JUST MY THOUGHTS

What About Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP)?

Christina M. Schumacher

There are probably very few people who are unfamiliar with the concept of an EVP since the movie "White Noise" came to the big screen. This movie created a huge sensation as well as causing fear about EVP's despite the fact that the movie was fiction. The writers and producers did a good job at explaining EVP's then proceeded to build a completely unbelievable world of evil based around the spirit voices.

"White Noise" was a sensation at the theaters, then became available on DVD a short time later. As on most DVD's, "White Noise" had some interesting special features. It's unsure how many people take advantage of the special features on a DVD, but my hope is that anyone who rented "White Noise", watched the special features. The reason for this hope is because the special features dispelled the fear of EVP's that the "fiction" movie created and put some reality on the subject.

Members of the website AA-EVP gave their experiences which were well presented, but also created a bit of irritation on the part of The Night Watchman and myself. I'm going to touch on some of the statements and share our own experiences in these areas.

The first area to discuss is their statement that some kind of background noise, such as a fan or running water, is required if you are using a standard cassette tape recorder. We feel that the background noise is not necessary and creates a great deal of noise in a recording making it very difficult to separate possible EVP's from the noise.

The fact is, if their small electronic recorder creates sufficient noise from the motor to aid spirits in speaking as they stated, then we guarantee that a cassette recorder has plenty of "hissing" noise within it and no extra background noise is required.

Wind is a spirit voice conduit as well, but we've gotten just as many voices on our recorder with the wind at 0 as we have with the wind at 10 miles per hour.

It was also stated that people should record only three to five minutes and that the first recording will be the best voice. The length of time concerns the amount of time you will have to listen back on your recording. We are very time conscious as well, but we always try to record for ten minutes or longer. The reason for this is that sometimes the spirits take their time in speaking. Chances are, if you shut off at three minutes, you'll miss a message or, at least, a clear message.

As for the first recording being the best, we have to emphatically disagree. Part of this magazine issue has the results of our second 30-day investigation. In ten minutes each night for 30 days, we recorded and took photos at the same exact location using the same routine each night. We ended up with 368 EVP's. Although we listed them all, we only placed the best recordings for each day for you to hear. If you look, you will see, that our best recording was NOT always our first. In fact, out of 30 days, only seven of the best EVP's were the first recording for those days. The other 23 days varied within the ten minutes of recording.

To us, thinking your first recording will ALWAYS be your best could deter people from listening to their entire recording if they get a voice in the first few seconds and believe it will be their best. This could cost them some amazing evidence!

Again, considering the time factor of listening back, AA-EVP suggested using a voice activated recorder. This way, the recorder only activates if you speak or a spirit speaks.

Personally, we prefer to record without the voice activation. The reason for this is because supposedly a spirit voice requires some kind of background noise to connect to. If the activation feature is available, it may lower the necessary frequency needed - kind of like equipment that conserves energy. What if a spirit can only whisper and very weakly at that? Will a voice activated recorder pick this up? Not knowing for certain, we prefer full activation to make sure we don't miss anything. This is a personal preference.

Another thing that seems to be in question are whether random voices should be considered as evidence. Some feel that if the voice does not give a direct answer to a question asked, then there is no validation. Thus, the EVP should be disregarded.

This is another area that we cannot agree with. We understand the validation argument, but we also feel that if we are the only two living people at a specific location and we record a voice that we know is not ours, this should NOT be disregarded.

There are times during our 30-day investigations that we captured two voices seeming to talk to one another. It was almost as though we were privy to part of a conversation where the veil thinned for just a short time. We feel this is very important evidence.

Also, if validation is based on an answer to a question we ask, what happens when the spirit anticipates the question (which is not impossible) and answers while we're asking the question? There have been a good number of times that an absolutely fabulous EVP could not be completely understood because we were speaking and the EVP ran into our voices.

Most of the time, we don't speak at all except to introduce ourselves at the location and invite anyone to speak who wishes to. THEN, we turn on the recorder and keep our mouths shut. Our feeling is, just as spirits can come through mediums if they choose to, if they want to get a message through to a specific person, they will. They know where we are.