Interim Report:  Mini-Box Testing by ASUP, Inc.

June 17, 2008 

With approximately six months of testing now completed, the Association for the Study of Unexplained Phenomenon, Inc.  (ASUP) has completed approximately 50 tests of the Mini-Box with a wide variety of subjects under many different circumstances.  While the research is far from over, it is appropriate to share some insights already learned from these tests.

First, the Mini-Box works best with time. If you do not have two hours to devote to a session, you might be disappointed.  You should have the device running in the place you will be using it for at least 15 minutes; during this time you can fine tune settings and volume. Never expect the Box to “Hit the ground running,” so to speak; it happens occasionally, that an operator can turn on the box and get an immediate message, but it hasn’t happened often in the ASUP’s tests. 

Second, while the Mini-Box has several uses, the largest number of testers have allowed themselves to use the device like an electronic Ouija board. While it can be used as strictly a communications device to the dead or to solicit your fortune, you are underestimating its capacity; akin to building a nuclear generator to power you electric train set in the garage. 

Third, if there is one thing we have noticed to date, it is that the Mini-Box works best in small groups. Our testing with three or four people seems to yield the best results, while the box seems to become more muted with large groups.  Recently, when used at a well known and much commercialized haunt, the box did poorly, but on the second night, in the same place with only three operators, it worked extremely well.

It also responds poorly to those who openly question its validity. In one session, two self proclaimed skeptics said that they were going to prove that the box did not work; that night, for the first time in our study, the box was totally silent, as if it were not turned on at all. Bewildered, the testing team checked circuit breakers and swapped out boxes, but the second unit failed to work properly too, not a hum or the crackle of static could be heard, never mind the expected scan of broadcast stations… and this was in a major city. 

Finally, a brief synopsis of what we have found when comparing the Mini-Box to other devices.  While the Mini-Box is very similar to the original Frank’s Box, it has little in common with the Radio Shack HACK units currently in the field.  Our primary consideration was whether the HACK or what is sometimes called the Ghost Box, is actually working in the same way as either Frank Sumption’s device of the Mini-Box. In a word, it does not.

In testing the HACK, we found that the scan rate is much too slow to be of practical use and this rate can’t be adjusted by the user, so what you have in essence is a scanning radio, not a communications device.  Testing by other groups suggests that the HACK works, but when studied under testing conditions, we found that what was being heard and interpreted as “spirit communications,” was in fact truly matrixing. 

Matrixing was an early concern for our testing of all the devices. For those who do not understand the term, allow us a moment to elaborate.  Matrixing is when the human ear hears bits of sounds and the brain attempts to interpret them as a whole.  The best example of this was covered in dept on PBS radio last year. A college linguistics professor was working with some basic Mandarin dialogue tapes. She left her office for a moment to go into the next room to prepare a cup of tea and while there, she heard someone singing. On closer inspection she found that she had left an audio tape looped in her computer for analysis. From a distance she was hearing only bits of the selection, but her brain was interpreting those sounds as song.

Mandarin is of course a language that is very lyrical to begin with, so it is relatively easy to think you are hearing a song from a distance.  To further test this hypothesis, the professor began to play the loop in public places and an astounding number of people asked her where she had found this beautiful song.  This is the epitome of matrixing, they were hearing human speech but their brains almost always interpreted it as music. 

This is precisely what is going wrong with the Ghost Box or HACK units.  Because you can’t adjust the speed of the scan, the listener thinks he is hearing voices from beyond, when in fact he is simply matrixing what he hears to what he hopes to hear.  In comparing the HACK to either Frank’s Box or the Mini-Box, the difference is obvious. We fear the lesson is that you get what you pay for!

While the study continues and the ASUP has widened the testing to cities throughout the United States through their free Mini-Box loaner program to other reputable groups, it is noteworthy that the great majority of users have reported personal experiences of a positive nature.   In one recent test, a group of investigators from another organization tested the Mini-Box under ASUP supervision.   

The visiting group had gone out of their way to set up a rather elaborate test.  The day before the test, they stopped at a local cemetery and one of their number placed a flower on her mother’s grave.  When they came to the testing, they asked to speak with the woman’s mother and a female voice answered. She asked the contact when she last came to the cemetery, the box replied “Yesterday.”  The woman asked, “Did I bring a gift?” and again the Mini-Box responded, “Yes.” Then they asked what was it and heard clearly, “A flower.”  They went even further, asking the flower’s color, and the voice answered clearly, “Blue.” 

The group was convinced that the Mini-Box had passed their test, but as they began to get up from the table, the Mini-Box had something to add.  “Where’d ya get it?” the Mini-Box asked.  The team leader was embarrassed by the question; it seems that when they arrived at the cemetery the day before, the flower shop was already closed.  One of the other team members however saw that there had just been a burial and walked over to the grave, picking up one blue flower from a mound of others, which they then put on the woman’s grave.  With whom they were communicating or how is still to be considered, but whomever it was, they knew about the origin of the blue flower. 

While the ASUP has concluded that the Radio Shack HACK or Ghost Box is not really communicating, but rather matrixing, the example above only strengthens the hypothesis that the more expensive units, including Frank’s Box and the Mini-Box are actually communicating with something or someone.  While the ASUP will continue to broaden the testing of these devices, they feel that the study so far has been very positive as a whole.  “Sometimes the subjects come to a session as skeptics and leave believers. Sometimes they leave in tears and other times they leave just shaking their heads,” one ASUP investigator explains. “But I have yet to find anyone who says that the device does not respond as we have explained!  Now all we have to do is figure out how.”