I was listening to an EVP website that had recordings taken at Cemeteries,Haunted Houses and other places. Some of those were very spooky,some weren't convincing at all.

I think each to be judged individually. There are to many to dismiss the idea that EVP's don't exist. The ones that spook me are children and the whispering voices.

Those spook Me out as well! The spookiest one that I heard was just ghostly moaning.

I've heard some very convincing evp's. I even tried it myself and came up with some wierd sounds.

Yeah, EVPs are pretty convincing some times... As had been already said, they need to be reviewed on a case by case basis...

-Wookie

EVPs are extrondinary. 'Tis interesting what technology can do...scary when you actually think about it.

Take each EVP with a grain of salt. The way I look at it, Is, If I wasnt there, I will review it, but not necessarily believe it. Too many factors play into the role of EVP. I mean hell, look at all these people supposedly manipulating photos. Im not saying there arent quality EVPS out there, but to be honest, If I was someone else, some of the EVPS I caught, I would be like um, ok whatever. Just because I wasnt there when the EVP was taken.

I agree with NoahJaymes on this, EVPs are most likely created by interference from nearby items that emit noise on low-level frequencies, such as CB radios or through cross modulation. Now that the phenomenon has a number of devoted followers some hoaxers have probably entered the fray.

Additionally, some of the "voices" people believe have been caught on tape are likely fueled by human natures propensity to try to make sense out of random patterns, called pareidolia, in this case, noise.

The face on Mars, hearing messages on records played in reverse and Electronic Voice Phenomena are examples of pareidolia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia

I went through a phase a couple of years back when i became totally fascinated by EVP's .I looked at everything i could read and find on the subject.Obviously there are hoaxes but if you research the very beginnings of this and the people involved you will soon come to the conclusion that they are very very real.
There some good (Free) books on the subject and also very good research material here.
www.worlditc.org
There have been some really fascinating examples of this and also experiments carried out under stringent conditions ...including picking them up in Faraday cages where any outside influences can be ruled out.
One of the most fascinating cases is the one in the 60's (i think) where two priests were recording chants in the Vatican using an old wire recorder and one of the priests fathers was picked up on the recording - using the Priests childhood nickname.he asked
"is that you papa ?" and again the same voice was recorded saying"but of course it's me dont you know me ?".They brought this to the Pope who told them it was okay to accept it as genuine communication from his father......Anyhoo i digress...That site is a perfect starting point for anyone interested in the subject.

I'm gonna look this up in the dictionary and there will be a picture of you beside the explanation.....It's your reason for everything

You're 100% wrong this time though and if you really cared to do the research you'd see this....but as usual you wont because it would mean having to drop the sceptical cloak for once.

Does anyone have any links to any good EVP's sites, or links to what they feel are good EVP's that ahve been caught?

Based on your second post Id say that you still are "totally fascinated by EVP's", I mean to say that Im 100% wrong about the interference, pareidolia or cross modulation connection is quite a bold statement, dont you think.

as well as interference causing noise on the recording, a lot of low quality sound recorders like dictaphones will have pretty a awful signal to noise ratio so when you listen to recorded silence it will be mostly audio noise. even worse are the digital recorders which seem to distort the noise and make a horrid sound which when it picks up a slight noise it distorts to a weird mushy noise which gives it character that some might consider a voice..

a lot of evps ive heard sound to me like slight movements creating sound and being distorted, especially the ones where people are asking questions first.

ive heard some of those older evp where the guy supposedly channels Gandhi, but i dont know what to make of that.. clever hoaxes perhaps

I would only believe in an EVP if it's a 2 way conversation.

I agree with Jonb. When doing a recording, you would have to basically remain still, leave the recorder untouched on a hard surface. Then ask questions without touching anything, or moving. Only then, if you happen to pick up anything, is it reviewable. Not saying anything else ISNT reviewable, everything is, but hard to debunk moreless.

Voice Recorders are very very sensitive. They pick up the slightest noise that most wouldnt hear, hence picking up voices of the dead so to speak. So when a cricket farts, you have a sound you cant seem to make out. Basically when I do EVP, I do not collect random noises as data. I only collect voices, is this wrong? Perhaps, but any bump, brush or tap can seem paranormal on a recorder.

Exactly.

This background noise is recorded, and replayed. If something "interesting" is heard, the sound sample is isolated, filtered, enhanced, and otherwise changed as much as necessary in order to make the "interesting" sounds into something vaguely intelligible. And when I say vaguely, boy do I mean it!

Yes i am i spose ,and where i might concede ground on other issues on EVP i wont.
Yes there are hoaxes ,Yes there are inaudible excuses for EVP ,Yes some of it is background pick up...........BUT EVP is a very real phenomena .Now where do the voices come from ? That is the question .....is it heaven,limbo ,hell ? I dont know .What i do know is that genuine researchers pick up voices which answer direct questions and some serious researchers who never made a penny from it have received extraordinary results.
People like The Fischbachs of Luxembourg.
Marcello Bacci the Italian who still comforts grieving people to this day ...look his work up.
Sarah Estep who's written several books on the subject.
Friedrich Jurgenson a Swedish documentary producer who accidentaly stumbled onto the phenomenen while recording bird song ...he heard his mothers voice talking to him on playback ...he went on to become one of the worlds foremost researchers ....even though he could have made more money and had an easier more famous life by sticking to producing.
Sonia Rinaldi ..The Brazilian who got physicists,Scientists and Engineers involved in her work ...and whose credentials have never been doubted

I could go on and on......google any of these names to begin with and start the research...it's fascinating

Im not convinced, pareidolia and cross modulation seems like the most logical explanation.
Another possible explanation is that people may have used old tapes, knowingly or not, for EVP sessions, and that the voices they hear come from previous recording "bleeding through".

To bad that Meek and ONeil, Spiricom, who promised direct two-way communication with the dead, shocker, never made it. How cool would it be to call up my dead grandmother, but then again, this is exactly what keeps this idea of EVP alive. The -What if.....

Well Haz you're just proving my point arent you ...you say that pareidolia and cross modulation are the most likely explanation.....do you think that everyone else are fools and they dont try to eliminate these occurrences ?
I have given you names to research ...Including those who have been investigated by scientists,Engineers and Physicists .....and what do you say.....Nahhh i dont think so !
If i cant get you to do the research well then theres no point in continuing the debate is there ?
I can prove that the research and methods are sound and you just draw down the sceptical cloak and say nahh ....so be it .....

More likely than the dead talking to us on a tape recorder, yes.



No I dont.



I have known and read alot about this guy Friedrich Jurgenson back in the good ol days. Everything, if not all the explanations I gave are more realistic than "the dead" calling us.



Believe you me, and Iv said this before, I used to believe in EVERYTHING paranormal, and then some. As far as continuing the debate, I sure wont do it with out you.



I wish you could prove that this is real science and not just science fiction, I would gladly travel, the hundred kilometers or so, to Stockholm to congratulate you to the Nobel prize.

Best of luck.

Well i'm sorry you brush it aside so lightly......For everyone else i can reassure you that This has been investigated by some of the best brains available to the researchers.

Trials have been done in Faraday cages
New Tapes are always used by serious researchers.
You've been told the sound is isolated, filtered and enhanced to make it sound as interesting as possible ...again not true in the case of serious researchers...i mean whats the point of that ?

Those that doubt this is real are mistaken.....and the ultimate test of EVP

Try it yourself ......If theres nothing to it what have you got to lose

Any names with that, a link perhaps..?

Go here and look up the researchers work - on the left hand side
http://www.worlditc.org/h_sub.htm

Check out the work of Sonia Rinaldi ,Marcello Bacci and Konstantin Raudive ....Check the tests that were done on Jurgensons work


Heres a Laboratory that specialises in testing phenomena such as this ...It's in Italian but they've got an English section

http://www.laboratorio.too.it

Well-

I've always been on the fence with EVP. Like Noah said, if I'm there, then I'm much more likely to believe. I think, as with most things in this field, that there are a lot of fakes or random things which are perceived as truth or something (pareidolia).

However, to rule the phenom. out completely... It's just too strong a viewpoint for me personally. Mostly because I have heard some extremely good EVPs in my life.

As always, the middle road is the safest in terms of paranormal research. Is everything paranormal? Not by any means. Is it likely that some of it is paranormal? Possibly.

-Wookie

I was not a big fan of them until I had a real experiance with it. We stayed at the Myrtles Plantation last month the room next to ours had a lot of activity in it the couple that stayed in it actually came to our room in the middle of the night and asked if they could sleep on the floor in our room because they were so afraid of the room. We caught a few things on the recordings that we took in that room with them that really made me a believer.

I know the owner of the following website because he is an acquaintance of a dear friend of mine (they have worked on several paranormal investigations together) :
http://www.alanhatfield.com/voices.html


My own opinion on EVP recordings........Some are, I think, truly are voices from beyond. On the above website you will hear that some spirit voices actually call out the name of the psychic medium doing the recording. But there are other possibilities as well. As you know, sound waves never "die". They continue to travel around, so to speak, though they do diminish to the point where they are mostly inaudible to the human ear. In some cases I think EVPs are simply picking up some of these stray sound waves. Often you will hear ordinary comments being made by the supposed spirit. For example, in one I've heard a man was asking for help buttoning his waistcoat. Why would a spirit ask for that? In all likelyhood that was a snippet of a residual sound wave. And then of course, as has already been mentioned, stray audio signals from radio stations, amateur radios, even phones can be picked up at times. I agree, it is important to treat each recording differently, taking all circumstances surrounding it into account.

Sound waves certainly do die...constantly, or you would hear the same tv shows and radio songs neverending.

Courtesy of Victorzammit.com


Controlled experiments rule out stray radio signals

Later Colin Smythe published Voices from the Tapes in which there are four pages of photos showing different participants in Bander's later experiments. These were carried out under the strictest control conditions. On one occasion EVP experiments were conducted in soundproof studios to filter out stray broadcasts. In the space of 27 minutes some 200 voices were received.

Comments from observers quoted in Bander's book include Ken Attwood, Chief Engineer of Pye, who stated:

I have done everything in my power to break the mystery of the voices without success; the same applies to other experts. I suppose we must learn to accept them (Bander 1973:132).

Dr Brendan McGann, Director of the Institute of Psychology Dublin, said:

I have apparently succeeded in reproducing the phenomena. Voices have appeared on a tape which did not come from any known source (Bander 1973:132).

A.P. Hale, Physicist and Electronics Engineer, stated:

In view of the tests carried out in a screened laboratory at my firm, I can not explain what happened in normal physical terms (Bander 1973:132).

Sir Robert Mayer LL.D., D.Sc., Mus.D. concluded:

If the experts are baffled, I consider this is a good enough reason for presenting the Voice Phenomena to the general public (Bander 1973:132).

Ted Bonner of Decca and RTE said:

This is no trick. This is no gimmickry; this is something we have never dreamed of before (Bander 1973:106).

The Pye Laboratory tests conducted by Colin Smythe and Peter Bander prior to the publication of Breakthrough were set up and paid for by the Editor-in-Chief of England's The Sunday Mirror.

Ronald Maxwell, a reporter for The Sunday Mirror, had supervised the tests and had prepared a three page feature article with photographs which was very supportive of them. He was delighted that the electronics experts chosen by the newspaper had verified that the voices were genuine and that no trickery or fraud was employed.

However at the last minute the extremely important article was stopped without explanation by the Editor-in-Chief who refused to have the story in the paper. As Peter Bander put it:

The experiment which had been arranged and paid for by The Sunday Mirror had yielded results which did not please the man at the top (Bander 1973:68).

Maxwell and Cyril Kersh, the features editor, tried again a week later. This time they had collected information and statements from leading scientists including Mr Peter Hale. Again the Editor-in-Chief refused to publish it (Bander 1973:68).

Full Article
http://www.victorzammit.com/book/4thedition/chapter04.html

They diminish, they don't fizzle though. Don't take my word for it though, look it up.

The reasons given for not believing in EVP have already been proven incorrect. There have been some very scientific controlled experiments eliminating the possibilities you are proposing. Your a wee bit behind the times but hey it is easier to sit back and say it doesn't exist and I would be the last to deny you that position. (it seems to fit you well)
As a serious investigator I also thought there would be a very realistic explainable explanation for voices I recorded but this has been a number of years ago now. I am now a firm believer due to my own investigations. The group I am with started investigating a confirmed haunted house and started to pick up evp easily after a few visits. Since the house was empty it was pretty easy to look for hidden electronics which had been professionally checked top to bottom prior to our investigation. Any of you that used to watch the "sightings" show would immediately recognize the name of this location or what the house was nicknamed. Any way we recorded several hundred hours of recordings with various equipment. We took the names and made a list of them and made notes of the character of the entities we recorded. It was with those names we compared to the history of the house. Only a few matched up but when we looked at the family that had lived next door we hit the jackpot. We didn't research first and then hear the names we heard the names and looked for the family that matched these names. The main character was a woman that we nicknamed "mommy dearest" because she acted so crazy from one moment to the next. Several months into our research we found that the woman next door where all the (names matched to) had in fact been forced by the court to be committed to the state hospital. The doctor that we believe facilitated her release on one of those occasions was also the town doctor and owner of the house we were investigating. We talked to the entities then researched to prove that our information we obtained from evp was correct with documents we found in court records, newspapers and town historians.
You see we took the evp and found written documents to support what we were told on our recordings.
With that said I believe that EVP research is still in a very infant stage of research and there is much to be done.
I am way past are the voices from someone who has died to are they from people who crossed over to the light? Are they earthbound which is what my research suggests or are they from some other dimension? (a few appear to be just that). Personally I have only received a couple of the later but please check out this site.
www.aaevp.com

Sorry but the reasons given for not believing just don't wash when you know the facts.
For most of us it isn't worth the time to keep going back over the same stuff time and again just to convince one more person. You need to read up a little on this subject so you can deny its existence in a more reasonable approach.

^^^ Who are you talking to?

If you were referring to me (since mine was the post just before yours), I never once said I don't believe that real spirit voice recordings can be obtained. I believe they can and often are. But contrary to whatever "scientific research" you've been reading about, there can be other reasons for voices or sounds in such recordings. I've seen radio waves being picked up and heard from the coiled copper wire of a washer motor before, and I once picked up ham radio on the voice recorder of my digital camera, which I could not hear myself while recording. These sort of sound waves can be picked up, which is why each EVP recording has to be looked at in detail before reaching the conclusion that it is indeed a spirit voice(s).

Some I beleive some I dont. Iv caught a few myself that I couldnt find explanation for.