The Problems Associated with Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP)

Evidence from Hauntings

For several decades, the collection of audio recordings from reported scenes has grown exponentially and with the introduction of reasonably inexpensive digital recorders, their use as tools in the ghost hunter’s kit has become mandatory.

Admittedly, the sounds often captured from haunted places are intriguing. While skeptics will argue that this is nothing but “electronic noise” the mass of evidence would suggest otherwise and the overall perception, in part to popular television and motion pictures like White Noise has peaked the curiosity of the common man. No longer is the use of portable tape recorders and digital pocket devices the exclusive realm of the “professional” parapsychologist, today everyone owns some sort of recorder and most have experimented with the white noise effect.

When first studied, white noise was summarily dismissed as nothing more than the sound created by the tape medium over the recording heads, but as innovations were added and the price of the units dropped, more and more researchers were being challenged over what was coming out in field recordings. While it can be argued that much of the “evidence” is too garbled to be clearly intelligible. Other recordings seem to be easily understandable phrases, even before “processing” the output through various high tech computer audio devices.

For the point of this discussion, we will limit our findings to devices and software most often used and easily obtainable to the field researcher.  In the lab, a working copy of Audacity is currently being used. The software is relatively simple to use and inexpensive and can be used in a numbef ways to evaluate tape or digital recordings.

The first and possibly the most arduous part of the job after running the recorders at a site, is the manual monitoring of that evidence.  For every hour of recording a researcher must dedicate at least the same amount of time reviewing the result. If anything is then found on the recording, it is downloaded onto a relatively high volume computer memory file and replayed for the first time in the audio program.

Many times, what sounded reasonably interesting on tape, become obvious noise when first played through the audio program. Even then, a good researcher will replay the tape and download it once again, if there is any question.  The team leader might still instruct the researchers to “clean up” the track, or enhance it to be sure.

More often, the “raw” recording still has the message first identified by the researcher who reviewed the original tape and a “master” of that section of the recording is recorded into the computer memory. Once the master is created, the researcher is free to manipulate the recording, removing routine audio artifact like “popping” and “scratching” from the session.  He or she can also manipulate tone, elongate or compress the time fact of the recording and remove extraneous background noise in the program.  Once the recording is at its clearest, it is laid down as the finished product and “packaged” next to the original.  They will then record the original and outcome to a digital DVD to be reviewed by others.

That recording can often convince listeners that there was something at that site. But researchers must be cautious to note that these findings are by no means empiric proof of the existence of otherworldly things.  In fact, to be more convincing in their final analysis, it might be proposed that the field researchers go at least one step further in the process.

When recordings were first introduced as part of the parapsychologists’ tool kit, the recording devices were heavy and not easily moved around. Wire recorders, wax mastering, Dictaphones and finally “portable” reporter’s recorders were utilized.  They were expensive.  As time progressed, the packages got smaller and less cumbersome, yet there seems to be an unwritten rule that suggests you have one device, usually hand-held, in any given space.  Why?

When first introducing the old Wolensak portable deck to a team years ago, the unit cost a king’s ransom, even the tape was expensive.  Before that time we had experimented with disk recorders that utilized the same medium as the tape units, but made the recording to a round disk.  The unit was less expensive, but the disks were not easy to find and once you had a recording, which was all you had. There was no inexpensive way to digest what was on the medium. In some cases the originals could be taken to an audio lab and some tweaking could be accomplished in the lab, for a price, but the true nature of the original artifact was illusive.

With the introduction of new technology, pocket recorders and home computers the story began to change, but we still seem to follow the one room, one recorder principal.  If we were to utilize two records in a space at some pre-designed space apart, the outcome of some of our field exercise would probably change.  Placing two records in a space would answer the first question in everyone’s mind, relative to the old question, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a noise?” Obviously, using one recorder, we capture something and to a trained ear, you can discern if that “noise” is something other than “normal” artifact found on all recordings.

If you utilize two records (actually four would be perfect, two digital and two analog tape) in the same space, then you could answer the first question, “Is the sound really a sound” and by comparing outputs, you can also discern where in the room, relative to the devices, the sound is coming from.  You can also have comparisons to weigh the sound against and by using the optimal four unit scheme, you can make some judgment about the nature of the artifact relative to the kind of device that captures it.

Like everything else in the research of unexplained phenomenon, we have learned a great deal and yet have much more to be learned in the future. The use of recording devices has a place in such investigations, but like all other tools, the answer lies in what can be found by utilizing the entire kit and not by relying on just one.

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