TRF7970A with Beaglebone Black

I am trying to use the TRF7970A RFID card reader with the Beaglebone Black through SPI. I have the SPI set up correctly and that part is working perfectly, the issue is that I am not receiving accurate data from the RFID reader unless I hold the card just right. I am testing it with this code (https://github.com/shengzhao91/RFID_Adaptor_Cape/blob/master/RFID_Application/BBB_RFID.c) as it was designed particularly for this type of an application.The problem is that I am constantly getting interrupts from the RFID reader for seemingly no reason as there is no card within distance of the reader. One thing that I did find weird is that the RFID reader is reset every time through the loop.