Friday, August 3, 2007

E.V.P. - The best and worst of paranormal evidence. Part One

E.V.P. Electronic Voice Phenomena is the paranormal phenomena of capturing disembodied voices on audio recording devices, such as a tape recorder, digital voice recorder, or video recorder, that is not heard at the time the recording was made.

There are a number of hypothesis' on how the voices are made, and where they come from, and by whom they come from. Anything from alter-dimensional beings making contact, to the worlds collective subconscious some how being accessed by a 20 dollar voice recorder, and most likely the most popular hypothesis is the disembodied voice of a deceased person, a ghost, or spirit. The later is what I will be focusing on through out this article. As you see, nothing is set in stone in regards to E.V.P., and for that matter, the paranormal.

E.V.P.'s come in different classifications. This is to make it easier on a researcher during categorizing their recordings. There are 3 classifications, that most follow. I'm sure some researchers classify their own recordings in their own way, but for the most part, there is a kind of standard classification system.

It was created by Sarah Estep of AA-EVP – The American Association of Electronic Voice Phenomena.

Class A – E.V.P.
Is a recording that is clear and distinct in what the voices are saying. Everyone that listens to it will agree on what is being said, with out having to be told what is being said, or any kind of enhancements.

Class B – E.V.P.
Is a recording that maybe loud, but not exactly crisp and clear in what is being said. This is the typical Class E.V.P. that most researchers will get. It will be audible, however it may require some filtering or amplification through audio editing software. Most people that listen to it, will either need to be told what is being said in order to understand it, or each person will hear something different from the next person.

Class C – E.V.P.
Is a recording that is generally very low, and hard to hear. What can be heard is generally unintelligible.

An E.V.P. In my opinion can be the best as well as the worst kind of paranormal evidence. There is truly nothing like capturing a class A – E.V.P.. When you capture a real class A you know it, as the thing tends to grab you in a place that honestly, unnerves you a bit.

An then there is the flip side. Class B' and C' can really get to annoying you when nothing can be understood. Sitting around for an hour or more trying to filter out noise and trying to amplify the audio to a legible level get tiresome. Not to mention that if any kind of enhancing has to be done on a recorded clip in order to be heard or understood, then that piece of evidence is pretty much null and void. As the process of cleaning up an E.V.P., most of the time damages the audio. This is why you are to never enhance the original clip you may have captured.

In this day and age of the over night paranormal team. Sites are popping up left and right with all of these new teams and organizations displaying their evidence. There is good and bad in this. Good by way that more people are becoming open to the possibility of paranormal phenomena. Bad that, most of these teams are inexperienced not only in their research but even worse, in their analysis of their possible evidence. They then upload this evidence to their websites for the general public to listen to, and look over. With out fully knowing what it is they have captured if anything. This only will confuse the less informed public. Not to mention, makes the paranormal community as a whole look really bad to the scientific community, that quite honestly, we want to be excepted by so badly.

More to come at a later date.

E



2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do you think that having audio samples of team members can help rule out natural voices during EVP analysis?

Eclectic said...

Hello Fulco,

Yes, as a matter of fact i do believe having audio samples of investigators voices on file can be very helpful for analysis of potential E.V.P.

What i like to do, is get a clear recording of each investigator, saying a number of phrases, or reading aloud an excerpt of some book, and keep it on file.

Later, if need be. You can run a spectral analysis of audio clips of investigators that you have on file, compared with potential E.V.P.'s.

This would certainly help eliminate any possible confusion in the analysis. Another good practice, is to always have your investigators, speaking at their normal tone of voice while on site.

Whispering should never be allowed, and investigators with soft voices, should be encouraged to speak louder. This way they can be identified later through a spectral analysis if need be.

Thanks for stopping by fulco. I'll talk with you soon.

E