EVP-Electronic Voice Phenomena

EVP-Electronic Voice Phenomena
Talking to the Dead
Written by James Paradie

Published in the White Mountain Shopper on June 2nd, 2010

This weeks edition of Scared Sheetless isn’t going to a haunted house. This week I will be talking about EVPs and how they work.

Every once in awhile when I mention the words “EVP” I get a response somewhere along the lines of “What?” For those who don’t know, EVP stands for Electronic Voice Phenomena and it’s probably the most important tool to ghost hunting. Cameras are great, camcorders are awesome, but a recording device is the black cats meow. One observation of why I think this is because when a spirit is trying to show itself it uses up a lot of energy-this is why you get cold spots-and you would think it would use less energy for the spirit to just say something then it would to appear on camera. That’s just my investigator opinion though. But, how does this ghost hunting tool work?

First, let’s talk about the man who popularized the idea of using regular tape recorders to talk to the dead. His name was Dr. Konstantin Raudive(1909-1974)and he is recommended by many as the man who popularized the idea of EVP use to contact spirits. Dr. Raudive specialized in parapsychology(aka Paranormal Science)and spent the last ten years of his life devoted to this new way of getting in contact with the afterlife that has now become one of the main ways of catching a spirit on audiotape, an EVP.

Dr. Raudive had wrote a book on the stories of the EVPs he gathered. He was said to have collected tens of thousands of voices and wrote about some of them in his book called, “Breakthrough-An Amazing Experiment in Electronic Communication with the Dead.” The novel, however, is out of print.

How does EVPs work you may ask? The basics of this question is that whichever proposed haunted location you are at, you ask the spirit questions. Simple questions: “What’s your name?”, “Why are you here?”, “What’s your favorite color?”, “Are you trapped here?”, “Do you need help to cross over?” All these questions, some may seem ridiculous yes, but any question may get a possible answer.

Recently I got in contact with Ron Kolek, you may recognize the name, because he has not only been on Fox News down in Massachusetts, but also has a new book out called “The Ghost Chronicles”. Ron and his son, Ron Jr., joined NEPI on the infamous Sugar Hill Inn case back in April(see the discussion “Shock, Awe, and Peace” on my Scared Sheetless Facebook page for more info). I asked Ron about his opinion on EVPs and here’s what he told me: “EVP's are an accepted way to communicate with spirits by most paranormal teams. I only accept class A EVPs as evidence, although I find other classes interesting. Some unfortunately are too open to interpretation. My most interesting case was when we [received] a EVP message [that] was recorded over the announcement portion of a answering machine. It revealed directions to the grave of a spirit that was haunting a house.”

But there are those who claim that hearing voices, tapping, or footsteps can be a form of pareidolia, which means you can look or hear something for so long that your mind wants to hear something or see something and in fact “makes” you hear it or see it. Your mind is playing tricks on itself and you start hearing voices or seeing faces in the window. You want it so badly that your mind makes you see it. A perfect example of this is our beloved fallen icon, the Old Man of the Mountain is a prime example of pareidolia. We saw an old man outline, but it wasn’t an old man.

You may ask, “If I’m on a ghost hunt or investigating my own house, how will I know it’s what I’m really hearing or just my mind?” The simple solution is the old saying, “two heads are better then one”, but in this case “four ears are better then two.” When we, NEPI, go on cases, we always team up, so if someone see’s something then we know to ask the person next to us, “Did you see that?!” We have a better idea. Most of the time it’s better to study evidence with someone else, so if you see something on the tape or hear something on the audio then you can have someone approve of the observation.

It’s spooky stuff indeed, but if your curious grab yourself an audio recorder and just press record while your asleep and hear what you get-you might be surprised. EVPs will of course be more discussed in future editions of Scared Sheetless.

Special thanks to “Van Helsing” Ron Kolek for his words of wisdom in this weeks edition of Scared Sheetless. Make sure to check out Ron Kolek’s website, www.neghostproject.com and make sure to get his new book, “The Ghost Chronicles.”

And also, make sure to search Scared Sheetless on Facebook. Join the group that as of now has 123 members and is growing pretty quickly-thank you!

This has been another Scared Sheetless. Have a happy and safe 4th of July my fellow Graveyard Disciples!