Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP) captures ghostly voices in recordings, intriguing paranormal enthusiasts and skeptics alike. Scientists often attribute EVP to pareidolia or equipment anomalies, viewing it as pseudoscience.
By Brad Nakase, Attorney
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EVPs, or electronic voice phenomena, are sounds on recordings that are perceived as ghostly voices in the paranormal and ghost-hunting communities. EVP is usually brief, lasting little more than one word or small phrase, according to Konstantīns Raudive (parapsychologist), who pioneered the concept in the 1970s.
Enthusiasts believe that EVP is a type of paranormal event that frequently appears in recordings that have background noise or static. EVP is considered by scientists to be a pseudoscience propagated by popular media and a type of audio pareidolia, which is the interpretation of random noises as speech in one’s native tongue. The most common theories for EVP are hoaxes, equipment objects, and apophenia, which is the perception of patterns in seemingly random data.
Using the new technology of the day, including photography, spiritualists attempted to demonstrate communication with the spirit realm as the Spiritualist religion movement gained prominence between the 1840s to 1940s with the distinctive conviction that the souls of deceased people can be reached by mediums.
These concepts were so well-liked that Edison was quizzed about the prospect of communicating with ghosts using his gadgets in a Scientific American interview. He retorted that assuming the spirits were limited to subtle impacts, then a sensitive recorder would offer a greater opportunity for spirit connection than the communicators used at that time, such as table tilting and Ouija board. Nevertheless, there is no evidence that Edison developed or manufactured a device for this use.
Mediums investigated employing this technology to show contact with deceased individuals as sound recordings became more common. Attempts to interact with spirits via portable recording equipment and contemporary digital technology persisted even as spiritualism decreased in the latter half of the twentieth century.
1. Early Interest
To supplement his investigations into capturing ghosts, Attila von Szalay (American photographer) was one of the initial people to attempt recording something he thought to be the sounds of deceased people. His first experiments with a 78 rpm record date back to 1941, but he didn’t think he succeeded until 1956 when he switched to a reel-to-reel recorder.
Von Szalay captured numerous recordings with Raymond Bayless using specially designed equipment that included a speaker and an outside recording device attached to the insulated box housing the microphone. Szalay claimed to have discovered numerous sounds from the tape, a few of which had been recorded while nobody was inside the cabinet, that were not audible through the speaker during the recording process. He thought that these noises were the voices of ghosts from discarnate.
Messages like “Hot dog, Art!” and “This is G!” as well as “Merry Christmas & Happy New Year” were among the initial recordings thought to be spirit voices. American Society for Psychical Research featured a study by Raymond Bayless and Von Szalay in 1959. Later on, Bayless co-wrote the book in the year 1979 titled “Phone Calls from the Dead”.
Bird songs were recorded in 1959 by Swedish film producer and painter Friedrich Jürgenson. He thought he sensed his departed father’s voice when he played the tape afterward, after which he sensed his late wife’s spirit saying his name. He proceeded to record many additional songs, one of which he said included a note from his mother, who passed away.
2. Raudive voices
Approximately 100000 recordings were made by Latvian psychologist Konstantin Raudive, who collaborated with Jürgenson and lectured at Sweden’s Uppsala University. Raudive claimed that the recordings were contacts with persons who had passed away. There were words/phrases Raudive stated were discernible in certain portions of these audio recordings, which were made in a laboratory with RF screening.
Raudive requested people listen to and analyze his recordings in an effort to verify their content. He thought that the sounds he recorded were so clear that it was impossible for them to be clarified using more conventional methods. In 1968, Raudive published Breakthrough: An Amazing Experiment in Electronic Communication with the Dead, which was subsequently translated into English and published in 1971.
3. Spiricom & Frank’s Box
William O’Neil created “The Spiricom,” a digital audio instrument, in 1980. According to O’Neil, the apparatus was constructed in accordance with instructions he supposedly received telepathically from physicist George Mueller, who passed away six years earlier. On 6th April 1982, O’Neil gave a press event in Washington, DC, claiming that he could have two-way discussions with spirits using the Spiricom gadget. He also gave researchers free access to the design specs.
O’Neil asserted to have achieved certain results with his own Spiricom devices, but nobody else has ever publicly verified these claims. George Meek, a former businessman, and O’Neil’s companion, explained that O’Neil’s mediumistic talents were components of the feedback loop that allowed the system to function, which is why O’Neil’s success was unrepeated by others.
A thorough paper elucidating Spiricom’s development by O’Neil & Meek was authored by Kenny Biddle in 2020. The re-emergence of the instrument on the TV show Ghosthunters served as the impetus for him to act. In both the instrument’s initial design and the episode of Ghosthunters, he thoroughly refuted the “science” underlying it.
“Frank’s Box” aka the “Ghost Box,” invented by EVP aficionado Frank Sumption in 2002 for purported immediate interaction with the deceased, is another technological gadget designed expressly to record EVP. Sumption says the spirit universe gave him the blueprints for his invention. The gadget can be described by its AM radio reception and white noise generation that has been altered to selectively pick split-second audio bursts from the AM band.
According to the device’s detractors, any significant reaction a user receives is a coincidence or the product of pareidolia because the device’s impact is subjective, unreplicable, and dependent on radio clutter. Frank’s Box, according to paranormal investigator Ben Radford, is a “contemporary variant of the Ouija boards… occasionally referred to as the ‘broken radio’.”
4. Interest in the late twentieth and early 21st centuries
With the aim of raising understanding of EVP and providing standardized techniques for recording it, Sarah Estep established the nonprofit American Association of Electronic Voice Phenomena (AA-EVP) in 1982 in Severna Park, Maryland. Estep started investigating extraterrestrial presence (EVP) in 1976 and claims to have recorded hundreds of communications from friends, family, and aliens that she believed to be from different worlds or universes.
Ernst Senkowski first used the word Instrumental Trans Communication (ITC) in the decade of the 1970s to more broadly describe contact between spirits and other discarnate beings and humans via any type of electronic device, such as cassette recorders, fax devices, televisions, or computers.
One famously reported instance of ITC involved the purported appearance of Friedrich Jürgenson’s image on a TV in a colleague’s home that was intentionally set to an empty channel. Jürgenson was an EVP aficionado, and his burial was that same day. ITC aficionados also examine the Droste effect’s TV & video camera return loop.
Scott Rogo, a parapsychologist, reported a purported paranormal event in 1979. Individuals claim to have received short, straightforward phone calls—typically one-time-only—from the spirits of departed acquaintances, family members, or strangers. According to Rosemary Guiley, Rogo “was regularly chastised within the paranormal research establishment for weak study, which, detractors believed, led to incorrect results.”
In 1995, David Fontana (parapsychologist) postulated in a paper that tape devices could be haunted by poltergeists. Maurice Grosse, a parapsychologist who looked into the Enfield Poltergeist situation, may have experienced something similar, he surmised. But after looking over Fontana’s article, Tom Flynn, an expert on media for the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, proposed a wholly naturalistic interpretation of the phenomenon.
The dubious researcher Joe Nickell claims, “Sometimes, the recording device can stick to one of these guide posts while it travels, especially when it’s older and wet. The tape keeps feeding and forms a fold whenever this occurs on a deck with motorized take-up and supply spindles. Flynn speculates that the loop of record of that kind made its way through Grosse’s recorder’s operations.”
Using the techniques of Konstantin Raudive (EVP investigator) and the research of Mark Macy (instrumental trans-communication researcher) as a guide, Imants Barušs of the University of Western Ontario’s Dept. of Psychology performed a series of studies in 1997. A radio was set to a blank frequency, and 81 sessions yielded an overall 60 hours & 11 minutes of recording. A person tried to speak with a possible EVP source or sat quietly while recordings were being made.
According to Barušs, he recorded certain occurrences that seemed like voices, however, they were insufficient and too erratic to constitute reliable evidence and too interpretive to be categorically labeled as extrasensory perception (EVP) experiences. “While we were able to duplicate EVP in the limited sense of hearing voices on tape records, none of the occurrences we observed in our research was obviously abnormal, much less explainable as the work of discarnate creatures,” he said in his conclusion.
As a result, we have not successfully replicated EVP in the true sense.” A study of the literature is included in the results, which were presented in 2001 in the Journal of Scientific Exploration.
An investigation by paranormal researcher Alexander MacRae was published in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research in 2005. Using a gadget he designed himself that produced EVP, MacRae undertook sessions to record. In an effort to show that many people would perceive the EVP during recordings in exactly the same manner, seven participants were given a set of five sentences and instructed to pick the one that best matched the selections. According to MacRae, the outcomes of the hearing panels suggested that the songs were supernatural in nature.
Right now, some EVP researchers choose to use portable electronic voice recorders as their primary tool. EVP enthusiasts occasionally attempt to capture EVP in audio- and RF-screened rooms because a few of these gadgets are highly vulnerable to RF (Radio Frequency) contamination.
Certain EVP aficionados characterize hearing the phrases in EVP as a skill akin to picking up an unfamiliar tongue. According to skeptics, the reported occurrences might be misinterpreted as natural events, researchers’ unintentional use of electronic devices, or intentional manipulation of the investigators and their instruments by outside parties. Since EVP & ITC are rarely studied by scientists, amateur investigators who are driven by subjective ideas and lack the finances and experience to undertake scientific studies do the majority of the field’s research.
The genesis of EVP is attributed to a variety of paranormal phenomena, such as communication from ghosts, natural forces, extraterrestrials, or entities from alternate dimensions, as well as human beings imprinting impulses directly on an electrical medium via psychokinesis. The majority of arguments for EVP that are considered paranormal presuppose that communication of intelligence produced the EVP using methods other than those that are commonly associated with communication technology. Explicitly disputing this assumption, natural explanations regarding reported EVP cases tend to offer explanations that do not necessitate new mechanisms unfounded in established scientific phenomena.
A study conducted by Imants Barušs (psychologist) failed to confirm theories of paranormal sources for EVPs captured in controlled environments. A justification can be built around the assumption that numerous EVPs are byproducts of the procedure for recording itself that the controllers are inexperienced with,” writes Brian Regal in Pseudoscience: A Critical Encyclopedia (2009). Anomalies in the EVP lack conclusive evidence that they are spiritual in nature; most have alternate, nonspiritual causes.”
1. Natural Explanations
The propensity of the brain of humans to identify patterns in seemingly random inputs and radio interference are two straightforward scientific justifications for why certain individuals who hear static on their audio equipment might think they hear voice. It’s possible that some recordings are fakes made by con artists or japes.
2. Psychology & Perception
Whenever the brain mistakenly perceives unfamiliar patterns as familiar ones, the condition is known as auditory pareidolia. When it comes to EVP, this could lead to an observer mistaking unnatural noise on a recording for the well-known sounding of an individual’s voice.
Evidence for this has been mentioned, including the tendency for a noticeable voice observed in white noise audio recordings to appear in a language that the researchers are familiar with instead of in an unknown tongue, and a wide category of phenomena known as Rorschach Audio, coined by Joe Banks (author), that has been presented as a universal explanation for every indication of EVP.
In 2019, Kenny Biddle (paranormal researcher) looked into claims put forward by ghost hunters and the museum owner that an EVP record clearly stating the lady’s name, “Annie,” is actually a recording of the lady in the painting. The painting in question was believed to be haunted. Those who pay attention to the initials Annie will know what they’re looking for because it is inscribed on the opposite side of the painting. A customized Radio Shack radio that could continuously scan over the available FM or AM bands without suppressing the sound was used to make the EVP.
According to Biddle, in response to the ghost hunter’s broad inquiry, “What’s your name?” you will eventually hear a word that seems like a name, as well as it’s likely to be one given that you’re constantly exposed to names through radio broadcasts, commercials, news reports, and other media. Some of the phrases that Biddle mentions as frequently heard while listening to the radio include “anything, company, anyone, many, mahogany, and even any.” “… and he…” might seem like “Annie” to someone who is trained to hear the initials Annie.
The “noise floor,” or the electrical sound produced by every electrical appliance, is typically raised to generate white noise for EVP recordings, according to skeptics including David Federlein, Terence Hines, Michael Shermer, and Chris French. It is possible to create noises that resemble speech by filtering this noise. Federlein claims that this is analogous to employing a wah pedal of a guitar, which produces open vowel tones with targeted sweep filters that travel the spectrum. Federlein said this sounded just like an EVP. This can provide the sense of hearing voices from beyond the grave when combined with other factors like radio station cross-modulation or malfunctioning ground loops.
The brain of humans is wired to identify patterns, and given enough noise to process, it can pick up phrases even in the absence of an intelligent origin. Expectation also contributes significantly to the belief that voices are being heard above background noise.
While not the same as pareidolia, apophenia remains related to it. Apophenia was proposed as a potential explanation. It can be described as “the sudden finding of linkages or significance in objects which are arbitrary, disconnected, or meaningless.” James Alcock (psychologist) states that cross-modulation, apophenia, expectancy, and illusory thoughts are the most plausible explanations for what individuals listen to EVP records. Alcock came to the conclusion that “Electronic Voice Experiences are the result of desire and anticipation; the assertions fade away in the gaze of scientific investigation.”
3. Physics
EVP recordings, for instance, exhibit interference, particularly when produced on equipment using RLC circuitry. In many circumstances, voices or additional sounds from broadcasting sources are represented as radio signals. It is known that cross-modulation by other kinds of electronics can cause anomalies, as can disruption from CB radio signals and cordless baby monitors. Even receiving radio signals can cause circuits to vibrate in the absence of an inner power supply.
Errors resulting from the technique employed to record sounds, such as distortion produced by signal over-amplification during recording, are known as capture errors.
Some EVP may be explained by artifacts produced in the process of trying to improve the quality of an already-existing recording. Techniques like frequency isolation, resampling, and reduction of noise or augmentation can result in records that have attributes that are noticeably different from what was originally recorded.
It’s possible that the initial EVP recordings were made with tape recorders whose recording heads and erasure were not properly aligned, leaving older audio files on the tape unfinished. This would make it possible to overlay or blend a tiny portion of older material into a brand-new, “silent” record.
4. Meteor showers and Sporadic meteors
The prospect of radio signal reflection from meteors exists for every radio transmission over 30 MHz that is not absorbed by the ionosphere. After passing through the high atmosphere, meteors (a process known as ablation) leave a path of electrons and ionized particles that reflect radio waves that would otherwise travel into space. The reflected waves originate from transmitters situated beneath the meteor reflection’s receiving horizon. This means that a foreign voice could be carried by the short scattered wave and interfere with the radio receivers across Europe. Based on the magnitude of the meteor, radio waves reflected by it can endure anywhere from 0.05 to 1 second.
Numerous groups either focus on researching EVP and acoustic trans-communication or show interest in the topic in general. Within these groups, people can conduct research, write books or articles for journals, give talks, and organize conferences in which they can exchange experiences. Furthermore, there are organizations that contest the phenomenon’s reality based on scientific evidence.
The International Ghost Hunters Society and the ATransC (Association TransCommunication), originally the AA-EVP (American Association of Electronic Voice Phenomena), continue to investigate ITC and EVP, gathering evidence of claimed EVP that is accessible online. Joe Banks, a sound artist, started the Rorschach Audio Project, which explains EVP as the result of interference from radio waves mixed with auditory pareidolia.
The Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Biopsychocybernetics Research is a non-profit whose goal is to investigate anomalous phenomena associated with neurophysiological circumstances. The AA-EVP states that it’s “the sole formalized research organization we are aware of that focuses on the research aspect of ITC.”
EVP continues to be of interest to spiritualists and parapsychologists. In an attempt to communicate with spirits, many spiritualists explore various methods, which they see as proof of life beyond death. “Spiritual communications using technology is a significant modern-day advancement in mediumship,” states the National Spiritualist Association of Churches. The most popular term for this is EVP. 1/3 of the churches hold sessions where participants attempt to use EVP to interact with spirit things, according to an unofficial poll conducted by the group’s Department of Phenomenal Evidence.
One million dollars was offered by the James Randi Educational Foundation as payment for evidence demonstrating the paranormal origin of any phenomenon, including EVP.
USA
The demographic makeup of American paranormal communities that employed electronic voice phenomena was studied in 2015 by Marc Eaton (Sociology associate professor). The study’s findings revealed a high proportion of white people who were brought up within the Roman Catholic Church (all of which make up just 21 percent of the country’s population) and who were primarily college-educated. While the overwhelming body of data indicates that women as well as “less socially accepted persons” are more inclined to be paranormal believers, Eaton’s study did not include demographic sampling that supported this claim.
Popular culture has been impacted by the EVP notion. It’s a common pastime, similar to ghost hunting, and also a coping mechanism for loss. Its impact can be heard in radio, television, music, and film.
1. Groups
Hundreds of local, national, and online discussion forums have focused on EVP research. According to John Zaffis (paranormal investigator), “Ghost hunting has boomed since the time the World Wide Web took off.” Investigators search purportedly haunted locations using electronic equipment, such as audio recorders, video cameras, and EMF meters, in an effort to find visual or audible proof of ghosts. In a bid to record EVP, many people employ portable recording equipment.
2. Films
White Noise, Poltergeist, and The Sixth Sense are among the movies that feature EVP.
3. Video Games
The first-person scary adventure game Sylvio was created independently and published in June 2015 for MS Windows (on Steam), PlayStation 4, OS X, Xbox, and One. It was powered by the Unity engine. The audio recordist Juliette Waters, who uses electronic voice phenomena to capture ghostly voices, is the main character of the video game. She needs to make use of her recorder to get through the night after becoming stuck in an abandoned family park that hasn’t been open since a massive slide in 1971. Sylvio 2, a follow-up, was made available on October 11, 2017.
Identifying hostile spirits in various locales is the goal of a group of between one and four players in the cooperative horror game Phasmophobia. Players can determine what kind of ghost they are dealing with by using the Spirit Box object in the video game, which records the EVPs of specific ghost types. In Phasmophobia, EVPs are comprised of individual words that indicate responses to player-initiated questions. Examples of these words are “here,” “death,” “attack,” “adult,” etc.
4. TV & Radio
A Haunting, Ghost Whisperer, The Omega Factor, In Search Of, Ghost Hunters, Ghost Adventures, MonsterQuest, The Secret Saturdays, Supernatural, Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files, Derren Brown Investigates, Buzzfeed Unsolved: Paranormal, and Ghost Lab have all featured it.
5. Novels
William Peter Blatty’s 1983 book Legion has a subplot in which a seriously ill neurologist named Dr. Vincent Amfortas leaves Father Dyer an “only open after my death” letter describing his experiences using EVP audio recordings to communicate with the deceased, including the recently dead wife of the Doctor, Ann. The Exorcist III, the movie adaption of the book, does not feature Amfortas’s figure or the EVP sub-plot, but Kinderman’s dream depicts dead people attempting to speak with those who are alive via radio.
William Gibson’s 2003 book Pattern Recognition tells the story of a woman trying to persuade her daughter that her dad is still speaking to her through tape recordings made after his demise or disappearance during the 2001 (September 11) attacks.
6. Theatre & Music
In Dimitris Lyacos’ vampire-themed drama Nyctivoe (2001), the protagonist and his departed friend converse through an audio recorder against a soundtrack of static and white noise.
The speech of the woman persona NCTV is broadcast from a TV screen over a white/static noise backdrop in Dimitris Lyacos’ 2014 play With the People from the Bridge, which explores the concept of the reappearance of deceased people.
Disembodied Voices on Tape, a song by Vyktoria Pratt Keating from her record Things that Fall from the Sky (2003)—which was put together by Andrew Giddings from Jethro Tull—talks about EVP.
“Example #22” by Laurie Anderson, taken from her record Big Science (1981), features English vocal segments that reflect EVP interspersed with verbal German phrases and sentences.
A snippet taken out of an EVP audio is played again during The Smiths’ “Rubber Ring” conclusion. This is “translated” from the “spirit voices” from a tape of the 1970s, meaning “You have fallen asleep and you don’t wish to believe.” The original tape is from the 1971 album that was released along with Raudive’s publication “Breakthrough.” It was republished as a complimentary flexi disc in the 1980s as part of Unexplained magazine.
EVP served as inspiration for Bass Communion’s Ghosts on Magnetic Tape album from 2004.
The song “Empty Churches” by Dan Barrett’s band Giles Corey features tracks 2, 36, and 38, respectively, titled “Raymond Cass,” “Justified Theft,” and “Tramping,” from the compilation An Introduction to EVP by The Ghost Orchid, which contains excerpts from various EVP experiments conducted by numerous researchers, most of whom are unidentified, though some, like Friedrich Jurgenson, Konstantin Raudive, and Raymond Cass, have been identified as more well-known researchers who examined EVP recordings.
EVP recordings can be heard in the background of the 2nd song, “Katharsis – Pandemonium,” on Jarosław Pijarowski’s 2017 record Katharsis (A Small Victory), which features Polish theater troupe Teatr Tworzenia.
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