Here is an interesting article over at sciam (Scientific American) about a telephone that can apparently communicate with the dead. Well, by apparently, I mean ‘not fucking likely’, but hey, I’m just one of those annoying skeptics who just tries to ruin everything, aren’t I? It was featured at a Paranormal conference held by Ryan Buell. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because I ripped him a new one in one of my podcasts for his pathetic Paranormal State TV show on A&E.

The telephone is your classic piece of paranormal junk: an interpreter is needed to attempt to decipher what the ghosts are saying, since they have a great deal of trouble communicating with the other side (apparently). They also seem unable to offer more information than what a typical mentalist would be able to conjure, so it’s fairly unimpressive by any standard.

I’m personally embarrassed by paranormal ‘investigators’ who run around with video cameras and other scientific looking devices thinking they are seriously helping

advance our understanding of the world with their little field trips. There is never any attempt to question their own assumptions. Is this cold breeze really the result of an undead presence, or is it possibly because the old creepy house you are in is drafty? Why not bring a building contractor just to make sure? Oh, you’d rather bring in a psychic? Yeah, that’s fair.