Testing Cell Phone Applications Used for After-Death Communication

Abstract

Cell phone applications whose purpose is to communicate with the deceased are popular downloads, but do they work? In other words, do such applications ever exhibit anomalous behaviour that could be interpreted as after-death communication? The authors downloaded 347 such applications on an Apple iPhone and Samsung Android phone and examined them. Overall, most of the applications proved to be frivolous. However, 20 Apple applications and 30 Android applications appeared to be designed for serious paranormal investigation and were subjected to further study. These fell into two categories: 1. applications that created random noise or speech-like sounds for the purpose of producing electronic voice phenomena, and 2. applications that generated random words or images. With the first type of applications, the authors found instances of verbal exchanges that appeared to be conversations with deceased individuals whom they knew. However, the data were not sufficiently rich to be able to rule out pareidolia or living agent psi as explanations. There were no instances of apparently anomalous events using the second type of applications. The authors contend that this is an important line of investigation to seek to uncover the relevant parameters in apparent after-death communication with cell phones.