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EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena), refers to "spirit voices" that are said to manifest themselves on audio recordings.
EVP is a subcategory of Instrumental Transcommunication (or ITC), which includes all electronically recorded phenomena, including telephones, televisions, computers, and specialized audio equipment. Electronic Voice Phenomena (or EVP), refers to spirit voices that are said to manifest themselves on audio recordings. ...
The telephone or phone (Greek: tele = far away and phone = voice) is a telecommunications device which is used to transmit and receive sound (most commonly voice and speech) across distance. ...
A drawing of a desktop computer. ...
Though there are a number of EVP proponents who insist that the phenomenon is inexplicable by conventional science, skeptics argue there are prosaic explanations for the phenomenon that do not require communication from ghosts or from other paranormal sources. Reputed ghost of a monk. ...
Anomalous phenomena are phenomena which are observed and for which there are no suitable explanations in the context of a specific body of scientific knowledge, e. ...
History
Interest in EVP apparently began in the 1920s. In a Scientific American interview, Thomas Edison was quizzed on his views regarding contacting the dead. Edison (who seems to have held no strong religious belief), opined that no one knows if "our personalities pass on to another existence or sphere" but he also speculated that "it is possible to construct an apparatus which will be so delicate that if there are personalities in another existence or sphere who wish to get in touch with us in this existence or sphere, this apparatus will at least give them a better opportunity to express themselves than the tilting tables and raps and ouija boards and mediums and the other crude methods now purported to be the only means of communication." Since there is no research whatever that sheds any light on the form or powers of the dead (even assuming they exist in any form and have any powers at all) there is no apparent basis for Edison's speculation that delicate apparatus would "give them a better opportunity" to express themselves. Sometimes referred to as the Jazz Age or primarily in North America and in Australia as the Roaring Twenties . In Europe it is sometimes refered to as the Golden Twenties. ...
Scientific American is a popular-science magazine, published monthly since August 28, 1845, making it the oldest continuously published magazine in the United States. ...
This is the current Improvement Drive collaboration! Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847 – October 18, 1931) was an inventor and businessman who developed many important devices. ...
A typical Ouija board Ouija (pronounced wee-juh or wee-jee) refers to the belief that one can receive messages during a séance by the use of a Ouija board (also called a talking board or spirit board) and planchette. ...
However, there is no indication that he designed or constructed such a device (though his speculations on the subject feature prominently in Tim Powers' novel Expiration Date). Tim Powers at the Israeli ICon 2005 SF&F Convention Timothy Thomas Powers (born February 29, 1952) is a Catholic American science fiction and fantasy author. ...
Perhaps the first time anyone reported hearing anomalous voices in an electronic recording was in June 1959. Friedrich Jurgenson (1903–1987), after playing back a recording of birdsong in the Swedish countryside, is said to have noticed the presence of a faint Norwegian voice talking about "birds at night". Jurgenson assumed this must have been a stray radio broadcast, although there was no radio receiver at the remote location where the recording had been made. Whatever the cause, it prompted Jurgenson to make further recordings in his home. 1959 (MCMLIX) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
1903 (MCMIII) was a common year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar). ...
1987 (MCMLXXXVII) is a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Bird song refers to the sounds, usually melodious to the human ear, made by many birds of the order Passeriformes as a form of communication. ...
This article does not cite its references or sources. ...
According to Jurgenson, voices that were not present during the recording continued to be heard on playback. They were said to refer to him (and his dog) by their names and nicknames, predict an incoming telephone call (and name the caller, Jurgenson's wife), and respond to questions and comment on the people and conversation physically present and accountable for in the room. Trinomial name Canis lupus familiaris (Linnaeus, 1758) The dog is a canine mammal of the Order Carnivora. ...
Modern EVP Since Jurgenson's report, thousands of people all over the world have attempted to replicate the spirit voices phenomenon, claiming success in many cases. They use no special equipment to capture voices such as these, only a microphone and a means of recording, such as a tape/minidisc/CD recorder or a computer, and patience. It is said it can take months of diligent recording before voices appear. Proponents recommend the use of headphones, because the voices are often faint, and a computer for processing the recordings is very helpful. Inside a condenser microphone. ...
Tape could refer to any of these : Adhesive tape Sticky tape Gaffer tape Duct tape Masking tape Magnetic tape Cassette tape Punched tape Tape drive Tape measure Tape (movie) This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...
The Sony MZ1 MiniDisc player, the first to hit the market in 1992. ...
CD may stand for: Compact Disc Canadian Forces Decoration Cash Dispenser (at least used in Japan) CD LPMud Driver Centrum-Demokraterne (Centre Democrats of Denmark) Certificate of Deposit České Dráhy (Czech Railways) Chad (NATO country code) Chalmers Datorförening (computer club of the Chalmers University of Technology) a 1960s...
A drawing of a desktop computer. ...
Closed Headphones Earbuds or Earphones IEMS (In Ear Monitors) or Canalphones Headphones (also known as earphones, stereophones, headsets, or the slang term cans) are a pair of transducers that receive an electrical signal from a media player or receiver and use speakers placed in close proximity to the ears (hence...
Raudive voices
 Dr. Konstantin Raudive (1906-1974) Taking their inspiration from Jürgenson's work, EVP phenomena was subsequently investigated by the German parapsychologist Hans Bender and by the Latvian psychologist Konstantin Raudive. Following the publication of Raudive's book on his research (Breakthrough, 1971) these phenomena are now often referred to as "Raudive Voices". Image File history File links Konstantin-raudive. ...
Hans Bender (1907-1991) was a lecturer on the subject of parapsychology, who was also responsible for establishing the parapsychological institute Instituts für Grenzgebiete der Psychologie und Psychohygiene in Freiburg. ...
Dr Konstantin Raudive (1906-1974), a student of Carl Jung, was a psychologist who taught at the University of Uppsala in Sweden. He was preoccupied with parapsychological interests all his life (especially with the possibility of life after death), and he kept in close contact with leading British psychical researchers. Carl Jung Carl Gustav Jung (July 26, 1875 – June 6, 1961) (IPA:) was a Swiss psychiatrist and founder of Analytical Psychology. ...
Uppsala University Uppsala University (Swedish Uppsala universitet) is a public university in Uppsala, Sweden. ...
In 1964, Raudive read Jürgenson’s book, Voices from Space, and was so impressed by it that he arranged to meet Jürgenson in 1965. He then worked with Jürgenson to make some EVP recordings, but their first efforts bore little fruit, although they believed that they could hear very weak, muddled voices. However, one night, as he listened to one recording, he clearly heard a number of voices. When he played the tape over and over, he came to understand all of them, some of which were in German, some in Latvian, some in French. The last voice on the tape, a woman’s voice, said "Va dormir, Margarete" ("Go to sleep, Margaret"). For the Nintendo 64 emulator, see 1964 (Emulator). ...
1965 (MCMLXV) was a common year starting on Friday (link goes to calendar). ...
Raudive later wrote (in his book Breakthrough): "These words made a deep impression on me, as Margarete Petrautzki had died recently, and her illness and death had greatly affected me." Amazed by this, he started researching such voices on his own and spent much of the last ten years of his life exploring electronic voice phenomena. With the help of various electronics experts he recorded over 100,000 audiotapes, most of which were made under what he described as "strict laboratory conditions." He collaborated at times with Bender. Over 400 people were involved in his research, and all apparently heard the voices. This culminated in the 1971 publication of his book Breakthrough, mentioned above. His impact was such that these phenomena are now often referred to simply as "Raudive voices." 1971 (MCMLXXI) is a common year starting on Friday (click for link to calendar). ...
Raudive developed several different approaches to recording EVP, and he referred to:
- Microphone voices: one simply leaves the tape recorder running, with no one talking; he indicated that one can even disconnect the microphone.
- Radio voices: one records the white noise from a radio that is not tuned to any station.
- Diode voices: one records from what is essentially a crystal set not tuned to a station.
Raudive delineated a number of characteristics of the voices, (as laid out in Breakthrough): - "The voice entities speak very rapidly, in a mixture of languages, sometimes as many as five or six in one sentence."
- "They speak in a definite rhythm, which seems forced on them."
- "The rhythmic mode imposes a shortened, telegram-style phrase or sentence."
- Probably because of this, "… grammatical rules are frequently abandoned and neologisms abound."
Of course, to the skeptic, these characteristics are what one might expect if indeed the "voices" are simply misinterpretations of random, "white" noise.
Spiricom From the mid-1960s to the early-1980s, research was conducted by the "Metascience Foundation", formerly based in Franklin, North Carolina, on the development of a system of communication with the dead. Two inventors, George W. Meek and William J. O'Neil, supposedly developed a machine containing sophisticated audio electronics that allowed actual two-way conversation with the afterlife. They called it Spiricom. Unlike EVP, where an investigator has to wait and playback a recording to hear disembodied voices, the Spiricom device allowed real-time two-way communication (or "Direct Voice") from beyond the grave. The project was officially defined as "An electromagnetic-etheric systems approach to communications with other levels of human consciousness". The 1960s decade refers to the years from 1960 to 1969, inclusive. ...
The 1980s decade refers to the years from 1980 to 1989, inclusive. ...
Franklin is a town located in Macon County, North Carolina. ...
At least five Spiricom machines were said to have been constructed, (named the Mark I through Mark V respectively), each a major improvement over the other previous design. The first systems worked by using a high frequency white noise generator that would provide a "carrier" wave for a ghost's actual voice. The theory was, if a ghost could record itself to magnetic media such as video cassette or audio tape via manipulating electromagnetic frequencies, the entity could manipulate the electromagnetic fields produced by the Spiricom machine and create a synthetic voice over a speaker through the oscillator of the noise generator.
Experiments began in Philadelphia sometime in 1972. During the experiment, a spirit was contacted and "guided" to the test device by a psychic medium. Initially, the Mark I did not produce communication and simply made unexplained buzzing and popping noises, however Meek believed this was an entity trying to communicate. The researchers even took in to account possible interference from a nearby airport control tower and devised better shielding for the device. Philadelphia is a village located in Jefferson County, New York. ...
1972 (MCMLXXII) was a leap year that started on a Saturday. ...
In 1974, the Mark II was made and was allegedly much more successful. The first somewhat coherent voices were heard although they were very difficult to understand. From the parts of the audio that were comprehensible, the entity claimed the machine was difficult to use. 1974 (MCMLXXIV) is a common year starting on Tuesday (click on link for calendar). ...
It wasn't until 1977 when the Spiricom Mark III and Mark IV had been built and produced a more stable sound output with microwave emitters and better shielding that more meaningful communication could take place. For the album by Ash, see 1977 (album). ...
Though various question and answer sessions with at least three separate entities, (one of which claimed to have died in 1830), the beings described the events of their death and what it was like on the "other side", saying it was just another level of human consciousness. They supposedly mentioned there are several levels in fact and they supposedly exist among them as mental energy without a physical body. They claim to "see" psychics and the Spiricom device itself as pathways of "light" that they can channel through to the material world and make communication. 1830 was a common year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ...
Proponents insist that the best reported contact was on April 16, 1980. Meeks and O'Niel were able to talk to a very clear voice of a deceased physicist, Dr. George Jeffries Mueller, who died on May 31, 1967 from a heart condition. Mueller claimed he was once an associate professor of engineering and mathematics at Orange Coast College, in Costa Mesa, California, and had also worked for at time with NASA. Mueller's voice sounded like a robot, buzzing through hissing background noise. April 16 is the 106th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (107th in leap years). ...
1980 (MCMLXXX) was a leap year starting on Tuesday. ...
May 31 is the 151st day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (152nd in leap years), with 214 days remaining. ...
1967 (MCMLXVII) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Orange Coast College (OCC), founded in 1948, is a community college providing two-year associate of arts degrees, and lower-division classes transferable to other colleges and universities. ...
Costa Mesa is a city located in Orange County, California. ...
State nickname: The Golden State Official languages English Capital Sacramento Largest city Los Angeles Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) Senators Dianne Feinstein (D) Barbara Boxer (D) Area - Total - % water Ranked 3rd 410,000 km² 4. ...
NASA Logo Listen to this article · (info) This audio file was created from the revision dated 2005-09-01, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. ...
Meeks and O'Niel claim to have spent months recording many hours of audio with Mueller's spirit, who even helped them "tune him in" better and advised them of how to improve the Spricom device. Other entities also tried to talk through the machine, however these communications did not last as long as Mueller's or were very incomprehensible. Some, according to Mueller, were unable to use the device at all. After some time, communication with Mueller was said to become less frequent. Sometimes the spirit would not speak for weeks, and eventually, communication with him ended completely. Spiricom research ended in early 1982. 1982 (MCMLXXXII) is a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Spiricom was hardly publicized, if at all, and most reports on the subject have fallen into pseudoscience and obscurity. Many skeptics believe the Spricom experiment is a complete fraud. A few amateur audio enthusiasts have tried to recreate the experiments and claim various degrees of success. Phrenology is seen today as a classic example of pseudoscience. ...
The Spiricom audio tapes of Dr. Mueller have been played on Art Bell's "Coast to Coast AM" radio program. Some of these audio clips can be downloaded from this website: Spiricom MP3's. The Spiricom reports are available for free download from this website: Spiricom Device, including the plans and research papers with technical instructions and diagrams on how to build your own Spiricom device. Meeks and O'Niel patented the device, but they allow anyone to make their own, "royalty free", and conduct further research and development, so long as that person agrees never to sell the research for profit. Arthur Art Bell, III (born June 17, 1945) is the founder and longtime host of the paranormal-themed radio program Coast to Coast AM. Though his work is much less frequent than in the past, he remains an occasional host. ...
Coast to Coast AM is a late-night syndicated radio talk show that deals with a variety of topics, but usually ones that relate to the paranormal. ...
ITC ITC (or Instrumental TransCommunication) is another controversial study of communication with the afterlife; investigating communication through ordinary electronic devices such as telephones, television sets, radios, and computers. In the case of telephones; many people report to have received strange phone calls by someone claiming to be a relative or a colleague that has died. The voices can also manifest over the white noise between untuned stations on a radio.
Some of the most remarkable are cases involving television and computers; a ghostly image of a distorted face will sometimes appear on the screen during the conversation. Some of the images even appear as a clear "full body" snapshot of the deceased individual, often standing in the foreground of a beautiful and peaceful looking backdrop. In some of these cases, the spirit will say the ethereal scene behind them is an actual view of the "astral world" and is used to reassure their loved ones who are still living, that they are in a safe and "wonderful place".
Recording EVP The quality, volume and durations of recordings are said to be increased by using a sound source placed within audible distance of the microphone during recording. Typically this would be a radio tuned to between stations so only white noise is audible; the theory being that this provides an acoustic basis for the voices to be constructed from, similar to vocoder technology. Four thousandths of a second of white noise White noise (Sample â–¶(?)) is a random signal (or process) with a flat power spectral density. ...
A vocoder (name derived from voice coder, formerly also called voder) is a speech analyser and synthesizer. ...
An alternative explanation is that the white noise provides random sounds that may be interpreted as voices by people who expect or want to hear voices. This explanation is consistent with the theory that the entire "phenomenon" is an example of pareidolia, in which a vague or random stimulus is mistakenly perceived as recognizable. Pareidolia (from Greek para- amiss, faulty, wrong + eidolon, diminutive of eidos appearance, form) is a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (usually an image) being mistakenly perceived as recognizable. ...
Still, another theory points to Stochastic Resonance as the promotive factor in allowing "spirit voices" to become audible. In this theory, white noise acts as an amplitude catalyst for small normally indistinguishable audio elements.
Voices are said to be known for being rapid, faint, and often spoken in grammatically unusual and simplified language—or even multiple languages during the same sentence. The interpretation of such recordings is often highly subjective and may differ from listener to listener; some listeners may hear nothing at all, while others report hearing specific phrases or sentences.
Theories The most acceptable explanation for those experimenters in the EVP/ITC field is that they are in contact with human spirits who are said to have survived the deaths of their physical bodies and are now living in etheric form on other planes of existence or in other dimensions.
Most long time researchers in this field will also agree that they have been in contact, at one time or another, with various astral entities who claim to have never incarnated as humans on the earthly plane. These types of entities are often times described as being either benevolent or trickster-type beings. Many reseachers have found that those trickster-type entities often times seem to "evolve" into more benevolent-like personalities as time goes by. Nevertheless, discernment for all information received by all spirit contacts in EVP experimentation is of utmost importance. Fortunately, the longer one engages in such experimentation, the better they are at discerning whom and where their information is coming from; and this is usually based on the actual "content" of the information communicated to them.
In addition to this, there are also those who claim to have been in contact with those entities who have identified themselves as nature energies or as beings from "other worlds" (extraterrestrials).
Another point of view suggests that the sounds and images seen and heard on electronic equipment might be placed there by living human beings via a kind of psychokinesis. As most paranormal investigators agree, EVP is the occurrence of sounds or voices on an audio recording which were not produced by known means. Often times these sounds or voices were not heard by the unaided physical ear of the recorder during their EVP recording session. This suggests the possibility that the voices or sounds were produced directly on the recording device via psychokinesis, or were audible outside the range of human hearing, possibly produced by psychokinetic manipulation of sound waves." http://nextstepresearch.tripod.com/id1.html
Those who are skeptical of paranormal phenomena, insist that there are more plausible explanations for EVP. The Skeptic's Dictionary summarises a number of common observations on the subject: "While it is impossible to prove that all EVPs are due to natural phenomena, skeptics maintain that they are probably due to such things as interference from a nearby CB operator or cross modulation. Some of the 'voices' are most likely people creating meaning out of random noise, a kind of auditory pareidolia or apophenia. And now that the phenomenon has a number of devoted followers [...] some hoaxers have probably entered the fray." CB may be: Cambridge: CB is the British post code for the region in eastern England which is served by the Cambridge postal sorting office. ...
Pareidolia (from Greek para- amiss, faulty, wrong + eidolon, diminutive of eidos appearance, form) is a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (usually an image) being mistakenly perceived as recognizable. ...
Apophenia is the experience of seeing patterns or connections in random or meaningless data. ...
A hoax is an attempt to trick an audience into believing that something false is real. ...
Classification Some proponents attempt to classify EVP: - "Class A" voices can be heard and understood by most people.
- "Class B" voices can be heard over a speaker, but not everyone will agree as to what is said.
- "Class C" voices can only be heard with headphones and is difficult to understand. (Class B or C voices may contain only one or two clearly understood words.)
EVP in fiction - Ubik by Philip K. Dick. A character (Glenn Runciter) communicates after his death(?) via vidphone.
- Do Det Ike by Gerry Connelly. A science fiction story published in Dream magazine in 1989 has the electronic voice phenomenon used as a means of interstellar communication.
- Ghost in the Machine. A movie starring Karen Allen about a serial killer who transfers his soul into the power grid and continues to murder victims through strange household appliance accidents. The killer also taunted victims through audio and video equipment.
- Johnny Mnemonic. A movie starring Keanu Reeves as Johnny who is contacted by the spirit of a woman who has been transferred into a computer system and helps him bring down a corrupt medical company that is withholding lifesaving information.
- Pulse. A 1988 movie about a murderous entity that kills victims through a series of electrical accidents.
- Ghost Whisperer. In episode 9 of this TV series' first season, a dead woman is trying to reach her son. EVP is the theme of the episode.
- The Electronic Ghosts. A book about an electronic engineer who becomes involved with EVP. Who uses a diode and radio frequency machine to contact a sinister entity.
- Supernatural. In a number of episodes, phone messages and tape recordings are found to contain EVP.
- White Noise. A 2005 movie about a man who loses his wife in a car accident and decides to try to contact her using uncontrolled EVP.
Book cover Pattern Recognition is William Gibsons eighth novel. ...
Some credit William Gibson with writing the most clear-cut examples of the Science Fiction genre known as cyberpunk, as well as coining the term cyberspace. ...
The September 11, 2001 attacks (also referred to as 9/11) were a series of coordinated suicide attacks upon the United States of America carried out on Tuesday, September 11, 2001, in which hijackers took control of four U.S. domestic commercial airliners. ...
Cover of the 1970 Dell paperback edition of Ubik Ubik is a 1969 science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick. ...
Philip K. Dick Philip Kindred Dick (December 16, 1928 — March 2, 1982), often known by his initials PKD, and sometimes by the pen name Richard Phillips, was an American science fiction writer and novelist who changed the genre profoundly. ...
Science fiction is a form of speculative fiction principally dealing with the impact of imagined science and technology, or both, upon society and persons as individuals. ...
Promotional poster for White Noise White Noise is a 2005 drama/supernatural thriller film, directed by Geoffrey Sax. ...
Michael Keaton in Batman Returns (1992) Michael Keaton (b. ...
Ghost in the Machine (a. ...
Karen Allen in Raiders of the Lost Ark Karen Jane Allen (born October 5, 1951 in Carrollton, Illinois) is an American actress most famous for her roles in the films National Lampoons Animal House (1978), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), and Starman (1984). ...
VCR tape box cover. ...
Keanu Reeves Keanu Charles Reeves (born on September 2, 1964 in Beirut, Lebanon) is an British-Canadian Hollywood film actor. ...
Pulse is a remake of the Japanese film Kario. ...
1988 (MCMLXXXVIII) was a leap year starting on a Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
A poltergeist (German for noisy ghost) is widely believed to be an invisible ghost that interacts with others by moving and influencing inanimate objects. ...
1982 (MCMLXXXII) is a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Steven Spielberg Steven Allan Spielberg (born December 18, 1946) is an Oscar winning Jewish American film director and producer. ...
Ghost Whisperer is an American drama television series starring Jennifer Love Hewitt, David Conrad and Aisha Tyler about a young woman who begins to realize that she can communicate with the spirits of dead people. ...
Types of diodes In electronics, a diode is a component that restricts the direction of movement of charge carriers. ...
Rough plot of Earths atmospheric transmittance (or opacity) to various wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation, including radio waves. ...
An entity is something that has a distinct, separate existence, though it need not be a material existence. ...
The supernatural (Latin: super- exceeding + nature) comprises forces and phenomena which are beyond the realm of current scientific understanding, and which may actually directly contradict conventional scientific understandings. ...
The Sixth Sense (1999) is a film that tells the fictional story of a troubled, isolated boy (played by Haley Joel Osment) and a child psychologist (played by Bruce Willis) who tries to help him. ...
Bruce Willis Walter Bruce Willis (born March 19, 1955, Kassel, West Germany) is an German-American actor and musician. ...
Methods and media for sound recording are varied and have undergone significant changes between the first time sound was actually recorded for later playback until now. ...
Four thousandths of a second of white noise White noise (Sample â–¶(?)) is a random signal (or process) with a flat power spectral density. ...
2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
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