Electronic Voice Phenomena: An Overview
If you’ve listened to our Sallie House series there’s a pretty good chance you’re familiar with Electronic Voice Phenomena, also known as an EVP. However, if you’re not and...at this point in your paranormal journey too afraid to ask what in the hell an EVP is, the blog is for you!
In short, an EVP is a human-like voice that is captured on data (be it an audiotape or a cellphone recording) that should not exist. Sometimes, the EVP picks up sound that was not heard by anyone in the room recording or heard from outside a door. Other times, it picks up and gives the chance to further examine voice phenomena that was heard but was very faint. Typically, the recording is put into an application to further amplify the sound artifact and filter out other sounds so that the EVP can be heard even more clearly.
Some EVPs are language and even respond to the questions being asked by the person recording. Other EVPs are impossible sound interferences or just guttural screams with no discernible words.
Although EVPs have been largely popularized on ghost hunting TV shows, the practice of capturing recordings of unseen people and/or entities goes back much further. In fact, Thomas Edison told Scientific American, “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.”
The biggest question, of course, is how these sounds are made...and who is making them.
Any paranormal researcher worth their salt will tell you there are plenty of ways to get a false EVP - unaccounted for persons, sensitivity of the device, picking up radio waves, someone else tampering with the tapes (either without the knowledge of the parties involved or with the express intent to invent an EVP to fool others), HAM radio interference, audio pareidolia, sound pollution, and even just a bad recording device. However, what about the EVPs, like the Sallie House EVP, that have been through the known-ringer and still don’t have an answer?
Some believe that EVPs are recordings of the dead, which is why EVPs are typically recorded in allegedly haunted locations. Others believe they may be contact from another dimension or plane of existence. Though these might not be found in haunted locales, some believe there are places where the veil is thin or where unexplainable things seem to happen, and that’s where you might find an EVP. And, some believe the voices are not human and are demonic or evil entities or beings that seek to make contact with us for a variety of reasons.
There are three main classes of EVPs:
Class A: Voices are clear and easy to understand
Class B: Voices are loud and somewhat clear, but usually you need headphones to really hone in
Class C: Voices are soft and even indecipherable.
I would suggest adding in to this EVP category unidentified audio interference or indecipherable voices (perhaps it sounds like a human scream, but just a scream...no words).
EVPs are continuing to be recorded and new methods are evolving to further ensure that this phenomena is really a phenomena and does not have an easy technical explanation. For example, the Hellier team uses the Estes Method, which you can read more about on another AL blog post.
Whatever EVPs may be and whomever or whatever may be using them to communicate with us...one thing is for sure: they are certainly astonishing.
Thank you Tabitha F for this blogstonishing suggestion!