Talking with Ghosts – My Journey with EVP
~ Written By Leslie Rose ~
I have always been interested in the paranormal since I was a child. I grew up in a haunted house in central NJ where all the members of my family and some family friends had personal experiences. As a child, I was terrified to be alone in that house. Someone was very evidently trying to communicate with us.
December 6th 2004 was the day my true journey into communicating with the paranormal began, and it began innocuously with a trip to Google. I was bored at work and googled “ghost” and found a paranormal website I became a member of. That led, in time, to me being able to exchange experiences with others who were just like me in that they also seemed to draw the spirits to them. May 2007 I found a website that was focused on EVP and I thought: “you know, I bet I can do that, that would be really cool!” So off I drove to Best Buy to buy my very first recorder. I felt like I was buying contraband items or something; it felt like everyone knew why I was buying it and what I intended to do with it. I started by going to a little cemetery here near me and straight off the bat I got my very first EVP. At first the EVP I got were so faint it was frustrating. I heard the voices, which came as faint whispers, but others I knew who were getting very clear voices were telling me “you have nothing” and “that is just the wind”. It was horrible.
I heard “c’mon and take them” when I told the spirits I was intending to come into the cemetery and take pics. To me, that was exciting. To the people online, it was a faint sound of the wind.
There are three categories of EVP: A, B and C, as explained on the website Ghost to Ghost:
“Developed by Sarah Estep, the A, B, and C filing system is the easy, universal method for analysis. It is the standard within the EVP community.
“Class A EVP | Very audible and can be clearly understood without the use of computer software intervention. I like to have our EVP files confirmed by 2 or more individuals before classifying them as an A. This helps to ensure their authenticity as well as their quality. Class A EVP are very rare, and although I have captured the majority of them on analog recorders, a Class A EVP is unmistakable. You should be able to clearly understand the vocalization / sound straight from the recording device itself without the use of headphones.
“Class B EVP | Class B recordings are somewhat similar to a Class A but are not clearly heard by all. They are usually mixed messages or jumbled words that the researcher cannot clearly make out. They are not necessarily at a lower capture volume and can be as audible as or even more so than a Class A. They seem to be the second most common EVP captures.
“Class C EVP | Class C captures are, by far the most common. These files are mostly inaudible or can be low whispers and usually require software intervention. Many researchers simply toss these aside, or even delete them entirely which I like to call “Spirit Prejudice”.
My earliest EVP were all class C. It took about 6 months of dedicated practice and opening myself to this whole concept for the EVP to slip from a category C to a B. Sometimes I am lucky enough to capture a class A EVP, but those are extremely rare.
I practiced by going from place to place, recording. I recorded in my car and got EVP. I set it in my bedroom and got really WEIRD EVP that led to spirits understanding they could come by and talk to me without the recorder!!. I posted my EVP online just to hear again and again from people who had more experience at this than I, that I had nothing. I left the websites. I figured if they were all such experts they could have it all to themselves.
But I didn’t give up.
In October 2008 I bought a second recorder because I wanted the flexibility of having two; one I could lay down somewhere on an investigation, one I could carry in my hand. The voices became increasingly clearer. Nowadays I take both on my investigations and will hand one to a friend, urging them to try it. Depending on who it is, the EVP they capture are very clear. I do feel somehow though, that there is a difference in the two recorders; it is as if they are attuned to me especially, and the older, grey one gets clearer EVP than the blue one does. I do not know why this is. I have talked with several people online who have their own theories. I personally think it has to do with the molecular structure of the recorder itself; once the spirits can “attune” themselves to a gadget, they can communicate effectively through it.
In December 2008 I initiated my own webpage and posted some of my early EVP to it. They still were very faint (so-called “class C”). Some of my friends got curious about what I was doing and so I emailed them my EVP. My best friend, especially, who is an absolute skeptic and who will debunk anything he possibly can, told me to keep going. He noticed the quality of my work was getting better and better. Anyone I investigate with I will share my EVP with, I only ask if they use it somewhere that they mention that I am the owner.
Listening to recordings to hunt out the EVP captured within is tedious work. Anyone I have talked to who does EVP work insists on using earphones. I don’t, personally. I listen to my recordings using my computer speakers after I upload the recordings directly into the PC via a fire wire. The reason I don’t use earphones is because I do a lot of my recordings while I am walking around during the daytime and the traffic sounds and airplane sounds (which are inevitable) can be so loud that it hurts my ears if I use the earphones. The EVP can be very faint and I have to turn up the volume. If I have a very, very faint one, I will put the earphones on just to verify I have something, but this is after I have cut out JUST that section.
Cataloging your EVP is very important. I tend to save all my original .wav recordings in full length in folders designated with date and place. Then I copy the EVP out of those and save them to their separate files along with the originals, noting recording number, hour, minute, second and what I understand was said in the file name. Backups are vital. You do not want to lose years worth of work in a computer crash! The program I use is Audacity, a free web program that is fairly easy to use.
One side effect of opening myself so much to this whole process has been the capability of clairaudience that I have developed. I distinctly recall the first time it happened. I was on my third daytime jaunt into a cemetery to take pics and record, and as I was walking between the graves in the modern section I heard a woman say “Hello?” very clearly out of thin air about ten feet to the right of me. No one was there that I could see. The next few times it was a bit more personal; I would be lying in bed and be awakened by a man’s voice speaking directly in my ear. This was a man whose voice I managed to capture several times in my bedroom, leading to a Best Practice: Do NOT do EVP recording in your personal space unless you chase everyone out that you have invited into it after you are done. I asked my online friends what to do since this had gotten very annoying and quite scary too. They suggested a smudging, which worked, and nowadays I use the bathroom or living room if I feel the need to record at home. And if I DO notice paranormal activity in my bedroom, I chase the spirit out.
Just last week I was in a cemetery in eastern Massachusetts at night with a friend and both she and I heard a woman saying “yoo hoooo!” to us as we walked by the section we always feel the most activity occurs. This was also captured on my digital recorder. These voices are also getting much clearer.
Nowadays most EVP I capture are class B. Yes, it’s a strange hobby for most, but it’s fun and you never know what you will get. I have my personal ghosts who like to come talk to me again and again. I have captured creepy whispery EVP, laughing, children talking to me, warnings to leave a place, and spirits questioning who I am. I have also gotten direct answers to questions I have asked. I can only stress that this is a fascinating method for communicating with spirits and is fun and rewarding!
Source for EVP Classification:
Ghost to Ghost.Org: www.ghost2ghost.org/?page_id=914
Thanks for publishing my article to your website! I’m honored.
Leslie
Good artical. I Do a lot of EVP work as well. I thought that you might want to visit David Rountree at http://www.spinvestigations.org. This man is a sound engineer and his knowlege of EVP is extensive. He has discovered that EVP is electromagnetic in nature. his web site is full of info that you would like.
The regulars on The Beyond forums are familiar with my stance on EVP classification. The Estep Method is what I call the ABC Classification system. I don’t think that it is fair to classify an EVP if it is something that you do not understand and/or you even suspect that it may be a noise artifact.
I would start with the Class A using the Estep Method at the bottom and work up from there. If you and others can understand it, even at high volume with headphones, then you may have something. The highest class of EVP, by definition, should be equivalent to a person speaking directly into the microphone.
I’m not sure that a classification system is even helpful. It may be misleading because it may make some think that two EVP in the same class are equivalent. We know from experience that EVERY EVP is a little different whether it is in tone, volume, speech pattern, etc. Boxing them into Class A, B, and C seems like an oversimplification.
A better system would consist of simple statements that qualify the EVP such as the following.
“Sounds like direct speech into the microphone” (i.e. highest clarity EVP).
Then you could modify that sentence with further qualifiers such as gruff tone, slow speech, behind background noise, whispering, etc.
This method would still be as concise as the Estep Method, but would not oversimply EVP by boxing them into fixed classes. You would keep the nuances of each EVP. Comparing a Class B to another Class B may not be comparing apples to apples after all.
I’ve also heard about “EVP affinity.” This is a phenomenon that some claim happens when you do a lot of EVP studies. You start to hear more sounds with more frequency even when others do not. This is where electronic research starts to turn into psychic research as some, as in the author’s case, feel the development of a psychic gift like clairaudience. Of course, others will not hear what the person with the psychic gift hears. We are then left with the conundrum of deciding what is real EVP as it cannot be heard by others to confirm it. In paranormal research we are concerned with spiritual phenomena, and ghosts, being human at one time, may respond better to some than to others as a function of each person’s own charisma.
The prevailing notion for any belief pattern is that the more that one immerses him/herself into it, then the more that he/she believes. This is dangerous as we can easily work ourselves into a corner by focusing on only one way of thinking. It happens in politics, religion, and in the professional world. I suspect that it also occurs in paranormal research. When we start to build up this system of belief based on a few strongly-held ideas, then we reinforce it by interpreting every new piece of information as another part of our belief system. It becomes that much more difficult to change our initial ideas because they are so deeply rooted in our minds.
Conversely, everyone is familiar with the effects of experience in just about anything. You are almost certain to get better at it. We can train our eyes, our ears, and our hands to perform very precise tasks that others cannot repeat without much experience. Could the same be true for those studying EVP? I suspect that it is. Could those who frequently record and listen to EVP actually be “reading between the lines” when it comes to hearing EVP that others miss?
I plan to test this idea for myself as I will record and listen to more EVP. It is a time-consuming task as it requires us to isolate ourselves away from outside noise for the recordings and also an equal or greater amount of time to review the evidence. Like any skill many will just not have enough time to practice to improve.