Entertainment only
Ghost Detector Lab is an entertainment website. It does not detect ghosts, spirits, presences, energies, or anything paranormal, and no claim on this site should be read as saying otherwise.
The Thinplace Survey is fiction. There is no such organisation, no Station 07, no field programme and no archive of incident records. The instrument numbers, the dates, the operators and the case files are invented, and they are invented for fun.
What is not fiction
The measurements. Each instrument reads a real sensor in your device — the compass, the accelerometer, the camera, the microphone — and reports what that sensor actually produces. Readings are not randomised, exaggerated, or seeded to make the display more exciting. The methodology page explains exactly what each instrument reads and what its number is made of.
A high reading on the detector means the magnetic environment around your phone is disturbed — usually by a speaker, a motor, an appliance, a charger, or wiring. It does not mean anything else.
Health and safety
Panels on this site move and indicator lamps change brightness. Nothing flashes faster than three times per second. If you turn on reduced motion in your device or browser settings, all animation, flicker and ambient movement on this site stops.
No audio plays without you starting it. Instruments that produce sound ask first, and some of them are loud, so check your volume before you begin.
These instruments are not medical, scientific, safety or measurement devices, and must not be relied on as any of those things. Do not use them to assess electrical hazards.
Investigating real places
If this site sends you out into the world with a phone in your hand: go somewhere you are allowed to be, take somebody with you, and tell a third person where you have gone. Do not trespass, do not enter derelict buildings, and do not treat a number on a screen as a reason to do something you would not otherwise do.
Age
This site is intended for a general audience and contains no explicit material. Some of the written case files are intended to be unsettling.