Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 14:54, 5 March 2007

The neutrality of this article is disputed. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until conditions to do so are met. (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) are said by proponents to be voices of a paranormal origin which appear on recording media or through other electronic audio devices. They are typically brief, usually the length of a word or short phrase, although longer segments have also been recorded. EVP has not been considered or accepted by the mainstream scientific community and its very existence remains controversial. What little literature exists has all appeared in publications dealing with topics outside of the mainstream such as parapsychology.

Explanations regarding the nature and origin of the phenomenon differ greatly. Paranormal explanations include communication from discarnate entities, psychic projections from EVP researchers themselves, or communication from alien or trans-dimensional beings. More prosaic naturalistic explanations include cross modulation or interference from nearby radio sources, or random noise mistakenly perceived as voices due to pareidolia – the human propensity to find familiar patterns amongst random stimuli.

The term EVP itself was coined by publishing company Colin Smythe Ltd in the early 1970s. Previously the phenomena had been known as “Raudive Voices” after early EVP pioneer Konstantin Raudive, whose 1970 book Breakthrough brought the subject into the public domain. Since then EVP has often captured the public imagination, and references to it have appeared throughout pop culture, such as in the Reality TV show Ghost Hunters, the fictional Supernatural, and the Hollywood films White Noise and The Sixth Sense.

Status of EVP

EVP has, for the most part, received no attention from the mainstream scientific community and what little literature that exists has appeared in publications focusing on unconventional topics. The Journal of Scientific Exploration, a publication covering "topics outside the established disciplines of mainstream" published results of an experiment by Imants Baruss in which he said that "we were unable to replicate EVP", and "One possibility is that previous researchers have been misled by known natural and psychological events and that there are no unusual phenomena to be considered." The Journal of the Society for Psychical Research published results of an experiment by Alexander MacRae in which he said the results "must have been in some way paranormal". These journals are not subject to the same editorial peer review that is the feature of most scientific journals, because they feature a higher level of editorial discretion than most mainstream journals.

History

EVP was not named or defined until the mid 20th century, although it is reported to have been observed in various forms since early in the century.

Von Szalay, Bayless, and Jürgenson

Attila von Szalay (Sealay), a self-professed medium, was among the first people to say he tape-recorded voices of the dead. He tried various techniques during the 1930s, before joining with Raymond Bayless in the 1950s. Together, they began by experimenting using a 78 RPM Pack Bell record cutter. When the results failed to meet their expectations, Bayless constructed a custom-made recording rig consisting of a soundproofed clothes closet featuring a microphone inside a tinfoil covered trumpet that led to a remote tape recorder and speaker system in order to to allow the sounds inside the closet to be monitored and recorded.

At times the recording closet was empty, while at other times it was occupied by a volunteer. Using this setup, Szalay and Bayless report having captured many voices on tape that were not heard through the speaker when the closet was occupied. Records of their experiment were later published in the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

EVP attracted further interest when, in 1959, Swedish film producer Friedrich Jürgenson captured what he believed to be the discarnate voice of a Norwegian speaking man on a recording of bird songs that he had made. Jürgenson went on to make many tape recordings, including one in which he believed he received a message from his late mother. Jürgenson's recordings attracted the attention of German parapsychologist Hans Bender, the head of a research team at the Institute for Border Areas of Psychology and Mental Health (University of Freiburg). After analyzing them, Bender concluded that Jürgenson's tapes were "susceptible to a paranormal interpretation."Cite error: A <ref> tag is missing the closing </ref> (see the help page).

After various experiments, Raudive devised three primary methods for conducting EVP research; allowing a tape to record in a silent room, recording the static from an un-tuned radio, and recording the static of an un-tuned diode receiver. Raudive confirmed Jürgenson's results, and he also reported that there were four key characteristics that differentiated the voices captured on tape from normal speech:

• Voices used a different rhythm to regular speech
• Voices used a stunted "telegram-style" sentences
• Voices did not obey standard grammatical rules
• Recordings sometimes consisted of multiple languages

Raudive's recordings were sometimes criticized for not following a pattern consistent with intelligent communication (for example, consisting of an answer that was unrelated to a question posed by Raudive) or because they appear to be random collections of words with no overall meaning. Raudive's interpretations of his tapes were also criticized for being highly subjective in nature.

In 1971 Raudive conducted a controlled experiment in a shielded laboratory that was designed to block out both sound and potential interference from external sources such as television and radio signals. Raudive recorded his own voice for 18 minutes and no other sounds were made or heard. When the recordings were played back, observers are said to have found that 200 other voices were present on the tape.

Spiricom

In 1980, American William O'Neil, who also said he was a medium, constructed a device known as "The Spiricom," which he said was based on instructions given to him by the spirit of deceased Cornell physicist George J. Mueller. The device consisted of thirteen audio oscillators, each tuned to an audio frequency between 131 Hz and 701 Hz (the approximate tone range for an adult male voice), which were fed to the input of an FM radio transmitter tuned to 29.57 MHz. The resulting broadcast was picked up by a nearby radio receiver, also tuned to 29.57 MHz FM. Through this device, O'Neil said that he was able to hold two-way conversations with the spirits of the dead, some of which he recorded and made available to researchers.

The results of O'Neil's experiments were announced at a Washington, DC, press conference on April 6, 1982, by retired industrialist George Meek, who had been associated with O'Neil since the early 1970s.

Meek and O'Neil went on to found the Metascience Foundation of North Carolina (Metascience Foundation Inc), and to provide the design specifications for Spiricom to researchers for free. However, nobody is known to have ever been able to replicate O'Neil's results using their own Spiricom devices.

In response to the failure of other Spiricom systems, Meek later concluded that O'Neil's mediumship had formed a key component of the device. Meek went on to state that he knew of no system for communicating with the dead having achieved success unless at least one member of the team investigating it had psychic abilities.

AA-EVP

In 1982, Sarah Estep founded the American Association of Electronic Voice Phenomena in Severna Park, Maryland, with the purpose of increasing awareness of EVP and teaching standardized methods for capturing it. Estep began her exploration of EVP in 1976, and says she has made hundreds of recordings of messages from deceased friends, relatives, and other individuals, including Konstantin Raudive, Beethoven, a lamplighter from 18th century Philadelphia, PA, and extraterrestrials whom she speculated originated from other planets or dimensions. Today, the AA-EVP is a nonprofit educational association headed by Directors Tom and Lisa Butler, dedicated to the support of people who are interested in or studying EVP and Instrumental transcommunication. The organization lists members in twenty countries and maintains a web site that offers examples, techniques and concepts concerning EVP.

Baruss

In 1997, researchers with the Department of Psychology at the University of Western Ontario conducted several EVP experiments using Raudive's methods and the work of Instrumental Transcommunication (ITC) researcher Mark Macy as a guide.

During 81 sessions, researchers recorded a total of 60 hours and 11 minutes of data in the presence of a neutral volunteer who either sat in silence or attempted to make verbal contact with potential sources of EVP. Over the course of the experiment researchers recorded several non-speech audio events similar to those which some paranormal researchers have previously associated with EVP, but which fell outside the parameters of the experiment because they did not represent a form of communication. Several events which could be interpreted as voices "with a little imagination" were recorded, but were deemed to be too few, too random, and too open to interpretation to be usable.

The experiment was deemed to have failed to capture EVP, and to have provided no evidence validating the phenomena. Their findings were published in the Journal of Scientific Exploration in 2001 by Imants Baruss.

MacRae

In March 2003, Scottish researcher Alexander MacRae made a number of attempts to capture EVP in a specially designed laboratory belonging to the Institute of Noetic Science in Petaluma, California. The laboratory was described as being "double-screened"; it was shielded against electromagnetic radiation to prevent interference from radio transmissions or near by electronic devices and insulated against sound to prevent contamination of recordings by external noise sources.

Over the course of the experiment, MacRae reported capturing a number of anomalies which were subsequently isolated and analyzed. Based on this analysis, and the level of screening against outside interference, MacRae concluded that the anomalies represented distinct speech from a source that could not be explained through conventional means. Details of MacRae's experiments, methods, and conclusions were published in the October 2005 issue of the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research. MacRae concluded:

One's conclusion must inevitably be that even under adverse circumstances voices were received within a room screened against both em and acoustic waves under circumstances which precluded the generation of such sounds locally.

It follows therefore that the means whereby these sounds occurred in the screened room must have been in some way paranormal.

The ultimate verification lies in replication, of course, and it is believed that the experiment described above is fully replicable.

Proposed explanations

Normal

The existence of EVP is disputed, and a variety of alternative explanations have been put forward for the phenomena.

• Interference: Certain instances of EVP, especially those recorded on devices which contain RLC circuitry, represent radio signals of voices/sounds from broadcast sources. Interference from CB Radio transmissions and wireless baby minders, or anomalies generated though cross modulation from other electronic devices, are all documented phenomena. It is even possible for circuits to resonate without any external power source by means of radio reception.
• Auditory pareidolia: Auditory pareidolia, a condition created when the brain incorrectly interprets random patterns as being familiar patterns. In the case of EVP it could result in an observer interpreting random noise on an audio recording as being the familiar sound of a human voice. The propensity for EVP to be in a language understood well by those researching it, rather than in an unfamiliar language, has been cited as evidence of this.
• Capture errors: Anomalies created by the method used to capture EVP, such as noise generated through the over-amplification of a signal at the point of recording, is known to cause a variety of aberrations.
• Processing artefacts: Artefacts created during attempts to boost the clarity of an existing recording through methods such as re-sampling, frequency isolation, and noise reduction/enhancement, until they take on qualities significantly different from those that were present in the original recording.
• Hoaxes: A percentage of EVP may be hoaxes created by frauds or pranksters.

Paranormal

There is no consensus within the paranormal community as to the origins of EVP or how best to capture it. However, a number of different explanations have been put forward:

• Discarnate entities: EVP is the voices of discarnate entities who communicate with the living through electronic devices. Some EVP experimenters say the sounds cannot be heard by the human ear because spirits do not have vocal chords, and instead imprint their voices on the recording media by some unknown method.
• Extraterrestrial entities: EVP represents contact with "nature energies" or extraterrestrials. There is also speculation that the beings may originate from an alternate dimension and that the communications are the result of some unknown fluctuation in space and time.
• Psychokinesis: EVP is created by the researcher's subconscious ability to influence matter or energy without the use of any currently known type of physical means. Some experimenters say they have received messages from a sleeping colleague and feel this may indicate that living humans are capable of creating EVP, a phenomenon which they speculate accounts for some percentage of recordings.

Trivia

In the 1920s, the American inventor Thomas Edison told a reporter with Scientific American that he was working on a machine that could contact the dead, and the story was printed in many newspapers. However, Edison announced a few years later that he had been making a joke at the reporter's expense, and that he had not been working on such a device.

EVP in fiction

EVP has been mentioned in several books and dramatic presentations. A few notable examples include:

Literature

• Legion, a 1983 novel by William Peter Blatty. Written as a sequel to Blatty's 1971 novel The Exorcist, Legion contains a subplot where Dr. Vincent Amfortas, a terminally-ill neurologist, leaves a "to-be-opened-upon-my-death" letter for Lt. Kinderman detailing his accounts of contact with the dead (including Amfortas' recently deceased wife, Ann) through EVP recordings. The book Breakthrough by EVP researcher Konstantin Raudive is mentioned in the novel, although Amfortas' character and the EVP subplot do not appear in the film version of the novel, Exorcist III.
• Pattern Recognition, 2003 novel by William Gibson. The main character's mother tries to convince her that her father is communicating with her from recordings after his death/disappearance in the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Film and television

• The Sixth Sense, a 1999 film starring Bruce Willis. The main character, a psychologist, realizes that audiotapes of his past patient interviews include the voices of dead people, who have been haunting said patient.
• Ghost Whisperer, 2005 TV series. In the episode "Voices", a dead woman tries to reach her son using EVP.
• Supernatural, a TV series launched in 2005 which draws from many legends and paranormal phenomena, frequently uses EVP as a plot device
• White Noise, a 2005 film starring Michael Keaton, focuses exclusively on the phenomenon of EVP and the main character's attempts to contact his recently deceased wife through it. The filmmakers assert at the end of the film that 1 in 12 EVP messages received is threatening in nature, a figure disputed by many in the field.

References

1. "EVP Question Time". Fortean Times. Retrieved 2006-12-01. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
2. ^ MacRae, Alexander (October 2005). "Report of an Electronic Voice Phenomenon Experiment inside a Double-Screened Room". Journal of the Society for Psychical Research. Society for Psychical Research. Retrieved 2007-01-28. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help) Cite error: The named reference "macRae1" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
3. ^ Chisholm, Judith (2000). "A Short History of EVP". Psychic World. Retrieved 2006-12-03.
4. ^ Baruss, Imants (2001). "Failure to Replicate Electronic Voice Phenomenon" (PDF). Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 15, No. 3, pp. 355–367, 2001. Retrieved 2007-01-07. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
5. http://www.colin-smythe.com/authors/voices/voices.htm (08 Feb 07)
6. http://parapsych.org/glossary_e_k.html#e Parapsychological Association website, Glossary of Key Words Frequently Used in Parapsychology, Retrieved January 24, 2006
7. "Journal of Scientific Exploration". 2000. Retrieved 2007-02-16.
8. Bayless, R (1959), Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 53#1, 35–38
9. Bjorling, Joel (1998). Consulting Spirits: A Bibliography. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. p. 68. ISBN 0313302847. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
10. ^ Cite error: The named reference bretf was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
11. Poysden, Mark (1999) This is EVP: A Look Behind the "The Ghost Orchid" CD, The Anomalist
12. Smith, E. L (1974), "The Raudive voices–Objective or subjective? A discussion"m Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 68, 91–100
13. http://www.wintersteel.com/EVP.html
14. http://www.worlditc.org/h_07_meek_spiri_000_007.htm
15. Meek, George. (1988), "Report from Europe: Earthside instrumental communications with higher planes of existence via telephone and computer are now a reality" Unlimited Horizons, Metascience Foundation, Inc, 6#1, 1–11.
16. Basic EVP Recording Technique, butler, T, Butler L, AA-EVP
17. ^ "EVP". Skeptic's Dictionary. Retrieved 2006-12-01. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
18. ^ Paul Tipler (2004). Physics for Scientists and Engineers: Electricity, Magnetism, Light, and Elementary Modern Physics (5th ed.). W. H. Freeman. ISBN 0-7167-0810-8.
19. Wiggins Arthur W. Wynn Charles M. (2001), "Quantum Leaps in the Wrong Direction: Where Real Science Ends–and Pseudoscience Begins", National Academies Press, ISBN 0-309-07309-X
20. Smith, Steven W. (2002) Digital Signal Processing - A Practical Guide for Engineers and Scientists, Newnes, ISBN 0-7506-7444-X
21. Randi, James (2006-06-09), Just Where is Lou Gentile?,
22. http://www.aaevp.com/articles/articles_about_cosmology.htm
23. "About the American Association of Electronic Voice Phenomena: What is the Survival Hypothesis?". American Association of Electronic Voice Phenomena (AA-EVP). Retrieved 2006-12-01. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
24. http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/2004/10/10-26-04tdc/10-26-04dscihealth-01.asp
25. Estep, Sarah, "Voices Of Eternity," page 144,
26. Jahn, Robert G. (1987). Margins of Reality: The Role of Consciousness in the Physical World. San Diego, California: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. ISBN 0151571481. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
27. http://www.aaevp.com/articles/articles_about_aaevp.htm
28. "Don't believe everything you read in a textbook!". Edison National Historic Site. National Parks Service. 2004-11-05. Retrieved 2006-12-01. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
29. http://www.lonestarspirits.org/media6.html

Further reading

• Voices of Eternity, by Sarah Estep, Fawcett 1988
• EVP, Cinderella Science, by Gerry Connelly, Domra Pub. 2001
• There is No Death, by Tom & Lisa Butler, AA-EVP Pub. 2003
• Roads to Eternity, by Sarah Estep, Fawcett 2005
• Experimenting With "EVP" - The Skeptic Express

See also

• Parapsychology
• Backward message
• Ghost hunting
• Reverse speech
• Pareidolia

External links

• The American Association of Electronic Voice Phenomena
• "White Noise" - on The Atlantic Paranormal Society (TAPS) website.
• Stephen Wagner Talks about EVP on Associated Content
• Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal
• EVP Online Resource, Founded by TAPS's Bill Lonero
• Overview of EVP in Fortean Times by Judith Chisholm
• The official website of the G.I.S. - Ghost Investigators Society
• EVP: Beyond White Noise
• EVP in the Skeptic's Dictionary
• Raymond Cass - UK Pioneer of EVP research
• EVPs at Ufopsi
• Ghosts or Gobbledegook?

• Spirituality
• Recording
• Ghosts
• Pseudoscience
• Parapsychology
• Paranormal