By Catelyn Fitzgerald ’23
Science & Environment Editor
Content warning: this article mentions suicide.
The beauty in ghost-hunting is its simplicity — and the wide availability of the technology it relies on. Take the case of the temperature gun: on a dark, cold night in the spring of 2019, I paraded around campus with a group of students from my Campus Sustainability course. Our mission was to identify buildings on campus that leaked heat due to insufficient insulation. In the tiny window of the temperature gun, we observed spine-chilling temperature changes around window frames and in the mortar between bricks where heat was escaping. The lack of energy efficiency in the College’s ancient buildings was not paranormal, but it certainly gave us a fright. With some extra time and the power of scientific discovery in our hands, we visited the famed “ghost room” on the fourth floor of Wilder Hall. The room is supposedly haunted by the Woman in White who, according to an article from the College’s Alumnae Association, hanged herself in after hearing of her lover’s death. We pointed the temperature gun at the door of the room, looking for any sign of a spirit within, but were disappointed with temperature differences that were meager at best. Perhaps the Woman in White was not home.
According to an Oct. 2011 installment of NPR’s All Things Considered, the owner of a supposedly haunted house in Richmond, Virginia, hired ghost-hunting agency Richmond Investigators of the Paranormal (RIP) to carry out a thorough investigation of the property for paranormal activity. The RIP team used an arsenal of tools to detect and observe ghost activity. They brought with them an electromagnetic field detector, temperature gun, night vision goggles, a motion detector and holy water, just in case. These gadgets are staples of the ghost-hunting community. Any fan of the show “Ghost Hunters,” which aired from 2004 to 2016, is familiar with the unintelligible mutters heard over the crackling of audio recorders that comprise the show’s episode-making moments.
The underlying idea that makes these tools suitable for detecting ghosts is energy. Paranormal investigators often operate under the idea that ghosts can be revealed by unexplained changes in the energy of the space they inhabit, which manifests in a sudden temperature drop or a rogue electromagnetic field. The association of the paranormal with energy can be traced back to 1848, a Popular Mechanics piece explained. According to the article, two sisters, Maggie and Kate Fox, became well known for their ability to communicate with ghosts by tapping on walls and furniture, an ability which inspired a rise in spiritual communication through the end of the century. The sisters’ later admitted the act was a hoax, but it nevertheless established the idea that ghosts can be contacted using the right methods and a little bit of supernatural ability.
Not long after the Fox sisters popularized talking to the dead, other technologies became known for capturing paranormal presences. The Atlantic reported that in 1861, William H. Mumler captured a ghostly figure in the background of one of his photographs. The photo was soon a sensation among the Spiritualist media and established cameras as a technology for capturing spirits. Mumler later confessed that the ghost in his famous photography was simply the result of a developing error, but the allure of technology being able to document the supernatural persists today.
What this technology has taught us is that anyone can be a ghost hunter. This Halloween, if you’re feeling bold, strap on your night vision goggles or turn to the tried-and-true Ouija board and find an extroverted spirit near you. Just don’t forget the holy water.