AI in the Shadows

12th February 2025. Reading Time: 6 minutes General, Paranormal Theories. 812 page views. 0 comments.

Technology and more specifically AI, has become a popular tool in paranormal investigating. While there is much discussion and arguments to be had, there are ways it can potentially aid us, just not in the way you may think! Let's brainstorm!

Typically when you think of AI and paranormal investigating, the first thing that comes to mind is Ghost Apps. Often these use AI to produce images or even 'talk to us'. It is highly subjective and highly controversial with many arguing that this technology should not be used as a paranormal investigation tool. If I am being perfectly honest, it is not for me. I don't like to use apps full stop just like I don't like to use gadgets. I have my own ways, tools and methods and I appreciate everyone is different so I am never going to tell you not to do something that works for you. When you come on a tour with me, yes we use all the different equipment you see on TV and we also like to show people the different apps and try to explain how they work. I like to describe this not necessarily as a paranormal investigation but more as a paranormal investigation experience because that is essentially what it is. You are cramming what would normally be days, weeks, or months of research into the span of 2 hours. People are coming hoping they will experience something paranormal. They want to use the devices they see on their favourite TV Shows or YouTube channels. If they use it properly, they gain an understanding of how it works. It is then up to the person to decide if that is something they feel is useful for them.

I really dislike when paranormal investigators start saying things like "Real paranormal investigators do things this way" or "Don't do this because I don't agree with it". I think we absolutely need to employ critical thinking and really understand these tools. Walking around aimlessly communicating through whatever means needs to have purpose and a level of understanding. So whether we like it or not, AI is slowly becoming a part of our lives. From editing our photos to finishing our sentences in a text message, AI is here and it is evolving. The paranormal field is not immune, it is here.

"The definition of insanity is -- doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result." Albert Einstein

I am a positive person and like to focus on this rather than being a Negative Nancy. I have been around Negative Nancy's and let me tell you, they can suck all your energy and just take away any joy you had. I don't want the paranormal to feel this way. Let's be honest, we could easily get sucked into paranormal drama holes and become this way, but we aren't going to are we? We are going to remain positive and stick to our research. Instead of getting upset about AI, let's stop resisting the inevitable and learn about it. Find out how it works and more importantly how it can work for us.

Image created in Canva using AI with the prompt: create an image of a ghost wearing headphones in a haunted building

As a writer, I was very much against AI. I mean I could load up Chat GPT with some prompts and churn out a whole book. I find this rather sad. I also want to point out that I don't like the fact that AI basically steals content from artists visually and writers to formulate something new. Let's leave the creating up to people. For a long time, I was yelling at clouds about it all, but now I have come to learn it can be useful to me in certain circumstances. So with that in mind, I started brainstorming about the ways AI could potentially aid us with our paranormal research. Here are a few ideas I came up with:

Analysing EVP:. Reviewing audio recordings is a long an tedious job. While some people tend to look for spikes in the waveforms, often people hear voices or whispers when they cannot see a spike. Now there is an argument by some that if there is no spike, have you have captured anything at all but that is for another day. Let's think about the task itself. You are potentially having to sit and manually listen to hours upon hours and hours of audio recordings. Could AI assist with this task? Could it be programmed to simply run a recording and find anomalies for us? (I don't know if it can and what the pros and cons are here, again this is just a brainstorm).

Speech to Text: I am a big note-taker. I like to take notes so that I don't forget things. Often it can be names that come up, reactions people have or even just a recap of what is happening. It can get hard trying to write things down in the dark and admittedly, I often use notepad on my mobile phone to make notes that seem to make sense to me at the time, but when I revisit them down the track I have no idea what I was talking about. Following on from the topic above, we could use AI and software to transcribe notes and audio. All we have to do is talk about what is happening and later it can all be written down and documented for us later thanks to AI. There is software that does this right now. A perfect example is watching a YouTube video that automatically shows captions. While it can get it wrong based on pronunciation, it is a very helpful tool and one of the ways AI can absolutely help us.

Crafting conversation specific to a location: Some people are team history, and others prefer to walk into a location blind. Again both have their pros and cons. I personally like to spend time revisiting the same location (I mean I have been doing that for 10 years now and it still manages to surprise me). If you have access to a location, sometimes you have very limited time and you want to be able to spend that time being the most productive you can be. This is why for some having a bit of a loose plan is essential. Now of course we know that things never end up going to plan, so this is why I say 'loosely'. AI could help you here. You could train AI with the history of a location and it could help formulate questions to ask during an EVP session if you are the type of person that gets stuck and doesn't know what to ask. It can be adjusted and come up with new things as the night progresses. This kind of starts to lead me to the next point ....

Can AI create a ghost?

I have spoken in depth on this blog about the concept of us projecting and creating our own ghosts. If we interact with AI enough, we can create our own fictional characters. Could we then end up 'creating a ghost'? If you have no idea what I am talking about, have a read of my article about the Philip Experiment and you will begin to see where I am headed with this.

As I said, this is merely just brainstorming and you may think I am crazy or maybe there is something to some of these ideas. That is just what they are ..... ideas. I think we need to have more discussions in the paranormal field and share theories, and ideas, what works, what doesn't, what we think, what we believe, what we don't believe and maybe we just may formulate some new approaches and ideas. So tell me your thoughts and ideas! How can we incorporate AI to our benefit in the world of paranormal research?

"The definition of insanity is -- doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result." Albert Einstein

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