"Well," says Ray, "whenever a paranormal entity such as, for example, a ghost or spirit manifests on the physical plane- even if it's only to manipulate an object, rather than show itself- the energy expended to cross the planar barrier results in local-area ionization and characteristic disruption of the local quantum valences. It's like watching the foam kicked up in a boat's wake, only on a subatomic scale. The meter's sensitive to those disturbances, even when they're caused by the energetic action of something that isn't a spirit- psychokinetic energy expenditure causes that kind of disruption regardless of whether the living or the dead are the source. See, these readings over here would be the valence levels, and this is the proximity in meters- I might be an American, but my stuff's in metric. That readout over there's only useful if there's a spirit entity invovled, though."

It simply does not occur to him that someone who shows an actual interest in the PKE meter might not be able to follow along with the words.