Electronic voice phenomenon

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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. Examples of alleged EVP are typically brief, usually the length of a word or short phrase, although longer segments have also been reported.

Virtually no scientific literature on the subject exists. A few studies have been published, with some degree of editorial review, in journals dealing with topics such as parapsychology. Paranormal explanations offered for EVP include communication from discarnate entities, psychic projections from EVP researchers themselves, or communication from alien or trans-dimensional beings. Prosaic explanations for such recordings 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 electronic voice phenomenon itself was coined by publishing company Colin Smythe Ltd in the early 1970s. Previously the phenomena had been known as “Raudive Voices” after Konstantin Raudive, whose 1970 book Breakthrough brought the subject into the public consciousness. Since then references to EVP have appeared in pop culture such as in the Reality TV show Ghost Hunters, the fictional Supernatural, and the Hollywood films White Noise and The Sixth Sense.

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 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 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. Their records 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."

Raudive

Jürgenson was succeeded by Latvian psychologist Konstantin Raudive who had worked in conjunction with both Jürgenson and Bender. Raudive conducted over 100,000 recordings under various conditions.

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 reported a confirmation of 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 are 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 tried to record EVP in a shielded room that he 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, Raudive's team claimed 200 other voices were present on the tape.

Spiricom

In 1980, self-described medium William O'Neil constructed an electronic audio device called "The Spiricom". At a Washington, DC, press conference on April 6, 1982, O'Neil said that he was able to hold two-way conversations with the spirits of the dead using this device.

O'Neil has provided 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 O'Neil's partner, retired industrialist George Meek, attributed O'Neil's success and the inability of others to replicate it to O'Neil's "psychic abilities" forming part of the loop that made the system work.

AA-EVP

Sound

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An audio sample recorded at the Thunderbird Lodge on the east shore of Lake Tahoe by the AA-EVP, who believe it is an example of 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 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.

Barušs

In 1997, researchers with the Department of Psychology at the University of Western Ontario conducted a series of 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 which fell outside the parameters of the experiment because they did not represent a form of communication. Several events were recorded which were interpreted as voices, but were deemed to be too few, too random, and too open to interpretation to be definitely of discarnate origin.

The experiment was deemed to have failed to capture EVP "in the strong sense" meaning as a paranormal phenomenon. Its findings were published in the Journal of Scientific Exploration in 2001 by Imants Barušs.

MacRae

In March 2003, Scottish paranormal investigator Alexander MacRae conducted what he described as "an experiment... which has considerable importance for us all. It has importance not just for the subject it addressed, but also for the study of the paranormal, and indeed for science in general." He conducted his work in a room, described as a Faraday Cage and an anechoic chamber, belonging to the Institute of Noetic Sciences in Petaluma, California. MacRae did not try to determine if EVP existed or not; rather his methodology was based on an attempt to demonstrate a commonality of interpretation for each of the "voices" he claimed to have recorded. Over the course of the experiment, MacRae assumed that he captured a number of EVP which he then isolated, enhanced, and sent to 30 e-mail correspondents who were bcc'ed so they could not communicate with each other regarding their interpretations of the "voices". MacRae offered multiple choice leading question options which never included "no voice" or "unintelligible" as an option. Neither did MacRae send any control signals that he believed were not EVP for his correspondents to analyze. Nevertheless, based on the results of this analysis, MacRae concluded that the anomalies represented distinct speech from a source that he could not explain through conventional means.

MacRae published his results in the October 2005 issue of the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, concluding:

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 paranormal nature of EVP is generally rejected by those outside of the paranormal community, and a variety of explanations have been put forward by skeptics to account for recordings of alleged EVP. These include:

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 or Apophenia: Auditory pareidolia is 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, although those who think EVP are the voices of spirits wonder why spirits would speak in a language they do not understand. Apophenia, a related but distinct phenomenon, defined as "the spontaneous finding of connections or meaning in things which are random, unconnected or meaningless", has also been put forward as a possible explanation.
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 popular culture

EVP has been mentioned in radio, TV, film, 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.

Radio, 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.
Coast To Coast AM hosts George Noory and Art Bell have explored the topic of EVP with featured guests such as Brendan Cook and Barbara McBeath of the Ghost Investigators Society, and paranormal investigator and demonologist Lou Gentile.
The SciFi Channel's Ghost Hunters TV series often features EVP as part of investigations conducted by Atlantic Paranormal Society members

EVP in religion

Adherents of Spiritualism believe that communication with the dead is a scientifically proven fact, and experiment with a variety of techniques for spirit communications which they believe provide evidence of the continuation of life. According to the National Spiritualist Association of Churches, "An important modern day development in mediumship is spirit communications via an electronic device. This is most commonly known as Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP)" An informal survey by the organization's Department Of Phenomenal Evidence cites that 3 out of 9 churches conduct sessions in which participants seek to communicate with spirit entities using EVP.

EVP in ghost hunting

Hundreds of Internet message boards and groups are dedicated to the pursuit of paranormal investigation, often known as ghost hunting. According to paranormal researcher John Zaffis, "There's been a boom in ghost hunting ever since the Internet took off." Enthusiasts equipped with electronic gear such as EMF meters, video cameras and audio recorders, scour reportedly haunted venues, trying to uncover visual and audio evidence of hauntings. Many use portable recording devices in an attempt to capture EVP and a number of ghost hunting organizations feature recorded samples on their web sites. One popular ghost hunting organization, the International Ghost Hunters Society, claims to be the largest Ghost Research Society on the Internet with over 1,000 "EVP ghost voices" on file.

References

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"Journal of Scientific Exploration". 2000. Retrieved 2007-02-16.
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