Serious Testing of “The Box” Not Easy

by Rick Moran

Frank Sumption simply calls it “The Box”, Christopher Moon has reportedly copyrighted the term, “Telephone to the Dead,” while I am going nuts trying to apply simple scientific principles to our testing of the device we lovingly call “The Mini-Box.” Before you sneer, let me explain the problems.

The box is not a new concept; its history spans several decades and several different kinds of users, from the original ITC folks to new age psychics. Rather than just accept the belief that this is truly a communications device that can be utilized to speak with the departed, we want to know how the box really works.

Early attempts to borrow a box for testing were unsuccessful, so I sat down with my R&D director, Ron Ricketts to build our own.  This was not an overnight decision; it took planning, research and training.  Among other things I asked that every officer in ASUP train for and pass the FCC Amateur Radio exam, which was a real leap of faith for some of them, who didn’t know a microphone from a diode, but the concept was simple, to study the box, you had to understand the basic technology; five months later all of my board members were hams.

In spite of rumors to the contrary, Frank Sumption was a great help in our early efforts; he later got to use a prototype of our device at the TAPS Colorado conference thanks to the assistance of two of our directors, and gave it rave reviews. But what did we really have?

Because ASUP is a 501 (c)(3) Non-Profit Corporation, we could not sell the device, but I had said publically that if we ever had such a machine, we would make it available to any researcher who wanted it. In order to make that happen, ASUP released the device to Ron Ricketts, whose company Paranormal Systems began manufacturing and marketing it. With more than 50 now in the field, I hear all sorts of praise for it, but again I don’t feel any closer to the answer we originally were seeking.

It is not that we are new to the concepts of testing, I have personally done this many times before, but at a University level on subject matter a little more palatable to the general public. We have already enlisted the assistance of a graduate student who assist us in creating the statistical analysis and once completed, it should be relatively easy to draw some conclusion upon which we might build a more in depth study.

But our testing is slow going, primarily because we have set in place a lot of conditions with our field research of the box. While we do group testing with other paranormal groups, our focus is on public testing; to that end we are recruiting groups as senior citizens clubs to fire departments to take part in our tests.  That of course takes a good deal of explaining in most cases; you have to outline the history of the box, what we hope to accomplish and how those results will be studied. While some groups welcome the experience, many others show open skepticism and even fear of becoming involved.

Even though ASUP now has four boxes in the field dedicated to testing, in the first month of our study, we have only conducted 3 full tests.  Our future schedule shows the most success with other research groups, colleges and university associated organizations, but our outreach to the public is at the moment falling short of our goals.  It was hoped that we would complete 50 studies by the summer, which is when a cooperating college expects to compile and extrapolate the data we have collected from our subjects.  Short of paying for public advertising in newspapers, that may not be possible.

So, have we learned anything? Well, setting aside the obvious reluctance we have met from the public to date, we can say that the sessions do find the box answering random questions in context, that is to say, if the subject asks a question requiring a person’s name, it will answer with a name. This is in itself interesting, but we are no closer to explaining how the box does it.

To the accepting psychic, the answer is simple, but to a skeptic it is not.  It is not enough to say that the box acts as a conduit to the departed, in fact so far, we find that the information coming from the device is incomplete in most cases, but that is based on a very small sampling.

What we do know is that the  box, all of the boxes, are basically radios that scan a frequency set, such as the broadcast band and that the “messages” seem to be found in between the active channels of that band. The box does not utilize an active “transmitter” so the first question is how the box can possibly answer a question in the first place.

Our test criteria is very basic.  The subjects are divided into small groups, with each taking a turn at the controls of the box and asking the questions.  We do not suggest questions to ask. The follow-up questionnaire asks the obvious questions, age, gender, religious preferences and some feedback about their experiences with the device.  Some criticism has been raised in that most of the test users to date have used the box much as you might a Ouija board and we now suggest that the subjects could use it in other ways. The data, although too small a study at present, is showing a good range of response, but the depth of the study really requires a much greater sampling.

 Of course, many paranormal researchers will comment that the obvious answer to our question is simple matrixing, the ability of the human mind to create what they wish to hear from white noise. There have been good studies in this area previously, and on the surface, that is a possibility, but there are still some things just not addressed in the matrixing examples. It is our hope to follow up this basic study with another that can address matrixing as a primary focus, but for the moment, we are more interesting in finding out what the uninitiated public thinks they are hearing and why, under a reasonably controlled environment being supervised by fairly well versed individuals who understand the basic theory behind the box, as well as radio concepts and the technology at hand.

Obviously, other groups are using the box in new and interesting ways.  Some are taking them into the field as part of their investigations of “haunted” places, others utilize them as mentioned earlier as simply an electronic Ouija board.  Some of the users are self proclaimed psychics or mediums, others as non-sensitive researchers. Hopefully the sheer number of users will help to answer some of our questions.

 If you have a suggestion about how to compliment our study, we are open to suggestions. Many have said that advertising our study is the best bet, but we are hampered by a very small budget, others have said that the key is to get more devices into the field with more diverse groups, but once again, budget constraints come into play.  If you have an idea, I’d love to hear them.  You can send your suggestions to ASUP@asup-inc.organd we will respond to all who write.

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