Ghost hunting apps to try for Halloween

SINGAPORE — Kids will be dressed up as ghouls and ghosts for Halloween next weekend, but if you want the real thing, how would you start looking for it? Well, in today’s world, where there’s an app for everything, there are plenty of ghost hunting apps available for the aspiring Ghostbuster.

Scary characters abound at this year's Halloween Horror Nights in Sentosa; but you are after the real deal, there are several apps out there to that can help you be a ghost finder. Photo: Resorts World Singapore

By

Nicholas Yong

SINGAPORE — Kids will be dressed up as ghouls and ghosts for Halloween next weekend, but if you want the real thing, how would you start looking for it? Well, in today’s world, where there’s an app for everything, there are plenty of ghost hunting apps available for the aspiring Ghostbuster.

We downloaded a few of them put them to the test at Bukit Tunku in Malaysia, which is apparently one of the spookiest places in the region. Formerly known as Kenny Hills, people who live around there tell many stories of spirits wandering around its abandoned houses in the night. Of course, you could try these apps right here in Singapore if you know where to look.

Here's what we found out after one spirit-seeking night:

GHOST RADAR CLASSIC (FREE)

One of the more popular apps in this list, Ghost Radar Classic analyses the electromagnetic fields, sounds and vibrations in the area (shown by the various numbers across the four corners of the screen). It indicates where a ghost is on-screen. Its creepiest feature is a voice interpreter that announces a detected word. We got goosebumps when it said “changing” or “require” out of the blue as we drove around. We tested this app at a scary looking gate we found somewhere atop Bukit Tunku. There seemed to be nothing untoward here, so we moved on.

GHOST & SPIRITS (FREE)

There are loads of options to choose from in this app. First is Pyschophony, represented by a classic Magnetophone that plays ghost sounds into your phone’s speaker. Next is Paranormal, which uses a graph chart to depict the level of paranormal activity in the area. While the cheap looking Ghost Finder tells you where there’s an increased energy level around you; the Radar Map is better than others on this list, using an actual map to show where the app detects energy readings. Finally, using the Ghost Camera (creepiest of the lot) you can look around you for actual ghosts. There are also a couple of niggling problems: The annoying pop-up ad that appears before starting the app, and the constant reminder to upgrade to the Pro version when using the Ghost Camera (although the Ghost Camera scans the surroundings quite clearly).

GHOST HUNTING TOOLS (FREE)

The bells and whistles look complicated when this app is first booted, but it’s actually quite simple. The bars on the top represent an EMF presence detector, a typical ghost hunting device that reads the fluctuation in electromagnetic fields. The blue screen at the bottom is an EVP analyser (electronic voice phenomena) that captures ghostly sounds. The audio is then translated and displayed in a small blue box between both detectors. There’s in-app help to explain these options thoroughly, and it also warns users not to shake the phone too hard when using this app or it’ll give false positives.

GHOST SONAR (FREE)

While it looks similar to the Ghost Radar, this app interprets EVP signals from your device’s microphone instead to show anomalies. The spirits can be seen like heat maps that come and go as it detects sound, so don’t speak too loud when you’re using this app; otherwise, you’ll be getting plenty of false positives as we did. While we were at a creepy looking bungalow, the app appeared to detect something behind us; but we didn’t turn to look.

ULTIMATE EMF DETECTOR (FREE)

Of all the app interfaces in the list, the Ultimate EMF detector gets our vote for its clean look and unobtrusive ads. You’re presented with three options, a classic, simple and advanced EMF detector. The app uses your phone’s compass as a magnetic sensor and displays the electromagnetic reading in the area. That’s really all it does, but it does it well. We assume that high readings mean there are spiritual beings nearby. The numbers were steadily increasing on the EMF detector, but finally stayed at the 30+ range.

GHOST EVP ANALYSER (S$1.95)

This paid app records and plays back “spiritual audio” in an area. You can also choose to replay recordings in half-speed or in reverse to try and catch what the entities are saying. Additional options include allowing the app run in background, disabling your device’s sleep function and setting the autosave duration for your audio recording. On the Analyse tab, there’s a chart that shows when the loudest noises can be heard, so you don’t have to search for anomalies in your recording. Unfortunately it didn’t really detect anything, even after we checked the recording when we returned home.

ENTITY SENSOR PRO-EMF DETECTOR (S$6.49)

While this is more pricey, this app is definitely the best EMF and EVP detector. The EMF detector works like the free apps in the list, but it also saves the EMF readings you capture into a graph that can be read on your computer. It also includes recording and play back of EVP audio at the same time for a better reading of ghosts around you. The milliGauss data (used to measure magnetic flux density) seems to be measured precisely, but we don’t really understand what it means. However, there’s a bar of coloured circles at the top to show how strong the magnetic waves are. As the numbers increased, we packed up and legged it out of there.

A version of this appeared on Stuff Singapore.

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Ghost hunting apps to try for Halloween

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