Testing the Ghost Hunting Tools: Our Paranormal Control Investigation Aboard Symphony of the Seas

When you think of haunted locations, cruise ships probably aren’t the first places that come to mind. But as part of our ongoing scientific ghost-hunting series, we investigated an unusual site: Royal Caribbean's Symphony of the Seas.

This wasn’t just a vacation (though we did enjoy the ocean air and endless buffets). It was a deliberate attempt to use the ship as a control location in our paranormal research. Unlike haunted hotels or Civil War battlefields, Symphony of the Seas doesn’t have a reputation for being haunted—yet it has seen death, which makes it a perfect candidate to test the reliability of ghost-hunting equipment. We also wanted to explore how tools like the spirit box behave in isolated environments like the open ocean.

Why Use a Cruise Ship as a Control?

In scientific experiments, a control group helps you measure whether your test results are meaningful. In ghost hunting, a control location is a site with little or no paranormal reputation. If your equipment behaves strangely at a known haunted place but not at a control site, you may be onto something. But if they perform the same, then it may not be a legit way to investigate. 

We picked the Symphony of the Seas precisely because of this. While it’s not a haunted hotspot, several people have tragically passed away aboard the ship. These incidents include:

• A 72-year-old man who died in 2022 after being pulled from the water during a shore excursion in Trunk Bay.

• A 56-year-old man who required medical evacuation due to stroke-like symptoms in 2024.

• An overboard incident in 2019, where a passenger fell off the ship under unclear circumstances.

Despite these deaths, no ghost stories or paranormal encounters have been associated with this vessel.

Our Goals Aboard Symphony of the Seas

We wanted to answer two main questions:

1. Can a location with deaths but no stories of hauntings produce paranormal evidence?

2. How does ghost-hunting equipment, especially the spirit box, perform far from radio stations to create voices?

To test this, we brought our usual toolkit:

• Spirit Box

• Voice Recorder

• Thermal Camera

Our focus was on the spirit box. Since it relies on scanning local radio frequencies, being miles from shore would theoretically strip it of usable signals. If we did hear voices, it would raise serious questions about where they came from. No radio towers. No AM/FM channels. Just ocean.

What We Found (or Didn’t Find)

Our results? Pretty much what we expected for a control location.

• The spirit box gave us nothing but static. This was actually great, because it proved an important point: spirit boxes depend heavily on ambient radio signals. Without them, they’re silent.

• The voice recorder picked up regular cruise ship noise, but nothing unusual or unexplained.

• Thermal imaging showed some weird heat patterns, but nothing paranormal.

In other words, no evidence of ghosts. But that’s not a failure—it’s data.

Why This Matters

Too many paranormal investigations are done without baselines. People assume any REM pod beep or spirit box voice is paranormal, without checking whether that same device would do the same thing in a non-haunted place. Which, by the way, they do. These devices performed the same in a non-haunted location with no deaths as a haunted location. 

By using the Symphony of the Seas as a control, we added a valuable comparison point. That we got no activity shows that some results we've captured in other, allegedly haunted places might be more credible by comparison.

Plus, this trip taught us a lot about the spirit box itself. Many of the "voices" people believe are ghosts may actually be fragmented radio DJs, ads, or music lyrics. Out at sea, far from any radio station, the spirit box was eerily quiet.

No Hauntings Here—Yet

We made a video diving into the deaths that occurred on Symphony of the Seas and why, despite them, no ghost stories have emerged. It raises some important questions: What causes a haunting? Does every death result in a haunting? Or do other factors like trauma, suddenness, or unfinished business play a bigger role? Or is it random chance that a location becomes haunted?

That’s the mystery we love digging into, and we hope our research encourages others to approach paranormal investigation with a skeptical, scientific mindset.

Final Thoughts: Keep Testing the Tools

This was a relaxing but meaningful investigation. We didn't prove ghosts exist, but we also didn't find false positives. We showed that when a spirit box is isolated from radio frequencies, it doesn’t mysteriously start talking (but I secretly hoped it would). That matters. Now, we need to isolate our spirit box in a known haunted location and see what happens. We think a faraday cage will do the trick and have constructed one from tin foil. 

We’ll keep testing these tools in different environments—haunted and not—to separate fact from fiction. And who knows? Maybe one day we'll be on a ship that is haunted like Enchantment of the Seas.

Until then, keep watching, keep questioning, and most importantly...

Stay spooky my spooky cats.

Watch the full investigation in our embedded video above. Don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe to Dark Whimsical Ghosts on YouTube for more investigations like this!