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Voices of the Dead (or alive?)

Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVPs) are allegedly voice recordings of the dead. Recorded after the person has died, that is.

At a recent paranormal conference I attended, a “certified EVP Specialist” reported that he had recorded a spirit uttering, “I like ice cream.” “No”, corrected a colleague, “the spirit said ‘I’m a nice kid!’” This example illustrates the subjective nature of EVPs quite nicely.

Also known as Raudive Voices or Trans-Communication, some believe that EVPs are recordings of the voices of spirits, demons, angels or even aliens. Interest in the concept appears to have arisen from the spiritualism movement in the 1920s, but was recently popularised by the movie White Noise, and a National Enquirer claim that a deceased husband left a message for his wife on their answering machine (presumably recorded before he died!).

EVPs are yet another attempt to substantiate the hope that there is life after death, and to ‘prove’ the existence of ghosts. The belief in EVPs is further legitimised by an urban legend that Thomas Edison built the first device to record voices of the dead. However, the first device built specifically for this purpose is Frank’s Box, the ‘telephone to the dead’ (that works like a bad radio). Inventor Frank Sumption doesn’t even need to use his own contraption as he received the design plans via telepathic messages from spirits.

Armed with various recording devices, EVP seekers visit cemeteries, deserted buildings, historic sites, parks and other ‘supernatural environments’ to record…well…nothing. The typical protocol is to leave a device recording for 2-30 minutes, then collect it and check for ‘messages’. Some EVP seekers also talk to…well…no one. According to EVP theory, the spirit voices are only heard after the recording is played back, not during recording. Posing questions, known as “Invocation”, is used to elicit responses from the spirits. Imagine a group of adults demanding of thin air “Hello. Is anybody there?” and pleading “Talk to us. We are here to help you, not hurt you.”

When the spirits do ‘talk’ back, what do they ‘say’? Spirits tend to be hard of speaking, so a lack of response, or a short (barely audible) phrase, is the norm. The expert from the above anecdote reveals that the threatening order “Get out!” is the most common message. Other replies range from the heart-wrenching, “Help me!”, or the contrite, “I’m sorry”, to the inane “chill, chill” . The dead have lost their personalities, and the messages are never profound, specific or useful.

According to their quality, the recordings are classified as A (best) through to D (worst). EVPs labelled as B-D have contentious interpretations. In an attempt to make these messages more audible, they are touched up using complex software programs. This is ostensibly to ‘clean up’ any ambient noise, but this could inadvertently, or purposefully, manipulate the recordings.

I have attempted my own mini experiments with EVPs. A few years ago I visited a house in Turramurra, NSW, ‘known’ to be haunted by operatic music (real music?) and the screams of young woman at midnight (real screams?). Apparently, the woman was an opera singer whose father killed her in a fit of fury when she wouldn’t marry the man he’d chosen for her. During an hour-long recording, all I eavesdropped on was a very real argument. Similarly, other recordings have captured natural noises, or nothing.

How can we explain EVPs? It is difficult to examine a recording if we weren’t there to witness the incident. However, the causes are probably natural. Most good quality EVPs are likely recordings of living people, or simply background noise. Applying Ockham’s Razor, the simplest explanation for an EVP of a baby crying is that it is a recording of a real baby, crying. Another natural cause could be radio interference, when a device picks up incongruous snippets of human voices.

Alternatively, these ‘messages’ can be subjective interpretations of random sounds. Like seeing Jesus on a tortilla (known as pareidolia), some hear ‘words’ in language-like noises (a sort of audio pareidolia). Similar to the theories of Backmasking and Reverse Speech, (hidden messages heard in music or speech played backwards) we naturally search for recognisable word patterns in sounds and foreign languages. Often we find them, even if they’re not really there. Our hearing can also be influenced by suggestion, when we ‘hear’ what others believe they can ‘hear’. Most of all, people hear what they want to hear, and noises outside the normal frequency range of the human voice are explained away as alien voices, or animal spirits.

Overall, the best way to capture ‘voices of the dead’ is to record them when the speakers are still alive.

Stollznow, K. 2008. Voices of the Dead. Naked Skeptic. Australasian Science. Vol.29, No.3. p.46.

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