There's an App for Bust Some Ghosts: Using a K2 milliGauss Meter

In Season 3, episode 12 of the SciFi channel's hit series, "Ghost Hunters", Jason and Grant, founders of The Atlantic Paranormal Society (TAPS), invited psychic medium Chris Fleming to accompany the team on the investigation of a home on Cielo Drive. A similar fight erupted over the use of digital cameras in this kind of work in the 1990s. Professional ghost hunters at first insisted digital cameras were unusable because a speck of dust near the lens could create an orb commonly mistaken for an apparition.

Located in Hollywood, California, this road was the site of the infamous Manson murders of 1969, wherein cult members entered the home of starlet Sharon Tate and brutally killed her, her unborn child, and four of her close friends. Now digital cameras are de rigueur in the trade, with higher resolution cameras minimizing orbs and generally accepted techniques for distinguishing a dust particle from an apparition.

He didn't recognize the man at the time, but three months later while researching the area, Mr. Jones, a computer engineer in Salt Lake City, created "Ghost Radar" by building a database of 2,100 words, then writing a program based on the steady stream of information coming in to the iPhone's sensors. This particular house, along with several others on the same road, is believed to be haunted by the ghosts of Sharon, her friend Jay Sebring, and the others.

The homeowner, Dave Oman, and his acquaintences report hearing footsteps and voices, and Dave awoke one night to see an apparition standing at the foot of his bed pointing towards the direction of the driveway. On Monday, Mr. Coffey led about 200 people in a psychic investigation in a darkened room at the Mayflower Renaissance Hotel, near the White House in Washington. "I asked, 'Are there any dead presidents that want to communicate with us? Any Kennedy want to come through to us?". This area was also the location of a number of suicides as well as Indian deaths and burials.

K-II EMF meter
During the investigation, Chris decided to try out a new device that is currently all the rage in the paranormal community: a K2 (or K-II) meter. This handheld device is a special type of Electromagnetic Field (EMF) detector. Originally sold to homeowners to check out power lines and electromagnetic fields, the $60 instrument, which is the size of a television remote control, is the go-to device for ghost hunters like Ms. Ray who probe paranormal activity in graveyards, homes and other buildings.

The 44-year-old comic swears by the K-II for picking up the presence of a ghost. An EMF detector locates and tracks energy sources, and picks up on fluctuations in electromagnetic fields in the surrounding environment. Because spirits are comprised of energy, it is believed that when an anomaly is present, it disrupts this electromagnetic field.

When you experience a cold spot in a haunted house, it is because whatever spirits are present need to absorb the energy around them in order to manifest (either physically or audibly.) Curt House, 32, uses the K-II to track down spirits in Raleigh, N.C. But the founder of Triangle Paranormal Investigations more and more finds himself relying on a newer ghost-hunting gadget: his iPhone. It's tricked out with apps that claim not only to track electromagnetic fields as the K-II does, but also to translate inaudible sounds into words and predict lunar and solar activity thought to foster apparitions.

"The K2 meter measures magnetic fields, and it's been specially calibrated for paranormal investigations. The theory behind the K2 meter is that if there's a spirit in the area, the K2 meter will pick up it's magnetic field. You can then train the spirits, supposedly, to intensify its magnetic field, therefore lighting up the lights on the meter." Choose your weapon. For a decade, avid ghost hunters relied on the K-II, buying almost all of the 30,000 devices manufactured every year. But now, the EMF meter is under competitive threat from dozens of digital devices that claim to offer a new link to the afterlife.

So the idea is that ghosts can actually communicate with the living by disturbing the electromagnetic fields that surround the K2 device. In the episode of "Ghost Hunters", for example, Chris told the spirits that they could answer his questions by making the meter flash twice for "yes" or once for "no".

The Ghost Hunter M2 iPhone app ($.99) uses the phone's built-in magnetometer to measure electromagnetic fields and the accelerometer to track faint movements like ghostly footsteps. Ghost Séance ($2.99) says it uses a recorded medium's voice to summon "good spirits" only. A previously inactive screen began lighting up with activity but only when he asked the questions. They even changed the batteries just to make sure the meter wasn't on the fritz, but fresh batteries produced the same results.

Through their use of the K2, the investigators were able to establish that it was in fact Jay Sebring who haunted the home, along with the spirit of Sharon Tate. The ghost also announced that he had been contacted before, through the use of a Ouija board. Homeowner Dave Oman later confirmed this, saying that he and his friends had played with a Ouija board in the house not too long ago. The programs' developers say they can perform functions that might otherwise take a suitcase full of gear. They also expose new people to the field.