What Are The Ghost Sensing LED Panels Used On 'Paranormal Lockdown'?

Nick Groff and Katrina Weidman were known for conducting some of television's most gadget-heavy and technical investigations together on their ghost hunting show, 'Paranormal Lockdown'.

The US investigators shot their last show together in 2019, marking an end of the series, but thanks to repeats and on demand streaming, plenty of people are still watching the adventures of Nick and Katrina and coming across the array of ghost hunting gadgets they use.

We're still regularly asked to explain exactly what these many devices are. Most often people ask about the GeoBox, which features heavily in all four seasons of the show. The duo also use other more readily-available tools such as SLS cameras and REM-Pods.

Another gadget we're often asked about are the motion-detecting light panels that Nick and Katrina use to detect the movement of unseen entities.

The idea of these panels is to lay them out on the floor in an area of the building which no one is in. If anything passes over them, their sensors detect this movement and light up the panel. It's a great gadget for a television show as it's so visual.

What they use to achieve this is a very simple interactive LED panel. They are essentially giant circuit boards covered with super-bright LED lights that respond to stimulus provided by human interaction. They're designed to be used as wall art or an interactive surface.

In its natural state the LEDs give out a very subtle glow, but when it detects motion a ripple of light radiates from the point where it was detected and gently spreads across the whole panel before settling down again. The effect is like throwing a stone in a perfectly still pond and watching the ripples spread.

Nick and Katrina use two different types of interactive light panels during the series. One type is the sort of interactive panels described above, but they also use something very similar which is designed for paranormal investigations, these devices are called Shadow Trackers and are available from specialist retailers like Infraready.

The still below shows Katrina setting up Shadow Trackers in a doorway at the Skegness Hell House, an investigation that featured in the spin-off series, 'Paranormal Lockdown UK'.

As with many ghost hunting gadgets, there's no scientific understanding of how a ghost can trigger such a device. Its components aren't specifically designed to detect supernatural entities.

Interactive light panels use a type of passive infrared (PIR) sensor called a pyroelectric sensor, these are really common motion detectors that are triggered when exposed to the tiny amounts of heat that is emitted from the human body in the form of infrared radiation.

The sensors can't "see" or detect visible light, so the only way it could detect a ghost is if the entity was radiating heat in a similar quantity to a living human body. This is a little problematic because incidents of people feeling a warm ghost pass through them aren't reported, in fact it's the opposite - cold spots are more commonly associated with hauntings.

So what is triggering these panels on 'Paranormal Lockdown' is a little unclear. Perhaps the spirits use some sort of electrokinetic manipulation to interfere with the device's circuitry and it is this interaction that causes it to trigger.

These panels aren't the only noticeable gadgets that light up used in the series. Nick is often seen using a handheld device which has colour-changing flashing lights over its body that react to the ghostly voices that are often heard echoing out of its speaker. You can find out what the flashing gadget does and how you can get your hands on one for your paranormal investigations here.

If you want to know more about the paranormal kit that Nick and Katrina used on 'Paranormal Lockdown', then a good place to start would be by reading about the GeoBox, one of the most commonly used devices on the show, as well as its more compact brother, the GeoPort.