In my opinion, over years of studying and researching many cases... I believe investigators could be recording and capturing a combination of a couple of things.

A # I'd like to think if you lived a good life, you get a choice or options where you would like to pass on to. ( Reincarnation ) Or you get to choose to become a spirit or guardian angel. If you lived a bad life, I think many spirits are being punished and being put in a state of purgatory because they lived a bad human life. Therefore, they are not allowed to pass on or given an option until they fulfill their deed.

B # I think we could also be recording and capturing people from our future and people from our past. If any of you have read or studied about the Philadelphia Experiment, the U.S. Government is quite capable of tampering with "Time Travel". If this did indeed happen, than that proves we could definitely be recording this in our research. Not just that particular experiment, but it proves the theory of being able to capture things from our future and past. If you really study your EVP's... you will see what I mean by this. Some EVP's we get are just so weird. It might not have anything to do with our question and we'll get an odd response. Like a conversation going on that has nothing to do with our questions.

What are some of your theories on what investigators are recording regarding evidence of the Paranormal?

Pluto
Like you i've been fascinated by this for years. On the EVPs i think if you take the work of Sarah Estep and Friedrich Jurgennson at face value it's hard to say they got messages from the future. A lot of EVP is very very specific and mentions names dates people etc.For example Jurgensen "stumbled" across EVP when he was recording bird song for a documentary he was making, when he played it back he distinctly heard his deceased mother calling him by the pet name she had for him
http://www.worlditc.org/h_sub.htm
http://www.worlditc.org/c_06_juerg_intro.htm
http://www.worlditc.org/h_22_estep.htm
Also i'd be interested to hear what you think of the work going on here
http://www.victorzammit.com/
Specifically the work of David Thompson ?
Bogey

Very cool Bogeyman...

Our research group LIGHT has been trying different techniques and methods to retreive communication from spirits. Most of them have worked. We find it that natural resources such as natural minerals, boulder, rock, brick, water etc; have a major factor in harvesting paranormal phenomena activity as well as EVP's. We tend to enhance their environment using such methods with natural resources. We've gotten to become very successful in acheiving great communication with many spirits this way. Most paranormal enthusiasts call this white noise. I don't refer to it as white noise as it's coming from natural sound. Everything is made up of energy, and when that energy is disrupted by a simple motion, it's going to bounce off those type of conductors that help it. If you are in a house, you might not get the same effect. Depending what the house is made of, of course.

I started to study a theory I came up with recently. Not that I invented it, but it was an idea. I was watching the show mythbusters on discovery one day and they were trying to bust the myth of recording sounds from ancient relics, pottery, ocean sea shells etc; anything that could hold sound and see if you can hear the sound of your voice or music. So they built their own pottery, and tried to record different sounds into different objects that could hold sound. Unfortunately I ended up falling asleep at the end of the episode, however I thought of something while I was watching this. If we can record sounds from the past, couldn't we record sounds from people from 2 days ago? So we have to be very careful with EVP's. You could technically record someone who was in the room just a day or two ago and pick up their words or conversation and it doesn't mean it's from the 1800's. So if you are in a location with a place of very good conductors, it could carry the echo of someone's voice from yesterday as well as getting EVP from the past.

It makes a lot of sense...

Unfortunately, because there are so many theories out there, it's not 100% positive that's the real conclusion.

EVP always fascinated me - however most EVP's I've heard online and from other people make reference to their names, or "I love you's", or a moment in time only the listener really can understand. I wish I could hear one that explained what death was like, or the afterlife. So far I haven't heard anyone complain, I guess it ain't too bad.