There are many other reasons to investigate or purchase equipment, but most of the reasons fall within one of the major categories outlined above.   Your first real task then becomes to prioritise these areas and decide where you wish to lend the majority of your focus.   Many of the items you purchase or make will undoubtedly cross the category boundaries; however, your focus will determine which combination of items you may need.

Lets give some practical examples.  If your primary focus is having personal experiences then you may want to have an EMF meter to find if there is any activity, a Thermometer to look for cold spots.   But yet reserve the Camcorder, Multi-Spectral camera, or Voice recorder for a later time.     You can still have secondary goals of Communicating and Recording but they could come in later as your arsenal of equipment expands.

Likewise, if your first goal is to Communicate with spirits, then you would need a Sound recorder, perhaps a Spirit box or Vox Box, and perhaps later a EMF meter to verify the presence of an entity.  Do you see how your goals influence your buying decisions?  And the more thought you put into your goals at the onset, the more you can focus towards those goals as you progress.   Also it will help you find like-minded individuals to work with as your group expands.

Equipment for Personal Experiences

The first set of tools we'll cover are those which you will need to investigate with the goal of personal experiences.   Perhaps recording your journeys a bit as you go, but without real focus on getting hard indisputable evidence.  This is a good place to start for the beginner, it will get you exposure to investigations techniques and events.  

For this you'll want to be able to determine if you have any entities, perhaps a simple EMF meter.   You'll also want to be able to listen for EVP's with a recorder that can give you quick playback.   And you'll want some form of camera that has low or no light capabilities.   A standard camcorder may be also good just for recording your experiences for later review.

For focus on experience, you won't need a high end EMF meter.   You can get a low cost EMF or Gauss (magnetic field) meter for as low as $25.00 from Amazon (Example) which detects magnetic fluctuations.    There are two types of meters, one detect magnetic flux or changing magnetic fields.   This type of energy comes from radio signals, power lines, or any magnetic source which is rapidly changing.  This type of meter is usually based on a small coil of wire used to detect the changes.    The second is a Gauss (magnetism) meter, this measures any form of magnetic field.   It also measures fields from magnets, motors, or some are even powerful enough to detect the magnetic field from the earth.   This type of meter generally uses something called a "Hall-Effect" sensor, which is a small chip which has the capability of creating a signal from non-changing magnetism.   An example of this is inside of some of the newer phones which are available which have an electronic compass built in.    Magnetism is measured in "Gauss" and standard background radiation is generally in the .5 - .6 milliGauss or 500 microGauss range.   The meter mentioned above has a scale which goes from 1.5 milliGauss to 30 milliGause.    So anything it registered should be above the background noise level.   This is the standard range also found in the "K2" and other similar meters.  When purchasing a EMF meter pay attention to the frequency range of operation.   For ghost investigation you want lower frequencies, if you want to detect radio signals you want higher frequencies.   So all EMF meters are not created equal.   For starters I would pay attention to price, at least until you get a feel for how this device lends its usefulness towards your goal.  Alternately if you have an Android 2.2 based phone with a magnetic sensor, there are also some excellent "EMF Meter" applications available.   Remember to turn on "Airplane Mode" to make sure the phone doesn't transmit while detecting.

 You'll also want a electronic voice recorder.   This can be a cheap battery operated tape recorder.   Since you're not focusing on converting these to digital or uploading as evidence you primary want to be able to listen for voices which were not heard during the investigation.    If you do not already have a tape recorder, then you can purchase a relatively cheap Digital Voice reorder.  (Example)   These can get fairly expensive depending on the model and capabilities.   When looking for a voice recorder make sure it has the ability to write to a microSD or similar memory card.   That way when the memory is full you can simply put in another memory card and keep going.   Alternately if you have an Android 2.2 or iPhone there are many great digital voice recorder applications available.   Again remember to turn on "Airplane Mode" whenever using a cell phone during an investigation.

Optionally you'll want to also add a cheap infrared digital camera.   With focus on personal experiences you really don't want to go overboard and focus on a camera which will simply take enough of an image to be able to sift through after the investigation to see if you can find something which you didn't see at the time of the investigation itself.    Bell & Howell has an excellent little digital IR camera for under $100.   (Example)    There are many other different IR cameras available.   You'll want to look closely at the strength of the infrared source and the cost of the camera.    Alternately if you have a laptop to take with you, you can easily convert most of the cheap web cams which you can purchase online or at store into a infrared night vision camera.   *WARNING* this conversion will lose most of the color capabilities of the camera so it may no longer be useful as a regular web cam.   You can also try using your cellphone; however, in my experience most cellphones do not have the low light or night vision capabilities needed for investigations.   Even with some "Apps" which are available for night vision, these generally just adjust the shutter time and contrast settings to maximize the camera's capabilities.   But they still do not operate in no light situations very well.

The second goal you may have would be to communicate with spirits.  Although much of the equipment you'll use will be the same as for personal experiences, you will want to also add additional focus on some devices for communication.   For example you will want to perhaps put a little more focus on getting a better digital voice recorder.   Perhaps a stereo recorder which can determine the direction of the voice or sound.   Additionally you'll want to look at a "Spirit Box".   This is a device which can rapidly sweeps through radio frequencies picking up many different signals and allowing the randomness of those signals to form words, phrases or ideas.    These devices are available online; however, be prepared for some sticker shock.    Many of these cost well over $100.   There is however an alternative, on this site as well as others there are instructions for building one from a cheaply ($30) available radio shack radio.   This option works quite well and is achievable without too much effort.  You can watch the video HERE.   Also you may want to look at the new Ovilus PX, for around $110, this device uses 4 sensors to trigger a 2000 word phonetic dictionary.   The same can be found for free by downloading the Ghost Radar app on any Android 2.2 phone with the magnetic/vibration sensors.   Again, if you do use this app please make sure to turn the phone onto "Airplane Mode".

We will cover more equipment in Part #2 of this portion of the Paranormal 101 -Equipment feature.  Stay tuned and keep reading!   Happy Hunting!