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EVP anyone?

Explorer

Graduate Poster
Explorer
Joined
Jun 22, 2003
Messages
1,516
Don't know how much of this has been discussed here before

For some background:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voice_phenomenon

Now for personal experience of perhaps the same phenomena.

When I was a kid of fifteen, my Dad bought a brand new Grundig reel to reel tape recorder. It was a fairly simple beast by today' standards but made good quality recordings. As you can imagine I used to play with it a lot, making my own voice recording with my friends, and often just on my own.

On one occasion, I was making a recording just using my own voice through the microphone supplied which was fairly basic job. On playback and in the middle of the recording, I could clearly hear another young male voice cut in over mine and speak a "nonsense" sentence, that sounded something like "He's going round the singing, Jim!" This meant absolutely nothing to me of course, but it has stuck in my head ever since.

Now I was the only person in the room, so there were no friends playing pranks, and I heard it on the first play back immediately after recording. The tape machine had the habit of picking up other radio and TV transmissions when not recording or playing, but this never previously happened with my actual recordings which were always clear and pure. The unknown voice was loud and clear over mine, and not feint and barely audible like some of the EVP examples that you can find on the net.

It never happened again, and so the event was just a mysterious one off and nothing like a spirit type communication that some seem to imply as the cause.
 
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Reminds me of when I was a kid and my friends and I would argue over whether or not the TV was picking up alien signals because there was a very strange looking "background image" behind the image on the TV (best way I know how to explain it). I asked my dad about it and he said, "it's probably just a crummy TV, buddy. I'd guess you're picking up some other station." Needless to say, he was right.

People who wander around with tape recorders listening for otherworldly signals need a hobby.
 
It may have been an older recording you made yourself being played backwards if you had unintentionally reversed the tape. We used to do that for laughs when we were young.
 
I don't know if I brought this up before, but on last week's episode of Paranormal State, the 'investigators' used a device called Frank's Box to pick up messages from the beyond. It was a metallic blue box with a small antenna on the side. They would ask, "Who is in here right now?" and hear "fuuzzzzzzzGARBLEfuzzz" and someone would say "Oh, that definitely said Lucy. And they kept doing this throughout the show, so I went to the Paranormal State site to see what exactly they claim Frank's Box is. They've pulled that particular episode description now, but at the time it stated that it's a type of radio (but a special new ground-breaking kind of radio that picks up all sorts of paranormal activity!), which anyone who has ever seen or heard a radio can tell you.

I'm sorry, but if someone shows you a dial-tune radio you can get at Radio Shack and you believe it's some kind of ghost box, I'm not sure how you passed junior high level physical science class.
 
No discussion about EVP can go without a few similar phenomena (and great webistes), these are:

http://coffeepotghost.com/

http://victorthebudgie.com/

http://www.reversespeech.com/home.htm

I think the biggest problem EVP has is with it's PVE's (Percieved Voice Equivilents) because you can ask 10 people what the EVP said and have 10 different answers. You will notice on all EVP sites they have subtitles, with the subtitles it's easy to fool yourself. However, I recommend before watching/listening to any EVP you do so a couple times with your eyes closed and write down what you think was said before seeing the authors interpretation.

Your:
"He's going round the singing, Jim!"

Could be my:
"She's go in ground, this ringing tin!"
 
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KateHW said:
I'm sorry, but if someone shows you a dial-tune radio you can get at Radio Shack and you believe it's some kind of ghost box, I'm not sure how you passed junior high level physical science class.
Click to expand...

Nicely said. I listen to a podcast called "Dead Science" and really enjoy it, but am disappointed that the host, who seemed to begin pretty decently skeptical, just did an entire show about this thing. He seems convinced it is a genuine way to speak with the dead. He played a clip where he asked if anyone has "a message" for him and got a voice that he claims said, quite distincly, "message." Like the voice was responding to his request. I admit the voice COULD have said "message," but to me it sounded like it could have also said, "many," "Manny," or "message," "messy," or something else quite similar.

He says that if you get distinct and obvious replies to something you ask or say that you should be convinced you are dealing with a genuine phenomen.
Well, I agree with that, but I wonder how specific a reply has to be to convince him. For me, I would say, "okay, Grandma, are you there? What is your name?" If a voice responds with her full name I would be pretty impressed. But if it just says "grandma" or something not specific I would not put any stock in it. I fear that many believers would, however.
 
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Explorer said:
I could clearly hear another young male voice cut in over mine and speak a "nonsense" sentence, that sounded something like "He's going round the singing, Jim!"
Click to expand...

Pretty sure that quote was from Star Trek...not sure of the episode, but it was clearly directed at Captain Kirk.

Explorer said:
This meant absolutely nothing to me of course, but it has stuck in my head ever since.
Click to expand...

Well that should wrap things up for ya, no? ;)

StarTrek_Logo_2007.JPG
 
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XBoxWarrior said:
Pretty sure that quote was from Star Trek...not sure of the episode, but it was clearly directed at Captain Kirk.



Well that should wrap things up for ya, no? ;)

[qimg]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7e/StarTrek_Logo_2007.JPG[/qimg]
Click to expand...

Nice one Warrior. The trouble is the event pre-dated Star Trek by around twenty years or so, when we still had steam powered TV.
 
What I'm most fond of is the "filtering" done to these audio samples... giving the unintentional impression that Peter Frampton was channeling some EVP on "Frampton Comes Alive!"


Frampton-style voice boxes, Hendrix-style wah pedals, and guitar phase and flange effects pedals are all "filters", and all of them will, under certain circumstances, produce voice-like effects. The uncritical use of "audio filters" shows the ignorance of the claims made about EVP.
 
You are probably experiencing a phenomenon called 'print through'.
The fact that you were using a reel to reel is significant. Sound Engineers sometimes refer to it as 'pre-echo' and 'post-echo'.

What happens is when the tape reel is stored 'head out', that is, rewound to the beginning, sounds recorded further along in the tape literally 'print through' to the blank areas that come before it. It is sensitive to magnetic fields, after all.
It is also noticeable if the playback/record heads are slightly misaligned.
EVP is probably nothing more than pre- or post- echo. It is well known to audio engineers.

This is why it is generally recomended to store reels 'tail-out', or not rewound. The effect will still be there, but not as noticeable.
I should clarify that since reels are generally not 2-sided, it is much more discernible
on them than a 2 sided cassette.(There is less 'cross-talk' on a reel-to-reel deck.)
 
One thing that gets me about EVP, is that every website concerning EVP, encourages using cheap handheld recorders. They say that the higher priced, more sophisticated gear filters out EVP frequencies. However they never claim to know which and what kind of frequencies carry EVP. I've always wanted to use pro audio gear, condensor mics, soundboards, multitrack recorders, laptops, etc. To do a cross examination with the handheld recorders. I don't think that gear would pick up any of the EVPs ghost hunters are claiming comes from their handheld recorders. As someone who enjoys sound mixing/engineering, EVP interests me in a way, though I don't believe in anything paranormal, I think EVP could easily be debunked. I think that the handheld recorders, are picking up internal noise, or its the operator making by jostling the recorder or rustling the mic, or it is noise they are themselves making that they can't recalling making.

As for the Frank's Box there is another device at http://www.paranormalsystems.com/ That is quite similar to the Franks Box called the Minibox. The device flips through AM radio channels continuously, at a speed of which you can set with the device.

Frank Sumption, the designer of the Ghost Box, sometimes known as 'Frank's Box', has done much pioneering work in the use of applying technology to capturing EVP messages. His method, which has been published in many places across the web, consists of using an AM radio circuit with an automated scanning system, which continually tunes the radio back and forth. Frank's theory is that the sound energy is captured and used by spirits to form words and phrases. The results have been astounding in some cases, but it takes time and patience to learn to use his device skillfully.

In my opinion, people using this device are doing nothing more than pick out words that are being picked up, from the radio stations as the device scans. So of course they feel like they have made a connection when a series of words from many channels, seem to make a sentence. Apophenia at it's finest.
 
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One thing that gets me about EVP, is that every website concerning EVP, encourages using cheap handheld recorders. They say that the higher priced, more sophisticated gear filters out EVP frequencies. However they never claim to know which and what kind of frequencies carry EVP. I've always wanted to use pro audio gear, condensor mics, soundboards, multitrack recorders, laptops, etc. To do a cross examination with the handheld recorders. I don't think that gear would pick up any of the EVPs ghost hunters are claiming comes from their handheld recorders. As someone who enjoys sound mixing/engineering, EVP interests me in a way, though I don't believe in anything paranormal, I think EVP could easily be debunked. I think that the handheld recorders, are picking up internal noise, or its the operator making by jostling the recorder or rustling the mic, or it is noise they are themselves making that they can't recalling making
Click to expand...

I agree. I also like to manipulate audio, and often wanted to do the same. My theory is that because they are using low quality recorders that have horrible sample rates, and are recording essentially room noise, what you end up with is white noise from the environment that gets a serious amount of gain added to it to hear anything. The result is a person intently listening to highly amplified distortion that creates artifacts that sound like words randomly. Statistically, it's really only a matter of time until the amplified distortions cause a certain number of artifacts to occur in the audio stream...like third harmonics...sounds rub together into a crappy little microphone and produce sounds that appears human but really aren't.

Ever wonder why the only way to detect the paranormal on film or audio is with crappy digital cameras and recorders? These mediums have the highest incidence of artifacts of any available medium. Take a low resolution camera into a dusty room and see how many orbs appear when the camera flashes, or record your bedroom with a 20 dollar digital voice recorder and you will probably find a ghost in there.
 
Explorer said:
Don't know how much of this has been discussed here before

For some background:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voice_phenomenon

Now for personal experience of perhaps the same phenomena.

When I was a kid of fifteen, my Dad bought a brand new Grundig reel to reel tape recorder. It was a fairly simple beast by today' standards but made good quality recordings. As you can imagine I used to play with it a lot, making my own voice recording with my friends, and often just on my own.

On one occasion, I was making a recording just using my own voice through the microphone supplied which was fairly basic job. On playback and in the middle of the recording, I could clearly hear another young male voice cut in over mine and speak a "nonsense" sentence, that sounded something like "He's going round the singing, Jim!" This meant absolutely nothing to me of course, but it has stuck in my head ever since.

Now I was the only person in the room, so there were no friends playing pranks, and I heard it on the first play back immediately after recording. The tape machine had the habit of picking up other radio and TV transmissions when not recording or playing, but this never previously happened with my actual recordings which were always clear and pure. The unknown voice was loud and clear over mine, and not feint and barely audible like some of the EVP examples that you can find on the net.

It never happened again, and so the event was just a mysterious one off and nothing like a spirit type communication that some seem to imply as the cause.
Click to expand...

My family had a good stereo system back in the early 60's, but still now and again we'd pick up brief bits of radio traffic, I suspect mostly from taxicabs going by. That at least would explain a strong transmission with nothing before and nothing after. Also, many cab companies had their own codes, to prevent their called-in fares being "hijacked" by other companies. That might explain all sorts of nonsensical language.

On another tack, regarding EVP psychology, I once tuned in to an overnight radio broadcast only to find that the recorded spoken program was playing about 1/4th its normal speed (and lowered register too). Amused by what I thought I was hearing, I started taking some notes. One of the things said: "Can you hear me or am I too slow?" Funny and spooky!
 
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ttch said:
My family had a good stereo system back in the early 60's, but still now and again we'd pick up brief bits of radio traffic, I suspect mostly from taxicabs going by. That at least would explain a strong transmission with nothing before and nothing after. Also, many cab companies had their own codes, to prevent their called-in fares being "hijacked" by other companies. That might explain all sorts of nonsensical language.

On another tack, regarding EVP psychology, I once tuned in to an overnight radio broadcast only to find that the recorded spoken program was playing about 1/4th its normal speed (and lowered register too). Amused by what I thought I was hearing, I started taking some notes. One of the things said: "Can you hear me or am I too slow?" Funny and spooky!
Click to expand...


That is kind of spooky...it reminds me of my old bass amplifier. Every once in awhile it would pick up what sounded like radio transmissions that were clearly audible, although quiet. I remember being 12 and getting super freaked out by it.

Anyone know how that works?
 
I did sound for a band a few years ago, and the bass player had an SWR brand amp, I can't remember the model it was. His rig would pick up radio stations quite frequently, then he would just move it around until it stopped. I've also worked with bands who's guitar amps did the same thing.
 
Gryphus-1 said:
Frank Sumption, the designer of the Ghost Box, sometimes known as 'Frank's Box', has done much pioneering work in the use of applying technology to capturing EVP messages. His method, which has been published in many places across the web, consists of using an AM radio circuit with an automated scanning system, which continually tunes the radio back and forth. Frank's theory is that the sound energy is captured and used by spirits to form words and phrases. The results have been astounding in some cases, but it takes time and patience to learn to use his device skillfully.
Click to expand...

I'm not an electrical engineer, but if the Ghost Box is scanning AM bandwidth, it's not capturing "sound energy". Or is "sound energy" woo-speak for electromagnetic waves?
 
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