Ghost Box Game

A “Ghost Box” is a device often used by paranormal investigators to contact various spirits and entities in real time. It functions in the following way: A radio set is programmed to scan rapidly through different channels, so rapidly that any words are barely distinguishable. Noise-canceling headphones are then hooked up to it. A medium puts on these headphones, closes her eyes, and begins the radio scan. She is asked questions by a second person nearby, questions which she cannot hear due to the headphones. The medium calls out any words which rise up to her from the babble of noise, and these then serve as answers.

In our own surrealist version of this practice, we attempted to use this strange device to see if we could make contact with an entity from deep time. And within the strata of radio fuzz, a “something” soon emerged…

What is your name?
Help.

Are you from the Triassic? The Jurassic? Or some other time?
I don’t know if I can.

What did you look like?
Twenty thousand.

What did you eat?
Marks left.

Tell us a little about your time.
It hurts. Bad.

What hurts?
I need help. Dead. Out. I need more.

More what? What kind of spirit are you?
Everywhere. Everyones.

Did you have any friends?
Face it. It’s hard. Everything. Whatever I want is gone.

What time was that? What year?
Not sure.

Were you human?
I don’t understand.

Or some other kind of creature?
Animal!

What was your skin like?
Dropping.

What colors were you?
I’m dead. Yellow. Blue. Get me out.

How long did you live?
My birth.

Is there anything about your time which we humans still are not aware of?
It’s a bad idea. Death.

What do you think of the current age?
Bloody.

Do you have any ancestors living today?
Now. I’m trying to. I did it.

Did what?
Died. I’m dead.

Did you write poetry?
Falling. Animal.

Where there others of your species?
Rocking. Breaking.

Did you form a civilization of some kind?
We both died.

Did you have a physical body?
Big hole!

Did you have any predators to be wary of, or were you the supreme predator of your time?
Forever.

What was the night sky like, way back then?
Never again.

Did you ever visit other planets?
Behind the eye. That’s it.

How did you procreate? Did you have a mate?
Eighty hundred thousand. It burst!

Is there a reason you are still here?
Help. Beauty.

Tell us more about yourself.
Beauty.

Were you large, or were you small, compared to us?
Yes.

Which one?
I got it.

Got what?
Eighty.

Do fossils of you still exist?
World.

Did you dream? Do you dream still?
Object. World is everybody. Marks left.

Where lives the last and final dinosaur?
Long time. But things help.

Is Nessie a leftover from your age?
Marks left!

What do you mean by “marks left”?
Light. Represent. Writing.

Where are these marks?
It’s green. Dirt.

Is there a specific location it is near?
Water.

A lake or river maybe? Do you know the name?
Honey. Powerless. It burnt. Rest.

Any final words for us?
Everything quaked. Everything. Quakes.