APP-lied Reasoning

Reconciling clear vocalizations usiAPP-lied Reasoning ng THE most criticized, suspect method

PHILOSOPHY/ SPIRIT COMMUNICATION / PARANORMAL STUDIES

By Ron Yacovetti - BA Communications/Journalism

Two mobile spirit communication apps I have seen in use.

Abstract

 

Making the case that suggests more research and experimentation takes place to fully understand the physics, metaphysics and all potentialities regarding the use of a phone or tablet app for spirit communication. Whilst I myself, likely in league with a majority of academics, scientists and highly educated paranormalist’s, do not prefer to use these apps, or lend them much credence, I also cannot deny timed and relevant results have been produced using them. This is not the predominant outcome from using them, as oftentimes I am of the belief that either something dishonest could be happening under the hood, as well as the operator of the device is misconstruing or misinterpreting the vocals emitted from them. However, it would be disingenuous to say that they never produce startling responses. This essay leaves the door to legitimacy open to that idea, but with a tight tension rod incessantly looking to slam it shut in the face of countless unknowns inherent in each app, essentially hidden variables which in the absence of identifying them, extract copious amounts of credibility. There is no a priori reason to assume efficacy of an app, which is also not aided in its campaign for legitimacy when considering the targeted audience and pedestrian level access to attaining the methodology itself.

So, how often do the paranormal phone and tablet apps show up in the field?

In the ghost hunting community, at virtually every famously haunted location (allegedly implied to famously), you will see the ticket holding guests, staff and ownership as well as celebrity paranormalist’s ALL touting the newest and most dynamic ghost hunting apps. These have populated our landscape like lantern flies around the northeastern parts of the United States. You simply cannot go anywhere in the field and avoid them and perhaps some, like the lantern flies, would be best to be stomped on until the lights literally go out.

Some could argue that it’s an extension of the ghost box revolution and the undeniable desire for convenience which permeates our society. Instant gratification, ease of mobility and the look and feel of something right out of a Ghostbusters film. It appeals to us in a handful of ways that satiate the general public and casual ghost hunting enthusiast. But for many of us, it causes mass confusion to see those we have deemed respectable and clearly identify as experienced paranormalist’s, touting an app in hand like it’s a Tesla Coil. The palpable confidence in it they bring to the dance is absolutely founded in these exceptional moments when the mobile apps seem to yield responses, not just words like an Ovilus, with timing and relevance…hence this quest to look deeper.

This is a topic that comes up anytime we do our own weekly podcast. Tony and Cherie Rathman, Lourdes Gonzalez and I, somehow end up touching upon this topic a lot because it is unavoidable if you go anywhere, private or public, to do paranormal investigations. Our phones and even easily carried tablets have now made their way into the mainstream as socially accepted tools of the paranormal trade. Nothing made that sobering fact more jolting to me than when Lourdes and I were watching an episode of Ghost Brothers (who are all supremely kind people), as they arrived at a location, parked their car and then Marcus uttered his routine catch phrase with the accompanying gesture, “Pop the trunk!” This was not only to signal the onset of their investigation, it was also the call to ‘bear ghost detecting arms’, by grabbing their gear from the rear of the vehicle.

            The shock and lack of awe was when the gear they grabbed after the theatrical build up, was nothing more than a KII meter, dowsing rods and a phone that would be the centerpiece of the investigation, revolving around one ghost box type app. I remember thinking, couldn’t they have just as easily, if not more so, said “Pop the glove box?!” That’s all they are grabbing? Now I understand they were fairly new at investigating (or so I had heard, in the event this is not exactly true) so getting a handle on equipment is understandably a gradual process. But with a modest amount of preparation and education, time could have been spent on learning more of what one does in the field. If in fact their being new at the time is accurate, then this is the net result of making celebrities out of the media exposure. This very well may be a contributing factor to the influx of influencer types on social media platforms, as the field itself seemed to be a fertile ground to nurture the next generation of para-celebrities. So, here is where we begin focusing on one of the three things they snatched from the pocket of one of their pants, the cell phone. 

            Everything from EVP to ghost box sessions, they would do using the phone. The devices we all carry do provide a technological Swiss army knife worth of available tools all in one handheld brick. And there are many who have clips of vocal evidence that is quite impressive, with timing and relevance to the moment captured. So, then Ron, I say to myself, “...if they are that utilizable, what’s the problem?” There are a couple of issues that come with the use of an app.

#1. Trust / Reliability

Unless one builds it or knows the developer personally, there is and always will be a trust dilemma in the usage of phone apps to aggregate paranormal evidence. Many of the app’s list “For entertainment purposes only” as a disclaimer but it is a double edged sword, also serving as a discreditor. Recent apps being announced now, 2024, by known social media theatrical content providers along with others who have developed other apps, go as far as to claim the inability of the app to attain a false positive. This is not only the definition of bogus, it is also what makes it non-scientific because being able to falsify is a key to a methodology being scientific in nature. Even dishwashing soaps don’t make such outlandish claims, instead saying “Leaves dishes VIRTUALLY spotless!” In a previous book of mine, “Paranormalization: Memoirs of an Academic Layperson” I posed the dichotomy of being anti-app but pro John Zaffis, due to the fact that John himself, a good friend of ours, uses an app called Echovox consistently. This is a PARAdox with two things combined that are polarized for so many people out there. So as a community, what do we do? We ignore it. We pretend it isn’t happening, etc. You won’t see the ‘debunk and defend the field from low quality or fake stuff’ people rallying for THIS cause.

And bringing this up is not meant to hatch anything more than thought. Hypocrisy or any internal contradiction is often undiagnosed and undisclosed from those who do not observe in themselves. But it does beg some questions. To me, it speaks to the position I have been telling people on podcasts for a while now…these apps do, at times, yield results that are beyond difficult to dismiss. I also include in speaking to this issue, the fact that I do not necessarily believe that any one app is the magical gateway to the spirit realm. The device and how I now think it can work, accounting for a philosophy of mind, does however, make me believe that there is good reason to expect that they can do what we expect of them from time to time…maybe just not in the way most people in the ghost hunting field think that they do.

When the results ARE of this impressively timed and relevant nature, I believe they deliver such in the same way that we receive audio on a terrestrial radio broadcast…by modulating the experience into what we can detect. This is nothing exclusive, in my opinion, to Android, Apple iOS, Windows, etc or the makers of the phone electronics themselves. The equipment, like many things we use, modulates the experience within our sensory input range so we can and do experience it. Under Analytic idealism, we can only perceive what registers on our dashboard of perception (Kastrup 2018), so it may be reasonable to say that the device, a representation of something out there as we perceive it, could be doing just that. But to suggest, as was always my argument with ghost boxes, that spirits are somehow manipulating sounds within a device, at superluminal speeds and with absolutely no latency in processing speed to be heard, is severely lacking in coherence and has a mine-field’s worth of explanatory gaps. Yet, repeatedly we see this play out as a convenient fiction of the paranormalist; the fact that it is easier to just accept spirits are doing what the app advertises that they can do, as if it is true. This also incorporates the totality of vocals the apps produce, many of which are without timing, relevance, context or any supporting information. All considered here, if the user of the app cannot comfortably have trust in it, and this excludes blind faith rooted in compliance with ignorance, then how can anyone else outside of the user be at peace with the results of any given phone app?

#2 The Anomaly you seek comes with the method

This one is fairly straightforward to explain and understand so I will try to get right to it and move on to point number three. The anomaly any voice-based ITC or EVP device is looking for is voice, and much like the criticism that gets slung at the ghost box, the apps come with sounds, words, banks, etc. all of which are composed of voices or sounds akin to vocals. To the cynic, this is like dropping a bag of coins and jewelry in the sand at the beach, then coming back hours later with a metal detector and finding them, only to declare that you made a fantastic discovery; YOU put them there. The avenue of legitimacy that the ghost box escapes upon that the apps cannot is based on this list’s point #1 - trust. With a radio sweep, you know it is cycling through broadcast with a continuously changing noise bed at all times. With an app, however, the entire guts behind the scenes are a compilation made by a developer or programmer whom you are required to trust wholeheartedly for just $9.99 (prices may/do vary). And with this mode of attempting to communicate with the afterlife, there is a highly critical dependence on discernment, which is so very, very often, absent from the average ghost hunter’s use of any app. Any intelligible words launch narratives, which heck, could be legitimate words from beyond but equally unlikely, if not much more so unlikely, is that the device/app combo is spitting out words. It just talks and you have no Ghost I.D. to trace the source of the caller back. The spoken words are also, not random, but deterministic based on whatever algorithmic plans are running under the hood. So, with so many instances where saying the words or words you hear, which are super clear, are declared to be ghosts speaking to us, yet with NO remotely reliable way to even know, I find it functions as a self-deterring situation.

#3 The most coherent justification for how they can work is never brought up

This is partly how I see this due to my own bias towards the fact that my reasoning for how they can produce the timed and relevant results they sometimes do, came from my own analysis. Added to that bias, I am also even more confident in my theory for the apps functioning now that our foundation for Staticom, Analytic Idealism, provides a conflict free rationale. For a while now, I have been saying that I have seen apps yield evidence I myself would not feel just in dismissing. I have also said that I don’t think there is one magical app that does it all, but rather that if we accept the idea that spirits can manipulate or work through electronics, then it is the phone that they are working through and the app is just an element of the moment they come through. It’s a user-friendly interface that allows our experience to work easier. But now, I see that same reasoning with a deeper understanding, deeper explanation and deeper seated concept for the phone being the conduit. Under the idea of analytic idealism, again that reality is mental processes, the physical items in our world are not actually physical stuff but instead, representations of the thing that IS out there.

With this in mind, if you grant me this for a moment, if you are still trying to digest the idea of a mental universe, consider that there is NO phone. The phone is a mentation, a representation of an abstract thing in our inanimate transpersonal space as we perceive it. So our screen of perception is being impinged upon by thought processes from universal phenomenal consciousness and those thought processes include the volitional dialog that we are receiving as it is part of that perception, in addition to the localized manifestation of what we call a phone. In other words, mental stuff is mixing with our mental stuff and we receive the intended or deterministic outcome of the sent message. I realize this is a lot I just unpacked here, but if the paranormalist’s of today want to support their cause and evidence without being quashed by physicalism and the limitations imposed on the spooky stuff, then we need to look deeper into the sciences, philosophies and more to do it. All of the equipment we use serves as a means to gather data to assess. If something such as an app says it is for entertainment, that to us is a red flag - not that it cannot work but that the commitment to what it is supposed to do comes with less confidence so the "for entertainment purposes" is a way to avert a flood of requests for a refund.

Proving ghosts are real or proving they are not will never be settled. It's a distraction from the real questions regarding the experiences people have...and many do have them. Experience is nature's one true given. It is how we know anything directly or indirectly, through acquaintance. So, when the means you use to aggregate data comes with a disclaimer about what it yields, for us, that disqualifies it from regular use. We will always test and play with such or not speak to it at all, which is something that many do with apps in order to bash them, despite never having tried it. So for us, the app situation is one to keep an eye on, monitor what new types of them come out and to see how they are received across the paranormal landscape; but never will a phone app be our plan A for contact and researching it.

Axioms and Spiritual Bypassing as Substrate for App Acceptance

Even though there is no a priori reason to accept the efficacy of any mobile app communicating with spirits, we see it overlooked through a sheer act of Spiritual bypassing; the tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep explaining gaps and hidden variables. In the paranormal it is often applied as a faith-based acceptance of “the unexplained” at work, hence no need to furnish even an attempt at a scientific theory or hypothesis. “Science can’t explain it, so I don’t need to either” - or - As my good friend Lauren Hellekson says to the ghost hunting enthusiasts who attend her lectures, “How do you know IF your device works if you do not know HOW your device works? You cannot just say “...Well the ghosts just know how to do this or that.” This is lazy and foolish to assume that it will entice even the most casual of analytic thinkers.

Most mobile apps made for spirit detection, communication and any other interaction rely heavily on the consumer’s use of spiritual bypassing. The world of spirit is the world of the unknown and in that world they do as they do and will. Could I have written a more generalized and pointless sentence? Probably not. But this is the conceptual thread with which the paranormalist will knit their fabric of belief. Ghosts can defy this and can do that so there is no alarming nature in granting “them” all kinds of abilities and potentialities which we can never empirically test, know or quite honestly, witness. And for some reason, when we are aware that we do not have access to all possible facets of a phenomenon, we theorize how we think it unfolds and also exclude elements of it that we CAN know. To adopt a philosophical postulate or theorem that clashes with known laws of science is to adopt a corrupted theory. The widespread belief in apps as reliable and effective tools in documenting spiritual interactions is demonstrative of epistemic dependence. This of course excludes those who are “all in” from the hurdle #1 Trust, outlined earlier in this essay.

Now…already for some of you reading this, ideas and examples of such may be bubbling up into your minds like bubbles across the surface of lava. One app just recently released which masquerades its theatrics to be actual research, with far reaching language used in the description of the app, hit my radar in a most disturbing way. It states, online upon its release:

(A) This app cannot be faked as there are no words, phrases, languages, human speech, reverse speech or any sound banks at all. This app supplies letters to spirit so they can form words and messages.

Let’s unpack, even if as briefly as one can try to do so, exactly what lacks explanatory power in the most extreme ways imaginable…there’s plenty lacking here.

First:

(B) This app cannot be faked as there are no words, phrases, languages, human speech, reverse speech or any sound banks at all.

If one reads the iOS specs on the app, it designates a language clearly (below). If there are only letters within the app (I’ll tackle this absurdity next), a language would not need to be identified for the app. I can say “Nosotros” which in Spanish means “we” or “us” using the same alphabet I use to say WE or US. Same for “Bonjour” in French, again using those letters from A to Z, etc. So why say there is no language in it and then declare which one it has? Wouldn’t that make most sense considering the unusual claim that it only has letters?

And, is this description of the app (above), ambiguously worded so as to perhaps protect the development team from being accused of the app doing what it shouldn’t or to allow them to claim authenticity in a way that doesn’t lend itself to a clear definition, thus not easily disproved? In pre-release videos prior to now, the claim was made that the app “cannot produce false positives”. This MAY be what they’re trying to imply. However, this is wildly absurd to suggest since many times when false positives happen, they are at the subjective level of the experiencer or operator of the app or device. Ruling out such for all possible humans that may use it is so broad a stroke that it cannot be truthful in any genuinely stated way. It is no mystery that interpretation is the bane of existence for all ITC, so certainly there is no escaping it as a possibility which one would address with theory and explanation, not spiritual or even technical bypassing that they expect us to just accept and then move on.

For many, such as those of us on the Staticom Project team, we acknowledge this interpretive issue for ITC but go to lengths to show that we are getting actual words and speech, including the use of only pure white noise devoid of any data, as well as timing, relevance and audio analysis showing characteristics harmonious with speech. It is also imperative to note that when we vet the audio we record, we do not dismiss vocals on the strength of the many interpretations concept used by closed-minded academics to suggest that since many people hear the words differently, thus they are not words at all. Most certainly such studies done like this one referred to, are addressing the ghost box modality and not DRV: Direct Radio Voice or Staticom. But still, this needs much more explanation to stand alone as a debunkery line of thinking to take even remotely serious.

As Staticom Project member Lourdes Gonzalez, a New York State Certified Court Reporter who listens to audio of testimony daily, often says during our lectures and podcasts, “If you say rip and I hear trip, it is correct to suggest that I misheard you, but it does not indicate that you didn’t speak words in a language that I understand purely because I got it wrong or heard it differently from what someone else heard. You still spoke and some words can rhyme or sound close enough to be mistaken for other words.” …With this explanation, I agree wholeheartedly. In instances when I am to decide between the audio engineer who knows how to produce sound and how it behaves, versus the professional whose vocation and state certification is linguistic, transcribing accents, dialects, cadences, people talking over each other, etc. I’m going with the court reporter identifying speech every time.

So, it is a very generalized and vague statement to say that an app cannot be faked. And only one instance seems applicable, being ‘by the user of it’, but prohibiting the user from manufacturing narratives from words the app spoke, which are not from spirit at all, does not indicate that non-spirit-based results to be mistaken as “evidence” cannot take place. They most certainly can, they most certainly do.

Another claim made by this new app, stating that the microphone of the phone or tablet is unable to use what you say in producing its results, is preaching to a concern regarding any app’s authenticity. But in this specific instance, as seems to always be the case, no explanation as to how that is being prevented, beyond a “trust me” testimony, is ever given. So in a very genuine sense, as I have stated many times over, I don’t believe there is one magical app that bridges realms and makes spirit contact happen. Yet, in seeing some apps produce difficult to refute results with timing and relevance, I believe it is under Analytic Idealism that such clear relevant speech can be granted the possibility to be genuine discarnate voice representation.

The intended communication, the phone itself, all being mentation and not actually physical and with standalone existence, could provide a modulated experience that can be heard by our sensory input. Even if I am wrong, though I do not believe so, it is far more coherent than to suggest that spirits are fumbling around with the inner workings of an app on a physically solid phone and faster than the DC superhero, The Flash, on cocaine, delivering words to us in real time. Processing speed on any computer known in public use cannot work at such breakneck speed. This already asks a lot of us to be on board with, and it gets worse. Which now brings me to the second and even more disturbing part of that original statement…you may want to buckle up for this one…

Second point to unpack (the doozy in my opinion)

 

This app supplies letters to spirit so they can form words and messages.

ONLY letters. Ok…Even I need to take a deep breath before diving into this part of the commercially driven, original statement. It is a tertiary attempt to use language to pull the paranormal wool over the eyes of the masses, in hopes that no one actually reads them for what they truly mean. Here goes…

The claim here is that the app has “no words, phrases, languages, human speech, reverse speech or any sound banks at all”; it supplies spirit letters so they can form words. Let us not forget this is an audio-based phenomena we’re discussing and not a Ouija board or telegraphy-based modality. Spelling things before our eyes is not what the app claims to do - though it does come with a visual element that shows the words that…(say it with me)...we HEAR.

And that is the driving force behind electronic voice communication…voice. We are to hear words…and to hear words, which is to perceive and experience them, is to register in an auditory way, on our dashboard of dials, on our wall of perception. In other words, we need the ability to detect words to know words that have been provided to us. So again, this app, which also concurrently runs a visual display pointing out the words heard, somehow claims not to possess sound banks or vocalizations in any fragmented or manipulated state of being. But we hear them…the words. Yes, I too remain confused by this but will try to press on here.

            So…the genuine spirit communication being experienced via this app makes the phenomena possible by “supplying letters to spirit”. That’s the substrate for the functionality of it on a fundamental level…letters. If it sounds ridiculous it’s because it is. But can some mode of spiritual scrabble be both heard and displayed on a screen without sound? OF COURSE NOT. Again, we hear the words. And it is an undeniable fact that letters and words are human constructs, contextual and referential in nature, which are not things with standalone existence in and of themselves. They are descriptions of the sounds we hear, not the sounds themselves. Cohesively they are applied in language, which the narrator and host of the videos claims spirits do not have…language. I wish I were making this up. They have no language and then form words IN language on an app with no language, to communicate!! That is yet another of the claims on the table here.

You cannot hand me a letter, any letter, be it “L” or “A” as it is what describes the sound, it is not a thing in and of itself. If you hand me a wooden letter “L” that is still a representation of something, not a standalone thing in nature. It would represent the wood shaped in a familiar pattern, i.e. the letter “L” and nothing more.

So how exactly does one put “letters” in an app, in a phone and then they somehow get manipulated by spirits, faster than the speed of light in assembling them in proper order to make timed and relevant words? And the fact that we hear words from the app flies in the face of the statement that it has “no words, phrases, languages, human speech, reverse speech or any sound banks at all” - the sounding out of the words HAS TO BE coming from somewhere.

This leaves us with “letters” placed in the app that has no sounds. Not a corner I’d want to see myself painted into, for sure. And since theoretically, letters are descriptions OF sounds, and that we hear sounds, the app MUST have access to sounds that coincide with their descriptions, likely in banks or some repository readily available for its use. To ask us to believe that no sound is accessible to the app and in light-defying speed, spirits slap them together to make words and then the phone - outside of the app functionality as per that statement - somehow modulates them to be heard - a processing feat that would make fiber optic speeds look like two cups and a string level communication, is BEYOND maddening to entertain. In an attempt to distance itself from all skepticisms of apps, this new unnamed app is instead, proposing ideas that fly in the face of science and comprehension as to how and why it is unique and above such criticisms which devalue app usage. And it is doing this by creating an unknown amount of hidden variables which leaves the thought inspired and inquisitive left with only blind faith in the developers and what is happening under the hood.

            As if that isn’t enough, the video announcing the app release also states in the narration and host personality’s words that it, the app, was made based on scientific principles, which includes the buzz word of the para-century “Scientific”, but in the remaining minutes of the video, makes no mention of which principles and and how it is in concert with said principles. It’s erroneous to say it and not say how that is true. You can even be mistaken or in error about how, but to state it and include no mention as to how, to fail to include any mention referentially is purely bait on a hook for the paranormalist seeking allegiance with the academic backed ideas of science. To accept all of this, move on and just dismiss the cynics on the app topic is to make their very point and undermine one’s own. The app description, when finally landing in the Apple Store, shows as follows:

There is a lot of the word “random” in this synopsis. This, of course, is a word used when we cannot calculate, model or measure something due to it being impossible or extremely difficult to the point of implausibility. There are certainly algorithms within the app which cycle the sounds (not letters), so the process, from the user’s standpoint, is computationally irreducible. This is also a contradiction to the primary selling point for which the developers want you to buy it…spirit communication. That too would be deterministic should it happen at all.  So why so much “random” in the summary? And again, letters cannot create sounds. Letters are descriptions of the individual sounds we hear and identify as that letter. This is analogous to saying two utterances of the word beautiful will produce a landscape or a female or a work of art. These are descriptions of the thing, not the thing described. And “random formations of sounds at varying intervals and lengths to generate vocal sounds”, being mentioned to explain it, is to claim the warbles and artifacts accusations laid upon ITC as true, as valid and perfectly suited. I do not think this is a claim they want or intend to make, but it is inferential by the way they attempt to explain the app’s legitimacy.

So what of the timed, relevant and spot on responses using an app??

The general overview of app use in paranormal experimentation, experience and study seems to suggest that the seemingly astounding results, difficult to refute, are the anomaly atop of the anomaly of communication itself. In other words, the apps seem to yield those eyebrow raising results in an extremely small percentage of instances compared to the continuous stream of results for which no referential, contextual or logical grounds can be had with confidence. For those occurrences, the minority of times when one can label the response(s) as timed and relevant, I would find it only holds water if the philosophy that serves as its scaffolding, such as Analytic Idealism, suggests a modulated experience whereas the device itself transduces it to a perceptible level, akin to a radio making RF signal detectable. Further dissecting of the inner workings of individual apps, a sort of disclosure, may aid in showing that in more instances words are significant and communicative versus being audible distractions from which the user constructs narratives that fit.

Such disclosure of these app inner-workings could raise more red flags than reasons to buy into them, which most critical thinkers, myself included, would tend to expect. This may prove out if we do not ever see attempts to show authenticity where the look under the hood genuinely takes place.  It is also worth mentioning that an extremely in depth analysis of this given app, carried out by a close and reliable friend and audio engineer, Joshua Sean, who stated that there is good reason to believe that this new grandiose app is using an A.I. transcriber. This would also require access to sounds or sound banks in order to be heard; something I discussed at length with Joshua when we compared notes and analysis regarding this and other apps available to the paranormalist. Joshua, one of the most brilliant audio engineers and ITC practitioners today, had this to say as a technical analysis of this given app:

“The simple fact that filtering was even considered for this app tells me there is sound hiding somewhere. Why is filtering even an option in a program like this?  If there is not one waveform anywhere, why would they need to filter? What would they be filtering? And given your (Ron Yacovetti’s) philosophical assessment of letters as representations of sounds, not the actual sounds themselves, to me, shows that scientifically and philosophically the app falls flat on its face. A definitive appeal to magic as presented for sale”

A.I.-A.I.-Oh!

Something profoundly impacting various aspects of our lives now, is the introduction of artificial intelligence into processes and practices where it previously did not exist. And while we can name several if we try, the focus here is in the smartphone and tablet app arena. In one study, of what surely must be many, our team has been informed that a Canadian university has done extensive research into the role of the ghost hunting apps in paranormal research and investigation. One huge finding speaks to the application of an A.I. in accessing and applying things such as GPS coordinates and referential information in order to spew out words that will most easily create the illusion of a successful ghost hunting tool. The illusion of a reliable data gathering instrument.

Where I find this most disturbing and what drives me most distant from the app legitimacy side of the fence is that such internal and indiscernible use of artificial intelligence presents the first and only viable way to disqualify the two governing things our team has used to determine the possibility of any vocal being anomalous…and I have been saying it for about eight years and have heard myself quoted by the descriptive statement that embodies it, “Timing and relevance”. A ghost box or most certainly Staticom, which employs the use of pure, live white noise, cannot be dented by this application of A.I., but the apps, which are already suspect to many, pretty much lose all credibility. This is not a step forward thanks to technology. It’s a shedding of one’s armor of integrity…The one thing a paranormalist can stand safely behind, shielded from cynicism, knowing their own genuine honesty and their own efforts to vet their own process. I would caution the general paranormalist to take this into consideration before whipping out the phone and using the trendy app to build their body of evidence. But I realize that some may read this message imbued with honesty and trepidation and see it as being “for entertainment purposes”.

Conclusion

The influx of mobile apps and the variants within every platform, the reason I have adhered to the modality of one new app, are both undeniable aspects of our cultural affinity for technology and its expected ability to remove complexity from things we want or love to do. Within this may lie an internal contradiction with regard to such, conflating simplicity with parsimony, as well as complexity with inefficiency. In nature, humans are much more complex, self-organizing systems than that of a paramecium, yet most would not infer from this, a superiority in the simpler, less complex life form. So why then, do we see removing complexity in process, with regard to supernatural technology to be superior? Again, this may be the confusion of convenience with complication, as complexity does not by necessity mean complicated. It is more straightforward and easy to use the phone you already have, with a tech element someone else already put forth and then just trust that what it yields is what you expected, than it is to pursue previous research, the findings from it and then take the time to employ a method or means of attempting spirit communication that you know to be vetted as much as possible. This very act of epistemic dependency leads to what it is that I conclude in this essay, which for me personally, displays no plot twist or self-represented character arc. I remain highly skeptical of app use as a legitimate means of trying to do spirit communication, but not based on an inability to work at all, but rather on their acceptance by design, of inherent flaws and hidden variables left divorced from any theoretical explanation.

Given any genuine effort to vet the functionality of any given app, with sufficient detail to illustrate a diminished potential for false positives, this subject remains something I will monitor and look back at from time to time. For as long as the exception remains the rare, inexplicable timed and relevant results, in contrast to the routine uncertainty about anything outside of algorithmic determinism as cause for what we hear from any paranormal app, my position to steer clear of them will also remain in place.

Acknowledgments

Dr. Bernardo Kastrup - Essentia Foundation/Author/ PhD; PhD - essentiafoundation.org/ https://www.bernardokastrup.com/

Joshua Sean - Zero-G ITC - Audio Engineer

Lauren Hellekson - Electronics expert - Paranormal Equipment developer -Author-Speaker

Lourdes Gonzalez - Paranormal Investigator - Staticom Project Developer - NY Certified Court Reporter/Linguistic expert.

Wikipedia.com 

Google.com