Franks Box
Franks Box
Frank’s box or the ghost box which is how it’s most commonly called today is a device which was created by Frank Sumption for EVP research. EVP, which stands for electronic voice phenomenon are unexplained noises, sounds, which according to paranormal researchers/ghost hunters are ghost voices, in another words spirit communication.
The majority of EVPs involve one or two words but in very rare instances a couple words resembling a sentence are retrieved. EVP’s are typically heard in the ghost box, tape recorders, digital recorders, computers, and even television sets.
Frank began experimenting with EVP’s the year 2000 which resulted in using a software program called EVPmaker created by the German researcher Stefan Bion. The EVPmaker functions by taking a wave file of human speech, chopping it up, and playing it back at random, while recording the results. According to Frank, it worked well except he did receive messages from ghosts who were having trouble using the program.
After receiving a number of EVP’s from the spirit world, Frank created the ghost box in 2002. Space Frank created the ghost box as a means for easier communication between the dead and the living, and claims he received the design instructions from the spirit world. His original design was created rather quickly, however the original design has been refined over the years consisting of at least 25 different models thus far. Nevertheless, each ghost box is unique in design and construction, but dependent on the same basic principles.
The very first incarnation of Frank’s box functioned by using a standard white noise generator which in turn is fed through a random voltage circuit which Frank designed himself. The random voltage is linked to an AM receiver, which reacted to the voltage by tuning into a radio station for a split second. This was known as voltage tuning and was prevalent in the late 80s and early 90s radio receivers. Basically Frank’s box creates audio bits and white noise, which spirits are able to manipulate into forming words/sentences in real time two-way communication between the living and the dead; these are the claims.
A newer model of the ghost box/Frank’s box utilizes the sweep method instead of voltage tuning. The box simply tunes back and forth through the AM band, hence the name sweep method. Frank now believes this is the better more efficient method of communicating with the spirits through his spirit box.
Having said that, Frank had stated that the ghost box is nothing magical and its only purpose is to sweep across the radio band in order to produce a source of raw audio consisting of bits of human speech for spirits to manipulate. In fact there are many other ways of getting the raw audio, one is crowd noise; a bunch of people gathered together, all talking at once. Are ghosts real;the mystery continues.
- As a side note, recently Frank, among other paranormal researchers believe spirits can manipulate sound waves to form images in real-time.
