The ARGNY Blog

Sotto Voce Electronica

This is another post that I've been meaning to do since November, back when The Forever Family Foundation held their Synchronized Universe symposium. Two of the guests of the symposium were Lisa & Tom Butler of the Association of America of Electronic Voice Phenomena. They had some amazing examples of EVPs, which they played for the audience. For an explanation of EVPs, please see my previous post on the subject. They also demonstrated how EVPs are recorded and seemed to make contact with the dead husband of one of the audience members, George. During the demonstration, George is thanked for his time and when the EVP is played back you can distinctly hear a voice reply, "thank you."

During the demonstration I did my own EVP recordings and what I captured is neither great, nor shocking, but I do believe I captured what the Butlers would call a Class C EVP. In both of these, I cannot make out what is being said. But, give it a shot: Download EVP1 and Download EVP2. You will need to use headphones and to crank up the volume of your computer just to hear these, but I do think there is something there. At the time of the recordings, these sounds were not audible to me or the rest of the audience of about 100 people. I would love suggestions, both productive and counter-productively comical.

Are You Talkin' To Me?

There is what seems to be a pretty interesting device produced by Digital Dowsing, LLC, called the Ovilus. It allows ghosts to "speak" through the device by providing an electronic database of words for the ghost to use to vocalize responses to questions, the environment or whatever may be on its mind. The results I have seen are pretty interesting, especially the instances where the ghost is providing direct answers to questions asked, as seen in this video, taken by the paranormal investigation group, U.N.S.E.E.N. Paranormal Research.

As the creator of the device, Bill Chappelle will openly confess, he has no idea how the thing works as a communicator for ghosts. Nonetheless, the results are sometimes pretty impressive.

People Are People

so why should it be that you and I should get along so awful--ly? Oh, that's right, because you're dead.

I'm not sure what it is that is so creepy about ghosts. Ghosts are not demons (more on this subject in later posts) or monsters or jump out from behind the sofa, waving their arms and shrieking, like in movies. Evidence suggests that in the real world, ghosts are people. What evidence? Of course there's anecdotal evidence: people hear stories that an old ship's captain who died in a ship wreck haunts a certain location. More times than not, the "captain" is a noisy heating duct or is a completely different ghost altogether.

Another type of evidence is the apparition. This is the ghost image of some part of a person or their full body, which is extremely rare. Problem is that unless the image is clearly photographed, it is only anecdotal evidence, which, unless there are multiple verifiable witnesses, doesn't count.

Next to photographic evidence of an apparition, some of the best evidence comes in the form of Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVPs). These are recordings of ghost voices that are usually in response to questions or comments made directly to the ghost, about the ghost or within the context of the investigation. The American Association of Electronic Voice Phenomena classifies EVPs in this way:

Class A	EVP is a message that can be heard without headphones and that people can generally agree on its content.
Class B	EVP requires a headphone to distinguish message content and not everyone will agree on the message.
Class C	EVP requires headphone, often needs amplification and filtering and will seldom even be heard by others.

However, in my book, EVPs can only be counted as evidence if

• the recording is clear and understandable
• the circumstances of the recording can be verified (there were no living people that could have made the recorded message)
• the presenter of the evidence can be verified (is the recorder/presenter of the evidence trustworthy or just a mental patient)
• multiple recordings can be made at the same location over time. This last one is ideal evidence, but there may be factors that could prohibit multiple recordings.

Point is, people get freaked out by ghosts. What they forget is that ghosts are people. People who still love their families and are probably missing them. And if the ghost is hanging around for an extended length of time, it's probably a person with emotional problems that needs caring, understanding and help. Or, just like the living, it could be a person that's a complete bastard.