Category: Technology and the Occult

• The "Electric" Ghost

  This theory centered on claims that Thomas Edison was developing an instrument—later popularly called a “Spirit Phone”—to communicate with the dead. Unlike many purely fictional technological occult rumors, this one had a real historical spark: Edison did publicly state in 1920 that he had been working on an apparatus to test whether personalities surviving death could communicate. Because no confirmed prototype or finished device has been found, the announcement itself became the foundation of a lasting conspiracy tradition about a lost, hidden, or suppressed machine.