Psychic Howlers & Other Ghost Detectors

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"I have been at work for some time building an apparatus to see if it is possible for personalities which have left this earth to communicate with us." - Thomas Edison
You read that right. Thomas Edison, the famous American inventor, might have built a ghost detector. There's no evidence he actually constructed a working prototype, but he did go on the record to say that he was thinking about it.

"This apparatus is in the nature of a valve, so to speak. That is to say, the slightest conceivable effort is made to exert many times its initial power for indicative purposes." 
Although Edison may never have gotten past the development stage, there are others who claimed to have created working ghost detectors. In fact, whole laboratories were set up to study  communication with the supernatural.

A New York Tribune article about the "American Psychical Institute", which pioneered several ghost hunting apparatus. 
There is a ghost detector in HAUNTIBLES. I based it on a real device called a "psychic howler" which was basically an electromagnetic field alarm. Ghost hunters coiled wire around a cylinder and attached it to a speaker, which would squawk whenever an electromagnetic field grew stronger.

I attached mine to a VU meter and added battery life so it couldn't be overused. It acts as a "hint system" for the logic puzzles in the game.

The psychic howler in HAUNTIBLES is a combination of a VU meter I found on an ancient stereo and the backing of my grandfather's Kodak Brownie camera.
 Did Edison ever construct his ghost hunting device? I haven't found any evidence yet to support its existence, but that's the great thing about historical research - there's so much left to discover.

An August 28th, 1921 article from the Washington Times entitled "To Solve By Scientific Instruments the Secrets of Life Beyond the Grave?"
Click here to read this whole newspaper article.

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