How to Hunt Ghosts Using an IPhone

As Halloween approaches, the veil between the living and the dead becomes thinner, so during a solar eclipse, I headed to the infamous haunted picnic table to look for ghosts using my iPhone.

There is no end to the “free” paranormal investigation apps – Ghost Detector: Radar Camera , Ghost Hunting Tools , Spirit Board , etc. Some claim to monitor EMF frequencies to point you to spirits. Some say they “translate” ambient noise into ghostly speech. Some say they use your phone’s camera LIDAR sensors to find the supernatural. Some people simply say, “Yes, we see ghosts around you.” They all say “for entertainment purposes only” but I wanted to know if they actually worked.

Thomas Edison: Inventor, Entrepreneur, Restless Ghost

Before you cynically dismiss the idea of ​​using your smartphone to communicate with ghosts, ask yourself if you’re smarter than Thomas Edison. Having invented the light bulb and the phonograph, Edison wanted to create a machine to communicate with the dead.

“I have been working for some time on constructing an apparatus to see if it would be possible for persons who have left this earth to communicate with us,” Edison told The American Magazine in 1920. “If it is ever accomplished, it will be accomplished.” not by any occult, mystifying, mysterious or supernatural means which so-called mediums use, but by scientific methods.”

Even though the spiritualism craze of the early 20th century is a century ago, half of Americans still believe in ghosts . I’m not one of them, but I’m open to the possibility, so I’m following in Edison’s footsteps by giving iPhone ghost hunting a fair shot.

How to Find Ghosts Using iPhone

There is no one-size-fits-all plan for ghost hunting—the field of paranormal research is too esoteric and personal (or fake) for that—so I invented my own process and tried to create the most favorable conditions for spirit hunting. Here’s what I did:

Step 1: Get the Right Tools

The first step to a successful paranormal investigation (and simple home remodeling project) is having the right tools for the job. I avoided ghost hunting apps that were sold as games and downloaded the following popular apps from the Apple store:

• Ghost Hunting Tools : This app says that it is “designed for beginners and professionals in the field of paranormal investigation.” It is equipped with an EMF meter (ghosts love electromagnetic fields for unknown reasons) and an EVP recording device that picks up ghostly sounds that are imperceptible to the human ear. He then translates these sounds into words.
• GhostDetector – Haunted Radar : This app promises to be more “accurate and sensitive than any of its peers.” It is designed to detect EMF fields for ghost hunting and has over 9,000 reviews on the app store and a rating of 4.2. It’s also the best looking ghost app I’ve downloaded.
• Ghost Finder Tools : This app says it is “the most used by ghost hunters around the world.” It features six ghost hunting tools that can be unlocked after watching the “Solitaire Cash” ad.

Step 2. Go to the desired location.

Most ghost hunting apps promise to help you find ghosts around you, but I don’t want to know if there are ghosts in my house—I have to live here—so I chose a notoriously haunted spot for my investigation: Picnic Table 29 in Griffith. -Los Angeles park.

The Legend of the Phantom Picnic Table

On Halloween night 1976, Rand Garrett and Nancy Jeanson, an up-and-coming musician and actress, consummated their young love at a picnic table in a remote, deserted part of Griffith Park, or so the legend goes. Just as things were looking up for the couple, a heavy tree fell on them, killing them both instantly. The families of the young lovers decided to scatter their ashes at this place so that they would always be together – a strange decision, but this was the 70s.

Since then, it is said that all attempts to remove the tree or fix the table have been met with supernatural protest: there have been reports of angry voices whispering “leave us alone” or “next time you will die”, as well as the mysterious disappearance of trimmers sent to clean up the place .

I can’t find any evidence that any of this actually happened, other than the fact that a pine tree did fall on that picnic table at some point, but the site still attracts curious and morbid people to this day who leave notes and tributes follow. young couple.

This is a truly creepy place. Here’s a map of Griffith Park’s haunted picnic area if you’re brave enough to visit.

Step 3: Choose the right time

You might think that midnight on Halloween is a good time to contact the spirits of Nancy and Rand, but if the ghosts repeat their actions for eternity, this will be the worst time to bother ghostly lovers (also, you are not allowed to enter the park on midnight).

So I decided to talk to Nancy and Rand at 9:23 a.m., October 14, 2023, just as a solar eclipse darkened the sky . During an eclipse, the shadowed sun acts as a spiritual beacon that calls the wandering dead back to Earth and stirs up the remaining spirits. (In the tradition of paranormal research, I made up all this nonsense about the eclipse being a beacon, but it sounds good, right?)

Before I left, I consulted Ghost Hunting Tools for some last-minute advice from the spirit world. I let him listen to the electronic voice phenomena in my home for a while and translate the ghostly speech into English. The apparently friendly spirit said, “Bail” and “Warning.” No kidding! Satisfied with my message from the Beyond, I headed to the haunted picnic table.

My expectations were high as I approached a secluded corner of the park where there was a picnic table. It’s near the top of Mount Hollywood, where the roads are closed to cars, so visiting it requires a fairly strenuous hike or bike ride. This protects the eerie isolation needed for spying on ghosts. I didn’t need the app to tell me it was a creepy place, especially with the greeting cards, flowers, and candles left by others.

Right before the eclipse, I turned on the GhostDetector: Spirit Radar app, waiting for the sky to darken and the spirits to make themselves known. The wait, I admit, was quite scary. But when the eclipse happened, nothing happened. There were no bursts of electromagnetic fields on my reader. No ghosts appeared. Even the eclipse itself failed—it might have gotten a little darker, but the mountains and trees still blocked my view of the sky.

I tried other ghost hunting apps I downloaded and got similar results. Sometimes unspecified gauges or needles would move, but I had no way of interpreting it. So I sat quietly for a while and let Ghost Hunting Tools record the ambient noise of the picnic table. “Ghosts” said: “Link to Fade Market Steel Cord Incorporated Fork Negative.”

Among the problems with the ghost hunting apps I’ve tried is that they don’t include instructions. They’re essentially sets of animated needles that appear to move randomly across indicators with labels like “aura.” You will have to make a lot of effort to interpret their results in any way.

Soon, another trio of amateur paranormal investigators appeared. They didn’t know how their apps worked either, but they told me they tried researching Rand and Nancy but couldn’t find any verifiable reports of deaths. They interpreted this as something very creepy rather than an indication that it was all a legend. I started to say that if the wooden picnic table had actually been hit by a tree in 1976, it would have rotted years ago, but I stopped myself – I didn’t want to ruin the morning for my new friends.

Step 4: Try again

So maybe there weren’t any ghosts at the picnic table because no one actually died there and ghosts don’t like camping. But I know someone died here:

Above is a folded wing portal at Valhalla Memorial Park Cemetery in North Hollywood. Built in 1924, this memorial to fallen aviators contains the remains of Walter Richard Brookins, who flew with the Wright Brothers, airship pilot Augustus Roy Knabenschuh, and many other prominent names in aviation history. It is also the site of the most ironic plane crash in history.

On July 18, 1969, a Navajo twin Piper, just taking off from nearby Burbank Airport , crashed into the dome of the Folded Wings Portal . The pilot and one passenger died instantly.

Surely these ghosts must be somewhere nearby. But no. Even though I was literally surrounded by dead people in graves and at the site of the confirmed death of two people, my ghost apps gave no specific direction. The EVP reading didn’t say “Mayday Plane Crash” or anything like that. Just more gibberish and a constant dose of solitaire advertising. I started to feel like I was taken.

Latest investigation: I actually found a ghost! (OK, not really)

Despite my family’s protests, I also tried ghost hunting in my own home. The detectors seemed a little more lively inside than outside, but not by much. I took them on a tour of my luxurious estate and no significant testimony occurred.

Before giving up completely, I downloaded this non-ghost, seemingly legit EMF detector . Using this app, the corner of my living room raised the gauge, deepening the needle to the right. Finally the result ! The ghost hunting apps I’ve tried haven’t shown a similar spike. But no matter. This ghost is proof of the supernatural.

Skeptics might argue that the high EMF area is right around my stereo speaker, and the closer I bring it to the magnet inside the speaker, the higher the readings will be. But I may have found a ghost who really loves music.

The fact that I was unable to load any of the apps I downloaded to record the actual EMF field is concerning. But perhaps they have some sophisticated software that separates everyday EMF fields from ghostly visions. Or maybe there’s nothing in ghost hunting apps at all.

Conclusion: I couldn’t find any ghosts on my iPhone.

The October 1933 issue of Modern Mechanix reported on a strange half-séance that Thomas Edison conducted in his Menlo Park laboratory in the 1920s. According to this story, on a dark, windy night, Edison assembled a group of scientists, psychics, and mediums and introduced a machine that directed a narrow beam of light into a photoelectric cell attached to a meter that recorded any vibrations—the “Edison Ghost.” Telephone!

Edison (supposedly) forced all mediums to contact the spirit world so that he could observe and record with his device anything supernatural passing through the room – if ghosts appeared, they would certainly interrupt the beam of light. The results of the experiment (and the experiment itself) were never made public by Edison, but all signs point to it not working—even with one of history’s greatest inventors in charge, nothing happened.

In any case, nothing supernatural. Edison and his pals spent a spooky evening of fun hanging out with mediums and pondering the possibility that there is more to the world than we see. This was the case with my experiment. I didn’t find any ghosts, but I did go to a very cool and creepy place in Griffith Park, visit an aviation memorial, and meet some friendly weirdos. Conclusion: While I couldn’t find ghosts with any iPhone app, perhaps the real ghosts are the friends we make along the way.