally, believe it or not, just supposed to be a game.
- 3:16It had nothing to do with ghosts.
- 3:19Well, it did have to do with ghosts, but they never added any credence that
- 3:23if you buy this Ouija board, you'll be able to kind of communicate with,
- 3:26you know, your Aunt Lizzie.
- 3:28That wasn't the case. It was really just a game just for fun.
- 3:32What had happened though is when The Exorcist came out in 1973,
- 3:38this is what kind of gave the Ouija board some credibility as being an actual
- 3:43form or tool to communicate with the dead.
- 3:46So if you remember in that movie, Regan, the girl that was possessed,
- 3:51her mother finds a Ouija board in the house and she asks Regan about it.
- 3:54And Regan, you know, She just casually says, well, you know,
- 3:57I've been playing with it by myself.
- 3:59And she mentions that she had been communicating with someone called Captain Howie. Okay.
- 4:05So she says that he answers a lot of her questions. And then the mother kind
- 4:10of brushes it off. Like it's just sort of a game.
- 4:12Now, this is the danger with the Ouija board and why it matters.
- 4:16In this particular situation, this, if you believe in the exorcist,
- 4:23this demon came masquerading as a friend but actually became,
- 4:30possessive of her body and possessed her body. And this is the fear that a lot
- 4:34of people have with the Ouija board.
- 4:36And how it's used, you just kind of place, you know, it's a board,
- 4:39you place your fingers on this planchette, it's a triangle-shaped piece, it spells out messages.
- 4:44So that was kind of the beauty of the Ouija board as opposed to like the tapping
- 4:48and the yes, no, you can actually get a whole message.
- 4:50You can get a name, you can get a date, you get, you know, anything you really
- 4:54wanted to ask, it was able to tell you.
- 4:57But believe it or not, like I've used the Ouija board many times.
- 5:02Gary from iOpener Society, one of our earlier podcasts, if you look,
- 5:06it might've been the first one that I am in.
- 5:08He talks about being in my house when he was a child in New York City as myself,
- 5:13and we had a bad situation with the Ouija board.
- 5:16But as myself, and I'll link that in my blog as well, that particular podcast,
- 5:23if you want to listen to it.
- 5:23But as myself, I've used it in the past. I don't necessarily think it's bad.
- 5:28I think it becomes bad when you invite negative things or you poke fun or you
- 5:36criticize or you chastise, I think then you can maybe attract something.
- 5:40But I think if you go to use the Ouija board in a respectful manner and then
- 5:46you bless the surrounding, you'll be fine.
- 5:49That's my opinion. I don't know how you feel about it.
- 5:51I don't actually have a Ouija board in my house just because I have family members
- 5:55that are afraid of them, but I've used them in the past and I've never had a situation with it.
- 6:01But anyway, how can you debunk this? Obviously, if you have four people doing
- 6:06the Ouija, somebody can be moving the planchette.
- 6:08There really is no way of knowing if anybody is doing that. So that's how it's debunked.
- 6:15Let's talk about EVPs and spirit boxes, which for me, honestly,
- 6:20right now is the most common tool used by investigators today.
- 6:25You can get it on Amazon. You can get like a really good one on Amazon,
- 6:28but I'm going to be honest with you, I use my phone.
- 6:31The recording devices on the
- 6:33phone right now are so superior that you can basically use it with that.
- 6:37And what you do when you do an EVP investigation, and again,
- 6:42it stands for electronic voice phenomenon.
- 6:46And what you do with that is you basically place the phone on a flat surface,
- 6:50nowhere near it. Don't go anywhere near so you don't get any movement getting picked up.
- 6:56And you ask questions. So you basically can say, you know, what is your name?
- 7:00Why are you here? Can I help you?
- 7:03And then what you do is you play it back.
- 7:09Now, I try to get everybody I know that's into ghost hunting to use this because
- 7:13to me it is the best form of communication.
- 7:17What happens is you don't hear the answer in real time. So as you're doing the
- 7:20investigation, you don't hear it.
- 7:22But when you take the recording back, and I like to listen to it with a really
- 7:26good set of headset, a really, I'm sorry, real headset, real good one,
- 7:30you'll hear voices sometimes coming out.
- 7:34So, and why I feel this is really credible is that sometimes you'll,
- 7:40you know, you'll get words that make no sense, right?
- 7:43But sometimes when you get a really specific answer, like if I say,
- 7:47how old you are, I'm sorry, how old are you? And the response I get is 13.
- 7:52And then I know somebody had passed away and he was 13. I mean, that's pretty telling.
- 7:58It's annoying because you have to listen to it over. and a majority of what
- 8:03you're listening to it is nothing.
- 8:05So it gets really hard to listen to it and the voices are very faint so you
- 8:09have to really pay attention.
- 8:11It's just hard, but if you're really willing to do it, I highly recommend this
- 8:15is by far the best equipment that you can use.
- 8:19So let's get into the history of it because it's really fascinating.
- 8:22Believe it or not, Thomas Edison, he actually, some people think he's the one
- 8:28that kind of sparked interest in it because he really believed that spirits
- 8:32could influence electrical signals.
- 8:34So he started kind of a lot of this interest. And about the same time that he
- 8:39was interested in talking about it, some of the spiritualists began experimenting
- 8:43with early phonograph, like phonographic recordings, like tech to hear voices.
- 8:49And some were able to find them, but the quality was really bad.
- 8:53If you've ever listened to like an old record, you hear that skipping and that crackling sound.
- 8:58So it was really bad, but apparently they were able to find some evidence of ghost interaction.
- 9:04But in the mid-century, about the 1950s and 1960s, they really started to get really serious.
- 9:11So this modern concept of the EVP really took shape at this time with a gentleman
- 9:17by the name of Frederick Jurgensen.
- 9:19He was a Swedish artist, painter, filmmaker as well.
- 9:23And in 1959, he went out with his, it was totally a fluke, he went out with
- 9:28his recorder and he was basically recording birds, bird songs.
- 9:33I'm not sure why, maybe for his movies, but he was recording a bunch of bird songs.
- 9:37And when he played it back, he accidentally captured what he claims was his
- 9:42mother's voice with a couple of messages, but he swears it was his mother's
- 9:48voice calling him Frederick.
- 9:50So this led him to explore this phenomenon.
- 9:54And he had hours and hours of recordings where he was analyzing for just even
- 9:59the faintest voice recording.
- 10:02Now, his work inspired another guy by the name of Radov.
- 10:05He was a Latvian psychologist who became by far one of the most famous pioneers of EVP.
- 10:11By the way, guys, I will have all of the links on my blog casted in,
- 10:17give me a few weeks, but I'll have that on my blog as well, hauntedandwaiting.blog.
- 10:22Hop on, though, if you want. I have other really important and fun information
- 10:27there as well as some true stories as well as my free novel. It's there as well.
- 10:32But getting back, this guy, Radav, he recorded several sessions.
- 10:38And what he did was he had this theory of using white noise or static.
- 10:44So besides just recording it, he would play back this static in the background
- 10:49while he was recording it because he felt that the spirits needed that as a medium to communicate,
- 10:56like they used the energy from that white noise to get their message across.
- 11:01And that is really what is used today.
- 11:04In the EVP recorders right now and the spirit boxes, which we'll talk about
- 11:07in a minute. That's what's used today.
- 11:10And so in 1971, he published the book, which is one of the best books for this particular theory.
- 11:18And it's called Breakthrough, an Amazing Experiment in Electronic Communication
- 11:22with the Dead. It's an actual book. It was a bestseller.
- 11:25I will post the link in my blog as well.
- 11:29Now, if we wanted to debunk this, well, there's something called auditory pareidolia,
- 11:34And that's where your mind sometimes will create a voice when you want to hear it.
- 11:40So this happens to me a lot. And I was shocked to find out this was actually a thing.
- 11:45But when I hear a fan, sometimes I hear music in the background.
- 11:50We also have a wood-burning stove that has this fan behind it.
- 11:55And when it runs in the winter, sometimes I hear music in the background.
- 11:59And that is something called auditory pareidolia where your mind will automatically
- 12:05it kind of tries to make sense of noise and it'll put music or voices into the
- 12:11sound it's not really there but you're hearing it so if you want to debunk the
- 12:16EVPs that's what people will say it is,
- 12:19as well as it could be radio interference or just maybe an accidental recording
- 12:24of a nearby conversation so this happened to me as well While I was recording,
- 12:30we have a haunted house literally across the street from my house.
- 12:34And I was trying to do an EVP session there.
- 12:37And I came across with a conversation, which I thought was coming from the house,
- 12:42which, by the way, was totally vacant.
- 12:44Turned out it was coming from my neighbor's house a few houses down.
- 12:47It picked up their conversation.
- 12:49So it was actually my son who was able to hear it and go, oh,
- 12:52that's so-and-so. And he was right.
- 12:54So this is how we debunk some of this stuff, which is interesting.
- 12:59So let's go down to dowsing rods.
- 13:03If you've ever seen a dowsing rod, you can get them for like $15.
- 13:06I own a pair. They're these two sticks. They swivel in your hand.
- 13:12And apparently, when you're speaking to a ghost, you can ask a yes, no question.
- 13:16If they cross, I believe it's a yes. And if they stay straight, it's a no.
- 13:21So but dowsing rods are not
- 13:24new um they were originally intended to
- 13:27use for water and they were used in the 1500s when
- 13:29people would homestead and or try to find where they could homestead
- 13:33they would use these and they apparently they would cross when you were standing
- 13:37over water like underground water and that's where you would build your house
- 13:41um this does work apparently i don't know how it works but it does work um but
- 13:46spiritualists in the 1800s started using these to detect energy,
- 13:52specifically ley lines as well as spirits.
- 13:55If you don't know what a ley line is, go back to Eye Opener Society and look
- 14:01for Sunset Child's podcast where she talks about ley lines.
- 14:05I don't know much about them. I'm not really into ley lines,
- 14:09these like energy lines that run under certain parts of the world.
- 14:12I'll link her blog, her podcast to my blog as well.
- 14:16But other people were using them for ghosts, for talking to ghosts.
- 14:21And it's like I said, if they cross, you ask a yes, no question.
- 14:25If they cross, it's a yes.
- 14:27Are you here? And they cross, is your name Tommy? They cross,
- 14:30yes. And they'll go straight for no.
- 14:33So are you mad? They say straight, it's no.
- 14:37Very similar to the tapping situation I had mentioned earlier.
- 14:44So these dowsing rods are used very commonly. For some reason,
- 14:48in Gettysburg, they love to use them.
- 14:50And apparently, they've been used to identify exact spots where soldiers were
- 14:56later confirmed to have been buried, where they didn't know they were there,
- 14:59and they crossed and they dug, and lo and behold, they're there.
- 15:03There's not a lot of evidence for this kind of stuff.
- 15:07Um you know um there was
- 15:10one story that i was able to find where this vermont woman um
- 15:13had asked her grandfather uh this is like
- 15:16an urban folklore um where he had hidden some money and apparently through all
- 15:22of these yes no questions um she was able to find a small box with a bunch of
- 15:26old coins um that were found beneath um some floorboards in her house and She
- 15:31got all the information from these dowsing rods.
- 15:34It's a funny podcast, or not podcast, I'm sorry, blog. It's called Chicken, Blood, and Steel.
- 15:41I will link that if you want to read that again on my blog.
- 15:45Now let's talk about EMF meters. Okay, so very similar to...
- 15:53What we've discussed before, but the EMF reader or meter detects heat or lack of.
- 16:00So the theory behind this is that ghosts tend to be colder, avoid of energy.
- 16:07They provide energy, but it tends to give you a cold spot, right?
- 16:12And that there's like an energy there.
- 16:14So the EMF meter was originally developed for electricians to identify electromagnetic fields or wiring.
- 16:23Like when they were wiring in a house and they wanted to know where wires were.
- 16:26My husband's a contractor and so we actually have a real, real good one.
- 16:29You can get these online, real cheap ones. They are actually really inexpensive.
- 16:35I would say if you're going to use an EMF reader, get a real one.
- 16:38Get one that an electrician would use.
- 16:40They're much better. They're much more detailed and it's the one that I've used.
- 16:45Ghost hunters kind of caught on to this and they started using them in the 1980s
- 16:49when they started noticing spikes in haunted houses and haunted rooms within haunted houses.
- 16:56So how it's used is basically you hold it up and if there's a spurt present,
- 17:04the meter will spike to let you know there's like an electrical spike in the area.
- 17:11I did a ghost hunt in Gettysburg and we were all handed one of these.
- 17:15And we were told not to place it on the floor and not to place it near a wall
- 17:19because of the wiring that ran through the floor and the wall would cause it to spike.
- 17:24And of course they told us not to do it. We all did it.
- 17:27You know, what's the first thing you do when someone says, don't do it, you do it.
- 17:30And certain it was true. Whenever we went near a wall, it would spike or we
- 17:32went near the floor in certain areas, it would spike.
- 17:35So we were told to just kind of hold it in front of us and walk into a room. And when we did that, um,
- 17:42We were in Gettysburg, but this was actually a ghost hunt that we did in a house
- 17:48where a murder had taken place in the 1980s.
- 17:50We weren't told anything else about it. We knew nothing about it until we got there.
- 17:54And we all were picking up a spike in the kitchen. And then later on,
- 17:57we had found out, among all the other evidence that we had collected that night,
- 18:01that there had been a woman murdered in her kitchen, I think by her husband
- 18:05or her lover, but one of those situations.
- 18:07And the meter would spike in the kitchen in a specific area.
- 18:12So that was interesting.
- 18:14So how this can be debunked, well, again, a wire will set it off.
- 18:19You know, electrical wire in a wall will set it off, which is interesting because
- 18:23if you use one of these meters in the woods like I have, they do spike.
- 18:27So it's just interesting. Like, they do spike. I don't know how you would explain that.
- 18:32So let's talk about infrared thermometers or thermal cameras.
- 18:37Okay. Another thing that's commonly used, originally developed for mechanics
- 18:43and for fire inspection, they would want to see where heat was.
- 18:47Basically, when you hold it up next to something, it'll give you an image and
- 18:52it'll show you where there is heat.
- 18:56So the paranormal group, I mean, we start to use these because of a drop in
- 19:01temperature that ghosts tend to bring with them.
- 19:06If anybody's seen The Sixth Sense one of my favorite movies Cole's Mother Lynn
- 19:10whenever there was a ghost present you remember she would go to the thermostat
- 19:13and turn it up or she would breathe in cold you would see the mist from her
- 19:17mouth because it was so cold,
- 19:20but that's how they were used for those kinds of things those kinds of places so I'm going to,
- 19:27post in my blog, The Dixie House, or The Dixie House Ghost. I'll put a link
- 19:33there and you can read up about it.
- 19:35But basically, this happened recently, actually, in May of 2025,
- 19:39in St. Augustine, Florida.
- 19:41And there was this house that was reported to have been haunted for some time.
- 19:47A lot of people were seeing shadowy figures, hearing voices,
- 19:51and then feeling these cold spots.
- 19:54And specifically in this room that they ended up calling Jack's room.
- 19:59So when they looked into the research, the house had a lot of history.
- 20:03It had been there. Again, it was in Florida. It was there during the Civil War.
- 20:07They weren't sure, though, if this Jack spirit was either like a Civil War figure
- 20:14or maybe a tenant because I guess it was a boarding house in the 1900s.
- 20:18One of the tenants who had died under mysterious circumstances,
- 20:22perhaps in this room, because people had reported seeing him and smelling tobacco.
- 20:27And there was a rocking chair, of course, the rocking chair,
- 20:29which would rock back and forth and they would hear a voice.
- 20:33So they went and they investigated specifically with this chair with a thermal camera.
- 20:38And they got a really beautiful image of the bottom half of a body.
- 20:44So obviously this is a podcast, you can't see it.
- 20:48Um, I will share their link on my blog so you can look at it yourself and then
- 20:53decide, but it's clearly the bottom half of a body.
- 20:56Um, they swore no one had entered the room for over an hour.
- 21:00No one had been sitting in that chair.
- 21:02Um, and the remainder of the room was like ice cold. So it was interesting that
- 21:07there was this residual heat pattern there.
- 21:10So how can you debunk this? Well, I don't know. I really don't know.
- 21:16Now, if you want a really cheap...
- 21:19You know, way of communicating with the afterlife, there is the pendulum, okay?
- 21:25Now, pendulums have been used for hundreds of years.
- 21:29In the Victorian seances, they came about, there's always a pendulum there.
- 21:35Kind of the same thing, they would go, I think it's back and forth for yes or a circle for no.
- 21:41No, I'm sorry, I think it's back and forth for no and a circle for yes.
- 21:44I don't really use pendulums a lot.
- 21:46A lot of times people will use them to determine the sex of a baby in the same way.
- 21:53But you take it with what you want. I would say you can make one yourself with a string.
- 21:58I would say use a crystal, not just a rock. But you can get them online.
- 22:02I've gotten a couple at craft shows just because I thought they were really
- 22:05beautiful, paid like $4 for them.
- 22:08But that's something you could look into, a very inexpensive thing.
- 22:13Okay, how you debunk it? Very easy. All I need to do is move my finger in the
- 22:17slightest way and I can get it to move back and forth or around in a circle.
- 22:22And believe it or not, you could be doing it and not even realizing you're doing it.
- 22:26So it could be something that's subconscious, not necessarily I'm trying to trick someone.
- 22:32Let's talk about cameras. So full spectrum camera is really what I would say
- 22:37to use, but photographers have been using cameras for hundreds of years and
- 22:42every now and then something shows up.
- 22:44Now, in the 1800s, we have a whole bunch of them, these photos,
- 22:48which a lot of them were debunked, which was easier to do at that time.
- 22:54Believe it or not, in the 1800s, if you wanted to fake a photo,
- 22:57it was a lot easier to do than during the digital age.
- 23:02It's harder to fake it in a digital age because people can tell it's been faked.
- 23:06But now that we're getting into AI, it's getting harder again.
- 23:13But today's ghost hunters will use these full spectrum cameras because they
- 23:18pick up more of the light that we can't see.
- 23:22And a lot of times these anomalies will pop up that way.
- 23:25So if you're going to do that, basically what you do is you snap a photo in
- 23:29an area that you know is haunted and then snap another one right after.
- 23:33And then you compare the two if an anomaly shows up in one.
- 23:38It's interesting, this double exposure thing, if you've ever seen the Osbournes
- 23:45want to believe, Ozzy Osbourne and his son Jack will always fight.
- 23:50Jack will show him this great picture and Ozzy will say, it's a digital,
- 23:54it's a double exposure, he'll say.
- 23:56And it just gets Jack furious because you can't double expose on digital.
- 24:01So when these things show up in digital photos, it kind of makes you a little
- 24:06bit like stand back and wonder what exactly it is.
- 24:11So, you know, they use them a lot, a lot. And then sometimes they show up accidentally.
- 24:17So if you go on to the internet, you'll see there's a bunch of these.
- 24:21They just kind of show up accidentally.
- 24:23The most telling ones, there's a ton from the Myrtles in Louisiana and obviously
- 24:29Gettysburg. There are hundreds of photos of these areas because they're known to be haunted.
- 24:36So I'm going to end my podcast here.
- 24:40Is there hard science to support any of these tools? No, unfortunately there isn't.
- 24:44A lot of it is used for a ritual. A lot of it is used for validation.
- 24:50A lot of it is used just for fun or for the thrill.
- 24:53And a lot of it can be faked. So I want you to just bear that in mind.
- 24:56And a lot of it can be faked, faked either intentionally, a lot of times,
- 25:01you know, unintentionally, like I said, like the slight movement of a hand,
- 25:05you're not realizing you're doing it.
- 25:08So anyway, that's the end of my podcast. I hope you got some value of it.
- 25:12I will again be posting the blog with all of these links and resources if you want to hop on over.
- 25:20It's hauntedandwaiting.blog.
- 25:22You can also follow me on TikTok on hauntedandwaiting.
- 25:26At Ann Lund. Obviously here on Eye Opener Society, I strongly urge you to check
- 25:32all of the other podcasters that are here.
- 25:35We have Sunset Child. She's got such a strange and interesting way of looking
- 25:40at things, as well as Elaine's Oracle's monthly readings, if you like tarot.
- 25:46And then you also have Gary and Lizzie right now are doing a lot of inspirational
- 25:49stuff and stuff on meditation. So wellness, I would definitely look at their stuff.
- 25:54And anyway, so that's all I have for this month. And if you want to comment,
- 25:59please comment below or hop on over to my blog and comment there when other
- 26:03people can interact as well.
- 26:05I'm also on Facebook, by the way, small community there, but you can find me
- 26:09haunted and waiting on Facebook, very small community where you can interact
- 26:12with a lot of like-minded people.
- 26:15Thank you again and hope to see you next month.