Spent £180 on this EMF meter and honestly, mate, it's either genius or I'm an idiot

Right, so I've been lurking on here for about three years and finally took the plunge. Bought the Mel Meter 8704R from eBay (£179.99, seller in Manchester) because half this forum swears by it and the other half says it's detecting next door's WiFi router.

I've done three investigations in the last fortnight - once at my local pub in Sheffield which is supposed to be haunted (spoiler: it's just old and draughty), once in my mate's flat in Leeds which gave me absolutely nothing, and once at this genuinely unsettling location near Haworth on the moors where the needle went mental for about forty seconds.

Here's my question: is this thing worth the money or have I just paid £180 to carry around a glorified mobile phone detector? The readings seem legit when I'm near electrical stuff, but how do I know I'm not just getting interference from literally everything in 2024?

Please be honest - I can take it if I've made a fool of myself.

Mate, you didn't waste your money, but you need to understand what you've bought. The Mel Meter is brilliant for establishing a baseline, which is exactly what you should be doing. The fact it went mad near Haworth doesn't mean ghosts - it means something electromagnetic is happening there. Could be underground power lines, could be a mobile mast, could be literally anything. The real skill is ruling out the mundane explanations.

The reason half the forum defends it and half slags it off is because it's a tool, not a ghost detector. Too many people treat it like a Geiger counter for the supernatural.

The readings seem legit when I'm near electrical stuff, but how do I know I'm not just getting interference from literally everything in 2024?

You've basically answered your own question, haven't you? That's the entire problem with EMF meters and why proper paranormal investigation is actually really boring and methodical. Sorry to be blunt, but if you want to use that meter properly, you need baseline readings from at least five control locations - places you know are 100% normal - so you can compare against your supposedly haunted sites. Have you done that?

I had the Mel Meter for two years and sold it on Facebook for £120. Honestly? Best purchase I ever made was ditching it. Got myself a decent digital thermometer and a proper camera instead. The EMF thing is pseudoscience dressed up in tech clothing. You're detecting electromagnetic fields, yeah, but claiming that means ghosts is like saying rain proves water exists in the sky - technically true but completely missing the point.

Keep the meter if it makes investigations fun, but don't fool yourself into thinking it's proving anything paranormal.

The Haworth reading though - that's actually interesting. Did you check for power lines on a map afterwards? The moorland around there has some old infrastructure. Also, what time of day was it? I find EMF readings fluctuate depending on whether people are using appliances in nearby houses.

Not being dismissive - genuine question. The skeptics are right that context matters, but that doesn't mean nothing weird ever happens. You just need to be rigorous about ruling out mundane causes.