Evidence of the Week: Just Another EVP?
by Karen Frazier, Managing Editor
Paranormal Underground Magazine
As I was going over what I was going to use as this week’s evidence, I caught myself thinking, It’s just another EVP.
Then I thought about it. As if an EVP isn’t an interesting piece of evidence. Especially one where you can clearly make out what is being said.
Are EVPs evidence of haunting? That is something that is still debatable. In many, many cases it is possible to find logical explanations for the anomaly. It could be the whisper of clothing. Or the scuffing of a foot. Traffic passing by. A bird singing. Random radio waves. There are all sorts of explanations, and I’m certain that there are for this EVP, as well.
This EVP was captured outdoors. I would tell you that I was in my favorite haunted location in the world, Wellington, but if you know my work you are probably well aware of that. There were three of us present, and no one else. No one was in the area. It was quiet and peaceful. There was no electricity within a few miles. We were not wearing walkie talkies or radios. Our cell phones had no reception. Day was approaching twilight and there was a slight breeze blowing. A stream gurgled nearby. I was the only person with a high pitched voice. The other two people there were my husband, who most definitely doesn’t sound like a girl or a child, and my 13 year old son, whose voice has rounded the bend of puberty and now matches the depth of his father’s voice.
I am the first voice you will hear. I believe I ask something like, “Can I have a peach?”
I was speaking to my husband, Jim. He wordlessly handed me one. As he did, on the recording you will hear the other high pitched voice (a child’s voice?) that is not mine pipe in. It seemed to be responding to either my question about the peach or the peach itself. You decide:
When you take away a number of the logical explanations that don’t fly because of the environmental circumstances at the moment – random cell phone reception, other people we didn’t notice speaking at the time, electricity – and you add it to the fact that the voice seems to respond to the situation at hand, do “logical” explanations fly out the window?
What do you think? Is there an explanation for this? I’m looking forward to your replies!
Enjoy Karen’s evidence from Wellington? Check out her new book, Avalanche of Spirits: The Ghosts of Wellington, now available from Amazon.com.
I don’t have any explanations.
This is an amazing evp,I love to listen to them.
Only thing that comes to mind, is the echo and acoustics of the area of Wellington you were in. Maybe when you go back, you could try to re-create the evp with what you said, at the exact spot.
Good result! I am currently under siege by another paranormal group,who insist that the majority of EVP’s are nothing more than random radio waves. I am low tech here, I strictly use analog recorders, as I had found digital ‘cleans up’ the recording way too much. I was so surprised to find on the internet, all these skeptic’s who bash people when they try to give an example of an EVP capture, and dismiss is as radio waves…..what was surprising is that when a question was asked, an answer was readily given, and that info was able to verified thru ‘hard records’. I just don’t get the logic in thinking a analog recorder has the capabilities of picking up radio waves, when the recorder does not contain any type of a receiver.
What a good idea, Sympathy. We will be up there this week, so I’m definitely going to give that a try.
As for random radio waves – it is certainly a theory and in a few cases it probably is an explanation but I don’t necessarily think it is in many of them. I’ve captured a number of EVPs in the same location with no cell phones or walkie talkies present where the recording seems responsive and appropriate to what it is we are discussing at the moment. There is a phenomenon that occurs where random radio waves circumnavigating the globe in the atmosphere can beam down out of the sky and affect a recording medium (I’m sure someone else like Dreamsinger can explain it FAR more scientifically than I just did – but that is essentially the idea of it), and I think it is a logical explanation for some EVPs. Just as I think cell phone interference can also be a logical explanation. But then there are others EVPs that stretch the credibility of those explanations.
Here’s my list of explanations for EVPs we capture at Wellington:
-Sometimes we have people with us whose cell phones actually get a signal there. Cell phone interference could take place in those instances.
-Sometimes we have walkie talkies with us. In those instances, walkie talkie signals could come into play.
-Sometimes we are in a large group of people. I can’t always remember every person who is talking and what they are saying, which could account for some audio anomalies. As a matter of fact, we’ve dismissed a number of them because of this reason. If it sounds remotely like a person who was with us or if we were in a large group at the time, then we very carefully scrutinize the recordings and discount many of them.
-Wellington is an outdoor location. There is wind and water. There are birds and animals. This has led us to dismiss a number of anomalies as very likely being wildlife related.
-We dismiss almost all whispers unless they are very specific and you can easily make out words in them because of the aforementioned sounds of nature.
Still, we come up with anomalies like this one fairly regularly where you know exactly who is there and what is being said, there are no walkie talkies or cell phones, the words are clearly speech and can be made out. The recording here is a perfect example: http://www.paranormalunderground.net/site/hi-def-audio-recording-revisited. There were three of us present and the odd voice out actually says the name of the boy we were with.
I do believe that there are a number of EVPs that aren’t actual EVPs. Heck I probably have several of them. I go back and re-analyze regularly because I think that if we keep listening we may come up with another explanation; however, I do also think that there are some that defy logical explanation.
Just three days prior to your post above, I made my first trip to Wellington. I arrived early and decided to enjoy the Iron Goat Trail before dark. It was a pleasant hike and took numerous photos.
Just before nightfall, I met up with Bert and Jayme of NWPIA. They had with them a “ghost box”. Bert asked a few questions while my digital recorder was running. A very interesting statement was discovered while reviewing the recording. For more details on this EVP, visit my blog entry here: http://rootsdigger.org/parablog/?p=511
Very cool, Paul! Thanks.
Sounds like a child’s voice to me, very interesting. I have always wanted to get a recorder and try capturing some evps.
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