The Broken Technology of Ghost Hunting Colin Dickey is a writer from San Jose, California, and is very well-versed in ghost stories. In his article "The Broken Technology of Ghost Hunting," Dickey rationalizes the idea that it is simply innate for humans to try to make something out of nothing. Dickey achieves this by using three examples: mocking how ghost-hunting items work with a sarcastic tone, stating the logic behind spiritual or ghost-hunting items, and by educating the reader with a brief history of ghost-hunting.
First, Dickey explains to us the items that are now being used to find ghosts and how they came to be. The most common one is the K-II Safe Range. The K-II Safe range is a device initially created to detect electromagnetic field radiation coming off of things such as home appliances or generators. Although the K-II was created for that purpose, it was turned into what believers call a "ghost meter" (2) and, like Dickey says in his article, "an indispensable tool in the ghost hunter's arsenal" (2). Dickey also uses a slightly sarcastic tone when talking about how the K-II was used in Ghostbusters, specifically when he says that it was "specially calibrated for paranormal investigators" (2). We saw this same tone used in Ectoplasm by Ben Mcgrath of how he ridiculed the story of there being ghosts in the hotel to make clear what his opinion was.
Second, the logic behind ghost hunting is very flawed. The K-II was used in the movie Ghostbusters as a ghost-hunting peripheral; although it was used in one of the most iconic ghost movies of all time, this was not the real reason the K-II became so famous. Dickey talks about the components of the K-II and how cheap and unreliable the K-II was. Dickey specifically says how it was "Erratic, prone to false positives and easily manipulated." (2). The real reason it became famous was that it failed to do its primary purpose. This goes with all other ghost-hunting items as well, such as a digital camcorder or a digital recorder. The items are either not functioning properly or broken and do what they are not intended for. As Dickey states in the article," Most purveyors of consumer electronics keep their consumers happy by constantly refining them until they're free of bugs. Ghost tech works the other way, by active engineering glitches, the more, the better." (5). We know that a camera will strictly capture whatever is in front of the lens. Yet, believers take the random times when there might be something in the final photo which we are unfamiliar with and try to make it into something, as Dickey said in the article, "static and ran...
