Does anyone actually use the paranormal investigation kit recommendations from the stickied posts?

So I've been on this forum for a good few months now and I keep seeing the same recommendations for investigation equipment in the stickied posts - EMF meters around £40, digital voice recorders, thermal imaging cameras (which are absolutely not £200, more like £500+), etc. Wondering if anyone actually uses this stuff or if it's just theory.

I bought an EMF meter out of curiosity and honestly it seems to go mental every time I'm near my router or my laptop. Which suggests either everything is haunted or the thing's too sensitive to be useful for actual investigation. Been thinking about getting a proper thermal camera but if it's not going to give me actual answers about paranormal activity, I'd rather spend the money on beer.

Real talk: has anyone actually caught anything paranormal using this equipment? Not looking for stories, just genuine experiences where the kit helped identify something unexplained. Or is most of this investigation community just playing around with expensive gadgets?

EMF meters are useful for ruling things out more than finding things. If you get a massive spike and there's clearly an electrical source causing it, you know that area's not producing paranormal signatures. The gear is more about eliminating the mundane explanations than proving the paranormal. Thermal cameras are slightly more useful because you can sometimes catch heat signatures that don't match known sources, but again, usually there's a boring explanation.

The best investigations I've done have been low-tech - just patience, observation, documentation, and talking to people who've experienced stuff. A decent notebook costs £5 and is often more useful than thousands of pounds of equipment. That said, a proper digital voice recorder is worth having for EVP work. Some genuinely weird stuff shows up in audio recordings that you didn't hear at the time.

it seems to go mental every time I'm near my router or my laptop

That's exactly what you'd expect. Modern electronics are EMF factories. The theory is that paranormal entities create distinct EMF patterns different from electrical devices, but in practice it's just noise. I've done about 20 investigations and the EMF meter has never conclusively detected anything paranormal. It's mostly been 'what's that spike?' then 'oh, it's the fuse box.'

I've had actual experiences with thermal imaging at Borley Rectory investigation last year. We captured what looked like a humanoid heat signature in an empty room - 37°C body heat where there was definitely no person. Could have been residual heat from earlier, or an equipment malfunction, but it was interesting enough to make the trip worthwhile. So the tech can produce interesting data, but interpretation is always the tricky bit.

Spend your money on better accommodation for overnight investigations, good torches, and decent documentation equipment (camera, voice recorder, notebook). The fancy meters are honestly more for show than results. I've seen investigators with £10k of equipment get less evidence than someone with a notebook and a smartphone. Methodology matters more than kit.