SPOOKY BOX / GHOST HUNTING APP
GHOST HUNTING
WITH A PHONE.
What a phone's sensors can and cannot tell you, how to run a Spooky Box session on an investigation, and what the numbers on the screen mean.
What a phone can measure
Every sensor in a phone measures something ordinary. Spooky Box reads the ones that describe the room:
- Magnetic field, in microtesla (µT). This is the compass sensor. It reads the steady magnetic field around the phone: mostly the Earth's, roughly 25 to 65 µT depending on where you are, plus whatever steel, magnets, speakers and electronics are nearby.
- Air pressure, in hectopascals (hPa). From the barometer, on phones that have one. Near sea level it sits around 1013 hPa and drops by about 0.1 hPa for every meter you climb, so lifting the phone from the floor to a table moves it.
- Temperature, in degrees Celsius, and relative humidity, in percent, on the few phones that have those sensors.
- Motion and rotation, from the accelerometer and gyroscope. Spooky Box uses these to tell when the phone is being handled.
Any sensor your phone does not have is shown as not on this device, and the session uses the rest.
What it cannot measure
There is no sensor for a presence. A phone cannot see heat the way a thermal camera does, and Spooky Box does not use radio. The magnetic sensor is built to work as a compass; it is not the same instrument as the handheld field meters sold for investigations, which respond to the fluctuating fields around household wiring.
Running a session on an investigation
- Find a steady surface. A shelf, a table or the floor, away from speakers, magnets, metal and other electronics, which move the magnetic reading. A magnetic phone case or mount moves it too.
- Start a session and let it learn the room. For the first five seconds Spooky Box only learns the normal level of each sensor. The screen says Sensing when it is ready.
- Hands off. Hands-off mode is on by default: if someone picks the phone up, words pause until it is still again, and readings taken while it moves are thrown out. When you set it down somewhere new, it takes the new spot as normal.
- Ask out loud. Ask your questions in a normal voice and leave a pause after each. Keep the volume low enough to hear the room; tap a recent word to hear it again.
- Mark moments. Tap Mark to stamp the time of anything worth going back to, such as a sound or a word that landed. The log shows the mark between the words.
- Record. Turn on Record the room before you start, and the microphone keeps the whole session on the phone. Afterwards, tap any word or mark in the log to hear the room from just before it.
- Film. Open the camera during a session to film with the current word, its reason, the clock and the magnetic reading drawn into the picture. The session keeps running behind the camera. If you film a clip with sound, the room recording stops for the rest of the session and the clip carries the sound.
Recording, marks and filming cost nothing; audio export is part of the one-time unlock. See Keep what the room said, and the page on filming and the Figures overlay.
Before you go
- Permission. Get permission to be there from the owner or whoever looks after the place, and stay aware of your surroundings.
- Lights. Bring a flashlight for getting around, so the phone can stay where you put it.
- Battery. Spooky Box keeps the screen on during a session by default, and recording and filming use more. Start full and carry a power bank.
- Keep the app open. A session ends if Spooky Box goes into the background, for example when you switch apps. Its words are saved in the archive.
What the readings mean
Under each word, Spooky Box shows the reason it came up. Each reason is a shift: a reading moved away from the room's normal level, which the app learns at the start and keeps updating as the session runs.
- Magnetic shift, for example +14.2 µT: the field around the phone got stronger, or weaker if the sign is minus. Keys or a phone carried past, a speaker, an elevator or the wiring in a wall can all do it.
- Pressure shift: the air pressure changed. A door closing, heating or air conditioning, or the weather.
- Temperature shift and humidity shift: the air around the phone warmed, cooled, dried or dampened. The phone's own warmth and people breathing nearby count.
- Spontaneous: nothing stood out, and the word arrived by chance alone.
A shift tells you something in the room changed. It does not tell you what changed it, and the word that arrives with it is drawn at random from the bank. Treat both as things to look into and talk over, not as answers.
An honest word about ghost hunting apps
No phone app can confirm a presence. A phone has no sensor for one, and every number it shows is an ordinary measurement of the room: a magnetic field, an air pressure, a temperature or a humidity. Looking for ghost hunting apps that work? Judge them by what they let you see: whether the numbers are the phone's own readings, whether a word tells you why it came up, and whether handling the phone sets it off. What an app can do is give a night a shape: a voice in the dark, a log of what happened and when, and a recording to go back over. That is what Spooky Box is built for.
Spooky Box is for Android 8.0 or later and is on its way to Google Play. Read how it chooses a word, see the home page, or ask support.
Questions
Do ghost hunting apps work?
A phone app can only work with what the phone has: its sensors, microphone and camera. No phone app can confirm a presence. Spooky Box reads the magnetic field, air pressure, temperature and humidity where your phone has those sensors, speaks a word when the readings shift, and shows the reason under every word.
What does microtesla mean on the screen?
Microtesla (µT) is a unit of magnetic field strength. The Earth's field is roughly 25 to 65 µT depending on where you are. A magnetic shift of +14.2 µT means the field around the phone is that much stronger than the room's normal level; a minus sign means weaker.
Why did a word come up as Spontaneous?
No reading stood out from the room's normal level when the word arrived, so it came by chance alone. Words keep arriving at unpredictable moments even in a quiet room; a bigger shift makes the next one likely to arrive sooner.
Can I use Spooky Box on a paranormal investigation with a team?
Yes. Put the phone where everyone can hear it, start a session and ask questions out loud. Turn on Record the room to keep the whole session, tap Mark for moments worth going back to, and export the word log as a text file to share with the team afterwards.
Will moving the phone set off words?
No. Readings taken while the phone is being handled are thrown out, and hands-off mode, on by default, pauses words until the phone is still. The magnetic reading uses the field's strength, not its direction, so turning the phone is not read as a shift.
Spooky Box is paranormal entertainment. It uses device sensor activity and a word engine to create atmospheric sessions. Generated words and sensor readings do not establish the presence of spirits or verified communication.