E.V.P
Electronic Voice Phenomena
Electronic voice phenomena (EVP) are sections of static noise on the radio or electronic recording media that are interpreted by paranormal investigators as voices speaking words usually attributed to ghosts or spirits. Recording EVP has become a technique of those who attempt to contact the souls of dead loved ones or during ghost hunting activities. In addition to deceased spirits, various paranormal investigators say that EVP could be due to psychic echoes from the past, psychokinesis unconsciously produced by living people, and the thoughts of aliens. According to parapsychologist Konstantin Raudive, who popularized the idea, EVP are typically brief, usually the length of a word or short phrase.
Skeptics of the paranormal attribute the voice-like aspect of the sounds to apophenia (finding of significance or connections between insignificant or unrelated phenomena), auditory pareidolia (interpreting random sounds into voices in their own language which might otherwise sound like random noise to a foreign speaker), artifacts due to low-quality equipment, and simple hoaxes. Likewise some reported EVP can be attributed to radio interference or other well-documented phenomena.
References to EVP have appeared in the reality television shows Paranormal State, Celebrity Paranormal Project, and Ghost Hunters, the fictional television series Supernatural and Medium, and Hollywood films such as White Noise and The Sixth Sense.
Paranormal explanations
Various explanations have been put forward for EVP by those who believe it to be an example of a paranormal phenomenon. These include:
Discarnate entities
According to the AA-EVP (American Association of Electronic Voice Phenomena) spirits cannot communicate verbally with humans, but are able to imprint information on recording media by an unknown method. According to Tom Butler, Director of the AA-EVP, questions have been asked during EVP recording sessions, and the audio recordings made during those sessions have contained utterances properly answering the questions.
Psychokinesis
According to this explanation, communications might be imprinted directly on an electronic medium by a living human, through an unknown form of matter/energy manipulation. Tom Butler says he has received messages from living people who are asleep.
Extraterrestrial entities
Sarah Estep founder AA-EVP (American Association of Electronic Voice Phenomena)of said that some EVP may be caused by nature energies, beings from other dimensions, or extraterrestrials.
Non-paranormal explanations
Mainstream science has generally ignored EVP, but there are a number of non-paranormal explanations that account for what listeners believe are voices, including such mechanisms as radio interference or the tendency of the human brain to recognize patterns in random stimuli These include:
Interference
Certain EVP recordings, especially those recorded on devices which contain RLC circuitry, represent radio signals of voices or other 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 internal power source by means of radio reception.
Auditory pareidolia
Auditory pareidolia is a situation 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 an apparent voice heard in white noise recordings to be in a language understood well by those researching it, rather than in an unfamiliar language, has been cited as evidence of this, and a broad class of phenomena referred to by author Joe Banks as Rorschach Audio has been described as a global explanation for all manifestations of EVP
Skeptics such as David Federlein, Chris French, Terrence Hines and Michael Shermer say that EVP are usually recorded by raising the "noise floor" - the electrical noise created by all electrical devices - in order to create white noise. When this noise is filtered, it can be made to produce noises which sound like speech. Federlein says that this is no different from using a wah pedal on a guitar, which is a focused sweep filter which moves around the spectrum and creates open vowel sounds. This, according to Federlein, sounds exactly like some EVP. This, in combination with such things as cross modulation of radio stations or faulty ground loops can cause the impression of paranormal voices. The human brain evolved to recognize patterns, and if a person listens to enough noise the brain will detect words, even when there is no intelligent source for them. Expectation also plays an important part in making people believe they are hearing voices in random noise.
Apophenia
Apophenia is related to, but distinct from pareidolia. Apophenia is defined as "the spontaneous finding of connections or meaning in things which are random, unconnected or meaningless", and has been put forward as a possible explanation.
Capture errors
Capture errors are anomalies created by the method used to capture audio signals, such as noise generated through the over-amplification of a signal at the point of recording.
Processing artifacts
Artifacts created during attempts to boost the clarity of an existing recording might explain some EVP. Methods include re-sampling, frequency isolation, and noise reduction or enhancement, which can cause recordings to take on qualities significantly different from those that were present in the original recording.
Instrumental transcommunication
Instrumental transcommunication (ITC) is a more general paranormal term than EVP and refers to communication between spirits or other discarnate entities and the living, through any sort of electronic device such as tape recorders, fax machines, television sets or computers. ITC include visual and other anomalies, rather than only auditory effects. The term was coined by physicist Professor Ernst Senkowski, of the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Mainz, Germany. Instrumental transcommunication has gained no notability within the scientific community, and is not accepted within science.
According to Claus Schreiber, an instance of ITC occurred at 13:22 on October 21, 1987 in which the image of EVP enthusiast Friedrich Jürgenson (whose funeral was held that day) appeared on a television in the home of a colleague, which had been purposefully tuned to a vacant channel It is claimed that similar effects can be achieved using a TV and video camera via the Droste effect. This involves aiming a video camera at the television and feeding the output of the camera back into the TV, in order to achieve a feedback loop
Skeptics say that these phenomena are hoaxes or misinterpretations of natural phenomena
