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EVP Experiments

 
 
nutella23
17:35 / 08.09.02
Been researching this as a "pet project" but have had inconclusive results thus far, I suppose if I had better equipment though I might feel differently. Been using hand-held cassette recorders but haven't picked up anything definitive, just occasional faint "somethings", but can't tell what. It could just as easily be glitches with the recording device as anything else. Tried gathering sounds in cemetaries, areas rumored to be "haunted", that sort of thing. I have heard of people getting tangible results using video equipment (for both sound and image gathering), but again--what I've seen that is on the net is, to me at any rate, inconclusive.

Has anyone tried this sort of thing and if so, what kind of results did you achieve? Best equipment for the job? Advice?

Also, as an afterthought, I've decided that combining EVP research with urban exploration would be a cool way to spend a weekend. An expedition anyone?
 
 
grant
18:54 / 09.09.02
I've never done any of it, and I'm so split over what I think of it that I can't recommend media. Meaning: part of me thinks you should try for something with a high hiss or "noise" factor, something lo-fi, so that you can get plenty of nice static to hear things in, and part of me thinks you should try for something as clean as possible to amplify those things which cannot be coming from the equipment.
 
 
nutella23
19:38 / 09.09.02
Thanks for reminding me what I meant to ask originally, which is the question of analog vs. digital. I've seen/heard commentary from "investigators" supporting/decrying both (depending on who they are). What I've heard on various radio programs ("Art Bell', etc.) hasn't convinced me either, the "voices" could just as easily be done with a good computer set-up., which is why I wanted to check it out for myself.

Lots of supposedly haunted areas out here. My big target is an old abandoned state mental hopital slated for destruction sometime in the near (?) future. It has a history of hauntings, according to the locals, and supposedly is built on top of an ancient Native American burial mound, not to mention being located near what were once the old town gallows (and they were used frequently in the past, such as during Shay's
Rebellion) hence my interest in the buildings and the urban exploration aspect. Ideally, I'd like to do this on Halloween of course. Also, the hospital grounds have a tunnel network and some old fallout shelters worth checking out. A friend has already got the blueprints copied (obtained from city hall records), the only real problem remains in choosing appropriate recording devices and dodging the security rent-a-cop patrols.
 
 
Naked Flame
07:39 / 19.11.02
I'd never heard of EVP until I read this thread whilst trawling through the archive.

Recently I started making ambient recordings of various cityscapes, as I needed some traffic samples and also to make my recordings noisier. I took a condenser microphone, stuck it out of my living room window, ran it through a preamp with about 35db of gain and then a compressor to squish any transient loud noises. I used the window itself as a baffle to close down what the mic was picking up- I would have preffered to use a shotgun mic, but hey.

Listening on headphones was a little like having superpowers- being able to distinguish speech hundreds of yards away is fun. But the weird thing, and the point of this post, was that whichever way I pointed the mic, there was a high-pitched keening noise underpinning the whole thing that was nothing to do with the equipment (I use this setup to record all sorts of stuff and I'd never heard this sound.)

I don't know what I heard, precisely. It's possible that in a city the size of London there's always a siren wailing or someone crying, if only you can listen hard enough. But there's always the paranormal...
 
 
Linus Dunce
16:30 / 19.11.02
Or a nearby faulty central heating pump, aircon unit or what have you. I've never heard of this before either, so forgive me if I'm teaching grandmother to suck eggs: You could control the experiments with a large ear-trumpet and by triangulating and verifying normal electromagnetic emissions. Anything left over would be ... spooky.
 
 
matsya
09:15 / 20.11.02
okay, judge's ruling here: what is EVP?

m.
 
 
grant
20:38 / 20.11.02
Electronic Voice Phenomena - recording "empty" tape and hearing... things.

Messages, maybe. Or maybe just tape hiss.
 
 
FinderWolf
00:08 / 24.12.02
So nutella, did you go to the hospital on Halloween? If so, anything good?
 
 
Lionheart
14:06 / 24.12.02
grant: won't empty tape have no hiss on them?
 
 
grant
14:19 / 24.12.02
Sure, if you have an absolutely perfect sound system, recording & playing back without any electrical or sonic interference whatsoever. Unfortunately, that'd require playing back the tape with heads that have no physical properties.
 
 
8===>Q: alyn
15:12 / 24.12.02
4th dimensional ones, then.
 
  
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