More reasons to stay away from the KII, Observations from last weekend... Options

[OMPRDave]

I was working a quiet residential case in Petersham, MA last weekend witha friend who received a KII as a gift for her birthday. I wanted to tell her it wasn't worth it to use it, but letting her have her fun I kept quiet and decided to observe the KII and how it would respond that night.

After using the KII in two areas of the home, I determined that the signal search on my cell phone was causing the meter to light up with the phone in my pocket and closed form a distance of 8 feet. Once i saw this, I showed her the effect the phone had on it and got a second set of eyes to note it.

The second false positive came when the KII was near the wireless temperature probe we had running signals from the same room to the base station. Each time the probe took a rading (every twenty seconds) the KII would top out.


SO, in two different trials with the KII, I've noticed and documented the following:

Cell phones, if not turned off, will continuously register false readings.
Two way radios cannot be operated near them while they are being used.
Any wireless piece of equipment will create false readings whenever it broadcasts to it's receiver.

And because of this I will staunchly recommend the KII stop being used as a viable piece of equipment for research of any kind in the paranormal community, and urge any findings taken with them be discarded by the community as a whole.

[boatlesspirate]

OMPRDave-Before you bash your friend's new toy, think about what you said. Your environment was causing fluctuations with the KII. But what if there were no cell phones on, or no wireless gear, or no radio or electric for miles-Then what? What if the KII lit up in direct response to questions asked out loud? Just as we have no difinitive proof of ghosts, we have no proof of what they can and cannot manipulate. I see people on this forum say what works and what doesn't, what's affective and what is garbage. Yet, until a fool proof Ghost Detector is developed, we use the various tools and techniques to validate their existence. "Real" scientist laugh at all of us because they say we don't use "proven" techniques. But, some of us have EVP's with "someone" saying things that we can clearly hear, but can't explain. Some have photos of people who weren't there when they snapped the pic. Some of us have experienced things with gear cheap, expensive, scientific, or downright silly, and have left us shaking our heads in awe. So before we call the next KII, Trifield, Ovilus, Ghost Box, etc. garbage, let's keep an open mind to what we are all here to validate. Maybe next time, explain to your friend the limitations of the KII, how it can be manipulated, and go from there. Cool? Peace!

[CaveRat]

I will have to go with Dave on this one. Equipment that is unstable and prone to false positives must be discounted even if it does once in a while get something right. It's the same logic with digital voice recorders and EVPs. Certainly you can capture EVPs on a cheap voice recorder. But you can also capture RF interference, aliasing, harmonics, and random noise which can at times cause audio paraedolia and other such false EVPs. How does one tell the difference?

So as a matter of reliability we step up to something better if we want to do any serious research. As long as we are satisfied stumbling around using the same old methods we will get the same ambiguous results. It would seem the time has come to advance.

[Joven76]

Jim took the words right out of my mouth... LOL

[DeadTrish]

Also you I have to mention that if you have the model where a dime is used to depress the on button (and to keep it on) this has been known to cause fluctuations as well. It is very unstable and there are many different factors to consider when using it. I def agree with Jim

[Redhead]

This is certainly welcome information. I am going to a conference in May that includes an investigation at the Mansfield Reformatory in Ohio. I was thinking of investing in one of these to take with me. This information sheds a lot of new light - and saves me some money to boot!

[chestnut]

That sounds like a really great conference, Redhead--will you be visiting any other sites?