EVP: General Information

EVP is personally one of my favorite types of evidence to capture. I have been doing some research on this phenomena, and while I am no expert, this is what I have found

There are 3 main classes of EVP evidence. Class A: Loud and clear. Everyone can understand what it says and there is no dispute over it. If you play this EVP to a crowd, everyone will be able to agree what has been recorded without being told what you think it says. Class B: Not quite as clear. When you play this piece of recording to a group, they will all agree they hear something, however there will be some dispute over the “words” that have been recorded. Did it say “happy” or “hungry”. Its just not as clear. Class C EVP is not one I deal with at all. This requires you to “clean up” the audio to bring out the EVP. Its one where most wont understand what has been recorded until you tell them what you think it says and even then, most will not hear it. I don’t consider anything I have to “clean up” to be evidence. In my opinion if its there we will hear it, if I have to fiddle with it, its not evidence.

There are many techniques to record EVP’s. One way I use is called the ASQ method.

A: Alone. The recording device is left alone in an active room to see what it records. Of course the location should be secure.

S: Supervised. Here you would sit in the room with a notebook and stopwatch. You would quietly note any activity in the room and the time it occurred along with noting any outside explainable noises. (such as a dog barking, a car going by etc)

Q: Question and Answer. This is what most investigators use when collecting EVP. Questions are asked and time is allowed for an answer to be picked up on the recorder. While doing this you would also want to note any noise contaminates that occur (someone coughing, background noise etc)

At the beginning of my tape I record location, names of the team members present, time and date. This way when I am reviewing tapes I have a reference point.

There are many types of equipment that investigators use to capture EVP. Digital Recorders seem to be the favorite right now, but I have had luck with analog recorders such as the mini-cassette types and even the old reel-to-reel type. Once I caught an EVP on my video recorder’s microphone. We could hear music and humming when I was videoing a music room of an old museum. The equipment used is personal preference. There is some debate over using white noise in the back ground, but many are experimenting with it.

You can’t talk about EVP without mentioning the Frank’s Box or the Ghost Box devices. There are mixed feelings about these devices in the paranormal world. Essentially a radio that has been altered to scan over the frequencies is the basic piece of equipment. Some researchers such as Rosemary Ellen Guiley ( author of Encyclopedia of Ghosts and Spirits) are having a lot of luck with this device. You can find many websites to help you build one yourself. I have not done any experimentation with this yet, but I hope to do so very soon. I will keep you posted

UPDATE: We have been doing extensive experimentation with the Franks Box, Radio Shack Hack and other builds witht his technology. We have found some results that we cannot explain (i.e. messages that span across frequency changes on the radio, a mechanical voice that has cut in on many of the radio frequencies, etc). We have not made a final decision on this device and we continue to experiment with it. Mark, our Tech Manager has been working very hard in this field. We will keep you updated as these move along.