Electronic Voice Phenomena - what's up with that?
- Thread starter GeoffP
- Start date
Hey! Guess what??? I put down "EVP IS TRUE" even though I'm slightly skeptical of it. Know why?
Because no answer was completely accurate enough to portray my thoughts.
And Baywatch? You think I'm watching P. Anderson's mammaries flopping up and down?
Hardly. I have better things to do than make myself into a neanderthal man. I'm a fairly good actor, but not that good.
Oh. D. Hasselhoff's hairy (?) chest? You think I'm swooning over that? Get real.
Okay. Serious, now.
EVP is fairly strange. And perhaps a tad subjective. Like the manner and methods used to get these audible "voices" perhaps? Are they trustworthy?
I can't say. But I definitely believe that it is possible that they are recording things that are not ordinary. I can't say either way. Fairly open about the phenomenon.
Because no answer was completely accurate enough to portray my thoughts.
And Baywatch? You think I'm watching P. Anderson's mammaries flopping up and down?
Hardly. I have better things to do than make myself into a neanderthal man. I'm a fairly good actor, but not that good.
Oh. D. Hasselhoff's hairy (?) chest? You think I'm swooning over that? Get real.
Okay. Serious, now.
EVP is fairly strange. And perhaps a tad subjective. Like the manner and methods used to get these audible "voices" perhaps? Are they trustworthy?
I can't say. But I definitely believe that it is possible that they are recording things that are not ordinary. I can't say either way. Fairly open about the phenomenon.
Some theories are:
1.They are voices of people who have died.
2.They are from another dimension.
3.They come from the researchers' own subconscious.
4.Some people believe that these voices are angelic or demonic in origin.
5.Skeptics assert that there is nothing to EVP at all - that the "voices" are either hoaxed, random noise interpreted as voices, real voices already on the tape, or voices picked up from radio, cell phones and other such sources.
http://paranormal.about.com/library/weekly/aa020303a.htm
imo number 5 makes the most sense
1.They are voices of people who have died.
2.They are from another dimension.
3.They come from the researchers' own subconscious.
4.Some people believe that these voices are angelic or demonic in origin.
5.Skeptics assert that there is nothing to EVP at all - that the "voices" are either hoaxed, random noise interpreted as voices, real voices already on the tape, or voices picked up from radio, cell phones and other such sources.
http://paranormal.about.com/library/weekly/aa020303a.htm
imo number 5 makes the most sense
Scratch Baywatch and produce something more along the lines of Star Trek TNG. Sometimes faky, but much more believable than Baywatch.
Bikini women and buff beach-dwelling stud-horses are a figment of the imagination, I think. In real life, they would have all been devoured by sharks in short order.
Bikini women and buff beach-dwelling stud-horses are a figment of the imagination, I think. In real life, they would have all been devoured by sharks in short order.
leopold99 said:
Thanks leopold. I relly relly hab lotzza respekt ferr yerr opinyonz.
Serious, now. Number 5 is a strong possibility, but a little convenient for people who want to grind Occam's Axe.
I pay it no heed, then.
We are tuned to hear words amongst noise, it's how we can follow two different conversations in a noisy pub while there is music playing, and other conversation all around us. We can select and hone in on specific voices. This takes a lot of brain power. When that ability is focussed on white noise, it will occasionally have a false positive, because it's searching for a meaningful signal, and if you look hard enough in white noise, you'll always find the signal you are after (this is physics, please go read).
On a related note, does anyone remember the Bullshit law suits in the 80's against various Heavy Metal bands, for allegedly hiding messages in reverse on their albums?
This is the same phenomena. A sound source interpreted incorrectly as certain words, when we know full well what is actually is (reversed different words).
Now, apply that to something as complex as white noise. There's plenty of stuff going on there, you just have to filter out certain bits, focus on others, and listen to enough, and part of it will sound like speech. It's the 'million monkeys' analogy at work. Except you only get phrases, not whole Shakespeare plays.
On a related note, does anyone remember the Bullshit law suits in the 80's against various Heavy Metal bands, for allegedly hiding messages in reverse on their albums?
This is the same phenomena. A sound source interpreted incorrectly as certain words, when we know full well what is actually is (reversed different words).
Now, apply that to something as complex as white noise. There's plenty of stuff going on there, you just have to filter out certain bits, focus on others, and listen to enough, and part of it will sound like speech. It's the 'million monkeys' analogy at work. Except you only get phrases, not whole Shakespeare plays.
Exactly. I heard a radio program once where they played old children's songs backwards and got all kinds of satanic messages
I don't know said:Exactly. I heard a radio program once where they played old children's songs backwards and got all kinds of satanic messages
The best ones I saw on a documentary were from Judas Priest albums. They were being sued over some BS back masked satanist sayings, so listen to all of their albums backwards, and selected various other things that sounded like phrases. These included;
"I want a peppermin, get me one now"
and
"It's so cheesey quite frankly I'd buy one"
Here's a an article, and a cool web site referenced in that article, on backmasking;
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/artsentertainment/2002828774_backmasking27.html
http://www.jeffmilner.com/backmasking.htm
Interestingly, it's hard to make out what the backmasked noises are saying, but when prompted, it fits suddenly.
I guess the same goes for EVP. It's a bit crap, but you can kind of get it when prompted.
leopold99 said:
6: Created using radiological devices by different researchers, just to keep something "Paranormal" for both people to investigate. afterall there is a great trade in qualifications in an otherwise useless diploma. (In fact some class Art classes as a waste of time, however an artist might sell paintings or use their skills in Architecture etc, where as these parapsychologists just run around bullshitting.)
There is also:
7: Counter-Intelligence, It's possible to listen into communications if they are triangulatable, so generating extra dopplers for high-frequency broadcast would generate a better field of white noise.
I've listened to some supposed EVP recordings from various websites devoted to this Phenomena. A couple of the recordings that caught my attention were of people in various locations and they would walk about with the tape recorder and ask questions to the "ghosts". They would just ask question after question and hopefully pick up something later when they reviewed the tape. When you hear the tapes from the investigation you would hear them ask a question then the volume of the tape would be enhanced and you can hear supposed "answers" to the questions. Most of the time its "Is there anyone here?" and sometimes you would hear the "yes" but at an enhanced volume level but unheard at normal levels, and sometimes when asking for the "ghosts" name they would get a reply. It's pretty cool.
Our brains are pattern recognition mechanisms. We will try to discern recognizable speech even when nothing is present.
That being said, shortwave frequencies are often used to transmit secret messages between governments or agents. They take the form of sounds or strange repeating phrases that only the intended recipient knows how to interpret. I came across a website with some of these recorded on mp3, but I can't find it now. It might have been here:
http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2005/12/adventures_in_a.html#more
That being said, shortwave frequencies are often used to transmit secret messages between governments or agents. They take the form of sounds or strange repeating phrases that only the intended recipient knows how to interpret. I came across a website with some of these recorded on mp3, but I can't find it now. It might have been here:
http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2005/12/adventures_in_a.html#more
I can agree that there's always background noises etc that could get on the recordings (and also that the human brain is keyed to find things where there's nothing), but what about where the recordings are made in a cleared room or something? I know we look for patterns instinctively...but do we have enough intellectual refinement to be able to recognize when we're really hearing something or whether it's in our heads? Maybe that's a much bigger issue. Could we throw computers at the problem? Or maybe at each other; an iMac can make a decent bruise on heads or even on the ego of its user.
Geoff
Geoff
I don't know if it has been done, but a large group experiment would be a good idea. Get a collection of recorded "voices" and play them to a large group individually and see who can hear the same thing to rule out "voices in the head". That being said, it won't really help the "voices of the dead" theory. There will always be someone attempting a rational explanation. Maybe there is an afterlife, we'll probably not know for sure till we kick the bucket...