Capturing EVPs Is Not A Very Simple Matter!
Capturing and analyzing electronic voice phenomena
(EVP) is more involved than many amateur ghost hunters realize, and this
lack of understanding results in shoddy results at best.
I have to admit, until I really began researching EVPs I
fell into this crowd of amateur ghost hunters armed with a single
recording device who never put enough thought into it to collect results
that were worth a damn.
On the few ghost hunts I’ve been on, the digital recorder
was little more than an afterthought to what I was doing on site. This
is an easy trap to fall into, because stalking around an allegedly
haunted location in search of entities from the other side is sexy
business. It’s alluring and fun, especially when it’s done in the dark.
This is total speculation on my part, and fairly uneducated
speculation at that, but I’d venture to say the bulk of people who
claim to be amateur ghost hunters fall into the same category I did on
the few hunts where I’ve been actively involved.
Efforts like these are little more than a waste of time as
far as EVP capturing is concerned. Properly recording voice phenomena
takes thought and preparation. Without appropriate thought and
preparation, any analysis of the evidence collected holds little water.
All I have to do is turn on the recorder, right?
When is anything worth doing in life simple?
Sex is at the core of our existence, and while the act
itself might be simple, the relationships that surround it can be
maddeningly complex.
Recording EVPs isn’t anywhere near as complicated as trying
to score with someone who you find attractive, but there are a few
things that need to be understood.
Every model of digital recorder, or cassette recorder if
you’re still doing things the old-school way, have their own
limitations. They each have a specific range of frequencies they can
pick up without augmentation from an external microphone.
They each have their own characteristics when it comes to
the type and amount of background noise inherent in the recordings.
Depending on who you ask, background noise picked up by the recorder
might not be such a bad thing in every situation.
EVPs are electrical impulses, and are not audible to the
participants while the recording session is going on. If voices are
audible, then they are considered disembodied voices, not EVPs.
In a recent study of EVPs, seemed to verify the long-held
belief that white noise and other background sounds, provide an audible
pallette for ghosts to manipulate into voice phenomena heard only on
playback of the recording.
Using just one recorder during a session intended to
capture EVPs does not allow one to verify the noises being heard are an
actual electrical manipulation of the equipment to create the voices,
versus an audible sound that wasn’t noticed during the session.
It turns out the human mind is only capable of focusing on
so much information at one time, which makes it quite easy to miss a
faint noise from another room, or outside, when a session is taking
place. It can also cause us to not register information that appears
right before our eyes.
For example, there is a famous experiment where viewers are
asked to watch a video, like a basketball game for instance, and count
the number of times there is a change of possession. While the subjects
focus on counting the changes of possession, they frequently miss seeing
the guy in a gorilla suit who slips onto the court, does a little jig,
and walks off. Magicians prey upon our brain’s inability to see all and
absorb things that take place right in front of us.
Effective EVP capturing takes into account our sensory
shortcomings, and involves methods for countering those flaws. Just
pressing record on your device does not accomplish any of this.
Analyzing the Recording Isn’t That Simple Either
Just as pressing record isn’t quite good enough to get the
kind of results you can share with others to be scrutinized, pressing
play isn’t quite good enough for seriously reviewing the recording.
This where the complexities of the human brain shines through even more prominently than it does when recording.
During the recording session, it’s easy for us to miss
things that we probably shouldn’t have missed because we were focusing
our energy on other matters.
Listening to the playback of a recording session opens up a
new flaw in our minds, and that is the brain’s desire to make sense of
things that might be completely random and nonsensical.
One of the biggest issues to look for when listening back
to an EVP recording session is apophenia, and more specifically
Pareidolia.
Apophenia is the term used for the mind’s determination to
make sense out of random info by trying to find patterns or something
familiar. When it comes to sound and vision, pareidolia is the label
given to that specific kind of apophenia. It can cause us to hear words,
or voices, in audio tracks where there really are no words or voices to
be heard.
While people wanted to believe John Lennon confirmed the
supposed death of Paul McCartney on the track Strawberry Fields Forever
by saying, “I buried Paul,” the reality of it is, he allegedly says,
“Cranberry Sauce.” At the time, though, the conspiracy theory about Paul
dying and being replaced with a look-a-like was a hot topic, making it
quite easy to twist the sounds into something they weren’t simply
because the Paul’s Dead Conspiracy was on the listener’s mind.
When you want to hear voices in seemingly random noise,
it’s easy to psych yourself into hearing what’s not really there just
because you’re looking for it.
If it’s not psychology interfering with the process of
identifying EVPs, it’s the lack of taking appropriate measures to
control the environment as much as possible to better prevent the
misidentification of sounds picked up by the device.
Without such careful planning and protocol being
implemented, very little value and validity can be given to any results
that might be captured, no matter how legit they might be.
Tips From the Pros for Good EVP Capturing Protocol
It’s no wonder the skeptics don’t give much credibility to
EVP results like those so frequently shared on the Internet. There are
just too many factors involved that could contaminate the results, or
just twist the results into something their not.
By taking a few extra steps to adhere to a common protocol
among the ghost hunting community, is at least a step in the right
direction to achieving legitimacy.
Here are a few resources to guide you toward better EVP capturing practices:
This is a long, detailed document describing not only what
an EVP is, but the different types of EVPs, along with detailed
procedures, complete with reference material.
This piece touches on the concept of using background
noise, like white noise, to get better results with EVP recording. It
also discusses consistency with alterations done to audio via editing
software.
Voice characteristics, session preparation, and the importance of keeping logs are at the forefront of this tip sheet from ATC.
This is a website dedicated to all things EVP, and it has a
wealth of information, research results, and tips for getting started
and fine tuning your approach to recording EVPs.
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