EVP

      Of all the types of material captured by ghost hunters, perhaps the most controversial is that of electronic voice phenomena. How can you be truly sure that what you get is a ghost and not other people talking, or even radio waves that you are somehow picking up?

     The watchword with EVP is caution. You must have quiet in order to capture EVP. A stray voice amid a jumble of noise is worthless to the serious investigator.

     Quiet can be your biggest challenge. We are often invited to sites where there is a lot of noise. At times I will just throw my hands up in despair and say, “We’ll not be able to look for EVP’s here.” Restaurants and bars will let you in to work, but they won’t turn off the jukebox or that dreaded karaoke machine. Now you are faced with isolating voices in another part of the building away from the active, people-inhabited areas.

     Here are a few pointers on that:

     1) Control the amount of conversation on your 2-way radios and among investigators. Limit comments as much as possible.

     2) Try asking questions and seeking information. If you have asked a question, and a voice answers you in context, then you have a fair chance to consider it a good EVP.

     3) Don’t look for voices among tape hiss. This is particularly important when using a digital recorder. There are sites on the Internet where “demonic” growls are featured. They are nothing other than electronic interference. Be familiar with your equipment and don’t look too hard.

     4) Try using a voice print program. There are some inexpensive ones on the Internet and they can help you to isolate voices so that you can be sure that great EVP is not another investigator making a comment that they don’t remember later on. We all do that.

     5) The best tip is quiet. Try to find places to work where you have at least some control of the noise level in the environment.

     6) The classical way of collecting EVP is to use white noise (static on a TV or radio tuned between frequencies) to help “pull” in the entities voices. You may want to play with that form, but be careful to disconnect the TV from the internal antenna or to have it done for you. This method has the added advantage of being done in your own home. Using this method, it is believed that the ghosts come to you.

     7) Be vigilant. Some of the best EVP that I have ever heard came from people who just seemed to be in the right place at the right time. A young woman was doing genealogy notes on tape in local cemeteries. She was reading off the birth and deaths of various family members when she came to her grandfather. She had never known him because he had died when she was quite young, but she had been taught to love him by her grandmother. The young woman paused, tape still running, to tell her grandfather that she and her grandmother still loved him very much.

     To her surprise, a male voice said “Shut up!” on her tape at that point. The young woman knew that she was alone in an isolated cemetery in the country, and there was no way anything could have interfered on her tape. She also made out the same male voice two other places on the tape. She asked her father, the dead grandfather’s son, to listen to the tape without explaining why. Her father was absolutely shocked. He insisted that it was his father’s voice on that tape.

     After making sure that she had used a new tape and visiting the site I do believe that this young woman captured her dead grandfather’s voice. I have heard it for myself and it was quite clear. “Shut up!”

     Other people just seem to keep their tapes with them all of the time and have gone to cemeteries to place flowers or hold the hand of a friend who is grieving and have captured ghostly voices.

     Never under estimate persistence and vigilance as ways to help capture ghostly voices.