SPOOKY BOX / SPIRIT BOX APP VS SB7

AN APP OR AN SB7?
WHAT EACH ONE DOES.

An SB7 is a sweep radio and a phone app is not, so the app does not replace it: if you want the sweep, you need the hardware. If you want a word device that times its words to the room, logs each one with a reason and records the session, an app on the phone you already carry does that, and the SB7 does not.

What the SB7 is

The P-SB7 is a small handheld radio built to sweep. Its listings call it a compact tool that uses radio frequency sweeps to generate white noise, designed by Gary Galka of DAS, and the first production-built spirit box made for paranormal enthusiasts. It made its television debut on a Ghost Adventures live broadcast from the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum on October 30, 2009.

It tunes across the AM or FM band without stopping, forward or in reverse, resting on each frequency for a set time. The current model, Rev 8, lists sweep rates of 100, 150, 200, 250, 300 and 350 milliseconds, plus a faster 50 millisecond setting and a frequency flutter between steps. The FM sweep is listed as 88.0 to 108.0; the AM range is not stated on either listing. What comes out is static broken by scraps of broadcasts, and people listen for words in it.

It has a small speaker of its own and an earphone jack, and one retailer says plainly that an external speaker is recommended. It runs on three AAA batteries. Nothing on its listings mentions a recorder, a log or a clock: it makes the noise, and keeping it is your job.

What a phone app can and cannot do

A phone is not a sweep radio. Whatever a spirit box app plays is sound the app already holds or streams over the internet; it is not stepping across the AM or FM band the way the SB7 does.

What a phone has that the SB7 does not: a magnetic field sensor, motion sensors, on many phones a barometer, on a few a thermometer and a humidity sensor, plus a microphone, a camera and a clock. An app can show those numbers, log what happened and when, record the session as audio or video, replay any moment, and export the result. None of that needs radio, and the SB7 does none of it.

Then the honest part. A word an app speaks does not come out of the air. In Spooky Box it is drawn at random from a built-in bank; the sensors decide only when it arrives, never what it says. No reading and no word shows more than that: the field moved, the pressure changed, or nothing stood out and the word came by chance. It is entertainment, in the spirit box tradition, and the static from a sweep radio is in the same position: what you hear in it is yours to weigh.

Where Spooky Box fits

Spooky Box is a spirit box-style app for Android 8.0 or later, and it has no radio in it. For the first five seconds of a session it learns the room's normal readings; after that, a bigger shift makes the next word likely to arrive sooner, and readings taken while the phone is handled are thrown out. The word is random, from a bank of more than 3,500 words, and every word shows its reason: Magnetic shift +14.2 µT, Pressure shift, Spontaneous. You see what the phone measured and decide for yourself whether it was the heating coming on.

When you tap Start session, choose Nothing, Audio, or Audio and video, which films up to 20 minutes with the words drawn into the picture. Afterwards, tap any word in the log to hear the room just before it came up. Sessions are unlimited and cost nothing. One optional one-time unlock through Google Play opens every archived session, not just the five most recent, and adds custom words and names, two voice effects, and export of a session's audio or video. No ads, no account, no subscription; the spirit box app guide has the detail.

Who wants the radio, and who wants the phone

Some investigators want the sweep and nothing else will do. The SB7 is what they have seen on television, it needs nothing but three AAA batteries, and what comes out is broadcast noise rather than anything a developer wrote. For them the app does not replace it, and we would not pretend it does.

Others want the phone they already carry: a device that stays quiet until something in the room changes, logs every word with its time and the reading behind it, records the whole hour and replays the second before a word. They want a log to go over afterwards, not a memory of what the static might have said.

Many people carry both. Run the SB7 for the sweep and set the phone down a little way from it, because its speaker moves the magnetic reading. Spooky Box keeps its own log while the radio runs, and a recording holds what the room and the radio said together. Take both to one of our haunted places, and read ghost hunting with a phone first.

Try it

Spooky Box is on Google Play for Android 8.0 or later; an iPhone version is coming next. Sessions, recording and replay cost nothing, so set it down beside your SB7 and see which you reach for.

Read next

• A spirit box app that shows its work: how Spooky Box chooses a word.
• Ghost hunting with a phone: what its sensors can and cannot measure.
• Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum: where the SB7 made its television debut.

Questions

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.