Throughout the history of spirit communication, people have used a variety of unique tools and methods to contact the deceased.
From automatic writing using planchettes, to mediums channeling the other side during late night seances, we’ve managed to develop quite the number of alleged ways to speak to the dead. The Ouija board, too, is an immensely popular form of attempted communication. In modern times, paranormal investigators have turned to radios and recording devices, like so-called Ghost Boxes, to capture electronic voice phenomena.
Perhaps there’s something else we can add to that list of tools in our supernatural toolbox: Alexa.
Amazon’s plucky virtual assistant inhabits nearly everything they make. Their Echo smart speakers, their TV sticks, their Fire tablets. Personally, I’ve never used Alexa, but apparently Amazon has sold over 100 million of these devices as of January 2019. That means Alexa can be found in many, many households, fielding many, many spoken commands.
But here’s a question: Can ghosts also speak to Alexa?
If we are to believe that they can speak through recording devices and radios, as they allegedly did with Konstantīns Raudive in the 1960s, there’s no particular reason ghosts can’t also speak through modern smart speakers. I’d imagine any spectral transmitting stations are already well-equipped to handle such technologies, wouldn’t you?
Check it out: Are Ghostly Transmitting Stations Our Bridge to Parallel Universes?
After all, Alexa’s no stranger to strange things. For example, in 2018, there were several reports of Alexa spontaneously laughing, which Amazon dubbed a simple “malfunction,” though a creepy one.
That said, can everything be explained away as simply a glitch or a misheard command?
One Echo user experienced a number of odd activities surrounding their device. On one day in particular, after the passing of their grandmother, they truly began to wonder if spirits beyond were conversing with Alexa:
“My grandma passed away around that time. A couple of days after her passing, the Echo turned on (when I was alone) and started playing ‘Mandy,’ by Boston. I had never heard that song before and had never played it on the Echo. My grandma was the only one who called me Mandy.”
Is it possible that ghosts might be giving Alexa commands? In another case, a user’s recently deceased grandfather may have asked Alexa to play a song:
“My grandpa passed away a few months back, leaving my grandma to live by herself. She has an Amazon echo. One night when she was alone getting ready for bed, she heard a song start playing in the living room, in a house that was completely silent. Alexa was playing the song Lucille by Kenny Rogers (a song she shares a name with). The song was my grandparents’ favorite song to dance to together.”
Perhaps it’s an odd coincidence, but I stumbled across multiple instances, including the above, of Echo users hearing very specific songs playing after the passing of a loved one, almost as if their ghosts were trying to send messages through these devices.
One Redditor shared an account of an Amazon Dot randomly playing a song that had helped them deal with the loss of their father. Another report of paranormal activity after a recent death also involved Alexa playing a specific song over and over again.
Is there anything to the idea that ghosts are reaching out to certain individuals through Alexa and other smart devices? In one final example, an Alexa command seemed a bit more specific:
“Today my mom was on her house phone with my grandmother (my mom left her cellphone at work, an hour away) . While she was talking, her Alexa came on, lit up green, and said “Dad wants to talk. Dad wants to talk” and she repeated it again two more times. My grandfather/moms father, passed away last Christmas.”
Of course, none of this proves anything supernatural. These are, after all, just anecdotes, and sometimes weird things just happen.
But consider this: Amazon reportedly employs thousands of people who sift through thousands of Alexa conversations every day to improve its voice recognition. That’s a lot of data. Now, if otherworldly entities can communicate through recording devices, including Alexa, just how many of those conversations may have been with ghosts? Is it possible that some Amazon employees have actually listened to EVPs captured by these devices?
They’d probably never even notice.
How about you? Has your smart device, if you have one, ever done anything you’d consider unnatural?
