A spirit box is a popular paranormal device that rapidly scans through the AM, MW, and FM radio spectrums. As it does, fleeting bursts of white noise and static can be heard. Spirit boxes usually have various settings that allow you to tweak which bands the device scans through and how much of each frequency step you hear. This usually ranges from a hundredth of a second up to a second.

The idea of using what is essentially a modified radio to pick up the voices of the dead divides the paranormal community, with many thinking it is a valid way to communicate with spirits, while others think it is nothing more than our psychological tendency to hear what we want to hear within random radio noise.

Unless you are in a cave or well-shielded building, you will almost certainly hear fragments of speech and music from radio stations. Although this might...