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4Cell EVP Demonstration

(Based on a Summer 2005 AA-EVP NewsJournal article) Updated May 2015 Abstract Can discarnate personality communicate with people in different parts of the world by hearing (sensing) a question from…

A Model for EVP

First published in The Journal for Spiritual and Consciousness Studies. November 2017 (ascsi.org/) Abstract This is an explanation of the model being considered by the Association TransCommunication (ATransC) to help study…

Do You Hear What I Hear?

Part II A Research Study into the Interpretation of EVP A Second Study of EVP Interpretation Published in the Spring 2013 ATransC NewsJournal Read Part 1 and Part 3 Introduction In…

EVP Online Listening Trials

ccaaevp2008-hearing_experiment_fig3

 Abstract A common explanation for Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) is that the reported utterances are mundane sounds mistaken as voice forming words. This report describes three online listening trials that…

EVP Online Phantom Voices

by Tom Butler Previously published in the Fall 2012 ATransC NewsJournal Abstract A frequent source of consternation for people who are asked to listen to EVP examples is their failure…

Hans Otto König Experiment

Originally published in the ITC Journal No. 24, December 2005. Also published in the January 2007 AA-EVP NewsJournal.          ©Anabela Cardoso – All Rights Reserved Introduction In the year 1974, Hans Otto…

Perception of Visual ITC Images

Published in the Fall 2010 ATransC NewsJournal Also see Butler ITC Gallery 2, Butler ITC Gallery 2,  Butler ITC Gallery 3, and Video-Loop, Visual ITC Recording Technique Abstract In visual Instrumental TransCommunication (Visual…

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A Model for EVP

First published in The Journal for Spiritual and Consciousness Studies. November 2017 (ascsi.org/)

Abstract

This is an explanation of the model being considered by the Association TransCommunication (ATransC) to help study Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP). The model is based on lessons learned from instrumental and personal forms of mediumship, theories related to psi functioning and mainstream emerging understanding of the relationship between unconscious and conscious mind. The model is applicable to the study of many forms of transcommunication and may further understanding of mindfulness.

Introduction

EVP are voices detected in electronic equipment that, based on currently understood science, should not exist. They may occur in just about any electronic device capable of processing voice. In fact, they were reportedly found in early wire recorders and now are found in answer machines and cell phones. EVP are typically discovered during review of recordings. They are often interactive, in that they answer questions or comment on activity around the practitioner or an interested observer. It is common for people to recognize the speaker, (Gullà, 2004) leading to the belief EVP are initiated by discarnate loved ones.

For this discussion, it is necessary to at least tentatively agree that there is a nonphysical aspect of reality referred to here as the psi field or etheric. The trans- prefix is used to mean across the etheric-physical interface, as in transcommunication.

Characteristics of etheric space that are important to this model:

  • Etheric space is conceptual, as opposed to the objective nature of the physical.
  • Intention is modeled as the motive force for expression in the etheric.
  • Influence is comparable to the physical concept of kinetic energy.
  • Potential future is comparable to the physical concept of potential energy.

Point of View

Speaking in general terms, the three major contending points of view related to EVP are:

Normalist: This is the Physical Hypothesis point of view which holds that EVP are delusion, fraud or are mundane, mistaken as paranormal. In this view, the necessary science supporting mechanisms for EVP formation are not established, and therefore any reference to paranormal must be pseudoscience. This is being addressed these days as Anomalistic Psychology. (APStaff, 2015) Consciousness is a product of brain and ceases to exist when the brain dies.

Psi+ Normalist: This point of view is the Super-Psi Hypothesis, which is the Physical Hypothesis modified with the contention that the physical universe is permeated by a psi field. (Sudduth, 2009) In parapsychology, psi represents influence associated with psychic functioning. For Psi+ Normalists, if not mundane, delusion or fraud, the information in EVP is produced via psychic access to residual memory or the mind of still living people. This is beginning to be addressed as Exceptional Experiences Psychology. Consciousness is a psi field phenomenon originating from the brain.

Dualist: This point of view is represented by the Survival Hypothesis. It is the point of view that we are immortal personalities temporarily entangled with a human for this lifetime, that our conscious self existed before this lifetime and will continue to exist in a sentient, self-aware form after this lifetime.

Dualists and Psi+ Normalists generally agree that EVP are formed by way of psychokinetic influence of the practitioner on electronic equipment. Studies indicate that it is also possible that information in the message is psychically accessed from a living person’s mind or from residual memory impressed into the psi field. However, the working assumption for Dualists is that some of the messages are communication from discarnate personalities.

Pay close attention to the terminology used in parapsychology. While we expect mainstream academics to reject the Survival Hypothesis, most people actively studying things paranormal seek to prove reported experiences are not paranormal (Normalists). Others seek to show that paranormal phenomena are psychic functioning (Psi+ Normalist). For both, the arrow of creation of consciousness flies from the origin of the human body. For Dualists, the arrow of creation flies from the origin of reality.

Normalist and Psi+ Normalists speak of consciousness as a product of brain. Psi+ Normalists speak of survival as survival of residual memory which is neither sentient nor interactive in the usual sense of communication.

The Trans-Survival Hypothesis described in Your Immortal Self provides the foundation argument on which this model has been designed. (Butler, 2016) (Butler, 2015-3) The trans- prefix is used to distinguish this version to avoid confusion with the usual “Oh and some people think they survive death” version referred to in most parapsychological discussions about psi models.

Model of Consciousness

Be aware that the model of consciousness presented here is derived by an engineer via a technique known as black box analysis. In that, known input and outputs are presented to a hypothetical black box which must contain a set of functions which respond to known inputs to produce known outputs. The functional areas in the Life Field Complex Diagram represent the sort of processes I would design for a computer so as to emulate the actual processes associated with consciousness.

A person trained in consciousness studies would not necessarily recognize the functions or agree that they are reasonable representations. Nevertheless, the diagram has been useful for the study of transcommunication.

life-field-complex

The resulting model, referred to as the Implicit Cosmology, is explained in detail in Your Immortal Self. An earlier version is available on ethericstudies.org under the Concepts tag. It is implicit because it is the consequence of survival based on the Trans-Survival Hypothesis.

Our Natural Habitat

If we existed before this lifetime and will continue to exist after, then the first point to conceptualize is that we are not our body. Think of our body as an avatar. We, as conscious self, share our human’s instincts and the early part of this lifetime is consumed with learning to override them with our more rational awareness. We are taught to think of ourselves as our body, and virtually all environmental cues reinforce this perspective. The task, then, is to learn how to think of ourselves as outside of our body in much the same way we are outside of a virtual reality device.

An important assumption of this model is that we are nonphysical in nature. Our mind is nonphysical. It is useful to think of our brain as a transmitter-receiver converting physical senses of our body to psi senses able to be processed by our mind. This seems to be a necessary consequence of our avatar relationship. We are more in agreement with our pre-lifetime awareness during the dream state.

As is illustrated in the diagram, our life field anatomy is modeled as:

  • Conscious self, which is entangled with our avatar and which is the direct experiencer of our life field (the box marked Physical Point of View).
  • Mostly unconscious mind, which processes sensed environmental information (Attention Complex).
  • Intelligent core (Personality), which includes our purpose and acts as the nexus for our life field.

Think of a field as a zone of influence relating many elements into a single object. The source influence is the nexus. In the conceptual space of the etheric, fields are the building blocks of reality. Life fields are the top field in the hierarchy of fields. (Butler, 2015)

Worldview

The most important functional area in the Attention Complex is Worldview, which functions as a library containing memory, understanding and instincts. At birth, it is populated with human instincts inherited from the Body Mind, and spiritual urges, and a degree of understanding about the nature of reality, inherited from our Personality.

As we mature, worldview is also populated with cultural beliefs and some degree of new understanding as we learn to manage our human instincts. Spiritual instincts involve the urge to turn toward kinds of experiences most likely to provide opportunities for desired understanding. More a nuisance in our youth, for some people, spiritual instincts begin to dominate their actions as they mature.

During transition out of this lifetime, and when we are free of human instincts, it appears we experience a sorting out process as we make sense of the understanding we have gained. It is beyond the scope of this model to explain whether or not we enter into a new venue for learning. Since our purpose appears to be to gain understanding, my speculation is that we will quickly find ourselves in a new venue … physical or not.

The Perceptual Agreement Organizing Principle states: Personality must be in perceptual agreement with the aspect of reality with which it will associate. (Butler, 2016) (Butler, 2015-2) Based on that, each lifetime would presumably result in greater understanding, and therefore, our access to reality would be increased. If true, this would make other venues available to us.

In this model, our actual self is our personality (core intelligence). What we think is our actual self is only our conscious self, which is the experiencing part of our life field. All information into and out of our life field is by way of our Attention Complex (mind). No part of us, core intelligence or experiencer, is immune to the filtering of information or able to avoid the coloring of our intended action caused by worldview. Thus, in this model, the Perceptual Agreement limitation applies to all parts of our life field.

As conscious self, the only way you can change worldview is with the expression of specific intention. As I will explain below, even then, you will only be able to make incremental changes. This is why mindfulness is a life-long process. (Butler, 2014)

Morphic Fields

The idea of what I refer to as our personality acting as our intelligent core is based on a concept proposed by Rupert Sheldrake as the Hypothesis of Formative Causation. (Sheldrake) [paraphrasing] Sheldrake proposes that an organism can be modeled as a top field enfolding a hierarchy of nested fields. Each field is an organizing agent for the formation of a part of the organism. For instance, each cell in the body is organized by a field with instructions specific to that cell’s function in a many to one manner. Larger parts of the organism such as skin, bone and muscle, are represented by fields enfolding subordinate fields, and so on in a hierarchical manner.

The process of organizing the field according to Nature’s habit is referred to by Sheldrake as morphic resonance. Each type of species has a common memory or habit. Creative solutions to environmental challenges are able to change the habit, and thus effect all of the related species.

Nature’s habit is comparable to the worldview functional area in the diagram. Both have considerable momentum, meaning that they resist large changes, but will respond to influences causing small, incremental change.

As a person, we are an immortal personality entangled with human body in an avatar relationship. We share the Attention Complex with our human, and therefore our worldview. But, note that I have modeled the influence of body image on the human body as a link to the body which bypasses the Attention Complex.

The morphic field that organizes our body is based on the memory of its species. Thus, when we seek to influence our body, the model predicts that we must do so by way of the Attention Complex as a well-visualized expression. For instance, worldview is typically programmed to assume a mature body means a worn-out body. Therefore, our task is to change worldview rather than the body image. (In actuality, aging may be a cultural artifact.)

First Sight Theory

First Sight Theory proposed by James Carpenter holds that everything produces a psi signal which we are able to sense. (Carpenter, 2014) He also maintains that our every expression produces a psychokinetic signal which influences our environment according to the intention of the expression. He proposes twelve corollaries to the psi sensing and psychokinetic expression theory that can be used pretty much without modification as the ruleset for operation of the Attention Complex.

Keep in mind that First Sight Theory applies to our mostly unconscious mind. I say mostly unconscious, because our ability to consciously sense and influence functions in the Attention Complex (mind) depends on our lucidity. Lucidity is a measure of how well we have learned to quiet our mind and pay attention to those small impressions radiating from our mental processing.

Corollary 7, the Bidirectionality Corollary, indicates that we unconsciously turn toward or away from information depending on our interest as it has been expressed to our mostly unconscious mind. This corollary is important as a mechanism for our spiritual instincts to guide our unconscious decision making. It is also the mechanism we seek to influence with our conscious intention to produce changes in worldview.

The Nature of Awareness

An important consequence of this model is that we do not directly experience reality. Instead, we experience what our worldview thinks about what we experience. This is not the conjecture of an engineer speculating about phenomena. Mainstream psychology is increasingly reporting findings indicating awareness of stimuli only after the mind processes the information. (Carpenter, 2014) (Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, 2008) (Dockrill, 2016)

If you contemplate your thought processes, you will note that you visualize what you are going to say, compose the wording, and then speak, in that order. This very fast process is triggered by your intention to speak, but we only become aware of what we express as it emerges from our unconscious mind.

Since your mostly unconscious mind pre-processes information, it is simple for it to ignore some information if your worldview is so conditioned. The Attention Limiter function in the Attention Complex is based on the consequences of Corollary 7 in First Sight Theory. In fact, we ignore much of the environmental information coming to us.

Since other minds also send psi information to us, we probably ignore psi information coming from the mind of our loved ones unless our worldview is conditioned to acknowledge it. We are all natural mental mediums. It is just that some of us have a worldview that is conditioned to accept mind-to-mind information. Mindfulness is the tool by which we can take control of that conditioning task to improve lucidity.

Summation of the Model

The consequences of surviving beyond this lifetime, the fact that we are only aware of the results of unconscious processing of environmental information and the fact that we share the database for that processing with our body, must be part of our sense of who we are. The alternative would seem to be self-delusion.

This model, or one like it, must also be part of the explanation for the phenomena we experience. If the model is largely correct, the etheric aspect of who we are is the same as our discarnate communicators. The only difference is our entanglement with a human avatar.

The relationship of our five physical senses to our mind, what we sense psychically and mediumistic communication with a loved one, are only different in intention and the meaning for them we have been conditioned to assign.

The only conscious influence we have on what we sense and express is our intention, and even that is conditional, based on the momentum of our mostly unconscious worldview. The awakening mystics speak of is a person’s emerging realization that there is a difference between personal reality dictated by worldview and actual reality … followed by the determination to align personal reality with actual reality.

As is discussed below, a person (spirit entangled with a human) is the conduit through which paranormal phenomena must pass to cause physical effects. This may be facilitated by our avatar relationship, while our discarnate communicators do not have the physical perspective apparently necessary for their worldview to assign physicality.

Anomalistic and Exceptional Experiences Psychologists are correct in thinking point of view influences experiences, but they ignore the reasons. If we believe in paranormal phenomena, then we are telling our Attention Complex to process environmental information deemed paranormal, rather than rejecting it because it does not agree with worldview. Based on the Principle of Perceptual Agreement, people who accept what their worldview shows them tend to be blind to more of reality than those who question their perception.

Formation of EVP

Using ATransC nomenclature, the most common forms of reported EVP are transform, opportunistic and left message: (Butler, 2010)

Transform EVP: Available noise is transformed into voice. Collection of transform EVP examples is accomplished by using a simple audio recorder. If there is not sufficient ambient noise, it might be added with a small fan. A common practice used in the early days of EVP, but discouraged today, was to tune a radio between stations so as to produce radio static for voice formation. Although the voices might be heard when they are formed, they are typically not heard until playback of the recording.

Transform EVP is the most common form and the only form ATransC considers useful for research. The models being developed to help understand survival and our etheric-physical nature also support the formation of transform EVP.

Opportunistic EVP: This is typically a live voice technique, meaning that a physical person’s speech is recorded and used for background noise. The live voice is thought to be changed between the source and the recorder. Foreign language is usually used.

In the radio-sweep technique, the tuner of a radio is swept to opportunistically produce an output stream formed of the required bits of radio broadcast sound. It appears to be necessary for intended order to be in the form of compelling a person to produce the required sound at the needed moment. (Possible violation of self-determination; think Seth’s “Do not violate.”)

A third technique for opportunistic EVP is storage of pre-recorded voice in a digital buffer, and then the random selection of buffer addresses to produce an output sound stream composed of bits of voice from the pre-recorded voice. A random process in the computer program may be used for selecting storage addresses, but an environmental detector, such as a radio-frequency, magnetic or temperature detector might also be used. EVP are thought to be formed via psychokinetic manipulation of the random process.

After experimentation and review of hundreds of examples, it has become ATransC policy that the frequency of false positives produced by opportunistic techniques makes it virtually useless for any but the most informed research. (Butler, 2011) (Butler, 2012) (Heinen, 2010) (Leary, 2013) (Butler, 2009)

None of the models being developed to help understand survival and our etheric-physical nature support the formation of radio-sweep EVP.

As a compounding factor for evaluation of these techniques by less experienced practitioners, transform EVP may be found in the resulting noise stream inadvertently produced by all such techniques.

Left Message EVP: This category includes messages left on telephone answering machines and phone calls. There is much less known about this form of EVP, as they are typically spontaneous events while transform and opportunistic EVP are typically induced, in that contact is initiated by a practitioner. The mechanisms involved in the formation of left message EVP appears to be the same as for transform EVP.

Stochastic Resonance

The only physical process we have identified that accounts for the physical changes in an audio stream is stochastic amplification. (Abbott, 2009) In that, a small signal can be amplified when mixed with a broad-spectrum noise signal in a nonlinear analog amplifier circuit. This phenomenon is sometimes used in telecommunication as a way of extending the range of transmission between signal regenerators.

In one view of this, a small psychokinetic influence is thought to be amplified via Stochastic amplification as if it were a physical sound stream. The second theory requires an understanding of how the intended order concept is used here.

Intended Order

The Expression Organizing Principle is important to this discussion. It is defined as: Reality is expressed via personality’s attention on an imagined outcome with the intention to make it so. (Butler, 2016) (Butler, 2015-2) If it is true that every act is intentional, then reality is the product of intention or intended order. (This is also the definition used for the creative process.)

We have noted that a random process is involved in most paranormal phenomena. For instance, at least some of the examples of precipitation art require the availability of raw, randomly organized material to be used in the art. Most visual forms of ITC require chaotic noise as the raw stuff for feature formation. Noise is transformed into voice in transform EVP.

The Random Event Generators (REG) used for consciousness research respond to attention by becoming less random. In terms of order, the only difference between an REG signal and audio or visual noise is scale. As I read the physics, the impression of intention on noise by way of stochastic amplification holds for all of these.

Etheric-to-Physical Interface

Etheric space is conceptual while physical space is objective, and so, a transforming process is necessary for one to influence the other. In this model, a concept is defined as a fundamental idea; a root thoughtform from which systems of thought can be derived. Objective means those aspects of our world we can experience with physical senses. Sensed information is transformed into psi signals to which we assign physicality, even though they are not otherwise different from other signals we receive.

An important concept concerning this interface is energy well. In a single-tone sound stream, each next cycle is the same as the preceding cycle. Such a signal is very stable, and conceptually, great stability represents a very deep energy well which is more difficult to influence than a shallow well. This can be seen in EVP formation, as the psi influence necessary to change a single-tone signal appears to be greater than that needed to change a more random signal.

In this model, it is not the size or mass of an object to be concerned with for psychokinetic influence. It is the energy well associated with the idea of its stability. Both views may have the same result, but the difference in focus helps us understand why noise with few variations produce fewer EVP than noise with many perturbations. It appears that noise spikes help initiate voice formation.

Cultural Contamination

A common factor in EVP is apparent coloring of the message according to the practitioner or interested observer’s worldview. In the simplest example, two people will record for EVP in the same room. The one who is not afraid of the dark records useful information and the one who is afraid, records scary messages such as “Get out!” and “I hate you!” We also see this sort of cultural contamination in mental mediumship, as mediums color messages based on personal beliefs.

In fact, we see no evidence in any of our ITC to support the notion of evil in the biblical sense. Yes, we find people behaving poorly, but not kill your soul evil. We also see no evidence or foundation in the metaphysics for earthbound souls. The Principle of Perceptual Agreement is the only organizing factor we have noted that limits our access to reality via self-determination.

The takeaway from the cultural contamination concept is that a discarnate communicator may initiate an EVP but the message is first sensed by the practitioner or interested observer’s mostly unconscious mind as a conceptual thoughtform. There, it is matched up to worldview before being expressed into the physical as intended order. In this way, an intended message of “Please leave me alone” from a discarnate communicator may produce a “Get out” EVP if the practitioner or interested observer expects scary messages.

Cultural contamination is easily seen in EVP. The same model used for EVP is used for mental mediumship or channeling or watching television. A person who has learned to be more lucid by way of mindfulness will probably be subject to less contamination, but in practice, it is a part of the human condition.

Concluding Comments

Emerging understanding about how we think is making it difficult to ignore the part our nonphysical aspect plays in our daily living. This idea of an inner, spiritual self and an outer, physical self is no longer the domain of mystics and New Age believers. While scientists are more willing to say that mental processing comes before conscious awareness, a decidedly etheric concept, they are reluctant to merge their theories with parapsychological models.

Be pragmatic. It is well-established fact that EVP exist as anomalous voices found in electronic equipment. Fraudulent EVP are not EVP; they are fakes. If a person mistakes ambient sounds for EVP, he or she needs training, rather than their error being evidence of delusion. Training is our community’s biggest problem and one only you can fix.

Be clear about the consequences of what you accept as true. Beware what your friends think is true, and examine beliefs of the author whose literature you depend on for learned guidance. Question the consequences of every thought and claim.

EVP are a well-established form of transcommunication. If you have examined it and remain unconvinced, perhaps your source needs more training. Certainly, there are examples that can only be reasonably discounted by ignoring known natural principles.

References

Abbott, Mark D. McDonnell and Derek. 2009. “What Is Stochastic Resonance? Definitions, Misconceptions, Debates, and Its Relevance to Biology.” NCBI, PMC, US National Library of Medicine. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2660436/.

APStaff. 2015. “What is Anomalistic Psychology?” Goldsmiths, University of London. gold.ac.uk/apru/what/.

Butler, Tom and Lisa. 2012. “Using Live Voice Input Files for EVP.” Association TransCommunication. atransc.org/live-voice/.

Butler, Tom. 2015. “Etheric Fields.” Etheric Studies. ethericstudies.org/etheric-fields/.

Butler, Tom. 2011. “EVPmaker with Allophones: Where are We Now?” Association TransCommunication. atransc.org/evpmaker-study-where-are-we-now/.

Butler, Tom. 2010. “Locating EVP Formation and Detecting False Positives.” Association TransCommunication. atransc.org/locating-false-positives/.

Butler, Tom. 2014. “Mindfulness.” Etheric Studies. ethericstudies.org/mindfulness/.

Butler, Tom. 2015-2. “Organizing Principles.” Etheric Studies. ethericstudies.org/organizing-principles/.

Butler, Tom. 2009. “Radio-Sweep: A Case Study.” Association TransCommunication. atransc.org/radiosweep-study1/.

Butler, Tom. 2015-3. “Trans-survival Hypothesis.” Etheric Studies. ethericstudies.org/trans-survival-hypothesis/.

Butler, Tom. 2016. Your Immortal Self, Exploring the Mindful Way. AA-EVP Publishing, Reno, NV. ISBN 978-0-9727493-8-1. ethericstudies.org/immortal_self/.

Carpenter, James. 2014. “First Sight: A Model and A Theory of Psi.” James Carpenter.  drjimcarpenter.com/about/documents/FirstSightformindfield.pdf.

Dockrill, Peter. 2016. “Consciousness Occurs in ‘Time Slices’ Lasting Only Milliseconds, Study Suggests.” Science Alert. sciencealert.com/consciousness-occurs-in-time-slices-lasting-only-milliseconds-study-suggests.

Gullà, Daniele. 2004. “Computer–Based Analysis of Supposed Paranormal Voice: The Question of Anomalies Detected and Speaker Identification.” Association TransCommunication. atransc.org/gulla-voice-analysis/.

Heinen, Cindy. 2010. “Information Gathering Using EVPmaker With Allophone: A Yearlong Trial.” Association TransCommunication. atransc.org/information-gathering-using-evpmaker/.

Leary, Mark. 2013. “A Research Study into the Interpretation of EVP – Three parts.” Association TransCommunication. atransc.org/radiosweep-study2/.

Max-Planck-Gesellschaft. 2008. “Decision-making May Be Surprisingly Unconscious Activity.” Science Daily. sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080414145705.htm.

Sheldrake, Rupert PhD. “Morphic Resonance and Morphic Fields.” Rupert Sheldrake. sheldrake.org/research/morphic-resonance/introduction?.

Sudduth, Michael. 2009. “Super-Psi and the Survivalist Interpretation of Mediumship.” Cup of Nirvana. michaelsudduth.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/SurvivalMediumship.pdf.

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Do You Hear What I Hear?

Part II
A Research Study into the Interpretation of EVP

A Second Study of EVP Interpretation
Published in the Spring 2013 ATransC NewsJournal
Read Part 1 and Part 3

This is a Minibox by Paranormal Systems, Inc. (2007). It is basically a radio equipped with a tuner that automatically sweeps the dial. The sweep is continuous and the rate is variable. See the ATransC endnote.

Introduction

In the previous issue of the NewsJournal (Winter 2013), I described a research study that examined the problem of EVP interpretation. As all EVP enthusiasts know, people often disagree over how particular EVP should be interpreted, and we were interested in documenting how serious the problem really is.

In that study, 24 investigators each interpreted a large set of EVP, and the most common or “consensus” interpretation of each EVP was determined. Then, the individual investigators’ interpretations of the EVP were compared to the consensus interpretations to see how well they agreed. The results showed that, on average, only 21% of the investigators’ interpretations of particular words agreed with the consensus interpretation. To put this finding in perspective, imagine that your family doctor arrived at the same diagnosis as most other doctors on only 1 out of 5 of their diagnoses. Such a low rate of agreement would obviously raise serious issues about medical diagnoses, and similar issues must be addressed about EVP interpretations.

In this article, I describe a second study that was conducted to answer additional questions about EVP interpretation. This study, which was partly funded by a grant from the Association TransCommunication to the Rhine Research Center, examined EVP that were recorded using radio-sweep technology. Radio-sweep technology, often known as “ghost boxes” or “spirit boxes,” involves rapidly changing the tuning of a radio receiver to produce a stream of noise that is composed of bits of sound from the stations that are being scanned. Advocates of this technique believe that communicating entities use the snippets of sound to produce words. Many investigators suggest that EVP that are recorded with radio sweep are more distinct than those recorded without background noise. However, critics note that the noise source itself sometimes contains words or other sounds that might be interpreted as intelligent communication. In any case, we were interested in whether the low rate of agreement found in the earlier study of EVP that were recorded without a sound source is also found with radio-sweep EVP.

A second goal of the study was to examine how people’s interpretations of EVP are affected by knowing what other people heard. EVP enthusiasts know that people’s interpretations of EVP can be influenced by what other people say they hear. For that reason, some investigators do not share their personal interpretations until others have listened and come to their own, independent conclusions. But exactly how much are listeners’ interpretations biased when they know what other people think an EVP says? And does this biasing effect depend on whose interpretation is known? Often, listeners tend to give the interpretation offered by the investigator who recorded the EVP special attention, possibly because listeners assume that the original investigator has listened carefully many times before rendering an interpretation and is aware of the conditions under which it was recorded. If so, listeners may be particularly affected by knowing the interpretation of the person who recorded the EVP. To examine the biasing effects of knowing other people’s interpretations, we had people listen to EVP after learning what others thought they said and had other people interpret EVP without knowing others’ interpretations.

The Study

To obtain a set of EVP for the study, an announcement was posted on the ATransC website and published in the NewsJournal asking investigators to submit radio-sweep EVP that the investigator believed contained an anomalous or ethereal voice. We also asked the submitting investigators to indicate what they thought the EVP said.

Nineteen EVP were submitted, of which we selected 12 audio clips for the study. If an investigator’s statement or question preceded the clip, it was removed so that each clip contained only the EVP with a few seconds of radio-sweep noise before and after when possible. These 12 EVP varied in length from a one-syllable word to eight words (containing 11 syllables).

Before we started the study, a pair of experienced paranormal investigators provided their independent interpretations of each EVP. We used these interpretations to see whether people’s interpretations agreed more with the original investigators’ interpretations than the “secondary interpretations” provided by these other investigators

The original investigators’ interpretations of the 12 EVP contained a total of 55 syllables and 46 words. The secondary interpretations by the other investigators contained 63 syllables and 53 words. The original and secondary interpretations not only contained different numbers of syllables and words, but the secondary interpretations agreed with the investigators’ interpretations on only 4 words (8.7%).

Ninety adults were recruited to participate in the study. The participants were 23 men and 61 women who ranged in age from 18 to 81 (average age was 46.5). Dr. Christine Simmonds-Moore supervised the data collection, which occurred in a laboratory at either the Rhine Research Center or the University of West Georgia.

After each participant completed a background questionnaire, he or she was randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions. These experimental conditions differed in whether participants received an interpretation of each EVP before listening to it. Participants in the no-interpretation condition simply wrote down their interpretations on a form that we provided, one EVP per page. Participants in a second condition saw the investigator’s interpretation of the EVP at the top of each page of the form before interpreting the EVP. Participants in a third condition saw the secondary interpretation (made by the other two investigators) at the top of each page. By having participants listen to the EVP under three different conditions (no interpretation, investigator’s interpretation, or secondary interpretation), we could examine the degree to which knowing others’ interpretations affected what participants reported they heard.

Participants listened to each of the 12 EVP clips through headphones in a quiet research room and wrote down their interpretations. Participants listened to each EVP as many times as needed to decide what the words might be.

Agreement with the Investigator’s and Secondary Interpretations

In deciding whether particular syllables and words in the participant’s interpretation matched the syllables and words in the investigator’s and secondary interpretation, we leaned in the direction of leniency. For example, singular and plural forms of a word were counted as a match (Richard/Richards), contractions were counted as a match with their constituent words (“don’t” and “do not” were counted as a match), and homonyms were counted as a match (weight/wait, their/there, hire/higher). Also, a particular word did not have to appear in the same position in the participant’s interpretation as in the investigator’s or secondary interpretation. For example, “book” would be counted as a match in “now take the book away” and “he should write the book today” even though book is the fourth syllable of the first phrase and the fifth syllable of the second.

The primary question was how many of the words in the investigators’ and secondary interpretations participants heard. Did participants hear the same things as the investigators? The answer depends on whether participants saw an interpretation of an EVP before they interpreted it.

When participants did not see any interpretation before listening to the EVP, they agreed with the investigator’s interpretation on only about 6% of the words (and 10% of the syllables) and with the secondary interpretations on about 8% of the words (10% of the syllables). More discouragingly, among participants who did not learn any interpretations before hearing the EVP, only one participant interpreted an EVP precisely in the same way as the investigator who submitted it. That is, out of 360 interpretations in the no-interpretation condition of the study (30 participants × 12 EVP), only one perfectly matched what the investigator reported. This is obviously a rather low level of agreement.

Of course, agreement differed across the 12 EVP. On the EVP with the greatest agreement, only one participant failed to match at least one word in the investigator’s interpretation. But on the EVP with the least agreement, not a single participant agreed with the investigator’s interpretation!

Agreement also differed across participants. In the absence of knowing the interpretation, the “worst” participant agreed with only 2% of the investigators’ words, and the “best” participant agreed with 14% of the words.

Knowing the investigators’ or secondary interpretations improved agreement markedly. Participants who had seen the investigators’ interpretations reported an average of 23% of the words and 23% of the syllables in those interpretations. After seeing the secondary interpretations, participants’ interpretations matched 27% of the words and 25% of the syllables in those interpretations. Thus, knowing how other people interpreted an EVP strongly influenced what participants said they heard.

Implications

Although the results of this study say nothing whatsoever about the nature of EVP, they raise questions about the degree to which we can trust interpretations of most EVP. I imagine that some investigators will find these results exceptionally discouraging. Most EVP enthusiasts are quite aware that people’s interpretations of particular EVP often disagree, sometimes wildly, but the extent of the problem may be more sobering than many imagine.

“Methods, the psychophone and the EVPmaker software methods proved to be highly unreliable, not because they are particularly bad acoustic backgrounds for the production of the voices but because they are undoubtedly a source of uncertainty and ambiguity in the analysis of the results. They can very easily originate pareidolia and/or projection of meaning based upon expectation. Very particularly with the EVPmaker software, it is easy to find “results” in recording-sessions where they do not exist. In addition, an erroneous interpretation of the content of possibly anomalous utterances found in the recording is very likely. Most of the EVP “results,” published in the Internet, fall into one of these categories.”

From: A Two-Year Investigation of the Allegedly Anomalous Electronic Voices or EVP

by Anabela CardosoRepublished from NeuroQuantology | September 2012 | Volume 10 | Issue 3 | Page 492-514

Other investigators may object that the situation is not as dire as the data suggest. For example, some may object that most of the participants in this study were not experienced with recording or interpreting EVP and, thus, the data may say little about the quality of EVP interpretations by experienced investigators. Yet, as noted, the two experienced investigators who provided the secondary interpretations agreed with the investigators’ interpretations on only 11.5% of the words. And the fact that participants who were trying to identify the words in the recordings under controlled circumstances heard only about 6% of the same words as the investigators should give us pause.

In many instances, these disagreements have no practical implications. If investigators on a paranormal investigation of a public location don’t agree on their interpretation of a particular EVP, often no harm is done. However, in cases where other people have a stake in the interpretation—as when grieving parents believe that an EVP is the voice of a deceased child—then interpretations matter a great deal. Like the earlier study, this experiment suggests that investigators should be more cautious in interpreting EVP for other people when the interpretations matter.

Read Part 1 and Part 3


With a Ph. D. in social psychology, Dr. Leary is a research psychologist who studies topics related to self-awareness, motivation, and emotion. He has conducted research on topics such as reactions to social rejection, the effects of excessive self-attention, people’s concerns with their social images, and the relationship between personality and behavior. He is on the editorial boards of several scientific journals in social psychology and recently released a psychology course on DVD entitled “Understanding the Mysteries of Human Behavior.”


Editor’s Note

For an additional study of how people hear EVP, please refer to the article EVP Online Listening Trials in the ATransC online Journal.

“Radio-sweep” is a generic name for EVP thought to be formed using sound produced by sweeping a radio dial. In principle, it produces a form of EVP referred to as “opportunistic EVP.” Please review Locating EVP Formation and Detecting False Positives and Radio-Sweep: A Case Study. Also see the article on page 9: “A Two-Year Investigation of the Allegedly Anomalous Electronic Voices or EVP.”

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A Research Study into the Interpretation of EVP

Part I

Published in the Winter 2013 ATransC NewsJournal
Read Part 2 and Part 3

Introduction

Anyone who has listened to even a few EVP recordings knows how difficult they are to interpret. Listeners often disagree, sometimes strongly, regarding what a particular EVP seems to say, which raises questions about the validity of each person’s interpretation. Yet, the usefulness of EVP depends on the degree to which investigators can trust one another’s interpretations of the EVP that they record. Although a great deal has been written about the possible mechanisms that produce EVP and the types of equipment that are most effective in recording them, EVP enthusiasts have devoted far less attention to problems associated with interpreting the sounds that are recorded.

After observing repeated disagreements among investigators (and rarely feeling that the interpretations of EVP on paranormal television shows match what I hear), I undertook a study to examine how serious the problem really is. The study that I conducted had two main goals: to document the degree to which investigators agree or disagree on their interpretations of EVP and to create a means of identifying which interpretation of a particular EVP is most likely to be “correct.”

The Study

To obtain a set of EVP for analysis, I contacted a number of paranormal investigators who had conducted systematic investigations at the Ferry Plantation House in Virginia Beach, Virginia. I received over 250 EVP, from which I chose 94 that were among the clearest in terms of having obvious vocal characteristics. These recordings came from eleven investigators who recorded them across seven different investigations. In general, investigators seemed to submit what they viewed as particularly good EVP, all of them recorded without a background noise source.

I then recruited 24 individuals (10 men, 14 women) with paranormal investigation experience to listen to and interpret the 94 audio clips. The raters ranged in age from 29 to 62, with an average age of 46. All but two of them currently belonged to active paranormal investigation groups.

The raters were sent a CD with the audio clips, along with a form for interpreting the EVP and a background information questionnaire. Raters listened to each EVP as many times as needed, wrote down each word that they heard (putting an asterisk for any words they could not understand), indicated any emotion that they detected in the voice, and rated their confidence that their interpretation of the EVP was correct. The background questionnaire asked about raters’ age and sex, their interests and beliefs in the paranormal, and included a brief measure of basic personality dimensions (such as extraversion, emotional stability and agreeableness).

Determining Agreement

Although we can never know for sure what an EVP “really” says, my analysis of raters’ interpretations was based on the assumption that a particular interpretation of an EVP that is made independently by several people is more likely to be “correct” than an interpretation that is made by only a few individuals. For example, if seven out of ten people who listen to an EVP hear exactly the same words, two other individuals hear a different set of words and the remaining person hears something else entirely, the interpretation on which the seven people agreed would be more likely to reflect the actual sounds than the other individuals’ idiosyncratic interpretations.

Thus, to begin, I determined a “consensus interpretation” for each EVP by counting the number of times that raters reported hearing various words. For example, whatever first word was heard by the most raters became the first word of the consensus interpretation. Whatever second word was heard by most raters was the second word of the consensus interpretation, and so on. In this way, I came up with the most common (or consensus) interpretation for each EVP.

With the consensus interpretation in hand, I then calculated the percentage of raters who agreed with the consensus interpretation. This number could range from 0% (no two raters reported hearing the same thing) to 100% (all raters agreed with the consensus interpretation) and is an index of the degree to which raters independently agreed in their interpretations of each EVP.

Of the 94 EVP, the one with the highest agreement (“What’s going on?”) was listed by 83% of the raters. That is, 83% of the raters listed the consensus interpretation for this EVP. However, the overall agreement for the entire set of EVP was much lower. Across all 94 EVP, average agreement with the consensus interpretation was only 21%. In other words, only about 1 out of 5 raters gave an interpretation that agreed with the most common (and, presumably most “accurate”) interpretation.

When analyzed at the level of particular words rather than the entire EVP, average agreement was 35%. Raters agreed with the most common interpretation of each specific word on about 1 out of every 3 words on average.

Some of the EVP not only had 0% agreement, but the various interpretations sometimes differed wildly. For example, one EVP that had no agreement on any words across raters was interpreted as saying, among other things: “Deep inside there’s a pickup;” “Keep those hidden Mr. Gel;” “He comes out here;” “Go outside and just lean on it;” “Get it tight, got to stretch it;” “Don’t try to persuade them;” “Get us out Mr. Kant;” and “I need the guns out if this is what you’ll do.” These various interpretations do not even contain similar phonemes.

Incidentally, the percentage of agreement with the consensual interpretation can be used as a way of assessing the clarity of an EVP. Historically, investigators have classified EVP as Class A, B, or C depending on how easily listeners can hear a message. But calculating the percentage of people who independently agree with the most common interpretation is a more precise and unambiguous indicator of the quality and clarity of an EVP than classifying it into one of three categories. Every EVP would have a score from 0 (no consensus; this EVP cannot be interpreted) to 100 (complete consensus; this EVP is so clear that everyone hears exactly the same thing).

Emotional Content

Raters indicated whether they detected any emotion in the voice. The majority of the EVP (63.5%) had no discernible emotional tone. However, raters indicated that some EVP expressed sadness (9.7%), anger or irritability (8.2%), urgency (7.7%), or happiness (6.3%).

Setting aside the fact that most of the EVP had no emotional tone, when an emotion was detected, on average only 12.7% of the raters agreed that a particular emotion, such as anger or sadness, was present. Thus, raters showed even less agreement in detecting emotion than in interpreting the content of the EVP.

Interestingly, raters’ tendency to hear emotions in the EVP was related to their own personalities. For example, raters who scored higher on the measure of extraversion reported “happiness” in the voices more frequently, raters who scored higher on the measure of agreeableness reported hearing both more “happiness” and more “anger,” and those who scored higher on emotional stability heard more “happiness” expressed. Raters’ interpretations of emotional tone sometimes reflected their own personalities as much as the actual features of the EVP.

Rater Confidence

For each EVP, raters indicated how confident they were that their interpretation was correct on a 4-point scale (where 1 = not at all, 2 = a little, 3 = moderately, and 4 = very confident). Across all EVP, raters’ confidence averaged between “a little” and “moderately” confident (average confidence was 2.5 on the 4-point scale). To see if raters who were more confident of their interpretations were more likely to hear what other raters heard (the consensus interpretation), I correlated raters’ confidence judgments with the number of their interpretations that agreed with the group’s consensus interpretation. The correlation was rather weak, indicating that being confident that one’s interpretation is correct does not usually reflect that other people will hear the same thing.

Differences Among Raters

I calculated an index of personal agreement that tells us how good each rater was at hearing the most common interpretation. Individual raters agreed with the group consensus between 17% and 35% of the time, with an average of 22%. That is, the “best” rater agreed with the group consensus interpretations on 35% of the EVP, and the “worst” rater agreed on 17% of the EVP. When analyzed at the level of the word rather than the entire EVP, the percent of raters who agreed with the group consensus varied from 31% to 51%, with an average of 38% of the words. So, if we play the average EVP to a large group of people, the average person will agree with the consensus interpretation of the entire EVP 22% of the time but agree with 38% of the words.

I analyzed whether any of the characteristics of the raters mattered in their agreement with the consensus interpretation. Although we might expect that experience with EVP might be related to interpretation ability, the degree to which raters agreed with the consensus interpretation was not related to the number of EVP that they had personally recorded, their years of involvement in paranormal investigations, the number or content of paranormal television shows they watched, basic personality dimensions, their age, or the nature of their beliefs in the paranormal. The only variable that was significantly related to agreement with the consensus interpretation was gender. Women’s interpretations agreed with the consensus interpretation 4% more often than men’s interpretations (24% vs. 20%). I’m not sure what to make of this finding.

Most raters’ interpretations were meaningful phrases, but some gave phonetic interpretations even if they did not make semantic sense. For example, on one EVP for which there was no consensus, some raters gave meaningful interpretations (such as “Hey we sung in the chorus” or “That is so great, Cory”), whereas other raters wrote down what they heard even though it didn’t make sense (such as “Hack me some green course” and “Hey peace and grin Coreys”). Investigators should consider whether imposing meaning on an EVP may lead them to “hear” words that help the phrase make sense but that might be incorrect.

The raters also differed in their willingness to leave blanks. Raters were told to use an asterisk when they couldn’t interpret a particular word. Some raters used asterisks regularly, but others did not use them at all. Given that we can assume that no rater was perfectly confident of every word, those who interpreted words they didn’t understand probably made more misleading interpretations than those who admitted that they didn’t understand certain words.

Conclusions and Recommendations

The results of this study suggest that investigators should be less confidence in their interpretations of EVP than they typically are. On average, the most common interpretation of each EVP was shared by only 22% of other people. And, of course, all interpretations other than the most common, consensual one had even less agreement. In fact, most of the raters’ interpretations were not given by any other listener! Furthermore, raters were not particularly good at judging the correctness of their interpretations. Thus, having the sense that “I’m sure this is what it says” does not indicate that other people will agree with one’s interpretation (or that it is actually correct).

These results lead me to offer four recommendations for the responsible interpretation of EVP:

  1. In light of the fact that any particular investigator’s interpretation of an EVP is not likely to be shared by other people and that people’s interpretations are biased by what they expect to hear, investigators should never interpret an EVP for other people without playing it for them several times and soliciting their independent interpretations.
  2. If the interpretation of a specific EVP is particularly important (such as when it is being interpreted for grieving family members), investigators should use a scaled-down version of the procedure used in this study. Have at least 10 people independently listen to the EVP and determine the consensus interpretation, if any. Then report an interpretation of the EVP to others only if a majority of listeners agrees on that interpretation. In some cases, it may be helpful to report more than one potential interpretation, along with the percentage of people who agreed with each one. Providing listeners with such data is a more honest and responsible way to share EVP than to offer a particular interpretation that might, in fact, be idiosyncratic.
  3. Investigators should be willing to refrain from interpreting ambiguous EVP. Providing a questionable interpretation as if it is certain is misleading, if not sometimes dishonest. Just because an EVP cannot be interpreted does not mean it is not a useful piece of evidence, so investigators should not interpret EVP that are unclear.
  4. Paranormal investigation groups and EVP practitioners should have formal guidelines for the interpretation of EVP that minimize the likelihood that they will offer interpretations of EVP—whether to other group members, clients, or outsiders—that are expressed with greater confidence than the objective evidence warrants. Investigators should exercise greater care in sharing their interpretations of EVP, and procedures should be in place to ensure that clients, other investigators and the public are not inadvertently misled regarding interpretations of an EVP.

Read Part 2


learythumbnailsmallWith a Ph. D. in social psychology, Dr. Leary is a research psychologist who studies topics related to self-awareness, motivation, and emotion. He has conducted research on topics such as reactions to social rejection, the effects of excessive self-attention, people’s concerns with their social images, and the relationship between personality and behavior. He is on the editorial boards of several scientific journals in social psychology and recently released a psychology course on DVD entitled “Understanding the Mysteries of Human Behavior.”


Editor’s Note

For an additional study of how people hear EVP, please refer to the article EVP Online Listening Trials in the ATransC online Journal.

“Radio-sweep” is a generic name for EVP thought to be formed using sound produced by sweeping a radio dial. In principle, it produces a form of EVP referred to as “opportunistic EVP.” Please review Locating EVP Formation and Detecting False Positives and Radio-Sweep: A Case Study. Also see the article on page 9: “A Two-Year Investigation of the Allegedly Anomalous Electronic Voices or EVP.”

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EVP Online Phantom Voices

by Tom Butler
Previously published in the Fall 2012 ATransC NewsJournal

Abstract

A frequent source of consternation for people who are asked to listen to EVP examples is their failure to hear what is reported. It is expected there will be some disagreement between listeners and practitioners. That is the nature of EVP (see Online Listening Study). However, a problem develops when listeners report hearing only noise, and doing so with example after example from the same practitioner when the practitioner insists there are paranormal voices in the examples. The question necessarily must turn to why the practitioner is hearing what others do not.

For this study, sound file containing only noise were presented to ATransC.org online listeners who were told there was only noise and were then asked to report what they heard. The study confirmed the prevalence of people who report hearing “phantom voices.” the study includes a discussion as to why this may be.

Introduction

The evidence is very clear that there are examples of Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) that contain clearly understood messages. EVP are empirically demonstrated phenomena. Yet, a commonly heard complaint is that websites concerned with the paranormal often have examples of EVP that sound like simple noise.

 

 

ccatransc2012-phantom_voices_fig2Website visitors have used the contact tool to announce that they are receiving astoundingly long and important EVP, which on close examination, have proven to only contain noise. Yet, others have provided excellent, clearly heard examples. So what is the difference? What leads one person to hear messages where there is only noise while others do not?

 

The prevalence of this “phantom voices” phenomenon is increasingly evident as more people become involved in EVP. The resulting confusion is seen as an obstacle to useful collaboration amongst practitioners and certainly must warn off potential researchers.

Listening Test

To develop more understanding of the problem of phantom voices, the ATransC conducted an online listening study using two sound files. One contained simple brown noise (emphasis on voice-frequencies) and the other contained broad-spectrum noise modulated with audio pulses that simulate the cadence of speech. It was clearly stated that neither example contained voice. Possible explanations about what might cause a person to hear phantom voices were included above the hearing test and what was in the files was clearly stated.

Results

Of the 111 submissions, 15.3% (17) reported hearing voices in the brown noise file and 27.8% (33) reported hearing voices in the modulated file. That means that 39% (43) reported voice in one or both of the files.

Participants were also asked if they had a history of hearing voices not heard by others. Thirty-six percent (40) of the respondents said that they did. Most indicated they were likely in a hypnagogic state of awareness.

Interestingly, many respondents reported hearing music or musical tones. While hearing music might be an associated characteristic of the phantom voices phenomenon, the question has not been addressed here.

Analysis

This was an informal study in the sense that there were no controls. Although respondents were asked how the samples were listened to, it is mostly unknown if the samples were heard under optimum conditions. It is also reasonable to ask if respondents would be candid about hearing voices they were told were not present. There is probably a natural selection of respondents which biases the results away from “hearing voices” reports. The website receives nearly a thousand visitors a day and receiving only 111 responses to the study over more than a year suggests that many who might have read the discussion prior to listening to the sound files, and subsequently heard voices, chose not to respond. For the purpose of future study, it is hypothesized that at least 43% might hear voices in sound files which are not present.

Theory

The phantom voices phenomenon appears to have a number of possible causes ranging from mental illness to the natural human tendency to make sense of ambiguous stimuli. Mental illness does not appear to be a factor for EVP; however, in the most extreme examples, there does appear to be a complex of common behaviors which may imply a situational fixation on hearing voices. This is addressed below in “Listener Fatigue.”

Hypnagogia

There are a number of mental characteristics described in the psychological literature that touch on this experience, but hypnagogia seems to be a key concept. It is defined as: Inducing sleep; soporific [sleepiness]; drowsiness preceding sleep; relating to the images or hallucinations sometimes experienced in this state. According to Gurstelle and de Oliveira,1 “…daytime parahypnagogia (DPH) is more likely to occur when one is tired, bored, suffering from attention fatigue, and/or engaged in a passive activity….”

The mind will naturally seek order in chaotic stimuli (see “Perceptual Order” below). The order is apparently based on what is in the person’s memory, so the almost-heard sounds have a familiar feel for the experiencer. A common report received by the ATransC is hearing voices or music for which the source cannot be found or recorded. In most reports, the sounds are described as a distant conversation or the sound of a radio program that can “almost” be made out, but no specific words or songs can be identified. As it happens, the phantom voices are often associated with a person who is distracted by activities that permit the person’s mind to wander. They may also be experienced at the beginning and end of sleep time.

Experiencers often resist mundane explanations, and insist they are experiencing something paranormal.

Audio Illusion

There are also a number of types of auditory illusions that have been identified. A good article about these is “Audio illusions that will fool your ear (and brain)” by Rich Pell.2 One such illusion is described as “The phantom words illusion,” which is simply the same two words being repeated over and over but time displaced between the left and right channel. This demonstrates how easy it is to hear words and phrases that are not there, and even hear them change, as the brain attempts to make sense of the aural ambiguity. This is a pretty interesting effect!

Passive Concentration

Perhaps a better term for hypnagogia would be “passive concentration” because the person has focused attention, but not with concentrated awareness. This distraction from the inner chatter of the brain leaves the mind open for unnoticed inputs.

In principle, the hypnagogic state of mind is ideal for our etheric communicators to commune with our otherwise too busy mind. Passive concentration is a spontaneous version of mindful meditation which is a deliberately cultivated technique for communing with one’s inner senses and is an important technique for mediumship. The important point is that we must recognize the part these natural tendencies play in our perception of phenomena.

Apophenia and Pareidolia

Apophenia is a term used in psychology for the mind’s natural tendency to identify patterns where none exist. Pareidolia is a subset of apophenia which applies to finding meaning in sound or images that does not exist. Skeptics love to use these terms to explain away reports of paranormal experiences. When applied to all reports with no examination of the evidence, these terms are, in effect, psychobabble used to explain why people reporting paranormal experiences are imagining things. The term, “apophenia” does not apply to simple cases of misidentification such as a balloon being identified as a UFO or a fellow investigator’s reflection being mistaken as a ghost in a mirror. It applies to the result of the mind’s need to find order in chaos. When presented with information the mind is unable to identify or make sense of, its natural reaction is to offer up the next best fit. If the person is intent on finding voices in noise, the mind will probably offer a likely word or two.

Some reports of the paranormal may be instances of apophenia. The study of things paranormal often involves poorly formed images and hard to understand sound files which must be carefully studied. A person who is unfamiliar with the concept of mediumship, and who does not know it is possible to sense subtle energy, may be inclined to express a natural fear of the dark as a “sense of a nearby evil entity.” Such responses to unfamiliar experiences are not evidence of a psychological flaw, but are natural human attempts to relate to circumstances. The “antidote” is education.

Perceptual Order

In Gestalt psychology, the whole is seen as being different than the sum of its parts. In this, the observer might find understanding where there is little or no substantiating information. The Gestalt Laws of Perceptual Organization3 also provide possible explanations for the natural human tendency to find order in chaos. They include:

The Law of Similarity: Similar stimuli or elements that are close together tend to be grouped.

The Law of Closure: Stimuli tend to be grouped into complete figures.

The Law of Good Continuation: Stimuli tend to be grouped so as to minimize change or discontinuity.

The Law of Symmetry: Regions bound by symmetrical borders tend to be perceived as coherent figures.

The Law of Simplicity: Ambiguous stimuli tend to be resolved in favor of the simplest.

Clairaudience

Clairvoyance or “clear seeing” has become a catchall term for the ability to sense information in subtle energy. This may be in the form of voices, images, smells or a general “knowing.” It is possible that a person might hear voices in a soundtrack containing only noise, via clairaudience, if none are physically present. However, in the study of EVP, the voices are either physically there or they are not. If they are there, then others should be able to experience them. They are objective, meaning they have physical form. Understanding this point is central to the study of how transcommunication is experienced.

Listener Fatigue

EVP practitioners spend a lot of time listening to often noisy audio recordings. The expected EVP are usually mostly hidden by the noise and one must listen very carefully to distinguish them. Once isolated, the paranormal utterances are usually Class C, meaning they are not very easily understood. This makes it necessary for the practitioner to concentrate and listen to the sound segment many times. This situation is a formula for noise to be mistaken as anticipated EVP.

Discussion

The first documentation of EVP was in 1959 and the phenomenon remains poorly understood today. Fundamentally, the examples are just sound tracks usually containing a lot of noise and a few, often poorly formed words.

With proper training, usually gained by trial and error, with feedback from friends or people on the ATransC Idea Exchange, the practitioner learns to recognize the difference between actual voices transformed out of background noise and imagined messages. However, in cases in which this learning has not occurred, practitioners have been known to find meaning which does not exist in the noise. For all of the reasons one might propose to explain this, the most available means of avoiding problems with phantom voices is education.

This study should provide a sense of how common it is for individuals to mistake mundane information as something paranormal. The phantom voices effect is not unique to EVP, but can be seen in virtually all forms of transcommunication including visual ITC and mediumship. While this report addresses what has been called here, “phantom voices,” the larger phenomenon might be referred to as a form of hyperlucidity as the experiencer’s mind goes to extremes in an attempt to assign meaning.

References

  1. Gurstelle EB, de Oliveira JL., Daytime parahypnagogia: a state of consciousness that occurs when we almost fall asleep, William Paterson University, Wayne, nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14962619, Reviewed 5-3-2012
  2. Pell, Rich, Audio illusions that will fool your ear (and brain), com/electronics-blogs/audio-designline-blog/4033473/Audio-illusions-that-will-fool-your-ear-and-brain-, Reviewed 5-3-2012
  3. Saw, Jim, “Design Notes: Art 104 Sesign and Composition,” Palomar College,  palomar.edu/design/gestalt.html, Reviewed 1-9-2015

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Computer–Based Analysis of Supposed Paranormal Voice

The Question of Anomalies Detected Voice and Speaker Identification

by Daniele Gullà, ©Daniele Gullà – All Rights Reserved
Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Biopsychocybernetics Research, Bologna, Italy

1. Listening to the sound material: between psychoacoustic perception and electroacoustic analysis

Listening to the material recorded during the Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) or Instrumental TransCommunication (ITC) experiments requires that the listeners pay particular attention. To judge and correctly classify what they will hear, they should have at least an overview of the psycho-acoustical dynamics of the human auditory system, and the fundamental principles of phonetics and acoustics.

This lecture will address these subjects and provide useful cues for considering the complexities of listening to and decoding the sound material which is fundamental to conducting serious biopsychocybernetic research (Note here that “biopsychocybernetic” is used as an alternative to the more obsolete “parapsychology” and “paranormal”).

1.1 First Stage: one or more subjects listen to the sound material.

In this stage, the personal characteristics of each listener must be taken into account. The human ear and the cerebral centers responsible for sound decoding have peculiar features that are unique for each subject.

The path of the sound vibrations goes through the outer ear duct, the tympanic membrane, the hammer, the anvil, the stirrup and the oval window, up to the cochlea, which is filled with a special fluid. A thick cord of nerves connects the cochlea to the brain.

The widespread belief that the human acoustic perception range goes from about 20 to 20,000 Hertz (cycles per second) seems to be inadequate. Some recent discoveries have shown that a person is also able to hear the so-called ultrasound when the transmitter directly touches the head bones, so that the sound does not have to travel through the air. However, human perception averages these signals so that only one tone is heard.

We hear all frequencies between 20,000 and 70,000 Hertz at exactly the same higher tone that we can hear in the air. A peculiarity of the human being is to have—somewhere inside the ear—a sophisticated spectrum analyzer which is capable of breaking the sounds up on a harmonic basis in much the same way as is seen in Fourier analysis. It would therefore explain the particular sensitiveness and accuracy of human hearing faculties compared to animals which also have less complex analyzers, with a lower dynamic sound capacity. For example, consider the complexity of the compound sound, which becomes grandiose in a symphony, and how sophisticated the human ear must be to distinguish the smallest nuances of every instrument.

1.2  Second Stage: differentiation of the sounds of language.

In addition to the subjective analysis made through our ear, an objective electro-acoustic analysis is useful. In fact, our ear could interpret some sounds, which occur in succession with a peculiar rhythm and intonation, as parts of a melodic chain of a language. This also occurs if the sounds do not actually come from a real human verbal source but from noises produced in a particular sequence, which can lead to a linguistic interpretation of the noise. This is referred to here as “psycholinguistics.” Please refer to Figure 3.

The problems encounter in decoding such sequences of sound essentially depends on the listener’s comprehension skills. Every person is different as far as the interpretative skills of sound are concerned. Some people are able to catch either small differences or sound nuances, or to reproduce at will sounds already heard and mentally compare familiar sounds with new sounds. When, for example, people study a foreign language, they are inevitably inclined to “hear” the sounds of that language as sounds of their mother tongue; but, after a little practice, they can begin to compare the new sounds with familiar ones, finding differences and similarities. Therefore, if they want to correctly pronounce the new language, they must exercise their ear to recognize new sounds.

The capacities of learning new sounds could explain the hearing differences between subjects who conduct EVP experiments and subjects who do not: EVP experimenters have selectively trained their ears to listen to those peculiar sounds.

Most of the sounds which surround us, including language, are made of various types of waves that are complex tones which do not always show a periodic pattern. A complex tone can be considered as the algebraic sum of more sinusoidal signals, each one with a given frequency and strength. If we know these two parameters for each sinusoid, we can determine the spectrum of the complex signal we are examining.

If the signal is periodic, from the breakdown of each sinusoid we will find frequencies which are a multiple of a frequency called the “fundamental frequency.” The fundamental frequency is usually the sinusoid having the lowest frequency and the highest sound intensity; the others are called partial or harmonic components.

The spectrum of a periodic complex signal, such as a human voice as shown in Figure 2, is discontinuous: it is a so-called, “line or discrete spectrum.” The spectrum of a pure sound is made of only one line (frequency), whereas the spectrum of noise is usually made of a spectrum called “continuous” (Figure 1) where the lines are very thick and placed one on top of the other, so that they make a continuous thickening (or, in some bands, like a noise made by some consonants). Therefore, the first classification of the sounds in different auditory types can be based on the discrepancy between the periodic and aperiodic vibrations (harmonic and non-harmonic spectra). This discrepancy is what we usually call “sounds” and “noises.”

 

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Figure 2 – Spectrum of a human voice

 

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Figure 3: Rhythmical noises which can be linguistically interpreted (Bersani-Trevisan)

Among the language sounds, the sounds called “vocoids” (vocalic) are usually of periodic type (simple tones), while the sounds called “contoids” (consonantal) are noises or have some noise components. In the spoken human language, the single sounds come together in a continuous connection: not only is the vibration curve of each letter affected by the letters between which is included and among which a common aura is produced, but also by the sounds which come before or after it in a given length of time.

1.3  Third stage: comprehension of the elements which characterize a human voice.

As we have just described, the complex tone which composes the human voice (but also many musical instruments) is made of a sequence of sinusoids. The sequence which has the lowest frequency is called “fundamental frequency” and the following sequences with a higher frequency are called “harmonics” and they can be odd or even multiples of the fundamental frequency.

In the human voice, the sound intensity, the timbre and the audibility are largely due to the number of harmonics in the acoustic spectrum. The voice of a child with a high tone has very few harmonics; the average voice of a woman has more harmonics, and therefore, it is more comprehensible. The voice of a man with a deep tone is far more comprehensible because it is richer in harmonics (more thickening).

The peculiar timbre of a human voice also depends on the position of the so-called “formants.” For example, the human voice can be extensively modified by the path it makes from the larynx to the outside, since more resonances are made in certain frequencies than in others. The range of possibilities is practically endless and a specific peculiar pattern of the harmonic spectrum results from each arrangement of the vocal path.

The study of the formants is particularly effective in research concerning the relation between the resonances of the acoustic sources and the timbre. In this field, the human vocal apparatus is the most expressive, and perhaps, the most complex system. Other sound sources cannot change their resounding features. In fact, the variations of timbre in musical instruments can only be caused by affecting the dynamic of the vibrant body but not the instrument resounding features, which apart from structural alterations, cannot be modified.

On the contrary, in the human vocal characteristics, the subject can modulate the timbre not only changing, as far as possible, the dynamic of the vocal chords, but also changing the use and the width of the resonant cavities. In the usual cadence of verbal speech, the total number of movements needed for uttering words from the lungs to the vocal chords, the lower and upper resonant cavities, the tongue and the lips, is about 50/60 actions per second. That is why the qualitative modulations of the human voice are undoubtedly more varied than any other sound source.

In actual fact, the vocal tract works like a filter, strengthening some group of harmonics called “formants.” In an adult, the resonances due to the oropharyngeal cavity are produced at about 500, 1500 and 2500 Hertz. They correspond to the values of the frequencies of the first three formants: these values allow us to mathematically calculate the vocal tract length that is about 17.5 cm. It goes without saying that the acoustic resonances change following the kind of sound produced and the subject producing it.

The Italian formant values are slightly different from the French or Russian ones, or those of other countries. Also, the same Italian formant values are different if they come from different regions or belong to dialects with or without a different accent.  Moreover, as far as the main vowels of the Italian language are concerned, they correspond to different values which can be separately ascribed to each vocoid. The values of the first two formants—the most important—are usually sufficient to hear the differences among each vowel (i, e, a, o, u) as shown in Figure 4.  The features which characterize the human voice are countless and it is important that the EVP/ITC experimenter is able to distinguish them clearly in order to compare them with the anomalous recorded sounds. It is clear that, at this stage, we should take into account the qualitative and quantitative characteristics of the analyzed evidences in order to make a correct measurement. A bad recording quality partially jeopardizes the precise reading of the plots we want to interpret.  Moreover, we could lose or hide some important spectrographic, morphologic and structural characteristics which would lead to lost information.

1.4  Fourth stage: detecting anomalies

Taking into account the main properties of the human voice, we should be able to know the nominal deviation from the predictable values of the analyses. In this field of researches, the phonetician comes into play. This is the person who studies the Articulatory Phonetics and Tonetics. The phonetician can recognize the type of spoken language following the so-called Phonetic Transcription Standards which use symbols to correlate any kind of sound to a language.

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Figure 4: Values of the first two formants (F1 and F2) with reference to the Italian, French and English vowels

 

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Figure 5: Examples of some different articulatory postures for three Italian vowels (from left: i, u, a)

This is the most complex stage, both for the phonetician who makes the measurements and for the EVP/ITC researcher. They both must devise a standard classification of the acoustic events judged anomalous, in accordance with tables and parameters of comparison, and show the predictable deviation percentages from the standard.

2. Examples of analysis made on “unusual voices.”

Figure 6 and 7 refer to the analysis made on a magnetic tape where the voice of a Gracula Religiosa, a bird known also as Hill Myna, has been recorded. In this example, we have examined the word “Renato” that the Gracula has uttered on request of its trainer. The anomalies that I am going to describe will be clearer if you will look at Figure 8 and 9, where I have tried to faithfully reproduce the same word with my own voice, trying to imitate the bird voice. At the bottom of the diagram, we can notice the strange configuration that the computer gives us about its virtual reconstruction of the acoustic vocal tract.

The example certainly cannot be the voice of a human being!

In this case, having changed my voice, the “O” sounds more like a “U” but it can be represented in the table with almost normal values for the human voice. At the bottom, the vocal tract is normally structured.

Somebody will ask why we hear the word “Renato” uttered by the bird. It is a simple, and at the same time, a complex answer. The solution partly lies in the acoustic perception physiology and in the connections made by our cerebral database, when it is stimulated by a melodic sequence with particular linguistic attributes. In practice, the computer tells us that those sounds do not exactly correspond with the word “Renato,” as it is in the usual human elocution, but with a sound melodically similar that our brain decodes as such, and makes the appropriate changes.

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Figure 6: Voice of an imitating bird (Gracula Religiosa–common name Hill Myna) which seems to say the word “Renato.”

 

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Figure 7: Spectrogram and medium spectrum of the vowel “o” in the word “Renato”
uttered by the Gracula Religiosa.

If you make the difference between the average values of the first two formants of the analysed acoustic evidences, you will notice that—even if they are very different (718/1129 and 380/790 Hz)—their ratio is almost the same (410 against 411). It therefore explains our auditory sensation, since the formant ratio of the “O” does not change.

Something similar happened to a dolphin which could imitate the human voices with a higher register (high frequencies). It was significant that, besides the melody and likeness to a human voice for the Gracula, the ratio of the formantic structures (resonances) were similar to the values in the human vowels.

How the bird can learn sounds from us that do not belong to its language is another field of study. It is enough to know that some birds called “polyglot” or “imitator” are able to imitate the vocalism of other species. The phenomenon is also called “vocal mimicry.”

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Figure 8: My own voice while I am imitating the bird cry uttering the word “Renato.”

 

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Figure 9: Spectrogram and spectrum of the vowel “O” uttered by myself.

3. Some examples of analyses of sounds of presumed bio-psycho-cybernetic origin.

In Figure 10, we can see the spectrogram of a presumed anomalous voice recorded by microphone on magnetic tape by Michele Dinicastro (Research Manager of the Biopsychocybernetic Laboratory) in a silent environment. The voice would seem to pronounce the word “Gesù” (Jesus).

The spectrographic analyses show an approximate formantic structure almost without fundamental frequency and periodic vibrations typical of a voice of human origin. As you noticed from the spectrogram, the fundamental frequency and the laryngeal vibrations are not present. We can partly explain this datum because the voice is whispering.

In Figure 11, we notice in the top image the oscillogram of the voice, in the centre the trend of the fundamental frequency and at the bottom the virtual reconstruction of the vocal tract. It is interesting to notice that the fundamental frequency F0 is only detected in the last part of the sound “U” (in the dampening phase), as well as the vocal tract, which shows the presence of laryngeal vibrations typical of sustained sounds, like vowels.

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Figure 10: Microphonic voice of presumed paranormal origin that seems to pronounce the word “Gesù.”

 

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Figure 11: Presumed paranormal microphonic voice which seems to pronounce the word “Gesù.”

The section with more acoustic power (“Ge”), which corresponds to the central part, does not have the fundamental frequency F0 and laryngeal vibrations. Therefore, the shape of the vocal tract is not outlined.

In the “U,” which is indicated with the vertical lines, the vocal tract has normal dimensions but anomalous structure. The involved zones have excessive dimensions in order to get out this sound with a correct posture. In addition, the pharynx, the epiglottis and the larynx are moved forward and are too long.

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Figure 12: Table of the formants (F1 and F2) detected in the word “Gesù.”

Figure 12 shows the value of the first two formants (F1 and F2) relevant to the “u” vowel in “Gesù.” The black spot indicates the average position of the formants and the type of the used phoneme. In this case, the sound corresponds to a slightly open “u” with average values ranging between the “o” and the “u” vowels. In the Anglo-American phonetic alphabet the vocoid position corresponds to a sound like “hood.” As it often happens in the Italian language, the length of the final “u” is short and confirms that the explanation given by Michele Dinicastro is correct.

Since in the “e” vowel which comes before, the formantic tracks are broken and there are no laryngeal vibrations, the automatic program does not show the formant chart, but if you look at the spectrogram just examined, you will notice some areas with a sound thickening traces at 617 and 2588 Hertz, which correspond to the values for a little closed and aphonous “e” sound.

Figure 13 shows a parametric analysis of an EVP recorded by Anabela Cardoso, which evidences the lack of information in the formant structure and in the sound dynamic. Many graphical sections of the analyses show the presence of three formants with a poor bandwidth and a progressively constant temporal trend. Some noise indications are detected with moderate thickening traces of pseudo harmonic components.

The progressive listening made in sequence of these sounds show a verbal elocution which is decoded by the listener as follows: E\RIO\DO\TEMPO.

The analysis of the vowel frequency range is quite difficult and the lack of laryngeal vibrations does not allow a reconstruction of the vocal tract and its phonetic representation on the formant chart. It practically can be considered as sounds structured in a segmental way which, if heard with a certain uttering speed, take on informational and linguistic meanings for the listener, something like a kind of a “quantic noise manipulation,” which is typical of the communication channel.

Even if there is a signal which is characterized by a great saving of energy, the decoding would seem correct because the compacting bands roughly correspond to those of the relevant vocalic sounds. If we had more spectral information, we could have identified further anomalous elements in the acoustic indexes between the place of articulation and the way of articulation, thanks to a more detailed analysis. Their classification is as follows:

Indexes of place, classified in three categories:

  1. Locus of transition of F2
  2. Locus of transition of F3
  3. Frequency of noise

Indexes of way, classified in six categories:

  1. Form and speed of  the transitions
  2. Locus of transition of  F1
  3. Noise presence
  4. Noise length
  5. Continuity or discontinuity of the connections, intensities and relative lengths to differentiate hard and voiced consonants

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    Figure 13: EVP received by Anabela Cardoso saying E\RIO\DO\TEMPO.

4. Summary of the resulting anomalies in the preliminary stage of the study

  1. Lack of the fundamental frequency or its partial presence with multiple fragmentations.
  2. Lack of the vibration of the vocal chords in timbre sounds with or without the fundamental frequency.
  3. Formantic structure sometimes replaced by a noise thickening in the relevant bands and showing a severe modification or a non-sinusoidal trend.
  4. Anomalous increase in the signal strength of the second formant and strengthening of the upper harmonics, poor melodic texture and fragmentation of the spectrum.
  5. Anomalies in the frequencies, with too high values of the fundamental and formants frequencies.
  6. Anomalies in the time of energy distribution in the whole signal structure which would seem to be made of many small side by side energy-packages, where it is difficult to separate the different structural elements of the spectrum.
  7. Anomalies in the signal periodicity detected in the autocorrelation analysis.
  8. Anomalous changes in the spectrum density.
  9. Anomalies in the utterance; it is difficult to obtain an acoustic chart.
  10. Anomalies in the time flowing with inexplicable slowing down or speeding up of the speech.
  11. Partial or total elision of the consonants.
  12. Harmonic distortions.

5. Comparative analyses for speaker recognition.

The method for identifying a speaker or for comparing an unknown voice (usually coming from telephone or from environmental interception) with a well-known speaker (also recorded) started in 1937, during the proceedings against the presumed kidnapper of Lindberg’s son, the first man to fly across the Atlantic.

At that time, it was only made by an acoustic trial. Later on, with the help of the so-called phonic proof and further improvements, the method developed by L. Kersta in 1962 was used. Kersta’s method consists of analyzing a graphic track, called spectrogram, with instruments like the Sonagraph, made by Kay Elemetrics, or using similar methods of analyses carried out through a computer with a data acquisition card, as in the examples below.

The chances of identifying the speaker are based on the hypothesis that any subject pronouncing a phoneme adapts the oral cavity in an “univocal” way, depending only on the person’s physical characteristics (dimensions of the larynx, of the oral cavity, of the tongue etc.). These anthropometrical characteristics shape the starting spectrum obtained by the vocal chords, intensifying for each vowel, some frequencies and attenuating others, so that they are recognizable.

The graphic of the spectrogram permits the display of these frequencies, showing the increases in sound intensities and attenuations called “formants,” which is shown by the intensification and/or attenuation of some lines in the spectrum. These are typical in a certain numerical range called “range of existence,” of each vowel and also typical, but not as certain as above, of each speaker. Remarks similar to those made on vowels can also be made about voiced consonants, such as \M\, \N\, \R\ since they show a formantic trend. The “melody” of the speech can give us a further parameter of analysis.

Such characteristic can be found in every “non-robotic” speech and can be seen in the spectrogram as a slant in the track corresponding to the fundamental frequency (also called “pitch” or F0).  In addition, the same characteristic can be found in the graphic of the F0 trend which can be drawn through the Cepstrum even if the “natural” melody is always altered in a counterfeit voice (musicality of the language). However, an average difference in highness (frequency or pitch), derived from a good number of elements, can be independent of counterfeits and intentional changes.

Taking into account all these remarks and the qualitative and noise problems due to communication channels, the problems listed above increase considerably when the presumed paranormal voices, which have a peculiar personality, are compared with the voices that the presumed dead people had in their lifetime. The expert very often does not have enough samples to make a sufficiently probative analysis.

The presumed paranormal voices have a spectrum of poor quality with a large amount of noise, maybe due to their own characteristics or to the noises of the communication channel. In messages received in different times and through different experimenters and instruments, the same presumed personalities produce fairly different spectrums, characterized by an unusual fluctuation in the range of frequencies and, above all, in the time domain. These fluctuations can mislead us into either a false identification or a false denial because of the vector segregation systems which works with a multiple fragmentation of the signal. In these cases, besides the statistical and mathematical methods, it is necessary to work manually. That is to say, to analyze their spectrographic tracks.

Since it is impossible to take a phonic sample with the same informational content as is done in the legal investigations, the research shows a high standard of errors. In some lucky cases, when we have the same words to compare, the research is more reliable and probative but it is a very rare event.

I must stress that the comparison must take into account the number of available linguistic events, besides the quality of the acoustic evidences and the noises of the communication channel (radio, telephone, recorder, computer, etc.). In other words, if the same informational contents are available, it is sufficient to have two words which last for two/three seconds to make a comparison. After the differential comparison with a matrix of at least 154 speakers (error of 4.4%) or 928 speakers (error of 2.8%), the result will be highly probative.

It goes without saying that with a speech which lasts at least 10 second and even if it does not have the same informational content, the comparison will be nonetheless acceptable, because some vocoids and contoids (vowels and consonants) for the analysis (10 or more vowels and consonants) are available and useful to draw up an histographic average of the speaker. Here below I will show you some examples of comparison between EVP voices and human voices in order to identify them (Figure 14, 15 and 16).

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Figure 14: Comparison between an EVP and the “living” voice of the same person.

Figure 14 shows the matrix formant layout of the EVP received by Anabela Cardoso. In red, are represented the formant distribution values relevant to the paranormal voice of a dead person named Joao. In blue, are represented the formant distribution values relevant to the voice of the same person when he was still alive. This is the person who is supposed to have spoken the EVP message.

Unfortunately, due to the scarcity of the available evidences—that is to say only one word—it is impossible to identify the voice with the help of objective parametrical methods which give us a certain reliability.

The conclusions that we can advance is that such a voice can be considered compatible, that is to say not dissimilar, since the two vocal samples have the tracks of the formants F4 and F5, which mainly characterize the individual features of the speaker, similar for 74%.

A different example concerns a case of identification made on an average of 3 seconds of speech with regard to an EVP recorded in Grosseto, Italy, at Marcello Bacci’s centre.

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Figure 15: Measures taken on the voice in life of Chiara Lenzi in two different occasions.
The Euclidean distance of the two vocal marks is 2.58.

Figure 15 compares the voice in life of a young girl, Chiara Lenzi, where the verbal elocution was recorded in two different occasions while she is giving out the following words: UN\BACIONE\A\TE\CHIARA. The Euclidean matrix distance is 2.58 for the same speaker. If we measure this distance on an EVP recorded in Grosseto, where the father, Dr. Giuseppe Lenzi, perceptibly recognised his daughter in the following elocution: UN\BACINO\A\TE\CHIARA, we notice a difference in the spectral values with a matrix distance smaller than that previously measured, as shows Figure 16. In this case, unlike the previous one, we can state that the comparative outcomes between the voices considerably prove the identification.

If it had been a comparison between two voices in a threatening phone call or in a legal case of speaker identification, the expert’s opinion addressed to the judge would have been: HIGHLY COMPATIBLE VOICES.

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Figure 16: Comparison between one of the paranormal voices examined in Grosseto, at Marcello Bacci’s laboratory and the voice in life of Chiara Lenzi. The Euclidean distance is 2.37; smaller than the inter-speaker variance previously measured.

6. Conclusions

In some cases, as above, the anomalies are clear and lean toward a high paranormal index of probability. In other cases the ambiguity of the data does not allow a clear interpretation and differentiation of the event. In such cases, a predisposition towards one of the two different explanations, for instance, towards the normality or the anomaly, shall be chosen as a trend. It is therefore necessary to be very careful to interpret the analyzed instrumental data, because there are many variables at stake, as in the case of the “voice” of Gracula Religiosa.

In my opinion, the organizational capacity of these acoustic signals is of great Importance. The signal can change from a simple noise thickening with poor harmonic content and a low informational standard due to a difficult decoding, to a well-constructed and complex harmonic structure very close to the expression of human language, and with the possibility of decoding them with a high standard of informational capacity.

We think that the study of the psi interaction phenomena in Transcommunication, started at our Laboratory in Bologna (www.laboratorio.too.it) in a common research project with French and Brazil, will lay the foundations for improving the knowledge of these unusual phenomena. This works is unfortunately still ignored today by mainstream science and by many academic parapsychologists.

Bibliography

  1. Oskar Schindler (1974), Manuale di audiofono-logopedia, Omega, Torino.
  2. Ferrero-A.Genre-L.J.Boe-M.Contini (1979), Nozioni di fonetica acustica, Omega, Torino.
  3. Muljacic (1969), Fonologia generale e fonologia della lingua italiana, Il Mulino, Bologna.
  4. De Dominicis (1999), Fonologia comparata delle principali lingue europee moderne, Coop. Libr. Universitaria Edit. Bologna.
  5. Gramming-J.Sundberg (1988), Spectrum factors relevant to phonetogram measurement, JASA 83, pagg. 2352-2360.
  6. Alton Everest (1997), Manuale di acustica, Hoepli, Milano.
  7. L.Klevans-R.D.Rodman (1997), Voice recognition, Artec House Inc.,Boston.
  8. B.Randall (1987), Frequency Analysis, Bruel Kjaer
  9. Gullà (2000), Voci paranormali e analisi di laboratorio, L’uomo e il Mistero/8, Edizioni Mediterranee, Roma.
  10. Gullà (2000), Proposta di una metodologia di ricerca per l’analisi di presunti eventi acustici paranormali di origine fonetica, Atti del Convegno del Ce.S.A.P. (Dip. di Bioetica) Università  degli Studi di Bari 27/10/2000.
  11. Presi (1988), Psicofonia e paranormalità elettroniche, in “Esperienze Paranormali”,  AA.VV., Edizioni Mediterranee, Roma.
  12. Presi (2000), Il paranormale in laboratorio: “voci psicofoniche”,”voci telefoniche” e ”voci dirette” a confronto, L’uomo e il Mistero/8, Edizioni Mediterranee, Roma.
  13. Gullà. (2003), Riconoscimento ed identificazione tramite le impronte vocali, Relazione contenuta nel 2° Anno del Corso Multimediale di Biopsicocibernetica del Laboratorio di Bologna.

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The Testimony of Marie-Hélène, Bénédicte’s Mother

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Introduction

cmarie_helene_bienaime2008What I am going to tell you happened in Brittany on the 9th of July 2004, when we were on holiday. It was after dinner and I had just put a piece of aluminum foil on a plate of cheese to cover it. I know … It’s very prosaic and my mind was far from any experiment but this is what happened.

As I was sitting at the table chatting with my mother and my husband—I still can’t believe it—I looked at the recently covered cheese plate and my daughter’s face was printed on that foil just in front of us. I then started to take photos of this very amazing event which seemed truly incredible to me. While I was taking the photographs with my Minolta Dimage XT, my mother became nervous and thought it was silly that I photographed a plate and asked me why I was doing it. I got up and went near her to show her my small camera screen without telling her anything. She immediately recognized the face of her granddaughter and asked me where I had got it. I told her it was on the aluminium paper; she then got up and came to where I was, sat on my chair and without me telling her the place she immediately spotted this little face. Then the same thing happened with my husband. And my husband—who is not a good observer—exclaimed: “It’s incredible; I can see Bénédicte’s face!” and he burst into tears.

I took the photos because I was afraid to see the image disappear. But the truth is that the little face remained on the same spot of the aluminium foil until the 14th of July and in the meantime I took photos with another camera, a Nikon F-401. The Nikon was less convenient to photograph the little face because it does not zoom and I wanted to show the photos to other people….

On the 14th of July we had to return because our holidays were over and I had to hand back the plate which was not mine, it belonged to the house we were renting and so I unwrapped the aluminum foil. To this day I regret not having brought that plate with me for I think I could still have my daughter’s face imprinted on the aluminum foil! It was really silly of me not having brought the plate home. Many people, friends who saw the photos later on, had the same opinion: they could see Bénédicte’s face on them.

Marie-Hélène Bienaimé, France


Physiognomic Analysis Performed on an
Image Obtained through I. P. V. S.*

by Daniele Gullà”Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Biopsychocybernetics Research

* I.P.V.S. : Acronym devised by IL Laboratorio which stands for “Interazione Psi-Visiva di tipo Strumentale” (Psi-Visual Interaction of Instrumental type, more commonly known as ITC image).

The Case Under Investigation

The investigation consists of attempts to explore the authenticity of an alleged ITC image unexpectedly obtained when a plate covered with aluminum foil was photographed. In the photograph, the creases in the foil were apparently seen to have spontaneously taken on the visual configuration of the face of a deceased girl. The girl’s identity was immediately claimed to be recognized by her mother (who took the photograph) and by other relatives present at the time.

Description of the Case

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Figure 1. Image with the “extra” appeared through the deformation of the aluminum foil. The purported face to be recognized has been encircled by a yellow mark.

The anomalous photograph that is at the center of the case initially came to the attention of Dr. Anabela Cardoso, who then arranged for it to be sent to me for analysis. It was shown to Dr. Cardoso by the lady responsible for taking it and whom Dr. Cardoso and I met while attending the International Conference of Infinitude held in Paris in 2007. Having inspected the photograph, Dr. Cardoso considered it of sufficient interest to be sent to me, together with photographs taken during the lifetime of the deceased daughter whose image it appeared to be. These photographs would enable me to carry out a possible verification of any similarities in physiognomic characteristics between the alleged ITC image on the tinfoil and the images of the girl shown in the photographs taken during her lifetime.

Technical Steps in Making the Anthropometric Comparison

The ITC image and one of the lifetime pictures of Bénédicte were normalized in terms of pixels and contrast, and subsequently, metric and morphologic measurements were taken of the two images. The two images were then superimposed one on the other so that the appropriate mark points (‘repère’ points) coincided. Morphologic Test of Pattern Recognition with Neural Networks: The test of morphologic compatibility was performed with the Neural Networks program utilized by the American intelligence services (FBI) known as the Universal Image Recognition program. This morphologic test takes into consideration the whole of the cranial structure of the human head, elaborating the contours of the “structural cage” and does not focus on the distances of single repère points. Instead it analyzes in a more general way the shape of the various parts of the cranium. The test was performed using the ONE_TO_MANY mode that compares the ITC image with 3,000 other images contained in the database of the Universal Image Recognition program. This database is composed of masculine and feminine somatic types of faces, all of European origin and aged between 10 and 70 years.

The final data is the result of a miscellaneous comparison of 3,000 x 3,000 or more precisely 9,000,000 comparative tests. In the final result visible on the screen in Figure 7, seven similar images were found but only one reaches the maximum score which surpasses the threshold of FAR (False Acceptance) and FRR (False Recognition Rate), which the program sets respectively at percentage values 0, 1% and 0, 03%. This image was one of Bénédicte’s lifetime photographs. That image reached the highest score and it was therefore identified as the face most similar to the ITC image with a rate of 98.97%.

 

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Figure 2. Detail of the supposed ITC face enlarged and rotated through approximately 30 degrees Figure 3. Four images of Bénédicte, the deceased French girl visually recognized by her mother as the subject of the ITC image in the aluminum foil, taken during her lifetime Figure 4. This image shows the result of the superimposition of the lifetime image of Bénédicte’s face with the presumed ITC face. The similarity of the somatic traits is clearly noticeable.

It is possible to read on the central report of the computer screen printout in Figure 7 that besides the choice of the anomalous ITC image proper (which was also added to the database of the program), which is identical to the image for which a comparison was required because it is the same image, and therefore attained the highest score of 192000000 (file denominated “Photo David et Bénédicte1r.jpg”), the second most similar image with a score of 59136000 is Bénédicte’s lifetime photograph (file denominated “Photo David et Bénédicte-2.jpg”) shown on the right side of the computer print-out. This image, which gave a percentage similarity rating of 98.7% was therefore identified as the face most similar to the ITC image (The Italian Courts of Justice accept a reading of 95% when establishing cases of human identity).

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Figure 5. The same operation was then carried out using another image of Bénédicte superimposed on the ITC picture with alignment of the repère points with morphing technique. The similarity of the faces and the apparent coincidence of the points are again noticeable. Figure 6. In this analysis the distance relationships between the repère points of the two images were measured. Although the relationships are noticeably constant, with values in the region of number 1, there are percentage value changes that indicate the presence of some spatial deformations in the tinfoil of the ITC image that prevent definitive conclusions, from the metric point of view, as to whether or not the two images share the same identity. Figure 7. Morphologic comparison between the ITC image and 3,000 faces performed with neural networks. Bénédicte’s lifetime image was recognized as the most similar to the anomalous image with a percentage of 98.97%.

Conclusions

The technological applications used in the comparative analysis have revealed several points of similarity. The morphologic comparison done with Neural Networks on a sampling of 3,000 faces shows that a high percentage of compatibility between the ITC image and the photograph taken during the young girl’s life exists. However, it should be borne in mind that

the alleged ITC image taken by the mother under the circumstances and with the exposure value (i.e. the time the shutter remained open during the shutter click) concerned, produced a particular effect of light/shadow on the reflective surface (i.e. the aluminum foil) that does not allow us to highlight identification marks capable of allowing an evaluation sufficiently sensitive to yield total compatibility with an image taken during the subject’s lifetime. Furthermore, it should be emphasized that my analysis is limited to measurements made on optical information whose authenticity and origin cannot be accurately determined.

Unfortunately, it was not possible to achieve an accurate comparison of the metric relationship between the points because, although a very marked similarity was found, the image containing the “extra” presents spatial deformations which are obviously due to the particular conditions of the creased aluminum foil on which the image was imprinted. Consequently, it was not possible to obtain precise anthropometric data from the image. Proper measurements could only be taken from Bénédicte’s lifetime pictures. The missing instrumental confirmation of the metric methodology does not, however, diminish the probability of a definite identification, even though we have to deal with comparisons between two images that differ from each other as to the material on which they are imposed. It would have been different if we had analyzed two homogeneous photographs and had found instrumental discrepancies with one of the two methods used.

Nevertheless, the morphologic analysis (which is more representative by virtue of its analysis of the images through the simulation of human vision) and the probabilistic comparison between the ITC image and the population of 3,000 faces in the database render the hypothesis of compatibility of the two faces valid.

Translated from the Italian original by Dr. Anabela Cardoso and originally published in No. 31 of the ITC Journal which is published 3 times a year. For subscription information, see itcjournal.org

Bibliography

[1] Bertillon A., Identification anthropometrique: instruction signaletiques, Melun, Imprimerie Administrative, 1893.

[2] Goldstein A., Harmon L.D., Lesk A.B., Identification of Human faces, Proceeding of the IEEE, Vol, 59, No.5, MAY 1971.

[3] Duda R., Hart P., Stork G., Pattern classification, Wiley, New York, 2000.

[4] Watanabe S., Pattern recognition:human and mechanical, Wiley, New York, 1985.

[5] Falco G., Identità: metodo scientifico di segnalamento e identificazione, II Edizione, Roma, 1923.

[6] Martin R., Saller K., Lehrbuch der Anthropologie in systematicher Darstellung, Dd. I-II. Fischer, Stuttgard, 1956-59.

[7] Reverte-Coma G.M., Antropologia forense, Ministero de Justitia, Madrid, 1991.

[8] Schiwidwtzky I., Knussmann R., Morphognose und Typognose, in Martin R. Antropologie, Fischer, Stuttgard, 1988.

[9] Iscan M.Y., Loth S.R., Photo image identification, in Siegel J.A., Soukko J.P., Knupfer G.C., (Eds), Encyclopedia of Forensic Sciences, Academic Press, pagg 795-805, New York, 2000.

[10] Olivieri L., Antropologia e Antropometria, C.E.V. Idelson, Napoli, 1963.

[11] Farkas L. G., Anthropometry of the head and face, Second Edition, Raven Press, 2000.

[12] Parisi, R., Nozioni di antropometria, EDAS, Messina, 1979.

[13] Balossino N., Siracusa S., Parametri discriminatori nel riconoscimento di volti, Polizia Moderna, n.1, 1998.

[14] Chellapa R., Wilson C.L., Sirohey S., Human and machine recognition of faces: a survey, Proceedings of the IEEE, 83(5):705-735, may 1995.

[15] Brunelli R., Poggio T., Face recognition:features versus Templates, IEEE Transaction on Pattern analysis and machine intelligence,vol. 15, no. 10, october 1993.

[16] Wu C., Huang J., Human face profile recognition by computer, Pattern recognition, Vol 23 No.3/4 pp.255-259, 1990.

[17] Wong K.H., Hudson H.M., Law and Tsang P.W.M., A system for recognising human faces, Dept. of Computer Science, The Chinese University of Hong Kong and Dept. of Elect. Eng. City Poly. of U. K., Technical Report, 1991.

[18] I. Craw, P. Cameron. Face recognition by computer. Pagg 498-508. D.Hogg and R. Boyle editors, Proceedings British Machine Vision Conference, Springer Verlag, 1992.

[19] M.S. Kamel, H.C. Shen, A.K.C. Wong, T.M. Hong, R.I. Campenu, Face recognition using perspective invariant features, Pattern Recognition Letters, 877-884, 1994.

[20] P. Rajesh, N. Rao, H. Ballard, Natural basis functions and topographic memory for face recognition, Proceedings of the International Conference of Artificial Intelligence, 10-17, 1995.

[21] D. Gullà, Two Cases of an Anthropometric Identification in Two Supposed Anomalous Photographs, Proceedings of Congress the Association “Casa dell’ Albero”, October 2001, Carpi (MO)

[22] D. Gullà, Forensic Analyses in Parapsichology“, Proceedings of XVI National Congress of “Il Movimento della Speranza”, January 2002, Roma.

[23] D. Gullà, “Images and Voice Anomalous; Case of Pattern Recognition,”  session   of University of Imola (BO), Gen. 2004

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EVP and Geomagnetic Fields: Is There a Correlation?

Southern Wisconsin Paranormal Research Group
©Dave Schumacher, Cindy Heinen – All Rights Reserved

Director’s Brief:

Research compilations for ambient magnetic conditions and psi functioning provided by S. James P. Spottiswoode (2) suggest a negative correlation: “Retrospective analyses of putative spontaneous psi, or anomalous cognition (AC), events have shown a tendency for these to be reported on days of relatively low geomagnetic disturbance.” jsasoc.com/library.html

Haunting events and EVP are believed to be a psi function, but nevertheless, there has been no research reported that supports the view that EVP is influenced by the magnetic environment The following research report details an effort to determine if there is a detectable correlation.

Introduction

Those who believe EVP to be real think that the voices of the dead are being recorded while those who do not believe in the paranormal nature of these phenomena claim that they are nothing more than stray radio waves or auditory pareidolia or apophenia. It is a proven fact that the human mind can create meaning out of insignificant sound and random noise. Those who support the paranormal nature of this phenomena claim that the voices are interactive and can be identified as someone who has died. The question then, is how do the deceased manifest their voices on the recording equipment?

Some EVP researchers, ghost hunters and paranormal investigators believe that entities use physical sound energy and re-modulate it to form words. In addition, there is anecdotal evidence that:

  1. More messages are recorded at night or during stormy weather than during the day or when the weather is clear,
  2. There is a relationship between EVP and electrical or moisture conditions of the atmosphere,
  3. Other types of energy, such as light and magnetism, can influence EVP recordings (1).

The ghost hunting community overall believes that times of increased solar activity are ideal for ghost hunting. It is thought that, with enough energy in the air from charged ions and an energized electromagnetic field, manifestations, including EVP, are more plentiful and clear (9, 10). This belief is due to investigator’s personal experiences and the extrapolation and interpretation of the published scientific literature.

There are published studies in peer reviewed academic journals and books that describe a correlation between paranormal activity and geomagnetic fields (3, 8). Some studies have shown there is an increase in poltergeist (Recurrent Spontaneous Psychokinesis or RSPK) events when there is an increase in the geomagnetic field (3, 6), while others found a correlation between an increase in the geomagnetic field and an increase in haunt phenomena, postmortem apparitions, and sensed presences (5, 8). The interpretation of these correlations is open to debate. Some think that the increase in geomagnetic activity either triggers and/or fuels the activity (especially in the RSPK studies) while others feel that the changes in geomagnetic fields and complex electromagnetic fields can induce hallucinations.

There is little or no formal analysis that increased geomagnetic activity leads to an increase in the frequency and clarity of EVP. This study is an attempt to determine if there is a correlation between geomagnetic activity and the quantity of EVP.

Methods

EVP: EVP from 2001 to 2005 were obtained from the Southern Wisconsin Paranormal Research Group case files, the South Jersey Ghost Research Group and the personal files of Cindy Heinen. The number of EVP recorded on each day were tabulated in an Excel spreadsheet. Both days with EVP recorded and days where recording for EVP was attempted but there were no EVP recorded were included.

Geomagnetic Activity

Magnetic field variation can come from currents caused by solar radiation changes. Solarwinds can interact with the magnetosphere. The magnetosphere and ionosphere can cause magnetic field changes by themselves. Magnetic activity indices provided by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) are used to describe the variation in the geomagnetic field (13).

The a-index is a 3-hourly “equivalent amplitude” index of the local geomagnetic activity; “a” is related to the 3-hourly K-index.

The A-index is the daily index of geomagnetic activity derived as the average of the eight 3-hourly a-indices.

The Ap-index is an average planetary A-index based on data from a set of specific stations (11). The estimated planetary A-index from NOAA (12) was used for this study.

A-index values (24-hrs) of the following determine the geomagnetic conditions:

0 to 7                “Quiet” geomagnetic conditions
8 to 15              “Unsettled” geomagnetic conditions
16 to 24            “Active” geomagnetic conditions
25 to 35            “Minor storm”
36+                   “Major storm”

Statistical Analysis

To determine if there was a correlation between the number of EVP recorded and the estimated Ap-index, the number of EVP vs. the estimated Ap-index was plotted and a nonparametric correlation Spearman r analysis was performed using GraphPad InStat version 3.05 for Windows 95/NT, GraphPad Software, San Diego California USA, www.graphpad.com

To determine if there was a difference in the mean estimated Ap-index for when EVP were recorded vs. when no EVP were recorded, a nonparametric Mann-Whitney t-test was performed using GraphPad InStat.

Finally, to determine if a certain level of enhanced geomagnetic activity leads to more EVP, the mean number of EVP was compared for the following:

Ap-index of 0 to 7 “Quiet” vs. 8 to 15 “Unsettled”
Ap-index of 0 to 7 “Quiet” vs. 16 to 24 “Active”
Ap-index of 0 to 7 “Quiet” vs. 25 to 35 “Minor Storm”
Ap-index of 0 to 7 “Quiet” vs. 36+ “Major Storm”

The analysis for each was done with a nonparametric Mann-Whitney t-test using GraphPad InStat.

Results

Two hundred and ten data points were collected and spanned the time period of January 6th, 2001 to August 27th, 2005. There were 101 days with EVP and 109 days without EVP. The number of data points for each estimated Ap-index range/geomagnetic condition were: 0 to 7/“Quiet” = 61; 8 to 15/”Unsettled” = 82; 16 to 24/”Active” = 39; 25 to 35/”Minor Storm” = 18; 36+/”Major Storm” = 10.

0 to 7/“Quiet” = 61
8 to 15/”Unsettled” = 82
16 to 24/”Active” = 39
25 to 35/”Minor Storm” = 18
36+/”Major Storm” = 10.

geomag_ap_index_graph

Figure 1 shows the number of EVP plotted against the estimated Ap-index. Spearman r = 0.02882 (95% CI –0.110 to 0.1675; P=0.6779; not significant). r = 0.02882, 95% CI –0.110 to 0.1675; P=0.6779; not significant

Comparison P-value Significance
Estimated Ap-index when no EVPs were recorded vs. estimated

Ap-index when EVPs were recorded

0.4477 Not significant
Mean number of EVPs for “Quiet” vs “Unsettled” 0.5571 Not significant
Mean number of EVPs for “Quiet” vs “Active”
0.9546 Not significant
Mean number of EVPs for “Quiet” vs “Minor Storm” 0.7120 Not significant
Mean number of EVPs for “Quiet” vs “Major Storm” 0.4319 Not significant

Table 1 shows the results of the statistical analysis for the various comparisons.

Discussion

There is a general belief among the hauntings investigation community that an increase in the geomagnetic field enables paranormal manifestations to be more plentiful and clear. It has been speculated that this extends to EVP as well (9, 10). These beliefs are based on investigator’s personal experiences and conclusions they draw from reading the published scientific literature. There is little if any formal analysis indicating that increases in geomagnetic activity leads to an increase in the number of EVP. This study explored the possibility that increases in the geomagnetic field (as measured with the estimated Ap-index) would lead to an increase in the quantity of EVP.

There was no significant correlation found between the estimated Ap-index and the number of EVP. In addition, there was no significant difference in the mean number of EVP recorded during “Quiet” geomagnetic conditions vs. the mean number of EVP recorded during “Unsettled”, “Active”, “Minor Storm”, or “Major Storm” geomagnetic conditions.

This study has several limitations:

First, the EVP data was collected from three different sources. Since identifying an EVP is highly subjective, different people may classify different things as EVP.

Second, the number of EVP data points became very small when analyzing the different geomagnetic conditions. For example, there were only ten data points in the 36+/”Major Storm” geomagnetic condition. This can limit the statistical power to determine a significant difference.

Third, this study does not address the issue of whether or not EVP have more clarity with elevated geomagnetic conditions. EVP classifications are extremely subjective and were not available in the data sets used in this analysis. This issue needs to be studied in a similar manner.

Fourth, this is only one study based on three data sets from three different sources. It should be repeated with more data sets. It would also be interesting to look at other parameters besides the estimated Ap-index. Formal analysis of various atmospheric conditions would also be interesting.

Conclusion

Despite the limitations, this study has shown that there doesn’t appear to be any correlation between geomagnetic conditions and the number of EVP recorded. However, more studies will need to be done looking at various other factors to see if any other environmental conditions can affect the quantity and quality of EVP.

References

  1. Butler, T. “ATransC White Paper on Transcommunication.” Association TransCommunication. Revised 9-2020. atransc.org/itc-white-paper/
  2. Spottiswoode, S. James P. “Apparent Association Between Effect Size in Free Response Anomalous Cognition Experiments and Local Sidereal Time.” The Journal of Scientific Exploration. Society for Scientific Exploration. 1997. jsasoc.com/docs/JSE-LST.pdf
  3. Roll, W.G. and Gearhart, L. (1974). Geomagnetic perturbations and RSPK. In W.G. Roll, R.L. Morris and J. Morris (Eds.), Research in parapsychology, 1973 (pp.44-46). Metuchen, NJ : Scarecrow.
  4. Gearhart, L. and Persinger, M.A. (1986). Geophysical variables and behavior: XXXIII. Onsets of historical and contemporary poltergeists episodes occurred with sudden increases in geomagnetic activity. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 62, pp.463-466.
  5. Persinger, M.A. and Koren, S.A. (2001). Predicting the characteristics of haunt phenomena from geomagnetic factors and brain sensitivity: Evidence from field and experimental studies. In J. Houran and R. Lange (Eds.), Hauntings and poltergeists: Multidisciplinary perspectives, (pp.179-194). Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, Inc.
  6. Roll, W.G. and Persinger, M.A. (2001). Investigations of poltergeists and haunts: A review and interpretation. In J. Houran and R. Lange (Eds.), Hauntings and poltergeists: Multidisciplinary perspectives, (pp.123-163). Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, Inc.
  7. Persinger, M.A. and Richards, P.M. (1995). Vestibular experiences of humans during brief periods of partial sensory deprivation are enhanced when daily geomagnetic activity exceeds 15-20nT. Neuroscience Letters, 194, pp.69-72.
  8. Persinger, M.A. (1988). Increased geomagnetic activity and the occurrence of bereavement hallucinations: Evidence for melatonin-mediated microseizuring in the temporal lobe? Neuroscience Letters, 88, pp.271-274.
  9. Chaney, S. (2006). I’ll give you the sun and moon… TAPS Paramagazine, Vol. 1, No. 6, pp.13-14.
  10. Farrell, M. (2005). The astronomy of ghost hunting. Ghost! Issue 2, pp.70.
  11. NOAA Glossary: http://www.sec.noaa.gov/info/glossary.html
  12. NOAA: http://ftp2.sec.noaa.gov/alerts/solar_indices.html
  13. NOAA Geomagnetic Kp and Ap Indices: noaa.gov/stp/GEOMAG/kp_ap.html

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EVPmaker with Allophones: Where are We Now?

by Tom Butler
Previously published in the Fall 2011 ATransC NewsJournal

Abstract

Based on a number of recent demonstrations by multiple practitioners, ATransC commissioned a study to determine the suitability of that technology for real-time, two-way communication. After three years, a “failure to replicate” style report was published. This article is a discussion of procedural concerns with the study and a discussion of lessons learned which may guide future studies.

Introduction

Stefan Bion developed a computer program named EVPmaker which uses a random process to select and combine segments of a sound file to produce a new output file. EVP are thought to be produced by the manipulation of the random process. To make the program more controllable for research, Stefan recently provided a sound file containing seventy-two allophones generated with the SpeakJet™ chip-set developed for robotics.

Allophones are small segments of speech, which when combined, can produce “spoken” words. The output from EVPmaker is a steady stream of allophones, which when intentionally selected by the communicating entity, produce EVP messages.

In 2008, Margaret Downey demonstrated real-time conversations using EVPmaker with allophones. An example here. Other practitioners reported similarly meaningful communications using the same technology, giving reason to think the time was right to closely examine real-time communication.

Thanks to a $10,000 donation to the Sarah Estep Research Fund from a member and a second donation from Becky Estep in memory of her mother and founder of the Association, Sarah Estep, ATransC contracted with Windbridge Research Institute to conduct a study. The assumption was that a report from impartial researchers would be more credible than if ATransC members conducted the study. The research question agreed to by ATransC was:

Can the EVPmaker software using the SpeakJet allophones data set produce real-time answers to questions that are posed by an operator under controlled conditions that eliminate conventional explanations for the results?

The project began June 2008 and the resulting report was published in the Summer 2011 Journal of Scientific Exploration. (Article is here) However, the final report to ATransC was delivered October 2009, and from the following comments from the report, it became evident that it was being reported as another “failure to replicate” article:

Taking all of these analyses into account, this study did not find evidence that the EVPmaker software using the SpeakJet allophones data set can produce real-time answers to questions posed by an operator under controlled conditions that eliminate conventional explanations for the results.

And:

The data in this study tend to suggest that the interpretation of EVPmaker conversations is a subjective process, the content of which is meaningful primarily (and perhaps solely) to the operator.


Examining the Windbridge Study

The study took just over three years from start to published report and cost ATransC about $12,000 including overhead. The ATransC objective was to have independent researchers evaluate the technology and help determine the best protocol for replicating the quality of existing examples. The study consisted of four phases: literature search, data collection, data analysis and final report. A single practitioner was used to produce ten sessions containing EVP with transcripts indicating what was heard. Data analysis consisted of allophone frequency analysis, listening panel, message grading as used for mediumship studies and speech recognition software.

Data Collection

It was possible for the practitioner to conduct the EVP sessions at home because of a computer that was configured to provide much the same controls as could be applied in a laboratory. One practitioner was used. The practitioner could do as many sessions as needed and was tasked with selecting and submitting what was heard as the top ten sessions. Besides the recorded sessions and the data file from EVPmaker indicating the sequence of allophones, the practitioner also provided a written script of what was heard as EVP in each session. As agreed to by ATransC, there were no constraints on what the practitioner asked the etheric communicators to evoke an EVP.

The study produced examples which the listening panel agreed on, but the one with the most agreement was discarded as a statistical “outlier” with the comment:

One of the 10 samples—Session 6 (“I’m here for you”)—fell just under the “hit” threshold with a mean of 2.99 (± 0.12). However, it was determined that this value is a statistical outlier* and its removal from the data set should be considered. If the scores given to Session 6 are removed from the analysis, the resulting updated mean for the remaining nine samples falls from 1.15 (± 0.05) to 0.86 (± 0.05). This shows that the perceptions of the listening panel received an average score less than what was deemed a “slight match” to the operator’s perception.

* Convention dictates that values three times the interquartile range above or below the mean be considered outliers.

It is important to note that Class A EVP are, by definition, “outliers.”

Lessons Learned

  1. Open-ended questions make it very difficult to use the “reasonableness” criterion.
  2. Based on an ATransC advisor’s comments, it is essential to use more than one practitioner.
  3. The data-collection methodology used by Windbridge is an excellent approach to establishing research controls for unattended EVP sessions.

Data Analysis

Frequency Analysis

The frequency of occurrence of allophones in the control sessions was compared with the practitioner sessions because (from the final report):

It was hypothesized that if communication involving English words was present in the Active Sessions, certain allophones might be present more or less often than in the Control Sessions

Not knowing what might come of it, we concurred that this was an interesting test. However, we cautioned several times that the words in EVP produced by EVPmaker are often formed in novel ways. As shown below, the researchers also noted this in the Speech Recognition part of the study. If words in the sessions are heard by people even though they may only be phonically similar to the spoken word, it is unlikely that a change in distribution of allophones between control and practitioner sessions would be detectible.

A second factor is that there may be only a few intended words and many naturally occurring words in a session. For the very many allophones generated in a session (1,675 for a three-minute session), would a Class A utterance even show up in such an analysis?

Lessons Learned

Without more study of this technique, it is very difficult to know if the right assumptions have been made by the researchers. From our assessment, it appears to be unreasonable to say that frequency analysis is a realistic technique for detecting the presence of anomalous influence on the selection of allophones.

Listening Panel

An online listening panel was selected and presented ten sound clips from control sessions and ten from the practitioner sessions. An important point in this test was that the examples used from the practitioner sessions were ten of those EVP reported as being heard real time.

One of the questions asked was whether or not the listener heard words in the samples. An average 73% answered “Yes” for the practitioner sessions and 63% answered “Yes” for the control sessions. Roughly half-heard words in each of the twenty examples they were asked to judge.

The grading system the researchers used has potential for future research, especially the way they graded what listeners reported hearing. However, one word responses were counted, including such words “I,” “yes” and “for.” EVPmaker output includes numerous naturally occurring sounds resembling common one-syllable words. This is apparently the case with the control sessions, resulting in both groups having a similar number of reported words.

Lessons learned

Witness panels do work, but one protocol does not fit all forms of EVP. Word-like sounds naturally occur in EVPmaker output, making it necessary to use grading rules which will ignore one-syllable words. EVP is considered communication, and a second consideration is the reasonableness of a response. For instance, a stand-alone word like “oracle” should be ignored unless the practitioner has specifically asked questions for which it is appropriate. One cannot say the word is present if a listening panel does not agree, but since short words are sometimes spontaneously formed by EVPmaker, care must be taken not to include them in the analysis. A methodology would need to be established for determining which is the case.

Judging Content of Reported EVP

As they do for messages in mediumship, the researchers scored the reported EVP with what the practitioner asked or said and reported that:

Of the 124 responses, roughly one-third (31%, 38) received a score of 0 [No fit]. Similarly, another third (34%, 42) received a score of 3 [Obvious fit]. The remaining third of the responses (35%) received median scores of 1 [Fit with minimal interpretation] (20) or 2 [Fit with more than minimal interpretation] (24). The overall mean was 1.56 ± 0.11, a score at the middle of the scoring range, and the higher end of the 95% confidence interval fell below 1.8.

Based on the distribution of these scores, it was concluded that responses perceived by the operator did not consistently contain information that logically matched her questions.

Of course, there remains the fact that nearly a third of the responses did agree with the practitioner. The conclusions arrived at by the researchers beg the question, “How can a 31% agreement be discarded when one is speaking of something that is not supposed to exist?”

Lessons learned: Content judging appears to be a good way to establish a numerical value to the objectivity of a reported utterance. That is essentially what analysis of results from a listening panel is supposed to provide. The rules of “convincingly objective,” however, should be based on reasonable consensus.

Speech Recognition Program

The researchers “trained” a speech recognition program to understand phrases spoken with the SpeakJet allophones. They then attempted to use that program to find the reported EVP phrases. From the report:

It is evident from this comparison that these 10 phrases that the operator heard during the real-time EVPmaker Active Sessions were not present in the EVPmaker output at those times in the sessions. However, similar vowel sounds were often found in the output. For example, when the operator heard the phrase “you are here,” the allophones being “spoken” by EVPmaker actually “said” something like “ooch k hoe are teer.” Similarly, when the operator heard “I’m here for you,” EVPmaker was “saying” “I oo we’re kk door you.”

Here is the example which was discarded as an outlier.

Reported phrase: I’m here for you.
Allophones from EVPmaker: \OHIY \UW \WW \IYRR \KO \EK \DO \OWRR \IYUW
Associated phonetic sounds: (“I oo we’re kk door yoo”)

The computer program was trained to find words in allophones “properly” arranged to form those words. It is difficult to “hear” what this sounds like by reading the phonetic sounds above. They were heard by the practitioner and many of the listening panel as “I’m here for you,” This is an example of how allophones might be arranged to approximate the intended words. Words that would be understood by a human but not found by the program.

Speech recognition programs have been tried for EVP many times, but to our knowledge, with no meaningful success. We made this clear to the researchers, but they insisted they could make it work. Trying to keep an open mind, we agreed. In fact, they did not make it work and we believe this part of the analysis should have been discarded as a bad idea.

Lessons learned: At this time, speech recognition is not a realistic tool for EVP formed with EVPmaker. It may be useful for transform EVP since forensic voice analysis has been successfully used to compare “living” and discarnate voices.

Discussion

The Journal of Scientific Exploration* is a peer-reviewed publication which has published two other “failure to replicate EVP” -type articles. Based on this and our attempts to communicate with the society, we do not count it as a friend of EVP/ITC. We have no visibility as to who the “peers” were and our assumption is that they are peers in science but not peers in ITC. In truth, being amongst the very few organizations friendly to the concepts of survival and transcommunication, we expected to have to publish the final report in the ATransC NewsJournal.

“The idea that you don’t show anybody, including your colleagues, results until they are peer-reviewed is something new in science. And it’s brought about because of media attention. I don’t think that’s good.”

Richard A. Miller in an interview by Michael D. Lemonick, Global warming “I stick to the Science,Scientific American, June 2011. (Available on docside.com.)

This is the first point we need to make. Peer review is not vetting. It is academics agreeing that the paper is academically sound, while vetting by subject matter specialists would have pointed out that many of the assumptions and procedures were inappropriate for the subject.

The basic scientific method is observation leading to hypothesis which predicts outcomes that can be tested to further refine the hypothesis. This is important and appropriate to the study of transcommunication. However, many of the tools of mainstream science are not appropriate for this study. Most glaring is the statistical discard of an example because it was understood to much more often than the others.

The listening panel and judging content procedures are essentially the same. As is clear in judging content, they are subjective considerations of objective phenomena. Being subjective,  it is necessary to constrain the results to plausible communication. This was done in judging content but counting one and two-syllable words as “Yes” for presence of words only serves to provide fodder for statistical analysis. In fact, the presence of EVP was noted, making the conclusion that EVP were not present unfounded. From the report:

Thus, consensus among participants during the listening panel did not rule out pareidolia (finding patterns in sound that are not there) as a possible explanation for the perceived presence of ITC in the Active Sessions.

And

Based on the distribution of these scores, it was concluded that responses perceived by the operator did not consistently contain information that logically matched the questions.

The researchers had been advised that previous attempts to use speech recognition have failed. Most EVP are formed in novel ways, which is especially true of EVPmaker. In fact, this is the common problem of frequency analysis of allophones and the speech recognition attempt made by the researchers. Both were interesting ideas which after seeing they did not detect phenomena known to be present, should have been abandoned. The report should have looked more like “We tried this but it did not work,” rather than, “We did this and it showed that phenomena were not present.”

Lessons Learned

Here is the research question used in the published report:

Can the presence of ITC be objectively detected in real-time ITC sessions recorded by an experienced EVPmaker operator in which the operator claims successful contact with an external entity has occurred?

There was a shift in emphasis from the original question (at beginning of this article) which highlights the breakdown in communication between Windbridge and ATransC. It is ATransC policy to promote open, candid collaboration and to make research results available to the average person. That was one of our requirements. ATransC is a nonprofit organization and funding this study had the potential of attracting more donations to enable future studies. Instead, the researchers refused to allow us to discuss the study until the final report was published—three years later.

The unavoidable conclusion is that research about techniques and human factors, such as protocols for listening panels, should be conducted by subject-matter specialists, and that work should be vetted by subject-matter specialists. Attempting to force-fit methodologies of mainstream science has not added to the understanding of these phenomena, except to show what does not work. There is a class division between academically trained but uninformed scientists and informed but generally poorly trained subject-matter specialist which impairs collaboration. This makes it necessary to conduct this work with the resources of the paranormal community.

Conclusion about EVPmaker

Despite the conclusions arrived at by Windbridge that EVP thought to be produced by EVPmaker are probably imaginary, there remain important examples of EVP from that technology which are very objective. So what is reasonable guidance for members? There can be no doubt; EVPmaker should not be recommended to people who are new to EVP. The difficult to follow output too easily leads people to find meaning where none was intended.

An example recorded in another study, “Her radio,” illustrates the complexities faced by researchers. Close examination of “radio” shows that it is actually a transform EVP—one formed by morphing noise to produce a clear expression. So in fact, that EVP is not a demonstration of EVPmaker’s capability. It could have been recorded with an ordinary audio recorder using background noise.

The ATransC recommendation will be that EVPmaker should be considered a specialty tool to be used by people already accustomed to recording EVP using a recorder with possible background noise (transform EVP). EVP from EVPmaker should be examined to determine whether or not it is actually transform EVP.

You can access the report on Windbridge’s website: windbridge.org/papers/BoccuzziBeischel2011JSE25ITC.pdf

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A Two-Year Investigation of the Allegedly Anomalous Electronic Voices or EVP

Republished from NeuroQuantology | September 2012 | Volume 10 | Issue 3 | Page 492-514
Please see the entire article at citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.988.4953&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Abstract

A relatively novel acoustic phenomenon has inundated the Internet and specialized literature. Several Associations, some of them with an important number of members, have formed around it in many countries. In the Anglo-Saxon world the phenomenon is called EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomenon) and is usually assumed as electronically mediated communication from or with the deceased. The first tests aimed at verifying the reality of these claims were carried out in Sweden and in Germany, in 1964 and 1970, under the direction of Professor Hans Bender from Freiburg University (Bender, 1970; 1972; 2011). The present report describes in detail the tests designed to record the allegedly anomalous electronic voices, or EVP, under controlled acoustic conditions. Series of experiments were carried out in Vigo, Spain throughout a period of two years under conditions controlled to the highest degree achievable. Several operators were involved in the many tests conducted in Acoustic Laboratories and professional recording studios equipped with very high levels of acoustic shielding. The protocols and procedures followed in the experiments, as well as the results obtained, are herewith described. Several extra voices were recorded during the many experiments performed for which no normal explanation was found.

Conclusions

The reality of the apparently anomalous electronic voices was confirmed in acoustically controlled environments with different operators.

With the exception of the June 17, 2008 radio voices, none of the voices or whispers described in the present report were heard live during the tests. Extra voices, originating from undetectable sources, were identified in the following situations:

  1. Under controlled speech and controlled acoustic environment – AC as sole operator at the Metropolis and at the University of Vigo; Iñaki at the University of Vigo and at the Metropolis.
  2. Under controlled acoustic environment and uncontrolled speech – AC, Portuguese operators and participants (PN and Francisco) at the Metropolis; AC, IH and UH at University of Vigo; the same and Iñaki at the Metropolis.
  3. Under uncontrolled speech and uncontrolled acoustic environment – AC and the Portuguese operators outside the Acoustics chamber of the Superior School of Engineering; AC and Iñaki at the same place.

The voices seemed to benefit from the presence of noise in the environment (particularly human speech and metallic clicks). The very few voices recorded without any explicit noise had quite lower amplitude than the voices registered with a background of explicit noise. The amplitude of the voices seems to be related to the level of background environmental noise extant in the room when the voices appear recorded. Probably to other variables, too but those remain undefined and need further research.

The voices were louder, clearer, more abundant and flowing when uncontrolled direct human speech by two or more people prevailed, independently of an acoustically controlled or uncontrolled environment. Above all, they seemed to benefit from a situation where the operators’ frame of mind was lively and energetic, and perhaps also from a relaxed and friendly atmosphere. On the other hand, they seemed to be negatively affected if the operators were focused on the experiment.

The voices seemed to benefit from a slightly chaotic situation – AC, Portuguese operators, PN and Francisco at the Metropolis; AC, IH, UH and Sound Technician ML at the Laboratory of Acoustics. The voices did not seem to be significantly more abundant when an artificial basis of human speech was used (Psychophone* and EVPmaker) as acoustic background source.

Methods, the psychophone and the EVPmaker software methods proved to be highly unreliable, not because they are particularly bad acoustic backgrounds for the production of the voices but because they are undoubtedly a source of uncertainty and ambiguity in the analysis of the results. They can very easily originate pareidolia and/or projection of meaning based upon expectation. Very particularly with the EVPmaker software, it is easy to find “results” in recording-sessions where they do not exist. In addition, an erroneous interpretation of the content of possibly anomalous utterances found in the recording is very likely. Most of the EVP “results,” published in the Internet, fall into one of these categories.

The equipment and location of the experiments did not seem to weigh on the formation of the voices but the highly sensitive microphone Bruel & Kjaer used at some of the University experiments appeared to capture more voices than the other microphones.

The content of all the voices recorded in the tests, with the possible exception of “altus”, were pertinent to the situation and/or to the operator(s)

From the results of the present research, this author fully corroborates Professor Alex Schneider, the Swiss physicist from St. Gallen who closely followed, studied and replicated some of Raudive’s work, when he declares in his Appendix to Breakthrough:

“Other investigators choose the moment when a transmitter starts to beam out the carrier wave just before beginning to transmit a program or else they select a slow-speaking lecture program in which the pauses between groups of words are so considerable that call signs can be interspersed. A carrier appears to be necessary, or, at any rate, desirable… a number of voices sound as though they were constituted from the homogeneous noises spectrum by some physically unexplained process of selection” (ibid, pp.340-341).

Moreover, in view of the results, a pertinent question is to find out if there are parallels between the allegedly anomalous electronic voice phenomena and so-called paranormal events of a different nature. Apparently, one of the distinctive characteristics of paranormal events is their occurrence in situations when they cannot be easily controlled. Professor Hans Bender is quoted as saying (translation):

“If we tentatively admit the still questionable factuality of ‘spooks’, then [the attempt] to keep hold of it by photographing, filming or by recording acoustical phenomena will have to face the difficulty that the phenomena apparently elude a critical grasp. The impression almost suggests that the intelligent forces mock the observer and produce a phenomenon just there where one cannot get hold of it” (Bender, 1979).

* Editor: A psychophone compares well as an early form of radio-sweep.


Anabela Cardoso has published the ITC Journal (itcjournal.org) since March, 2000. She is amongst the few ITC practitioners in the world able to communicate using Direct Radio Voice (DRV). Since 1998, she has communicated with an etheric communication station which identifies itself as Rio do Tempo (Timestream).

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Talking to the Dead, Listening to Yourself

An Empirical Study on the Psychological Aspects of Interpreting Electronic Voice Phenomena
by John E. Buckner and Rebecca A. Buckner
Previously published in the Skeptic Magazine Vol. 17, No. 1, 2012

Introduction

A common theme in ITC research concerns how people experience the phenomena. Studies conducted by the ATransC indicate that, on average, people correctly understand Class A examples about 25% of the time. (For Class B and C transform EVP radio-sweep, that approaches 0%.) Dr. Mark Leary has conducted similar studies with similar results. See also: Phantom Voices

This common theme of so little agreement in what is said in a reported EVP example naturally leads to a second common theme. That is, the presentation of EVP examples to the public by EVP researchers and practitioners that few or no listeners are able to understand. This leads to an unavoidable assumption that the practitioner is delusional.

Of course, the assumption that people who believe in things paranormal are delusional is contagious, and ultimately leads to qualified researchers avoiding anything paranormal, little or no funding for research and an increased probability that the conservative mainstream will eventually begin enforcing anti-fortunetelling laws … again.

Here is an article that was published in the Skeptic Magazine. It can be read on John Buckner’s page on Academica.edu. We are offering it to you here because it is a reasonably well-considered study that asks all of the right questions. The fact that it was published by the skeptical should not overshadow the message it offers to the paranormal community: Pay attention to how you look to the public. Either follow the rigor of using a listening panel and carefully planned protocols for your field work or help the rest of us by refraining from sharing your examples with the public.


From the article

“Overall, the results of this study support the psychological explanations for EVP. The phenomenon was reliably produced in the sense that teams generally identified potential EVP, but they were inconsistent in identifying when an EVP occurred or in their interpretation of the alleged communication. Still, it is possible that the one matched EVP is a result of communication with the deceased. Another possibility is that noise was generated from some other source and follows a particular pattern, which caused the teams to interpret the noise in a similar fashion. We feel the latter explanation is more likely the case, given the physical explanations for EVP, such as human error. Unfortunately, the limited experience we’ve had sharing this information with proponents of EVP has been somewhat disheartening. The matching EVP identified by two of the teams seems to over-shadow the 150 potential EVPs identified that did not match. This is an example of the confirmation bias, or the tendency to look for and find confirming evidence for one’s beliefs and to ignore the disconfirming evidence. This is a very common effect found in paranormal circles, most notably psychic readings in which the sitter remembers the handful of hits and forgets the numerous misses.”      This article is here.

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Relationship Between Physical Phenomena and EVP in Séances with a Physical Circle

by Rachel Browning
This is a digested version. The full report may be read at evp-voices.info (closed)
Previously published in the Fall 2013 ATransC NewsJournal

Introduction

The following article documents the spontaneous recording of Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) in an experimental physical séance circle. It is a personal attempt to investigate and understand the nature of the voices. The initial focus was to determine the source and validity of voices obtained on digital recorders during séances and to investigate their concurrence with sitters’ reports of visual phenomena. As yet, it has not been possible to determine a source that would explain or replicate the phenomena.

The Furzey Hill Physical Circle was formed to explore the validity of physical séance phenomena. From 2005 to 2008, members changed intermittently and the reported phenomena varied from sitting to sitting. Whilst very occasionally, a partial materialization was reported, more common phenomena such as fleeting lights and noises were reported with regularity. In May 2008, I was gifted an Olympus VN2100 Voice Recorder. I sat alone and made a recording of 38 minutes; it has some of the clearest voices captured so far. The most startling are two elderly women; one has a distinctly upper class English accent,v1 the other has a regional London accent.v2 Expecting the recorded voices to be an isolated occurrence, I took the recorder into the next sitting. Not only were there multiple voices present, possibly the same elderly lady could be heard.v3

Some group members were very concerned that a study of the voices would de-focus the group from our original goal of developing physical phenomena. A fixed study period from August 2009 to March 2010 was agreed after which we would return to our original focus of sittings.

The Séance Circle and Reported Phenomena

The group regularly consists of three members including me, who acts as the medium. Members are not religious but the group sits as a Spiritualist circle; however, there are three important departures from the traditional physical séance; the use of continuous red light, no use of music or singing and I do not enter a state of trance.

There is one source of light in the room, an overhead fluorescent globe with a 60-watt red bulb. This is controlled by a dimmer switch, which is out of the reach of sitters and the medium. In one corner of the room, there is a black-curtained cabinet. In sittings, the curtains have an aperture at the front of approximately two feet, allowing the sitters a clear view of the medium. Blackout blinds are placed at the window and cover the recessed doorway, successfully eliminating all daylight. It was agreed that the first three sittings would be held in blackout conditions to encourage the development of phenomena.

The first phenomenon to be reported in the circle was a dull white/yellow light approximately two inches in diameter, emanating from a wall to the left of the séance cabinet – this was visible for approximately fifteen minutes. Moderate red light up to 20 watts does not appear to inhibit the generation of physical phenomena. Lights are still seen, both static and moving. They have been described as tiny pinks of color to brilliant flashes of lightning. At 60 watts, knocking, unexplained noises and EVP capture are reported but no visible phenomena. We attributed our observations to low lighting; however, coincidental EVP have confirmed many reports of lights and noises.

figure-1-seance-room
Figure 1: The séance room

Partial materializations were reported in five isolated sittings over the period of nine years. Transfiguration was the most common type of phenomenon commented on in EVP. An example was the voice of gentleman with a North East English accent, who said “We’re not impressed with that,” as a circle member observes many faces transfiguring in rapid succession.v4 Audible phenomena can be most perplexing; the sound of a heavy horse walking on cobblestones was centered in the middle of the room. Again, this phenomenon was never repeated. Voices have been heard in the séance room by all present but never clearly enough to understand their speech. Whistles are occasionally heard in the room, at other times they can be heard on the recording without our awareness at the time.v5

All guests sitting with us whilst a recording was made were able to identify voices on the recordings not heard in the séance room.

EVP Communicators

The communicator’s motivation to make contact and talk appears to be either out of curiosity to find out if they can be heard or to make a comment on an aspect of the sitting. They do not report being directed to make contact but do on occasion refuse to speak if they are reprimanded by another communicator. Received EVP clips do not provide evidence that communicators have a depth of knowledge on the mechanics of how they send messages but they are fully aware that they can be heard on our recording devices.

Regular members have received no communication from families or friends. Personal messages to members are purely centered on the phenomena within the circle. Some communicators express an ability to follow a member away from the group but have no function other than to observe their actions. They express little interest in assisting with our development but are entertained by our endless fascination with them. At no point has the circle received regular messages from a group of communicators that perform as guides to facilitate development.

Regular communicators have distinct accents and often repeat the same phrase, almost a vocal calling card. Many are willing to give their name, but when asked for personal information that would satisfy us of their identity, it is not forthcoming. We rarely capture messages telling us how or why the communicator died or a matter pertaining to their death, it does not seem important to them. At odds with this are EVP from field recordings, where EVP is more likely to make reference to death and dying.

Séance Recordings

Up to four laptops were used to analyze each recording; all are standard unmodified machines, each running Audacity 1.3 beta (Unicode), which is an open source sound editing platform. Four digital recorders are used; two Olympus VN2100, a Sony ICD-B600 and an Olympus LS10. External microphones were not used. After the sitting, data is immediately transferred from all devices to Audacity in real time. Direct file transfers were only possible from the Olympus LS10; these had fewer voices versus the same recording transferred via a cable.

Once clipped, isolated EVP are played as soon as possible to those who attended the sitting; it is important that reviewers have a fresh memory of the discussions held in the séance. Depending on our understanding, EVP clips are then graded into three categories; A: clear and easily understood by most listeners, B: understandable with repeated playing or earphones and C: difficult to understand speech or a noise not heard in the séance room at the time of recording.

The ability to obtain EVP on four digital audio recorders and on three laptops illustrates the phenomenon is not an inherent or idiosyncratic anomaly to one device. When used together, both Olympus VN2100s were capable of picking up the same voice, at varying levels. Only two voice clips were captured on the Olympus LS10 at the same time as a VN2100; although audible, they were Grade C clips and not easily understood. I prefer not to artificially modulate isolated EVP, so it is necessary to learn the patterns of stress, pitch and inflection before attempting to interpret each message. There are examples of very clear but meaningless EVP in our archive, these are excellent in training your ear for analysis but purposeless in their content.v6

EVP comments can be seemingly random, nonsensical and grammatically incorrect. Single words are often spoken in isolation and it is rare that we capture more than a short sentence. Foreign clips are captured infrequently; those that could be interpreted have had meaning to the group. Without doubt, the most puzzling EVP are those of members’ voices, speaking phrases and sentences that we are certain were not spoken by us. This type of EVP is nearly always clear, although characteristically incorrect in comparison to their normal vocal profile and use of language.v7 We discussed in the circle how our voices could be manipulated; we were surprised to hear the reply, “Then I change the waves.”v8 EVP comments hint that existing sound waves in the environment are morphed to convey the message of the sender.

For some recordings in 2009, the in-between station noise from a short wave radio set at 5 MHz was tested as a carrier wave for voices. These sittings were outside of the specified study period and its use did not increase the capture of the voices, it was therefore discontinued.

The Study

There were a total of twenty-one sittings within the study period. Recordings were reviewed and a tally was made of how many direct responses or irrelevant comments were isolated. From the results, it appears that relatively few direct responses were captured in any one sitting, but if considered overall, eleven percent of the total number of EVP clips were of interest. It should be noted that a number of these clips were grade C and therefore an unpracticed ear may well arrive at a less impressive figure.

wavefor-clip-10
“Great big flash on your head” –“That bastard saw me.”
Figure 2: Audacity waveform of clip v10

As well as looking at the amount of direct responses, I was keen to establish if EVP could be captured on more than one device at a time. In the sittings where two recorders were used, there are examples of the same EVP present on both recordings. Whilst these clips are significant there are relatively few; further duplicated recordings are taking place to try to replicate the results.

Whilst the study provided a focus for critical listening; it did not address my subjective interpretation of the EVP. I wanted more certainty that the clips I translated would be commonly understood by a wider English speaking audience and I was concerned that my interpretations would lead to selective reporting and bias. I chose to perform an online listening survey to compare my interpretation of EVP versus a test subject. Participants were directed to the two-part survey through the group website.

Before beginning the survey participants were asked to declare if they believed in the possibility of afterlife communication, if they were a non-believer or if they were undecided. In part one, they were asked to interpret a mix of a series of 8 Grade A, B and C clips from the archive. In part two, they were provided with a translation of the same 8 clips and asked if they agreed with our interpretations.

It was tempting to present only class A voices, those that are most easily understood, however, I considered that a range of clips requiring varying levels of auditory acuity would provide a more realistic appraisal of interpretative skill. All groups were more inclined to attempt a translation if they did not agree with the provided interpretation.

In part one, no group or individual was able to interpret the clips which had an unusual speed – yet I had found translations easy. The remaining clips were more like everyday speech; test subjects found them easier to understand. I consider the survey to have been personally helpful even if the outcome was somewhat predictable. I cannot assume to provide an agreed interpretation for all voice clips but am confident that the translations I provide for grade A clips are likely to be agreed with by other listeners.

Direct Response Examples

(Clips not available) The first recording took place in May, 2008. By December, 2008, EVP clips with direct relevance to the circle were building. I consider a direct response or comment to be a voice other than ours that answers a question, makes a remark concerning the action of a group member or a valid observation of something taking place within the room. I was keen to understand how much awareness the EVP senders had of our environment.

I have provided the transcripts of three clips that I think illustrate well the communicators’ ability to both hear and see what is happening in the séance room:

Clip 1. My voice: “Down there,” EVP: “Big flash.” A circle members says, “I saw a big white flash.”v9

Clip 2. A circle members says, “Great big flash on your head.” EVP: “That bastard saw me!” v10 (See Figure 2)

Clip 3. My voice: “There’s a group of chaps and all standing there talking.” EVP: “Is anybody saying they think of us?” v11

Conclusion

The ability to capture a voice on more than one device at the same time may indicate that the EVP is a recorded transmission of a physical sound wave and not a mechanical or electrical fault inherent to a recording device. This does not in itself provide evidence of an incorporeal source but it does suppose a source of physical generation. It also leads to the unanswerable question; how would an etherical intelligence commute thought to a sound wave that is able to be recorded at the same pitch and volume as human speech but that is not heard in the environment at the time of recording?

It would be logical having only read the study results to conclude that EVP does not provide evidence of post mortem communication. However, had you taken part in a sitting, witnessed the recording and were satisfied that no deception took place, then on playback were able to hear an anomalous voice in reply to yours, it would be logical to explore all alternative explanations, regardless of how unlikely they were. We are fortunate in continuing to experience and report physical phenomena and EVP in our sittings; the study and recordings will continue.

[Editor: EVP will “normally” occur in only one recording process at a time. An exception is if the noise output device has an analog stage. In that case, it is possible the EVP could be formed there and recorded by more than one recorder. With this exception, the one process-one EVP characteristic is so dependable that it is used in the Control Recorder for EVP Best Practice:  atransc.org/bp/Control_recorder_for_EVP.]

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4Cell EVP Demonstration

(Based on a Summer 2005 AA-EVP NewsJournal article) Updated May 2015

Abstract

Can discarnate personality communicate with people in different parts of the world by hearing (sensing) a question from one person, ascertain the correct answer and deliver that answer to someone else in a different part of the world? A series of EVP sessions based on a specific protocol were conducted by four person teams. Coordination was via email and discussion board, and team members were in different parts of the USA. A person functioning as Requester thought of a question and told the question but not the answer to a person functioning as the Sender. The Sender communed in some way with his or her etheric communicators, asking them to tell the Receiver the correct answer via an EVP message. Once notified that a question had been sent, but not the question or answer. The Receiver conducted an EVP session to ask for the answer. A fourth person acting as the Scribe evaluated the resulting recordings for possible EVP and made first determination of what was said, if anything. The study indicated that it is possible to use EVP to gather information, but that there are limits to the kind of information that may be accessed.


Directors of the ATransC (formally the AA-EVP) had been looking for an effective has been in finding a way to make the recording of the phenomenal voices more reliable. There has also been a problem with practitioner ability, which varies considerably amongst people willing to participate in such studies.

One initiative to increase our understanding that has proven to be very effective is the 4Cell EVP Demonstration, which was conducted by association members and tracked in the Idea Exchange. The 4Cell project is designed to function as a test bed in which new ideas can be tried and the limits of EVP can be explored. As the 4Cell demonstration matured with more cells and more experiments on record, we anticipated being able to provide solid support for the existence of EVP, and the fact that EVP may be evidence of personal survival. Further, we expect this proof to be in a form that the scientific community will be able to accept, and therefore, feel obliged to repeat the experiments.

The Idea Exchange has been converted to “Read Only” due to lack of participation.
Please contact us if you have questions.

The 4Cell EVP Demonstration protocol is explained here. As always, we are available to assist researchers in setting up Cells to meet their research goals.

It is possible to apply this protocol to mediumship studies as well.

Protocol

Each cell consists of four people:

  1. A Requester who thinks of a request to be given to cooperating etheric communicators. A request may be a question, such as, “Who was my favorite teacher,” or a request for action, such as, “Please tell the Receiver what I am wearing now.” The request should be of interest to the Requester. The request can be directed at a research question, such as, “What happens after the moment of physical death?” The Requester tells the Sender the request but not the expected response.
  2. A Sender who is given the request and then conveys it to his or her etheric communicators, asking that they send the requested information to the Receiver. This may be accomplished in any way the Sender feels will work. Part of the objective here is to allow the participant to invent a way that “seems” right. Since so much of this is intuitive, personal initiative may be more effective than constraining rules. If there is doubt as to how to proceed, we advise that the Sender meditates or contemplates on the question. The idea is to send the message psychically, but to also send it verbally and maybe even in writing. All are effective techniques for EVP, as all helps focus attention. The Sender then notifies the Receiver that a request has been sent.
  3. A Receiver who conducts an EVP session (or contemplates/meditates for mental mediumship), asking to receive the response to the request. There may be many receiving sessions and they may be designed to suit the Receiver. To maintain focus, the Receiver should be the only one conducting a receiving session for any particular cycle. If the Receiver thinks EVP are in the resulting recording, the sound files are sent to the Scribe. (Mediumistic messages should be prescreened by the Receiver for a sense of meaningfulness.)
  4. A Scribe who accepts what was received, if anything, from the Receiver and makes a first determination as to what is said. The Scribe then asks the Requester for the request and privately posts the request and possible responses to the other three members of the Cell. The results of collaboration amongst Cell members is documented in a standardized report. For ATransC sponsored Cells, the report is posted on the Idea Exchange for peer review.
  5. Other board participants are then asked to consider the offered response by functioning as a listening panel. The Cell’s determination of what is said remains as The Report, but comments from others are retained as a record of possible alternative considerations (peer review).

Cell members have been asked to rotate positions, but we have found that it is more important that the cell has some degree of recording success so we are now asking that each Cell has at least one experienced experimenter with some level of confidence that at least some messages will be recorded. The Cells were also asked to record on a regular, weekly basis but now we see that there are too many normal living interruptions. It is better that the group tries to record when possible, perhaps on a monthly schedule.

It is important that some recording schedule is maintained, otherwise, the normally geographically distributed group of people tends to lose focus resulting in eventual abandonment of the study.

Once an effective Receiver has been found and the Cell has had some initial success, rotating members into the Receiver position will help develop more overall ability of the group.

Considerations

In the event that one of the four members is temporarily not able to participate, the functions of Receiver and Scribe can be combined. But separation between the Requester and the Sender is required to address the possibility that the Requester is asking something that is emotionally biased. This also separates the expected response from the send/receive process. The reason the Scribe is asked to independently decide whether or not the request has been correctly responded to is to see if he or she is able to arrive at that conclusion without the influence of group-think unconsciously guided by the Requester.

The protocol does not require a specific type of question or technique for obtaining the answer. The reason for this is that the group dynamics are as much part of the research question as are the resulting answer. One of the predictions from this protocol is that a cooperating group will have better results than one that experiences internal conflict. The concept is that the rapport of mutual cooperation builds the kind of contact field thought to be necessary for trans-etheric influences.

The flexibility of the protocol is in the fact that the Receiver can use EVP, automatic writing, mental mediumship, any form of transcommunication.  If EVP is not used, then the Listening Panel can be referred to as something like a Witness Panel.

Evaluating Results

Since Cell members are usually scattered around the country, it is unrealistic to attempt physically supervising the experimental cycles: so many experiments by many different Cells over many months should provide sufficient information to assess the validity of the concept, even though individual results should be judged on a case by case basis.

Responses are seldom going to be decisively correct and many requests will require a subjective response. For instance, A possible answer to “Please recite Mary Had a Little Lamb” might be a verbatim recital, but more likely would be more arcane such as Lamb chops, Happy Mary, or baby sheep. As such, the determination as to whether or not the answer is correct must be made on a scale of reasonableness and the unlikeliest of the results. This is why the first decision is independently made by one person and that decision is preserved in the record.

After the Scribe sends the first determination to the other Cell members, the group collaborates to accept, modify or completely change that first determination. The results of this process are also reported.

Finally, the use of an independent Witness or Listening Panel of less invested people helps to avoid group-think. This final review of what the Receiver reported is most effective if one of the Witness Panel acts as a Judge to sort out potentially divergent opinions.

The three versions of the transcommunication: Initial determination by the Scribe; Cell member’s group determination; and, the version selected by the Judge are retained in the report record. Confidence in the usefulness of the answer is based on this report.

Results

At first, the effectiveness of the protocol was unknown; however, early Cell reports made it clear that the communicating entities were happy to participate and that they could do all that we asked.

4Cell 1 – Voices: Andrea Carr, Siobhan McBride, Karen Mossey and Sue Mousseau (James Jones replaced Sue in experiment four and then the group dissolved):

  • Experiment 1 question: “Does it take more of your energy to manifest a Class A EVP, and if so, please indicate your answer as ‘More energy’ or ‘No difference.’” Class B answer: “No difference.”
  • Experiment 2 question: “From what level in the Afterlife are you communicating with us?” Class B answer: “Level six.”
  • Experiment 3 question: “What can we, as receivers on the physical level, do to help facilitate communication from you, the transmitters in the spiritual?” Class B+ answer: “Just open up the portal.”
  • Experiment 4 question: “What is the purpose of our communication with the other side? What is it we’re supposed to be doing in order to help them?” There was no appropriate response recorded.
  • Experiment 5 question: “Can anyone (any dead former human being) on the other side be involved in EVP messaging to us?” Class C answer: Four distinct utterances in same file, the second being “Perhaps.”
  • Experiment 6 question: “Is there a reason that some spirits do not come through for us? Why would that be?” Class B answer: “Stop moving” and “That’s right.” Class B- answer: “Yes … people.”

4Cell 2 –Infinite: Mary Jo Gran, Rheta Conley, Shelly Morrison and Vicki Talbott:

  • Experiment 1 question: “Can you tell me the name of Jim Robinson’s make believe sister?” Correct answer: “Sissy Sally.” Class B answer: “Sally’s the name.” (Other appropriate answers were also recorded.)
  • Experiment 2 question: “Who is the artist and what is the name of the painting hanging at the end of the entrance hallway in Vicki and Pete’s home?” Correct Answer: “Marc Chagall” and “The Lovers.” Class B answer: “Who painted it? … Chagall did.”
  • Experiment 3 question: “What Did Keith’s Grandpa Hallmark give him, and also, it has been lost. Can they tell us where it is?” Correct Answer: “Cue stick.” Class C answer: “A cue” and “Christy know right where it is.
  • Experiment 4 question: “What are the names of Jim’s Montessori School teachers?” Correct Answer: “Vivian” and “Rosmund.” Class B answer: “Vivian.” Class C answer in same file: “Rosmund.”
  • Experiment 5 question: “What is the most common sign that those in Spirit do to let us know you are near us or that you have been around?” Class C answer: Not clear.
  • Experiment 6 question: “What was the name of the tavern where I (Vicki) met my husband?” Correct answer: “The Waterfront.” Class B answer: “Has a view of the bay.” (below)

Cell Name: CellOctetic

Demo 3 Question: “What were some of your misconceptions about death and/or life on the other side?”

Answer: Vicki told us that, “Braden (her son) wanted us to know that the answer ‘Regrets’ was a very difficult one for him to give.” The order of the EVP that was most important to the study  was: Class C “It’s just hard to answer this,” Followed directly by Class A “Regrets.” (below)

Vicki explained: “I think that he and his friends on the other side did not want to hurt their moms or frighten others—they discussed whether Braden could even say it. He knew I could handle it, but others might not be able to. The EVP came as you see it above. As I said, Braden wants us to know that this is an important part of our passing; our life review.”

Comment: Near Death Experience researchers appear to be in agreement that we do experience a life review, and that it is from the perspective of those with whom we have interacted during the lifetime. This review can be expected to be emotionally painful, but it is probably the foundation on which we build new spiritual understanding. The 4Cell results are amongst the very few we have seen indicating all is not heaven when we make our transition.

4Cell 2 –Infinite: Shell Morrison: “Review our lives”  (below)

Shell was functioning as the Sender during a 4Cell EVP Demonstration experiment, but when the Receiver did not record an EVP that was appropriate to the question, “What happens when we die?” she asked Sell to record for answers. Shell recorded this response, which is an astoundingly clear Class A.

Summary

Of the first eighteen experiments, eleven or 61% were seen as successful. The etheric communicators have had a very large number of possible answers from which to choose. For instance, in Cell Infinity’s experiment 4, asking for Jim’s Montessori School Teachers, the expected answer was given as “Vivian” and “Rosmund.” How many first names are there in the western culture? There must be thousands. The odds of a person guessing the correct name must be about the same as winning the California Lottery. What are the odds of selecting the right name twice in the same EVP?

Guessing eleven appropriate answers out of eighteen attempts must be similar in difficulty to winning the California Lottery eleven out of eighteen tries. The results of the experiments would be astounding just because of how much the answers have exceeded what would be expected for guessing. Since we know that the communicators are intelligent, aware people, the gratifying part is not beating the odds, but how cooperative they have been.

We wish to thank all of the Cell members for their participation in the experiment. We especially thank Shelly Morrison and Vicki Talbott for moderating the Idea Exchange forum and for helping everyone get through the complicated protocol. And yes, a hearty thanks to their etheric partners who have been so willing to help us learn.

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Eliminating Radio Frequency Contamination for EVP

spirit_voices_1

The most common explanation for the source of the voices in EVP that is offered by people who have not studied the evidence is that they are caused by the audio recorder picking up stray radio or television signals. In fact, a number of well-designed experiments have been conducted over the years by very qualified people, to prove that such stray radio frequency signals are not the cause. Reports of two such experiments are provided below.

There is also an experiment shown below that was suggested by one such scientist as a prerequisite to his accepting that EVP are not stray electromagnetic (EM) signals. We believe that nested metal containers, such as the variety found in hobby stores, separated one from another by foam rubber or Styrofoam, would satisfy the requirement while helping to rule out stray sounds.

From the AA-EVP Archive

Here is longtime researcher Bill Weisensale’s response to concerns expressed by Dr Karlis Osis, with the American Society for Psychical Research, about eliminating mundane causes for EVP. From Bill Weisensale’s article in the May 1981 Spirit Voices:

In early 1975 … the controversy was still raging as to whether EVP voices arrived via acoustical or electromagnetic means. (It is generally accepted now that neither is the case.) At the time this was most perplexing. It seemed reasonable to believe that if EVP arrived by electromagnetic signal, a radio receiver would be required in all cases, and yet some methods did not involve any form of radio receiver. Conversely, if they were of an acoustic nature, then all methods would, of necessity, require the use of a microphone, and yet there were some methods that do not involve a microphone.

I reasoned either the voices had to be both acoustic and electromagnetic, depending upon the method of recording, which seemed very unlikely, or they had to arrive by some other kind of energy, which was of neither electromagnetic nor acoustic in nature. (We have come to call this PK energy, for lack of a better explanation.) In order to find out which was the case, I used a (steel) 50-gallon drum with a removable lid …

I brought the drum into the house, laid it on its side on a wooden pallet, and blocked the sides to prevent it from rolling. Next, very small holes were drilled in the drum and lid. A piece of heavy wire, with a solder terminal, was then bolted to the drum and run out through a window where another solder terminal and bolt were used to attach the wire to a steel stake driven into the ground. A second wire and solder terminal were attached to the lid and soldered to the first wire. All connections, drum to wire, lid to wire, wire to wire, and stake to wire, were checked with an ohmmeter to ensure there was no resistance and everything was properly grounded. Before doing the experiments, water was poured around the steel stake to ensure proper grounding.

spirit_voices_1

In the initial experiment, which was to check the efficiency of the shield, a battery-powered radio receiver was tuned to a strong station, the volume set rather high, and placed inside the drum. A battery-powered tape recorder was then connected via patch cord to the radio, also placed inside the drum and the lid bolted into place for several minutes.

Upon removing the recorder and reviewing the tape, it was found that the station was quite clear with the lid off, but when the lid was bolted into place, the station totally disappeared and its presence could no longer be discerned even with the closest listening. We then adjusted the radio to between station static, listening carefully to be sure there were no distant stations present, placed the radio in the drum with the recorder and made several recordings with the lid bolted in place each time.

We found the voices appeared inside of the shield just as they did with no shielding. Also, since the radio and recorder were connected via patch cord and there was, therefore, no microphone involved, this experiment eliminated (to at least my own satisfaction) both the acoustic and the electromagnetic hypotheses.

[Editor: The May 1981 Spirit Voices and other newsletters are being added to the AA-EVP online document archive as time allows. We are currently up to Spring 1987 with the AA-EVP newsletters. Remember that access to the Archive is a benefit of membership. We highly recommend that you take advantage of this growing library of historical EVP and ITC documents.]


A Suggested Experiment

Initially published in the Fall 2004 AA-EVP NewsJournal

ccaaevp2008-shielded_suggested_by_charles_tartParapsychologist, Professor Charles Tart, was interviewed by The Psychic Times (apparently defunct), a new British publication that is already proving itself antagonistic to EVP. In the article, Tart was quoted to argue that EVP is stray radio, and that we who study in this field have not demonstrated the necessary research discipline to produce the kind of credible evidence that he can take to other scientists.

The diagram is of a shielded recording compartment, EVP from which would answer Tart’s objections. It provides more shielding than a metal can or microwave, but it is not as readily available. We would like to talk to someone who might be able to make one, or who might have one. If possible, we would like to send one to a number of different experimenters in serial fashion, so that many examples can be collected in the compartment. Please let us know if you can help.


MacRae has a Second Article in the JSPR

Initially published in the Winter 2006 AA-EVP NewsJournal
©Alexander MacRae – All Rights Reserved

The October 2005 issue of the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research included a second article by Alexander MacRae. In this one, Alec details the EVP experiments he conducted in the Institute of Noetic Sciences screen room. Remember that the JSPR is a refereed, peer-review journal and that the article necessarily meets the SPR’s high standard for thoroughness and documentation. Here is the abstract:

Report of an Electronic Voice Phenomenon Experiment
inside a Double-Screened Room

By Alexander MacRae

Abstract

An Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP) experiment is described which took place in a laboratory screened against e.m. radiation and also acoustically isolated. The subsequent treatment of the results through sound-processing is outlined, and the final analysis of the results through the use of a unique multiple-choice system is described. Comparative spectrograms of one EVP utterance and the same thing spoken in normal speech are provided to assess the physical basis of the results. The conclusion is drawn that voices of no natural origin were received in the screened laboratory.

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Recording Thoughts of the Living?

Originally printed in the Spring 2001 AA-EVP NewsJournal

There is some evidence that at least a few of the messages we record in EVP, may actually be put there by people who are still in the physical.  Here are a few examples from members:

  • In the Spring 1982 newsletter, Sarah quoted Tina Laurent of Wales:  “I’ve had on two occasions, voices that sound exactly like two people I know, they gave their names too, but they are STILL living.  I don’t know what to make of that.  Do you?  One of them I played for my brother and his wife and they recognized them straight away and they have always thought that I played a joke on them.”
  • Ernst Senkowski contributed this: “I several times observed at least the name and possibly the voice of a living person some 300 miles away. . .(A) case seems to have happened in Italy wherein an EVP experimenter succeeded in taping the contents of the mind of a far absent living person.  So we have to be very careful in stating ‘our’ voices come from the ‘dead.’”
  • Jacque Blanc-Garin of France recently wrote to say that, “About the problem of voices from living persons.  I tried some experiments regarding this fact.  I called some persons (my wife and some other friends with their agreement – important point for ethics) who were sleeping.  I received many messages where some were a proof. For example, I asked my wife where she was?  Answer: I am in the air, Monique. Another question: Do you meet your family on the other side?  Answer: I meet all but I will come to you because I love you Poupoune. (The name Poupoune is the nickname given to Monique by her parents).  That means we have the possibility to tape the voice of a person who is sleeping, because we go out of body while some part of us is asleep.” (See below)
  • Edna Drake, B.C. Canada, comments that she has reason to believe an EVP message she received was from a brain damaged friend of hers.  She wrote that, “I just had a strong feeling that the “voice” trying to form words stammering and stuttering, like a handicapped person, was in fact the brain injured young man I worked with for over 2 years–to talk and communicate.”
  • Brian Jones, WA, has discussed the possibility that he might actually be recording his thoughts.  He sent us a sound track in which a person was speaking to him via his computer phone at the same time he was recording.  He indicated that he thought the voice he recorded might have been generated by thoughts from that person.

You may want to test this idea for yourself by following the technique used by Jacque Blanc-Garin.  It is an interesting idea, the possibility that we sometimes record the living as well as the departed.  We are Self living in a physical body during this lifetime.  When free of the encumbrance of our body, perhaps during sleep, we are very much the same as the discarnate entities we seek to communicate with.  If this is true, then it is not much of a leap in logic to think we can impress messages on tape as well.


French Sleep Experiments

This article was originally printed in the Summer 2002 AA-EVP NewsJournal

Jacques Blanc-Garin of the French EVP/ITC group, Infinitude, provided us with a description of experiments to contact sleeping people via EVP.  See more about Infinitude at www.infinitude.asso.fr. ©Jacques Blanc-Garin – All Rights Reserved

From 1994 to July 1995, Jacques conducted a series of experiments in which he tried to reach people while they were sleeping.  A friend of his, Robert Doré, had suggested that it might be possible for a person to communicate through Tci (French term for ITC) with a sleeping person.  (The following is a translation from French.)  Jacques wrote, “My idea with these experiences is that we would be able to help people who are considered insane.  It would be possible to contact them when they are sleeping and maybe record the entity who is disturbing them.  However, I have not tried this because it is not easy to bring such an idea to hospital personnel.”

The following experiments were conducted with a Marrantz CP430 equipped with a micro Monacor ECM 600 ST or a Philips 6350 recorder.  For ambient noises, Jacques used the sound of rubbing paper, German language conversation, and sometimes an air-band receiver.

Jacques writes that the results were conclusive almost every time.  He also pointed out that, as a matter of ethics, each experiment was prearranged with the person who would be addressed while they slept.

Following, are samples of what was received during some of these experiments.

Excerpts from recording of Monique Simonet during sleep, April 7, 1995.

Jacques: “It is useless for me to explain to you how to make Tci.  I believe that you are more expert than me in this domain and you will know how to use all vibrations that I can send you.”
     Answer: “I would like to make it on the Earth” (very audible whisper).

Jacques: “I hope that I do not disturb your sleep.”
     Answer: “It was foreseen, I will remember” (whisper).

Jacques: “If you answer me, you are maybe in the environment where I record.  If that is it you can then tell me what I currently hold in my left hand?”
     Answer: “It is a crystal” (whisper).

Jacques said that, “I indeed, had a crystal in my hand.  Monique saw me!”

Excerpt from recording of Monique Laage during sleep, Nov. 8 1994.

Jacques: “I call this double astral body that should be theoretically able to answer me.  Are you there, Monique if it pleases you?”
     Answer: “I am in airs, Poupoune” (audible whisper).

(Editors: “Poupoune” is pet name given to Monique by her father.)

Excerpt November 10, 1995 recording Monique Laage.

Jacques: “When you go to the astral, do you meet other people?
     Answer: “I see them all again, but I will come back, I like you, Monique who likes you” (uninterrupted, whisper).

Excerpt December 10, 1994 recording Monique Laage.

Jacques: “It is extraordinary that, in a little time, you are going to wake up and you are going to return to your body.”
     Answer: “One is well, it is happiness here” (whisper).

(Editor’s note:  We are spirit living in a physical body.  It is logical that we should be able to leave messages via EVP just as those who do not have a physical body do.  This should also make us think a little more about our adventures while asleep.)


Experiment – Recording the Living

This article was originally printed in the Summer 2001 AA-EVP NewsJournal

In April Sarah Estep participated with us in an experiment in which we tried to see if we could record messages from each other while asleep.  This worked out well as Tom and I taped around 10 pm PST when Sarah was asleep.  Sarah taped early in the morning while we were still sleeping.  The experiment ran three separate evenings.

On one experiment Sarah said on the tape that Tom and Lisa were asleep right now.  A loud voice says, “That’s right,” and then 16 counts later another class A message by the same male voice says, “I am.”  During another experiment Sarah asks Tom Butler, “Are you here,” and got, “He’s here, we will try to get him back.”  When Sarah asked for Lisa she got, “I’m here,” and then later, “Stop, the Lisa back.”  This is interesting, as I woke up and remember looking at the clock.  This was verified with Sarah as the time that she was recording.

During our experiments in trying to reach Sarah we recorded, “You have main contact,” and also, “Rain.”  Interestingly, we later learned it had been raining at Sarah’s house.  We asked, “Where are you Sarah?” The message came back “I am here.”

An interesting side note in all of this. Sarah also had a surprise visitor.  During our running of these experiments Sonia Rinaldi, EVP researcher in Brazil, sent Sarah an Email.  In it she told Sarah about a very vivid dream and wrote, “I could see you so clearly that I am sure that we really met.  I was in your kitchen. … The fact is that I never remember any of my dreams.”  Sonia was not aware of our experiments and yet she had this lucid dream on one of the nights that we were trying to reach Sarah via tape recorder.

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Hans Otto König Experiment

Originally published in the ITC Journal No. 24, December 2005. Also published in the January 2007 AA-EVP NewsJournal.          ©Anabela Cardoso – All Rights Reserved


Introduction

Hans Otto König

In the year 1974, Hans Otto König, now 66, a professional electroacoustics technician living in Mönchengladbach, by chance found himself listening to a discussion broadcast by ZdF (the second German TV Channel) in which Friedrich Jürgenson from Sweden, the pioneer of EVP, tried in vain to convince the well-known German parapsychologist Prof. Hans Bender and other critical scientists and journalists of the reality of extraordinary voices captured on his audio-tapes and apparently originating from the deceased.

König’s interest was aroused, and he resolved to start his own experiments in an attempt to demonstrate that the anomalous voices came from the unconscious of the experimenter rather than from the deceased. Instead, he received the singing voice of his late mother who addressed him and his father by name and asked whether or not they could hear her. During the following weeks, König was forced to the conclusion that the voices did indeed come from the so-called dead. He started his EVP experimentation using as background support noise a radio station transmitting in a foreign language, and although he obtained his positive results almost immediately, initially they were of very poor quality, consisting mostly of whispers and sighs rather than vocalizations.

Subsequently he changed his background noise from foreign language broadcasts to ultra-sounds, since this is an area of acoustics which he understands, and has used his professional expertise and psychic faculties to improve the quantity and quality of the contacts with the beyond—now known as Instrumental TransCommunication or ITC—by inventing and continuously modifying electronic devices specially developed for the purpose. Initially, he applied combined frequency-modulated mechanical ultrasonics transmitted and received by transducers in his laboratory. He then found that electromagnetic oscillations in the frequency range around 50 kHz produced the same results. Later he added a multifrequency infrared transmitter-receiver system, which demodulates infrared and modulates it again to a UHF vibration-oscillation from 10 m down to a 1 m wavelength, with a frequency of 30 MHz to 300 MHz. Currently he is working with a complex device based on quartz-crystals irradiated with ultraviolet light which he calls HRS (Hyper-Raum-System or Hyperspace System).

König tells us that he builds his various IC devices according to his own thoughts and the information he receives in dreams from the communicators. He further tells us that he goes into deep meditation for thirty minutes every day and while doing so can “see” (as a kind of psychic perception) his communicators as diffuse physical shapes, and that he has also been successful in photographing them using the Klaus Schreiber closed loop method. His explanation for the success of his experimentation is the key word “resonance,” which he says includes electromagnetic resonance.

The voices that now come through his loudspeaker are of a different, often excellent, quality, and he is sometimes able to dialogue with them. The contents of communications and the nature of the communicators themselves vary dependent upon the context. Deceased humans may answer the requests of their bereaved relatives and friends for comfort, while at other times, technical advice is given to König, and nameless cosmic entities, apparently outside our space-time, provide philosophical observations. The outcome of an experiment is never predictable, and may produce no results at all depending on mental-spiritual and other (unknown) conditions. König feels that audio results seem to improve in the presence of a harmonious audience, and the same is true for his work on transimages, which in one instance have already been obtained accompanied by the voice of the deceased person, whose identity was later discovered “by chance.”

The Two Experiments

The two experiments that are the subject of this Report were held respectively on September 10th and 11th, 2005, in two afternoon sessions held in a room at the Hotel Kaiserhof, in the German town of Wesel. Dr. Anabela Cardoso attended, accompanied in the unavoidable absence of Professor David Fontana by Mr. Carlos Fernández, the Technical Editor of the ITC Journal and an electronics technician with long experience of ITC data. Also accompanying Dr. Cardoso was Professor Ernst Senkowski, one of the foremost experts on ITC, who has known König well for many years, and who was responsible for helping to arrange Dr. Cardoso’s visit. The others present included visitors from Finland and some sixty of the regular observers of König’s previous experiments, together with a few individuals who were attending for the first time. König completely eschews publicity and avoids working with journalists and the media because of the negative experiences he has had with such groups in the past. All the communications were in German, which is the native language of König and of Professor Senkowski and in which Dr. Cardoso has some facility.

First Experiment, September 10th 2005.

König opened proceedings with an introductory talk that included recordings of voices received during earlier experiments. After a short meditation he then activated one of the older systems developed by him many years ago, which has misleadingly been called a “generator” but which in fact should be considered as a device open to the influx of information from hidden ranges of consciousness. This infrared/ultrasound device operates in a frequency range from 30 kHz to 70 kHz. The device, which looks like a rectangular metallic box, was built by König himself and the frequencies are mixed in its interior while an aerial placed on top of the generator transmits the signal to a receiver in the same band. An amplifier is connected to a mixing table and to the loudspeakers. König’s microphone and recording apparatus are also connected to the mixing table. When the voices started, silence was suddenly transformed into a beat, and the voices seemed to speak much above the beat. The communications that resulted lasted some two minutes and consisted of a nearly continuous dialogue between König and several voices.

The communications began with the habitual opening words. “Contact field closed” (i.e. closed to intruding entities), and finished with, “Contact end.” In all, there were fifteen exchanges. In Exchange Number 2, the “answer” did not directly refer to the question asked by König. In Number 5, the voice asked for a technical modification of the equipment being used. In Numbers 9 and 14 respectively, two names of earlier acquaintances of König, “Hubert” and “Helmut,” were given, the latter communicator spontaneously referring to König’s sick wife, Margaret.

Most of the voices were clear and could be heard above the permanent noise level from the equipment. In consequence the comprehensibility level was around eighty-five to ninety per cent for all those present during live listening, and one hundred per cent on replay. The voices were of excellent quality, but somehow did not possess the same degree of what Dr. Cardoso describes as the “inner clarity of an angelical prototype” that in her view was overpowering in the voices that came through during the experiment of the following day. Professor Senkowski expressed himself unable to always decide whether a voice sounded more male or more female.

An interesting observation concerns the varying speed of the utterances. For example, Exchange Number 12 was spoken very quickly, and here and in other cases, one had the impression that when the contact is nearing its end because of shortness of “energy,” the speech is accelerated. Another observation concerns the time lapse between the questions of the experimenter and the responses from the communicators. These lapses were generally in the range of a few seconds, but in Number 12, the voice broke in before König had completed his question, so that the two voices momentarily overlapped.

To some extent, the speech of the communicators possessed its own character and style, both of which are difficult to describe. Often the speech sounded not “normal” or not “human-like.” Grammar was not always correct. The contents sometimes were metaphorical and not easily interpreted, especially when the speaker seemed to be a “remote,” non-human being. An example is Number 2, when subsequent to König asking who and where the “speaker” is, the answer, “Ultraschall ist das Bild” is given, (translated as, “Ultrasonics is the image”). This answer could be understood as meaning that the voice, as mediated by the electromagnetic oscillations in the range of 30 to 70 kHz, is an “image” of the speaker, who remains unnamed. Alternatively the speaker may be identifying his (mental) “position,” as in or near the equipment being used. But these alternatives must remain more or less speculative.

Second Experiment, September 11th 2005

This experiment was carried out with the HRS system that consists of a large quartz-crystal and ten smaller ones, all of them irradiated by ultraviolet light of different wavelengths. As in the first experiment, we started with a short meditation, after which the device was switched on. After some fifteen minutes, the first voice came through, and a dialogue developed with nineteen exchanges taking place lasting seven minutes and fifty-three seconds.

The background noise, according to König, actually produced from the “other side,” was quite different from that heard from the so-called generator in Experiment One. It consisted of a nearly periodic bird-like high-pitched twittering or chirping, mixed with slow roaring like a storm and waves on a seashore. Most voices were absolutely clear and immediately understood, provided they were not too fast. König spoke his questions in a meditative state, speaking slowly, and the voices answered in their chosen manner.

Most responses were given immediately, although a few were delayed up to twelve seconds. Most of the voices seemed to come from one single entity, who sounded to be female, and they possessed a special modulation, similar to singing. Most of them sounded rather “neutral” or “detached” with the possible exception of Exchange Number 10, where the voice seemed to express some underlying contempt for the stupidity of Christian beliefs, describing them as “unreasonable superstition.” In Number 8 were the words, “I stem from the realm of stars,” delivered in an elevated poetic style. The German words used by the entity, “lch stamme,” can be translated simply as, “I come,” or more tellingly as, I am descended.”

The dialogue seemed to be presided over by a highly intelligent source that treated adult humans like children, with some compassion or even regret. For example Number 15, when we were told that, “But it is probably too difficult for you to comprehend this.” (“This” being their magnificent, super-terrestrial world). However, one should take into consideration the difficulties pertaining to the adaptation process of the different structures of human and the entities’ consciousness in contact through these communications. In the rather long pause between Number 18 and the end of the contact, dull beats similar to drumming appeared as additional signals, although their meaning remained unclear. The live comprehensibility level was around one hundred per cent for all those present.

 

 komig_experiment

Diagram of the devices used by Hans Otto König on September 11
Previously published in the ITC Journal No. 24, December 2005

1. 10 UV LEDs UV-C – 100-280 Nanometer

2. 10 Small Quartz Crystals

3. 10 Phototransistors

4. Stochastic Generator

5. FM Output From Stochastic Generator

5A Oscillogram – Line 5

5B Frequency – Spectrum 48 – 68 KHz Line 5

 

6. FM Demodulator

7. Preamplifier

8. 4 UV LEDs Special Frequencies

9. Big Quartz Crystal

10. Demodulator

11. Low Frequency Amplifier

12. Audio Signal to Mixer

 Related Matters

The transcripts of the communications received during the above mentioned experiments and the respective translations provide by Dr. Ernst Senkowski are available below

During the two days spent in Wesel, Dr. Cardoso had the opportunity to exchange views with Hans-Otto König on a number of issues—namely on the content of the communications she receives from the group of communicators calling themselves Rio do Tempo (Timestream) and recorded by Dr. Cardoso, and of the communications received by Hans-Otto König. Among the many interesting similarities there is, for instance, the fact that König’s communicators very rarely speak in the singular and almost always in the plural, referring to themselves as “We,” just as do the communicators from Rio do Tempo.

They also speak of “meditating (in their world),” as do the voices from Rio do Tempo. Furthermore, König’s and Rio do Tempo communicators tell us that, in the third level of the next world, deceased animals and deceased humans are together again, and that at this level, communication with animals and plants is also possible. Another aspect of the similarities regards the interchange of energies between the communicators and the experimenters. Hans Otto König said on September 10, 2005, prior to the experiment of that day, that the entities who speak with him “can as well charge, or even overcharge, him before a contact, and at other times he feels devoid of energy after a contact.”

From her side on September 2, 2005, Dr. Cardoso wrote in her contacts log the following: “… when I am in the studio I seem to lose track of time. I wouldn’t know if I have been in for fifteen minutes or for over one hour. Also, those days when I feel particularly energetic, and upon request of the communicators, stay inside for a period of time, I feel emptied out and tired when I go out of the studio. On the other hand, the days when I feel very tired and go into the studio, upon going out I feel recovered and the tiredness has disappeared. It is as if there is an interchange of energies with the communicators.” As with the communicators from Rio do Tempo, who refer to themselves as speaking from a “station,” König’s communicators say the group who organizes their contacts is known as “ZentraIe.”

Conclusion

Our conclusion is that we witnessed two fascinating experiments that are the outcome of thirty years of engaged and devoted work by Hans-Otto König, who works without support and who has often been fiercely attacked by what Professor Senkowski calls envious or even ill-intentioned people. Hopefully, at some point in the future, Hans Otto König will be considered one of the most prominent pioneers of ITC, and his wish to prove the reality of life after death will perhaps be fulfilled by a less materialistic science. Meanwhile, we remain thankful for the opportunity to observe the work of this man, and wish him the continuation of success in the laborious developmental path that he has chosen to follow.

Editorial Note

As emphasized in earlier issues of the Journal this research work has been made possible by the generosity of Mr. Oliver Knowles, a great supporter and benefactor of psychical investigation…

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Perception of Visual ITC Images

Published in the Fall 2010 ATransC NewsJournal
Also see Butler ITC Gallery 2Butler ITC Gallery 2,  Butler ITC Gallery 3,
and Video-Loop, Visual ITC Recording Technique

Abstract

In visual Instrumental TransCommunication (Visual ITC), recognizable features are found in what should be only random optical noise. No known physical principles account for the phenomenal features and they may be found in virtually any sufficiently noisy media. The Examples and Techniques sections of this website include several such techniques for capturing the features. This report includes results of an online viewing study in which website visitors were asked to describe what they saw in unmarked visual ITC images.

Of the seven examples, an average of 61% of respondents correctly identified the feature. Each example was presented with original, grayscale and increased contrast versions. The increased contrast version was most often correctly identified.

Question: Will website visitors report seeing same or similar features in visual ITC examples?

caaevp2004_video_setupThis is a study to determine whether or not images recorded in optical-frequency noise can be consistently described. The video-feedback technique was used for all of these examples. As is shown in the diagram, a video camera is pointed at a television screen and the output of the camera is connected to the input of the television so that the camera “sees” what it has just recorded. The camera is usually focused slightly beyond the screen to produce a soft focus image. The zoom, focus and camera presets are adjusted until a “rolling” effect is achieved on the display not unlike the special effect of “warp drive” in the movies.

The recorded video is examined one frame at a time. Those with “interesting” optical texture are “grabbed” and examined with a photo editing program to find the features. An example “interesting” video frame is provided here.

Preliminary Results

 Example Extra detail No or Unrelated Detail Basic Shape Detail Recognized
Shape
1 19 or 15% 25 or 19% 68 35 103 or 81%
2 28 or 22% 92 or 72% 28 8 36 or 28%
3 41 or 32% 32 or 25% 43 53 96 or 75%
4 26 or 20% 56 or 44% 46 26 72 or 56%
5 24 or 19% 34 or 27% 47 47 94 or 73%
6 24 or 19% 82 or 64% 23 23 46 or 36%
7 18 or 14% 24 or 19% 51 53 104 or 81%
128 Entries 26% 39% Did not see feature or saw it incorrectly 61% Recognized Correct Detail

Procedure

Please examine each example and state what you see in the associated text box. Each example has been clipped out of a video frame and is shown in its unaltered form, as an enhanced contrast image and in gray scale. The three versions are intended to help you visualize the feature.

1csocrates2010-111609_18Unaltered clip from video frame 1csocrates2010-111609_18_contrastIncreased contrast 1csocrates2010-111609_18_bwIncreased contrast and grayscale
Example 1: (All three are the same image)  81% correct recognition

What you should see: This is the head of a dog facing toward you and to your left. You can see his eyes and snout. A little of the neck is visible and just a hint of ears. The animal appears to be very alert and appears to have short hair.

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Example 2: (All three are the same image) 28% correct recognition

What you should see: This is the head of a person facing to your left and looking down a little. His/her left eye is in the middle of the picture and seems to be slanted like an Asian and the nose-brow line seems very strong. He/she appears to be wearing some kind of cloak or ceremonial garb. The person seems to have dark hair put up in some kind of formal arrangement or he/she may be wearing a hat of some kind. The overall impression is of an oriental warrior or nobility.

Depending on how you look at this one, there are several pretty dominant faces. They show up mostly in the black and white version.

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Example 3: (All three are the same image) 75% correct recognition

What you should see: This is the head of a person facing to your left and visible from the chest up. It is not clear if this is a male or female, but my guess is male. The blue area is his coat and it seems he might be wearing a white coat and shirt with a bow tie. He may have something like an animal in his left (your right) hand. He appears to have a dark beard and dark hair.

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Example 4: (All three are the same image) 56% correct recognition

What you should see: This is the head of a man facing to your right and tilted slightly down. You see him from the chest up, but his pointed chin almost touches the bottom of the frame. He has prominent cheeks and is smiling so that he seems to have a large but evil laugh. His chin, nose, cheeks and temples are bright areas. It would seem he has no teeth to fill out his face.

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Example 5: (All three are the same image) 73% correct recognition

What you should see: This is the head of a man facing to your right and tilted slightly down and to the right. The nose is prominent as a long bright line right of middle. The bright section at top appears to be top-illuminated hair. Like the nose, the right (your left) cheek is brighter as is the side of what looks like a full beard as if the same light source is shining on those areas. The man has a long face and seems to be more like a biblical character than like a businessman.

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Example 6: (All three are the same image) 36% correct recognition

What you should see: This is a person visible from the chest up. It may be a woman or a man. Since he seems to have a dark shadow of a beard, I will say he is a man. He is facing to your left. The green areas seem to mark the lapel of a reddish coat. He has long black hair that appears to be combed around some kind of hat. The hat seems like a too small derby, which is why he may be a clown.

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Example 7: (All three are the same image) 81% correct recognition

What you should see: This is a head facing to your left. It is a profile from the neck up. The person may be a boy or boyish girl with short hair and appears to be wearing a dark shirt with a white collar like a sweater over a “T” shirt. The hair and face seem to be illuminated from your left and top.

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Information Gathering Using EVPmaker With Allophone: A Yearlong Trial

Abstract

This twelve-month trial was designed to determine whether or not information not known to a participant could be requested and received via Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) using EVPmaker with allophones.

A target object was left undisturbed in the same location at the beginning of each month for twelve months. Participants were asked to use only EVPmaker with allophones to produce a sound file containing the information identifying the target. To qualify submissions the project manager screened them for reasonableness. Those possibly containing usable information were submitted to a listening panel of people who were familiar with EVP but who did not know the identity of the target. If a majority of the listening panel heard information as reported by the participant, the submission was considered a valid submission. Submissions were rejected if a majority did not hear what the participant heard. Valid submissions were screened for a positive response by the project manager for inclusion in the study.

This trial did not produce positive responses based on the study’s protocol. However, the abundance of non-protocol EVP captured in the study might suggest EVPmaker is not suited for the type of communication this study was designed to capture. Also, participant knowledge of the target might have to be reexamined as several targets were identified either before the target was placed or after when the participant knew what the target was. Future studies may wish to look at these non-protocol results when designing a follow-up study.

Introduction

Background sound is often used as sound energy during the recording of Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP). This sound may be ambient noise in the environment or sound purposely added to the recording environment such as the hiss of a radio tuned off station, flowing water or the sound of a fan. These imported sounds are said to supply the sound energy entities need to form voices.

While these sound sources can result in EVP, some practitioners proposed that the sounds or frequencies of the human voice would be optimal for the communicating entities to use to generate a voice. Different methods of experimentation using human vocalizations have been tried including foreign language recordings, some of which were edited and clipped to produce random bits of vocalizations with no discernible words or syllables. Radio-sweep using modified radios popularly known as “ghost boxes” or “spirit boxes,” has also been tried. This involves rapidly changing the tuning dial of a radio to produce pieces of speech.

In the late 1980s, Stefan Bion developed a computer program that he likened to a sound grinder. The software program, called EVPmaker,1 uses a random process to select segments of a buffer in which a raw, audio input file has been loaded. The resulting output file is a stream of randomly arranged short sound segments from the input file. EVP are thought to be formed via manipulation of the random selection process.

In 2008 Stefan Bion offered a file containing seventy-two allophones generated by SpeakJet™ 2 that could be used as the input audio file for EVPmaker. The output of these randomized allophones from EVPmaker, while robotic sounding, were used successfully by some researchers to obtain what they felt were meaningful and relevant communications.

Because of the standardization provided by using EVPmaker with the allophone file provided by Stefan Bion, the program was a good choice to use in a controlled study of EVP. All participants, individuals who attempted to record EVP communication for the study, would be using the SpeakJet™ Allophones2 as the sound source to input into EVPmaker.

Protocol

The study was designed to ask each communicating entity to perform a task that would indicate understanding and cooperation. This task was to view a specific object that was set out at a specific location. The communicating entity was then instructed to tell the participant what that object was through the participant’s copy of EVPmaker with allophones.

Study question: Can the identity of a target object be recorded in the EVPmaker output file which is of sufficient quality that a listening panel is able to agree on its content?

The Protocol:

  1. A target object unknown to participants was placed in the same location at the beginning of each month for twelve months. Sufficient information about the location to uniquely identify it in the world was announced.
  2. Participants, who responded to the public announcement, conducted EVPmaker sessions using the allophone file provided by Stefan Bion, but otherwise using any EVPmaker setting. They asked that the target be identified in the output file. There was no limit on the number of attempts.
  3. Knowing only that the target was an object, participants listened to the output files and determined if a response had been recorded. Whether or not it was a likely response concerning the target object was up to the judgment of the participant.
  4. Audio files the participant determined could include names of the target were sent to the project manager.
  5. The project manager compared what the participant heard to the target. If the project manager agreed that the target was indicated in the file, it was sent to a listening panel.
  6. Not knowing the target object, the listening panel individually reviewed the file and noted what if anything was said in the file. That information was sent to the project manager.
  7. If a majority of the listening panel heard information as reported by the participant, the submission was considered a valid submission; if not, it was rejected. Valid submissions were screened for a positive response by the project manager for inclusion in the study.

Trial Personnel

The people who made up the study team were the project manager, the target keeper, three listening-panel members, two alternate listening-panel members and the participants.

  • The project manager developed the trial protocol, oversaw the project, communicated with the target keeper, listening-panel members and the participants, analyzed the data and wrote the monthly and final reports.
  • The target keeper was in charge of putting a new target into place every month.
  • The listening-panel members would review any audio files sent to them by the project manager.
  • The alternate listening-panel members would be enlisted to review audio files if one of the original three listening-panel members could not participate.
  • Participants were anyone who wanted to take part in this trial and could follow the study’s protocol.

Targets

The target for each month was taken from a list that had been prepared prior to the start of the yearlong study. The target objects for the year were only known to the project manager and target keeper. The target keeper would find objects that she felt fit the predetermined list of targets. She would then submit a picture and a brief explanation of the object to the project manager. On the first of the month, she would place only this object on a specific shelf on a shelving unit in her home. The object would remain there undisturbed for the entire month. This target object would be taken away and replaced with the next month’s target on the first of the following month.

The following list shows what was requested and what the target keeper put into place for each month. A synopsis of her comments concerning the targets has also been included.

May: An abalone dragonfly pin designed by her husband.

June: One of the target keeper’s recorders.

July: Pink roses in an engraved black vase with “4546 B INDIA” on the underside of the vase.

August: A blue teacup with painted flowers on it. “JAPAN” was stamped on the bottom of the teacup.

September: Zephyr scissors with “CLAUSS NO 78 USA” on one blade. They had blue handles with white paint and black gunk on them. The target keeper noted that she has had them for twenty-five years and thinks of them as “our work scissors.”

October: I Am That, by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj. It is not a “holy book” in the traditional sense, but the teachings within are certainly considered to be sacred by many.

November: Candle made for the target keeper by her son while in elementary school. It has layers of blue, yellow, red and orange wax poured into a baby food jar.

December: The target keeper’s favorite radio-sweep radio, a Duracell KP028 crank flashlight/radio, also referred to as a “3-in-1.”

January: A child’s pair of BluBlocker sunglasses that belonged to the target keeper’s son when he was little. The word “Taiwan” is printed in white on the inner right arm.

February: A peacock feather given as a cat toy by the pet store.

March: A red, flexible bracelet with the words, “Stronger Now.” The bracelet was bought from two girls who started ARCHFoundation.com.

April: A hammer with very faded print on both sides. One side reads “Diamond Island” and the other reads “Burro Cigars.”

The pictures of the targets (right) and what the project manager was told about them suggested that other target words could be applied to a target. Responses that were considered acceptable for this study had to be words or phrases that contained a word that could be used to identify the object. For example, in March the target object was a bracelet. The bracelet itself was a red, flexible bracelet of the type often used as a charity fundraiser. The best word for the target would be bracelet, but band or wristband would also be acceptable. Words that would be considered adjectives for the bracelet like red or flexible would be noted but not considered a positive response.

Participants

Participants for this trial were required to use only EVPmaker with the SpeakJet™ allophone file provided on Stefan Bion’s EVPmaker website. They were allowed to record their sessions using recording equipment of their choice. Files thought to contain information about the target were to be emailed to the project manager, along with text of what the participant believed was said. Inclusion of the practitioner’s voice was considered a valuable plus. Altering the audio file through filtering or noise reduction was not allowed.

Participants did not know what target objects were other than that they could fit on a standard-size wall unit shelf. They also knew the general location of the shelf that held the object. This was at the target keeper’s home in California on the middle shelf on the right-hand side of the wall unit.

After a recording session, each participant was to analyze and interpret their recordings while listening for a reply to the question: “What is the target object on the target keeper’s shelf?” If they heard something they felt might be the target, they would submit an email stating what they heard along with the audio attachment to the project manager.

EVP from EVPmaker is considered an opportunistic form,3 meaning the message is formed from available sound segments in the buffer. But output may also be used as noise for transform EVP 3 which are voices formed from background noise. Participants could submit either type of EVP for this study. If the participant’s interpretation of their submission identified that month’s target object, the project manager would send the files to the listening panel.

Listening Panel

A listening panel was organized to review any files that might contain words that indicated the target for that month. It consisted of three primary and two standby individuals who had been enlisted before the study. The listening-panel members did not know what the target objects were and did not talk to anyone about their analyses. After reviewing the audio files, listening-panel members sent their interpretation of the files to the project manager. The project manager then compared the listening panel’s interpretations with that of the participants who sent the files. If two out of three of the listening-panel members heard something phonetically similar to what the participants heard, the submission would be considered a positive response.

Results

In the twelve months of the trial, 648 audio files were submitted. In August, two submissions matched the target object, and in December, three submissions were a match. These submissions were sent to the listening panels but none met the protocol which stated that the target the participant heard must also be heard by at least two out of three of the listening-panel members to be considered a positive response.evpmaker_study

Non-Protocol Observations

Although not what this trial was designed to find, some interesting things did surface during the year of the trial:

  • There were seven possibly positive responses that were recorded in September but that appeared to refer to the October target object which was a holy book. The target keeper chose I AM THAT by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj for October. This book has a black and orange cover and the back of the book is orange. In September, the project manager received seven submissions from three participants that indicated a book. They were: “red book,” “green book,” “bible,” “Book is the key,” “scripture,” “a certified orange book(let)” and “popular book.” The listening panel reviewed all the files and out of the seven, three were identified. They were:
      1. Book is the key.
      2. Certified orange book
      3. Popular book

While these could not be counted as positive responses for the trial, the project manager felt the results should be noted for a number of reasons. First, up to this point in the study, this was the first time that a specific word, “book,” was repeated frequently and was submitted by several participants. Second, some of the references to the target, while not validated by the listening panel, did seem to point towards a holy or spiritual book.

Finally, the project managers and the target keeper both knew what the target was. But in addition to this, both had a connection to the target being prepared for October. The target keeper placed a book she felt connected to because of the book’s wisdom. The project manager, when developing the target list, felt that a holy book would be the one target that would receive the most positive results. She was anticipating the October placement of the book throughout September. While one cannot rule out coincidence for these results, could the knowledge of what the target was and the intentions of the project manager and the target keeper have played a part in the results?

  • Group intentions and how they affect the outcome of an event is being studied by scientists. The Institute of Noetic Sciences’, “The Effects of Distant Intentions on Water Crystal Formation: A Triple Blind Replication”4 results suggested that ice crystals formed from water exposed to distant intentions were more aesthetically pleasing than ice crystals formed from water from a control group. And the majority of Lynne McTaggart’s intention experiments5 have suggested that intention can affect plants and human project outcomes. EVP and participants’ intentions might also lend themselves to some interesting studies.
  • As documented in the chart, three submissions were accepted by the project manager for the December target, which was a radio favored by the target keeper for radio-sweep. These submissions were “Her radio,” “The answer … radio,” and “Transistor.” The project manager accepted “transistor” because small, handheld radios were often in the past referred to as “transistors.” Knowing what to listen for, the project manager could identify these responses but the listening panel, who did not know what to listen for, did not hear what the participants reported hearing. The question arises that, if the listening panel knew what the participants heard, could they have picked it out of the audio file?
  • How much does confirmation bias affect the analysis of skilled listeners? There were instances after the month’s target was revealed that participants reviewed audio they recorded during the month of that target and subsequently reported to the project manager that they found audio that matched the target. The effect of knowledge about the target during the recording process needs to be explored and possibly reconsidered.
  • Another common result was the recordings of what participants felt were communicating-entity comments. Most of these comments were normal EVPmaker random selection EVP. Most were quite clear and many commented on the communicating entity’s ability or lack of ability to be able to help with the trial. Also, on a monthly basis, there were submissions that were comments directed, by name, to the participant or to the project manager. Some submissions were negative in nature and a few did not make any sense. While several participants submitted these “comment EVP,” the majority were submitted by one participant.

Listening Panel Challenges

Throughout the trial, the listening panel was sent audio files to listen to and analyze. None of the listening-panel members knew what the targets were. Often, what the listening panel reported hearing was not phonetically close to what the participant heard. They also seldom agreed with one another as to what the same audio file was saying, if they heard anything at all. This may indicate the challenges one faces when trying to understand and analyze very short audio clips from EVPmaker using allophones.

The clipped, robotic sound of the short audio files, along with having no word cues, may make it difficult for listeners to find any recognizable words. It might prove useful to submit longer audio files to the listening panel so they could hear the participant’s voice asking the question, then have the communicating entity’s reply. However, this has its own sets of challenges as the communicating entity did not always come in after the question was asked. The entity responses and comments could come in anytime during the recording sessions.

Words created through EVPmaker, while having proper vowel sounds, may have dropped consonants, for example, the word “hammer” might be heard as “ammer.”6 Since EVPmaker voices seem to create modified words it might be useful to train the listening panel to be able to identify these “new words.”

Number of Participant Challenges

Several things need to be noted that may have had an effect on the results. While 648 submissions were sent to this study, the number of participants was low. There were never more than four participants per month and often there were only two or three. Also, from August 2010 until the end of the study, the bulk of the submissions were from only one individual. So while the sample size was respectable, the number of different participants was very small. The study was designed as a group project. Having a greater number of participants could likely have changed the results. The reason few people participated may have been because trying to find an unknown target in a sea of vocalization fragments is a difficult task.

Another point to note is the rigidity of the trial’s protocol itself. It is often apparent in the recording of EVP that what works for one person does not necessarily work for others. Also, successful techniques have been known to sometimes show a decline in productivity for no apparent reason.7 All these points should be addressed in the development of follow-up experiments.

Conclusion

Based on the files submitted by a small number of participants, the results indicate that gathering specific information (a target) that was unknown to the participants was not accomplished using EVPmaker with allophones and following the protocol for this study.

Although not a part of this study, it does appear that “comment EVP” that identified the target was frequently recorded. These results suggest that following this trial’s protocol, EVP could be recorded using EVPmaker with allophones but specific informational EVP was infrequent. The reason for this remains unknown.

The “holy book” results in September might offer a nudge towards what else might be needed to obtain information-gathering communication. An experiment could be designed to compare the number of targets identified between participants who know what the target is and those who do not. A similar study could be done to compare the results of participants who spend time having focused intentions towards a target and those who don’t. A participant’s knowledge of the target might also play into this idea about intention.

The development of such intention experiments would need to take more into account than the technical aspects of EVP communication. It also would have to explore if consciousness; intent and attitude play a part in EVP communications.

Finally, knowing what to listen for and how to interpret the speech coming through EVPmaker might need to be addressed. A tutorial for participants and listening-panel members on the communicating entity’s unique formation of speech in EVPmaker might change the outcome of any future EVPmaker experiments.

Acknowledgment

The author wishes to express her appreciation and thanks to Tom Butler for his guidance during the course of this trial and assistance in the preparation of this paper. Also, the author wishes to express her gratitude to the individuals who assisted in this trial including the persons who took on the positions of target keeper, listening-panel members and all those who were participants in the study.

References

  1. Bion, Stephan. EVPmaker.
  2. SpeakJet,™ speakjet.com, Magnevation LLC.
  3. Butler, Tom. “Locating EVP Formation and Detecting False Positives,” atransc.org/locating-false-positives/, 2010.
  4. Radin, Dean, Nancy Lund, Masaru Emoto, and Takashige Kizu. “The Effects of Distant Intentions on Water Crystal Formation: A Triple Blind Replication” Petaluma, Institute of Noetic Sciences, Journal of Scientific Exploration, 22, No. 4, pp. 481–493, 2008.deanradin.com/papers/emotoIIproof.pdf
  5. McTaggart, Lynne. The Intention Experiment: Using Your Thoughts to Change Your Life and the World, Free Press, 2007. ISBN-10: 0743276957, ISBN-13: 978-0743276955. theintentionexperiment.com
  6. Butler, Tom. “EVPmaker with Allophones: Where are We Now?” atransc.org/evpmaker-study-where-are-we-now/, 2011
  7. Butler, Tom and Lisa Butler. There is No Death and There Are No Dead. Reno: AA-EVP Publishing, 2004, atransc.org/books-atransc/

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EVP Online Listening Trials

ccaaevp2008-hearing_experiment_fig3

 Abstract

A common explanation for Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) is that the reported utterances are mundane sounds mistaken as voice forming words. This report describes three online listening trials that were conducted to determine whether or not website visitors can correctly identify words that are thought to be EVP by listening to unmarked sound files.

A second consideration is that it is a popular wisdom amongst EVP practitioners that one must learn to correctly understand EVP. A variety of approaches were tried to test this theory, including polling experienced listeners, using questions in an attempt to assess interest and predisposition to believe in EVP and asking participants to indicate experience in hearing examples. Analysis of the trials is included, along with an assessment of the reliability of the results.

When the total number of words correctly recognized for the three trials is compared to the possible number, the overall percent Recognized words (%Rw) is 25.2%, indicating that at least some EVP do constitute recognizable words.

Introduction

Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) is defined as voices found in recording media, for the presence of which, there is no apparent physical explanation. Lacking a physical cause for the utterances, the working hypothesis most popularly proposed to explain them is the Survival Hypothesis.1 Specifically, that a person is a nonphysical Self (sometimes referred to as the personality, point of view or consciousness) in a symbiotic relationship with a physical body, and at the moment of death of the physical body, the Self is free to “return” to its more natural nonphysical environment. The hypothesis further holds that there is a nonphysical aspect of reality in which the survived Self exists, and from which it is able to communicate “back into” the physical via the mediumship of a still physical person, either technology augmented or via the human channel.

Alternative explanations for EVP which depend on physical principles include naturally occurring sounds mistaken as voice, real but mundane voices in the environment (voice contamination), radio frequency contamination, technology artifacts and sound file processing errors (processing artifacts). Super-PSI explanations that do not depend on the Survival Hypothesis include “echoes of the past” from residual mental energy that is stored in an as yet undefined quantum field and the recording of thoughts of the living. An emerging theory is that the practitioner and/or an interested observer creates an expected reality (experimental result), which is then mistaken as a trans-etheric influence.

Analysis of these theories is beyond the scope of this paper but they are briefly addressed in the Association TransCommunication (ATransC) article, ITC White Paper.2 This paper is written with the assumption that EVP exist but how or why they exist is not addressed, nor is the question of their paranormality other than in the context of what is known about their nature.

Statement of Question 1: That EVP are ordinary sounds mistaken as voice is described as “pareidolia,” which is defined as “the erroneous or fanciful perception of a pattern or meaning in something that is actually ambiguous or random.”3 There can be little doubt that people do sometimes inappropriately assign meaning, but by definition, EVP is not pareidolia; however, for this statement to be true, then words reported in EVP must be distinguishable as words. Further, there should be some measure of agreement amongst listeners as to what is said.

Question 1: Can words in EVP be correctly identified by a website visitor without guidance.

Answer Format: A consistent measure of correctly identified words (Recognized words = Rw) greater than zero would indicate that at least some parts of the example EVP are real words.

Statement of Question 2: EVP are not formed with a biological system, but are formed in novel ways that produce sounds that represent words; they are simulated words. The words are often so arranged that they are not recognized as language without prior training. The assumption of these trials is that website visitors are “average” people ranging in experience listening to EVP from novice to expert. If the result of Question one is affirmative, then there should be a measurable difference in %Rw between novice listeners and experienced listeners.

Question 2: Is there an increase of %Rw with increased experience hearing EVP examples?

Answer Format: People who are experienced in listening to EVP should produce measurably higher %Rw.

Factors Influencing How EVP is Understood

The words of EVP should not be thought of as being formed by a biological system. Analysis has shown that they are simulations of words, and because of an often imperfect simulation, they are not understood in the same way as the same words spoken by a physical person. Because of this, some experienced practitioners have speculated that correctly hearing EVP is a learned ability.

Unusual Arrangement of Formants

ccaaevp2008-hearing_experiment_fig1It is fairly standard practice to classify EVP examples according to how easily they are correctly understood. A Class A voice can be heard and understood over a speaker by most people. A Class B voice can be heard over a speaker, but not everyone will agree as to what is said. A Class C voice is difficult to understand under any condition. An utterance may have one or two clearly understood words. Loud does not equal Class A. The majority of examples are Class C, and probably only one in several hundred are Class A.

The problem with this classification system is the assumption that all listeners have the same ability to understand the words in EVP. However, experience indicates that hearing the utterances is something of a learned ability and understanding them is not unlike learning a new language. That is, the words in EVP are formed in novel ways that often confound an untrained listener. This observation lacks the support of clinical studies, but there are a number of studies and learned opinions which may provide reference for further study.

Novel Voice Formation

Analysis of the voices by the Italian research group, Il Laboratorio4, indicates that the fundamental voice frequency is often distorted or missing in the utterances, as shown in Figure 1.

ccdaniele_gulla2007-hearing_experiment_fig2Figure 2 includes illustrations created by forensic-quality software used by Daniele Gullà at Il Laboratorio. The software creates illustrations showing probable shape of a mouth when speaking particular sounds. The software will sometimes fail to properly determine the shape of the mouth necessary to form some of the sounds in EVP.

An important characteristic of EVP is that they are energy limited; they are typically only a few words and appear as packets of audio energy with about the same average power in the waveform. This is a generalization, but examples are often encountered in which short utterances (one or two words) are relatively loud while longer ones (four or five) tend to be a little quieter or loud with a trailing-off or garbled enunciation at the end. Extraordinarily long utterances tend to be delivered as concatenated packets of words with evident pauses between packets, as if energy is being gathered between efforts. In some cases, different speakers will finish a concatenated utterance, or several speakers might speak in unison, as if sharing energy to “get through.”

ccaaevp2008-hearing_experiment_fig3Figure 3 provides an example of an EVP which is delivered in two packets with an evident pause between packets. At left is the waveform view of the same example shown at the right as a spectral view. The first packet (region 1 in the spectral view) is most easily understood, while the second (region 2) seems to be better enunciated, but is not as easily understood. The second may be a different person attempting to assist the speaker, or alternatively, the single speaker may have achieved more control over the “circuit.”

Region 3 (right end) is a physical person speaking. The EVP would be characterized overall as a Class C. but Region 1 would be considered a Class B. If you look at the spectral view of the same sound file, you will see that area 3 shows definite formant formation while area 1 does not and area 2 is partially defined. The formant levels are indicated by the white hash marks on the right side of the frame. Area 1 is thought to say, “I’m fine” while area 2 is thought to say “love you mom.” I can make out the “I’m fine” quite well, but not the area 2 and certainly not the woman’s quiet voice, even though you see the voice is well defined.

Parenthetically, another point illustrated in Figure 3 is that, when there are clearly defined formants in an EVP, it is possible to put the signal through a low pass filter and take out some of the formants. Doing so usually does not hurt physical speech, but it can change how an EVP is understood. Also, as is noted above, noise reduction tools (not filters) use a sample of the waveform to build a profile, which is then used to selectively remove those frequencies by amplitude. If the utterance is formed from the noise, then in some cases, the utterance is removed or is altered to be interpreted as having a different meaning. So yes, it is possible to cause processing artifacts with inappropriate processing of the sound file, although such processing does not produce an utterance unless it is someone trying to find voice in a near-zero-level, flat-line waveform. In that case, it is possible to make radio-frequency contamination audible.

Hearing with Templates

Alexander MacRae has proposed a possible explanation for why some people have difficulty hearing and understanding EVP.8 In part, he explains that:

  • My article on hearing with templates makes the point that what we hear is not necessarily the same as what we are listening to. And then the point is made that templates are used in all recognition processes, whether recognizing phonemes (elements of words), patterns of phonemes which are words or patterns of words which are phrases. What you actually “hear” is the template. You can also hear all the other noises that are part of what you are listening to, but what you actually “hear” is the template that best fits the sound pattern.
  • If you listen to a sequence of phonemes that you have never heard before, for instance, “Gelarumipalat,” which is not a word in the languages that you understand, which does not have Latin, Greek or Germanic roots, what you will hear is a sequence of phonemes, pure and simple. If you listen to a recognized sequence of phonemes such as “angry,” you hear a word. And if you listen to a sequence of known words in a recognized sequence such as, “I am so angry!” what you “hear” is a meaning.
  • What you listen to and what you hear can be different things. There has to be a distinction, therefore, between EVP that is so good it is close to normal speech in good listening conditions which I call A-type EVP, and EVP that is not that good which I will call that B-type EVP. They are both EVP but they have different behavioral characteristics.
  • With B-type EVP:
    • Different people may hear different things;
    • What is heard using headphones may be different from what is heard using a speaker;
    • What is heard when one is told what it is, may be different from what one heard before being told what it is; and,
    • What one hears at one time may be different from what one hears at another time.”
  • The point is that the EVP researchers are identifying important reasons why EVP are not heard as normal speech. Novel voice formation and missing timing cues that confound the mind are just two of the reasons an average person might think that an example of EVP is just noise, or at best, gibberish. If known problems of missing context, noise contamination and utterances that are spoken too softly or too fast are considered, then there begins to be a case for treating hearing and understanding EVP as a learned ability, not very different than learning a new language.

Listener Expectation

As it applies to psi phenomena, the experimenter effect refers to the influence a “believer” has on the outcome of a process. The hypothesis is that, if the experimenter expects a positive result, it is possible that he or she might psychically facilitate that result. The reverse is true of those who are not “believers.” If there is a psi aspect of EVP, then this same hypothesis should be considered.

The experimenter effect suggests that the person participating in the listening trials might be an unreliable listener because of a predisposition to believe or not believe.

  • Agnosia: Loss of the ability to interpret sensory stimuli, such as sounds or images. (American Heritage Dictionary). Agnosia was once considered a rare condition, but since the work with inattention blindness, it has become clear that it is much more common than previously thought. An audio form of agnosia is also recognized, and what might be referred to as incredulity blindness should be considered in the analysis of listener ability to hear EVP. That is:
  • Incredulity blindness: A category of inattentional agnosia or inattentional  blindness, in which an audio or visual example of a phenomenon is not experienced because it is so foreign to a person’s worldview. There are at least two forms of the experimenter effect. One is the difference in experimental results collected by “believers” and “skeptics.” The second is due to the difference in results reported between a “believer” and a “skeptics.”

Effective Listening Technique

Website visitors volunteer to participate in the listening trials, but do not necessarily agree to follow the recommended procedure for listening to an example. As suggested in the introduction to the examples “…an excellent technique for examining a possible utterance is to select the suspected wave form and listen to it many times. If words are present to be understood, the listener’s mind will sometimes, eventually recognize them.” They are also asked to use headphones, rather than listening via speakers.

This technique is used with an audio management program such as Audition, or the open source, Audacity. Most people experienced with EVP use a similar program, and as is shown in Figure 3, variations in the waveform are suggestive of utterances, so it is easy to select one pulse of the waveform and listen to it many times using the “Loop” feature. Once a word “emerges” into my awareness, it is easy to hear it later when listening to the entire file. In effect, the person learns how to understand words as formed by that communicator.

Experimental Protocol

As of July, 2007, the Association TransCommunication (formally AA-EVP) website received an average of fifteen hundred unique visitors a day, making it an ideal platform for conducting online EVP listening experiments. Also, the site ranks high in search engines, assuring that both people seriously interested in EVP and the idly curious will find the page hosting the experiment.

ccaaevp2007-listening_experimentThe basic protocol utilizes a web page inviting website visitors to listen to audio files labeled with just the word, “Example” and a number. Visitors were asked to type what they heard in an unlabeled text field. This information was sent to an email address and also to a database on the website server.

A conscious effort was made to allow very little tolerance for what was considered a correct interpretation of the examples, and other than as noted below “almost right” words were generally not accepted as correct. The number of words contained in the examples ranged from one to seven words and each word was counted as a possible hit or miss. Allowance was given for the way words are commonly heard or reported. For instance, “Shut up” was counted as one word, because that is the way it is commonly heard, “spirit” and “spirits” were equally accepted, but “I’m” was not accepted when it was supposed to be “We’re.”

The resulting database was manually tallied based on the number of words correctly reported for each example by each participant. Data is not available for how likely any one word in the English language is to be guessed in any single attempt. However, it is predictable that some words are more likely to be guessed than are others, especially if the participant has previously listening to EVP examples on the Internet. For instance, words like “the” and “is” are commonly found in phrases, as are “I,” “I’m” and “we.” Names are often in EVP examples, and some names are more common than others. For these reasons, no effort was made to evaluate the responses based on deviation from chance guessing of words. Instead, a straightforward count was made to establish average percentage of correctly reported words, compared to the total number in the example multiplied by the number of entries.

Normalizing Quality of Examples

Some examples are simply harder to understand, and so, a means of predicting how hard an example is to understand would be helpful for the analysis of the results. In an attempt to establish this measure, participants were asked questions designed to determine their experience in hearing EVP or inclination to believe in their validity as natural phenomena. The intention was to find a way to say that this participant has, say a skill level of five on a scale of one (beginner) to ten (expert), and the %Rw for the person was n%. Then to compare all entries for that example versus average skill level to establish a quality index for the example. Overall, this was not successful, although the data is provided and comments have been made for each trial.

Trial 1

Five examples thought to be Class A were used. In an effort to avoid recognition by participants, they were selected because they were not widely used. Participants were asked to select from the following options:

Please select one or more the following descriptions that best describes you:

  • I have studied EVP and believe they are caused by discarnate people.
  • I have studied EVP and believe that there is a physical explanation for them.
  • I consider myself a skeptical person when it comes to the paranormal.
  • I have been academically trained in the sciences.
  • I am academically trained but not in the sciences.

There was a problem in determining the number of correctly identified words as compared to the participant’s background because participants were able to select more than one response. While the raw data contains this information, it was generalized as:

  • I have studied EVP and believe they are caused by discarnate people.
  • I consider myself a skeptical person when it comes to the paranormal.
  • I consider myself a skeptical person when it comes to the paranormal and I am an academically trained scientist
  • I have been academically trained in the sciences.
  • I am academically trained but not in the sciences.
  • No background marked.

The responses were stored on the internet and also delivered via email to my computer. (The raw data is available for analysis on request.) In the first experiment, a response came as (actual-typical):

Example 1: shut up vicki good job vicki
Example 2: we can’t go in the
Example 3: the voice is mine
Example 4: hi ,mom
Example 5: big speech from the mommy
Studied evp and believes evp:
Studied evp and believes physical:
Skeptical: Skeptical
Scientist: Trained Scientist
Layperson:
Remote Name: nn.nnn.nn.nn
Remote User:
Date: 08 February, 2007
Time: 11:59 AM

After one hundred “qualified” responses, the experiment was stopped because of the time required for processing the results and because there was an almost exponential increase in attempts to sabotage the experiment with misleading responses. Judging by the “Remote Name” (IP address), after indicating they were skeptical, some were coming back a second time, saying they had studied EVP and believed it to be phenomenal and then typing random characters in the response field. All duplicated responses were discarded.

“Qualified” respondent actually wrote a response for at least one example, and the response was something other than random characters. Blank entries for individual examples were counted as a “miss” as long as there was some form of response for at least one example; however, entries with no attempted word identification for all five examples were discarded.

The five examples included nineteen words. Example 1 sounds as if it was “Shutup Viki” repeated twice, rather than the actual “Shutup Vicki, just shutup Vicki.” Many gave the correct first half and the assumption was made that the second half was mistaken as a repeat. (Repeating the example in the same recording is a common practice.) As previously noted, “shut up” was counted as one word because that is pretty much the way it is heard. Thus, a “shutup Viki” response was counted as four words because we feel the participant assumed a repeat. Other decisions made for judging correct word identification included:

“Were” is okay for “Where’s”
“Sticky,” “Dickey” or “Becky” was not counted for “Viki” but “kiki” was
“Than” is accepted as “thanks” but “Think” was not accepted
“Hay” was accepted for “Hi”
“Mommy” was not accepted for “money”
“Bob” was not accepted for “mom”

Trial 1 Results

There were ninety-six “qualified” responses resulting in a possible 1,824 words. There were 612 correctly recognized words (Rw) or ”’overall %Rw = 33.6%”’. Based on how participants answered the profile questions:

  • I have studied EVP and believe they are caused by discarnate people.
    %Rw = 40.9% (35.4% of participants (34 people))
  • I consider myself a skeptical person when it comes to the paranormal.
    %Rw = 28.0% (32.3% of participants (31 people))
  • I consider myself a skeptical person when it comes to the paranormal and I am an academically trained scientist.
    %Rw = 20.0% (5.2% of participants (5 people))
  • I have been academically trained in the sciences.
    %Rw = 27.4% (5.2% of participants (5 people))
  • I am academically trained but not in the sciences.
    %Rw = 28.3% (13.5% of the participants (13 people))
  • No background marked.
    %Rw = 38.2% (8.3% of the participants (8 people))

Shutup Vicki just shutup Vickirecorded by Viki Talbott (5 words).
Possible 480 words (96 x 5) with 247 words correctly identified or %w = 51.5%.

We keep looking for peace recorded by Lisa Butler (5 words).
Possible 480 words  (96 x 5) with 69 words correctly identified or ”’%Rw = 14.4%”’.

Where’s mom recorded by Martha Copeland (2 words).
Possible 192 (96 x 2) words with 85 words correctly identified or ”’%Rw = 44.3%”’.

Hi mom recorded by Teri Dabber (2 words).
Possible 192 words (96 x 2) with 84 words correctly identified or ”’%Rw = 43.8%”’.

Thanks, thanks for the money recorded by Vicki Talbott (5 words).
Possible 480 words(96 x 5) with 127 words correctly identified or ”’%Rw = 26.5%”’.


Trial 2

A second listening trial was conducted in an effort to better establish an average for %Rw and to determine whether or not it was possible to relate ability to hear to background. Five examples thought to be Class A were used, along with one example spoken by a physical person. Once again, they were selected because they were not widely used, in an effort to avoid recognition by participants.

Background information: The background information participants were asked to provide was different from Trial 1 in an effort to find a more useful way to profile the participants. They were asked:ccaaevp2007-trial2_background

Identifying the mundane utterance: Near the end of the trial, participants were told that one example was mundane and participants were ask to use a provided check-boxes to indicate which one they thought was mundane.

Testing for response fatigue: The number of correctly recognized words (Rw) for example six was unexpectedly low so examples one and six were reversed during the trial to see if the Rw world changed. Such a change in Rw would seem to indicate that participants were experiencing “fatigue” in trying to listen to so many examples.

The EVP, “It’s Jamie” had a %Rw of 56.6% when it was Example 1 and a %Rw of 62.3% when it was Example 6. The differential is 5.7% with a gain for being the last example.

The EVP, “I survived” had a %Rw of 22.5% when it was Example 1 and a %Rw of 27.4% when it was Example 6. The differential is 4.9% with a gain for being the last example

Response format: As in Trial 1, the responses were stored on the internet and also delivered via email to my computer. (The raw data is available for analysis on request.) A response came as:

Normal Speech: Yes 4
Example 1: jeremy
Example 2: im flying
Example 3: we come to get roxanne
Example 4: this feels weird
Example 5: you’re crazy
Example 6: im in your barn
Education:
Subject of education:
Background in evp: Have studied a little
Opinion about evp: May provide proof of survival after physical death
Spam control: 2
B1: Submit
Remote Name: nn.nn.nnn.nn
Remote User:
Date: 07 July, 2007
Time: 05:52 PM

The same rules were applied to grading correctly reported words in Trail 2 as was used in Trial 1. For instance:

  • Any word that began with a “J” and ended with a “m” and a “ie” ending, such as “y” or “e.”
  • Not accepted: Words like “Jane” and “Jenny.”
  • “I’m” was not accepted for “I”
  • “Survive” was accepted for “survived”

Trial 2 Results

The mundane example “Will you tell me the grump’s name?” was not counted in the tally. The maximum number of responses for the remaining five was 217, but as few as 184 were counted in one example because some participants made no entry. Overall, there was a possibility of 2,844 recognized words. 855 words were recognized for an average of 30.1% (Overall %Rw = 31.0)

It’s Jamie recorded by Ginny Sawyer (2 words).
Possible 434 words (217 x 2). 249 words were correctly identified or %Rw = 57.4%

It’s Frank recorded by Karen Mossey (2 words).
Possible 426 words (213 x 2). 207 words were correctly identified or %Rw = 48.6%

Will you tell me the grump’s name? recorded by Martha Copeland (7 words). This is a mundane voice spoken by Martha Copeland.
     Possible 1365 words (195 x 7). 449 words were correctly identified or %Rw = 32.9%

We’re still in spirit recorded by Vicki Talbott (4 words).
Possible 832 words (208 x 4). 191 words were correctly identified or %Rw = 22.9%

Tell her it’s Satan recorded by Martha Copeland (4 words).
Possible 736 words (184 x 4). 102 words were correctly identified or %Rw = 13.9%

I survived recorded by Martha Copeland (2 words).
Possible 416 words (208 x 2). 106 words were correctly identified or %Rw = 25.5%


Trial 3

Trial 3 was an attempt to determine whether or not it was reasonable to ask participants to estimate their previous experience in listening to EVP examples. Participants were also asked to identify any organization with which they were affiliated. This question was intended to permit identification of a control group, such as a teacher’s students or members of the ATransC. All examples were recorded using an audio recorder as transform EVP (transformation of available noise into words), except for one recorded using the radio-sweep method as an opportunistic EVP (just in time sounds selected to form words). See Locating EVP formation and detecting false positives. (Radio-sweep is accomplished with a modified radio popularly known as “ghost boxes” or “spirit boxes.”)

Response format: As in the other trials, the responses were stored on the internet and also delivered via email to my computer. (The raw data is available for analysis on request.) A response came as:

Example 1:  NO ONES HELD ME
Example 2:  ROB IS PEEKING CAN HE HELP THAT
Example 3:  THIS IS SOOO DIFFICULT
Example 4:  HEAVENS THE BEST
Example 5:  YOU SHOULD MOTHER _ _ _ _ A
Example 6:  HELLO
Posit science results:  7.25B
Organization:  AAEVP
Experience:  8
Spam control:  2
B1:  Submit
Remote Name:
Remote User:  xx.xxx.x.xxx
Date:  02 February, 2008
Time:  08:08 PM

IP addresses were examined and multiple entries from the same IP were deleted, except in the instances in which the reported words were identical. In identical, duplicated entries, only one was counted; the assumption being that the duplicate was accidental.

The same rules were applied to grading correctly reported words as was used in the other trials, so that:

  • Death was accepted for dead
  • Catherine was accepted for Cathy but not captain
  • McTaulk not accepted for talking
  • Shaw, Sha, Shraw, Shah and Saul were accepted for Shawn but not Sean, Sal or Saw
  • Talk was accepted for Talking
  • Help was accepted for helping
  • Death was accepted for dead
  • Merrill was accepted for Marilyn
  • Words like Kevin not accepted for Cathy
  • Help me was not accepted for Helping but was given one word for help
  • Weak was accepted for Week but not speak

Trial 3 Results

results of your test below, but this is optional.197 entries were accepted for a possible 4,334 words to be recognized. 804 words were correctly recognized for an average of 18.6% (Overall %Rw = 18.6%).

  1. Joeys helping Recorded by Margaret Downey. 2 words, had a possible 394 possible (2 X 197), 121 words were correctly identified or %Rw = 30.7%
         42 responses were “Someone help me” or close variation of this.

  1. Not this week. We can help recorded by Margaret Downey. 7 words (Radio Sweep) had a possible 1,379 possible (6 X 197), 34 words were correctly identified or %Rw = 2.5%
         “Have to speak” or “Do I have to speak,” was a common response. There were 100 “speak” responses, and if “speak” had been accepted for “week,” %Rw would be %Rw = 9.7%

  1. This is Shawn talking recorded by Margaret Downey. 4 words, had a possible 788 possible (4 X 197), 343 words were correctly identified or %Rw = 43.5%
         7 responses were “This is so difficult” and 6 were “This is from the top.” “This is” accounted for most of the hits for this example.

  1. Cathy, you’re dead recorded by Margaret Downey. 3 words, had a possible 591 possible (3 X 197), 216 words were correctly identified or %Rw = 36.6%
         60 responses begin with “Kevin.”

  1. You should never step out recorded by Lisa Butler. 5 words, had a possible 985 possible (5 X 197), 83 words were correctly identified or %Rw = 8.4%
         40 responses began with “This is” and 20 began with “we should,” “said” or “shall.”

  1. Marilyn recorded by Lisa Butler. 1 word, had a possible 197 possible (1 X 197), 7 words were correctly identified or %Rw = 3.6%
         6 responses were “Hell,” 56 were “Hello,” 20 were “Help” and 16 “Sarah.”

Experience Hearing EVP vs. %Rw

ccaaevp2008-experience_hearing_evpThis plot shows the distribution of (self-reported) experience and %Rw. Each the number in each point represents the number of entries represented. The average experience level is about 3.6 with an average %Rw = 20.3% The two numbers for experience level 10 is without and with (second number) the single result of fifteen correctly recognized words. (The total numbers reported here deviates from the overall average because some people failed to indicate estimated experience.)

The graph does not include entries that did not offer an experience level.

If understanding EVP is a learned ability, then an improvement in %Rw should be seen with more experience. But as can be seen in the table below, the %Rw is almost flat. one possible explanation for the lack of improvement may be the human nature tendency to overestimate personal ability. It is difficult to know how much experience one has, or how “good” one has become in listening to EVP when interested people are so few and far in-between.  For this question to be properly asked and answered, it appears that a standardized hearing and experience tests would need to be administered before the actual listening trials are conducted.ccaaevp2008-expereince_vs_percent_heard

Posit Science Results

ccaaevp2008-graph_posit_scienceAs a way to evaluate how well participants hear voice in noisy environments, we asked participants to take the Posit Science Speech in noise” hearing test (No longer available) You will be asked for the results of your test below, but this is optional.

Nineteen people reported a Posit Science result. -15 is the best possible result. The average was -6.8 with an average %Rw = 19.4%. Overall, participants had a %Rw = 19.4%, indicating that hearing ability alone is not a major factor in the ability to understand EVP.

Discussion

Question 1 was to test the pareidolia hypothesis, and if %Rw was greater than zero, to establish parameters for how EVP are heard. Whether or not EVP are mundane sounds mistaken as voice should be able to be determined by whether or not sound files thought to be EVP can be heard to say what EVP experiments think they say. With an average percent recognized words or %Rw = 36% for Trial 1, %Rw = 30% for Trial 2 and %Rw = 18.6% for Trial 3. Based on total number of words recognized for all three trials, the overall average of %Rw = 25.2%, it seems clear that at least the examples used in this exercise are composed of sometimes intelligible words, and therefore, are not figments of an experimenter’s imagination.

Stats

3 trials
17 examples (One mundane voice and one radio sweep, the rest are transform EVP made with a plain old recorder.)
510 participants
9,002 possible words
2,7271 words correctly recognized.
25.2% Overall %Rw

Question 2 addressed the idea that EVP are formed in novel ways that produce sounds that represent words, and that the words are often so arranged that they are not recognized as language without prior training.

  • In Trial 1, people who indicated that they have studied EVP scored a %Rw of 40.9% (34 people), as compared to 28.4% for the other participants combined (62 people). This is a difference of 12.5%
  • In Trail 2, people who have recorded EVP had a %Rw of 33.0% (14 people) while the people indicating having no experience with EVP scored 21.9% (79 people) for a difference of 11.1%.
  • In Trial 3, %Rw based tallied by self-reported experience levels was nearly flat from no experience to considerable experience.

The results of Trial 1 and 2 seem to indicate that learning does improve performance, which seems to support the hypothesis that one reason people new to EVP often report hearing EVP as just noise is that they have not learned to hear the utterances. However, participants were asked in Trial 3 to estimate their experience in hearing EVP, and for the most part, reported experience versus %Rw did not support the self-hypothesis that learning is required.

Cooperation of the Participants

During the first trial, the editors of Wikipedia active in the EVP article at the time were told that there was a trial under way. Directly after that, responses began to be received that were first marked as being from a skeptical person and then the same IP came back one or more times marked as being from a “believer.” The responses also changed from an apparent honest effort to hear the words to mere random typing or obviously wrong responses. This escalated so that it was necessary to discontinue the trial when the majority of responses were of this nature. Wikipedia is controlled by editors who are ideologically in line with and strong defenders of mainstream science.

Single responses cannot be excluded just because it seems that there was no honest effort to hear the words; however, when there is more than one entry for a single IP, all entries associated with that IP were discounted, even when their %Rw was high. A negative of this policy is that some IP addresses are associated with publicly accessed computers, such as in libraries and schools.

The one exception to discounting responses with duplicated IPs is when the response itself is both consecutive and identical, in which case it was assumed that a mechanical error occurred and the first response was retained while the second was discounted.

A second form of vandalism comes in the form of unreasonable interpretations of an example. In the waveform shown here, changes in amplitude corresponds with the utterance–first part anomalous and the last part mundane. An interpretation of what is said should have some correspondence with the number of amplitude pulses, especially as seen in the spectral view at the right. In other words, if the listener makes an effort to hear what is said, what is typed in the response field should at least approximate the number of sound pulses, even if the typed words are not correct. There were many responses containing far too many syllables to be seriously related to the example. Yet, it is necessary to count such responses because there is no overriding reason to assume vandalism. This does, however, reduce the usefulness of the overall trial.

Wrong Words Reported

An intriguing result of these trials is that the wrong word is sometimes more often reported than the right word. This was tracked in the third trial, and for instance, the last example is Marilyn, but it was identified as “hello” in 56 of the 197 responses. in Cathy, your dead, ‘Cathy” was understood as “Kevin” 60 times. If “Kevin” had been the correct response, the %Rw would have been better than 45% as opposed to the reported 36%.

In some cases, expectations of the listener might make a response more likely. For instance, in the Marilyn, “Sarah” was reported 16 times. Sarah Estep is the founder of the AA-EVP and has recently made her transition. “Help” was reported 20 times, and is another often reported EVP.

A phrase beginning with a “Ca” sound and one beginning with a “Ke” sound is close enough that people might hear one as the other. Participants are asked to use a headset and listen to the example several times, but in fact, one listening via computer speakers is probably best that can be expected. Audio performance varies amongst computers, as does environments, and it should be expected that listening errors will have a negative influence on %Rw.

Improving the Protocol

Normalizing the example: The best practice for grading how easily an EVP example will be understood is the Class A (easily heard), B (poorly heard, but hearable) and C (usually only heard by the practitioner) classification system. This is generally established by the practitioner and is only rarely determined by a listening panel. If the hypothesis that learning is required to understand EVP is correct, then the practitioner is not reliable as a standard for classification, nor is a listening panel.

The clarity of EVP examples varies considerably, and the ones used in these three trials are no exception. They were selected because they are considered Class A, but I have nearly twenty years of experience hearing EVP, and if there is a learning curve, I am at it top and clearly am not a reliable standard. On the other hand, I have also played examples for many people, and have a sense of what the average person can understand.

Another factor in determining the quality of an example is that, if listeners are routinely told what the example is thought to say, they will be more likely to hear the example as a Class A. This is true even when the example might actually be a poor Class B. This is related to the listener’s expectation. For instance, if the example is recorded in a cemetery, the listener is more apt to assume an utterance is dreadful if the person assumes “dead” people are stuck there.

Normalizing listener experience: How well qualified the listener is to correctly hear an utterance is a second issue for hearing trials. As is seen here, self-estimation of ability may not be reliable. Online trials depend on keeping the interest of the participant, and based on the results, the best circumstance might be academic. An instructor can request that students take the necessary screening tests, and then using an affiliation question in the online trials form to identify the control group. Ideally, participants would be given a hearing test using the computer with speakers or headphone that would be used for the trial. In addition, a set of questions could be developed to determine the participant’s experience hearing EVP based on a psychology-style aptitude test.

An Ideal Protocol

  • EVP examples would be taken from a pool of previously screened examples. This screening would be accomplished by using this same protocol to establish a control listening panel, and based on the control group’s performance with examples, a set of examples that have been given a grade. Thus an example would have a factor based on control group score.
  • Website visitors participating in a trial would include a listening test and a survey designed to provide a factor representing experience. Thus the participant would have a hearing score and a score for experience.
  • Participants would then listen to a set of unmarked examples and type what they hear in an unmarked text field.
  • Listening results would be graded based on hearing ability, experience and the quality factor of examples.

Conclusions

With the degree of normalization described above, it should be possible to use the online listening trial protocol to explore subjects such as how experience and/or personality traits influence ability to understand EVP. There is evidence of a cultural influence on how trans-etheric influences are experienced, and the online listening protocol may provide an important means of controlling the examination of these ideas.

EVP is just an objective form of trans-etheric influence, but it is also easily induced. Any time the conceptual world of the etheric is examined by people and their attendant observer influence, variables become involved that cannot be easily controlled. That is one of the reasons deviations from chance has become the primary approach for psi functioning studies. With the on-demand objective results of EVP research, such variables can potentially be controlled, and meaningful results can be expected.

References

  1. Butler, Tom, Survival Hypothesis Explained, ATransC, ethericstudies.org/trans-survival-hypothesis/
  2. Butler, Tom, EITC White paper, atransc.org/itc-white-paper/
  3. Word Spy: pareidolia.
  4. Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Biopsychocybernetics Research, Bologna, Italy (Il Laboratorio)
  5. Gullà, Daniele, Computer–Based Analysis of Supposed Paranormal Voice: The Question of Anomalies Detected and Speaker Identification, Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Biopsychocybernetics Research, Bologna, Italy, ATransC web site atransc.org/gulla-voice-analysis/
  6. Butler. Tom, Characteristic Test for EVP, Best Practices Development.
  7. “Formants,” Handbook For Acoustic Ecology, Cambridge Street Publishing, 1999.
  8. MacRae, Alexander, “Hearing with Templates,” Winter 2007 AA-EVP NewsJournal, atransc.org/theory/macrae-hearing_with_templates.htm
  9. Caroline Watt, Peter Ramakers, Journal of Parapsychology, The, Spring, 2003.
  10. Daniel J. Simons, Scholarpedia, 2007.
  11. Audition, Adobe Systems, Inc.
  12. Audacity, audacity.sourceforge.net/download/windows.

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The Work at Il Laboratorio

ccdaniele_gulla2007-hearing_experiment_fig2

As presented by Paolo Presi at the 2006 AA-EVP conference

Introducing Il Laboratorio

It is a great pleasure and honor for me to attend this very important International Conference and I wish to thank Lisa and Tom Butler for their kind invitation to participate. I will begin by explaining the targets, methods and research activities carried out at Il Laboratorio – Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Biopsychocybernetic Research, the purpose of which is to study phenomena that, for a long time, we all wrongly judged as “paranormal.” [Il laboratorio is no longer operational.]

To begin, I would like to draw your attention to the name of our organization so that you understand the leading criteria of our scientific activities. The first word, “Il Laboratorio” (The Laboratory), is self-explanatory and refers to a place provided with equipment for scientific research. The word, “Interdisciplinary,” indicates that our research is performed using methods belonging to different sciences and/or disciplines linked together in a methodological and conceptual way. To follow an interdisciplinary approach in the investigations has today become a necessity of contemporary scientific thought, particularly when the research is designed to understand certain phenomena emerging from the human mind.

The Il Laboratorio team intends also to investigate unusual occurrences; usually referred to as events that go beyond psi-cognitive and psychokinetic phenomena, in areas that traditional parapsychology did not intend to investigate. Our area of interest also includes study of so-called “borderline phenomena,” such as Out-of-Body-Experiences (OBE) and Near Death Experiences (NDE), as well as phenomena that depend upon altered or modified states of consciousness like sensitiveness and mediumship.

Our research is also concerned with investigation of the subjects involved in psychic phenomena from the neuro-psycho-physiological point of view, in order to bring to light possible interconnections between the subject and the final link in the phenomenological chain, like physical psychic effects. This includes the so-called bioresonance phenomena that are concerned with the interactive interface that man has with his immediate and more remote physical surroundings, as well as with his social psychological background.

The word Research refers to the studies designed and systematically implemented in order to increase our understanding and knowledge of unusual occurrences through the use of scientific methodology wherever applicable and feasible.

The final word in the name of our organization, Bio-psycho-cybernetic, indicates that our investigations are not limited to explaining psi phenomena by criteria and laws based only on physical paradigms, but by considering each occurrence belonging to a complex system whose properties can be understood by studying the whole system from different perspectives.

I wish to stress that the philosophy guiding the researchers of Il Laboratorio deals with events as they occur, whether as they appear in the physical world, or as evidence of inner or psychic experience. This neologism was suggested by the founders of Il Laboratorio and adopted with the goal of supporting a gradual revision of the terminology of parapsychological research in order to distance our discipline from the ghetto of the pseudo-sciences. Our activities are therefore both practical (in the field) and theoretical. They deal with the reliability of documented reports, the verification of reported occurrences, and the scientific and technological circumstances (including controls) within which findings are gathered.

Within the context of present scientific knowledge, utilizing where possible and feasible the most updated technologies, our researchers conduct their research.

Before introducing to you the Department directly involved in Instrumental Transcommunication, I would like to give you some information about the other Departments that work together collaboratively.

The Research and Theoretics Departments report directly to the General Director while the Voice, Image and Psychophysiological Departments report to the Research Department.

Dr. Enrico Marabini heads Il Laboratorio as General Director. He also manages ad interim the Theoretics Department. This branch of Il Laboratorio handles the epistemological issues that arise from our research activities. This is a very important Department since its task is to confirm the correctness of methodology, and the procedures and interpretations attributed to results arising from the experimental activities of the research teams.

The Research Department, managed by Dr. Michele Dinicastro, coordinates all the research activities performed by the Departments.

Dr. Giorgio Gagliardi manages the Psychophysiological Department. He is entrusted with the investigations into the personality and physiology of the subjects involved in paranormal phenomena. This is a very complex topic and, at the same time, one that is of great importance in the context of both psychological and physiological interactions between the human personality and the phenomena under investigation.

The topic of Instrumental TransCommunication (ITC) is dealt with by the Voice Department, managed by myself, and the Image Department managed by engineer Daniele Gullà.

The Voice and Image Departments conduct their research activities thanks to the competence and collaboration of colleague Daniele Gullà, a skilled electronics engineer, who is an expert in electro-acoustical analysis of voices, as well as image recognition and processing. His extensive experience in these fields has allowed him to accomplish qualified legal advices for Italian Courts of Justice.

I am pleased to provide detailed information about our research including some practical and significant examples.

There are many ways to study the paranormal or unusual events relating to the survival of consciousness after death. Many operators who try to “receive” messages from the beyond are motivated mainly by emotional issues, such as the loss of a loved one, where the contents are surely more important than anything else. Other researchers, like myself, are conscious of the great importance of the topic and are studying the process by investigating the many different expressions of the phenomena. By doing so, those researchers attempt to characterize all the elements that contribute to increasing the meaning and validity of the results of experimentation. That is why I consider it mandatory that the phenomena witnessed be thoroughly investigated and that the investigations be carried out using methods and technical tools that are recognized as being suitable for scientific research.

It should be the task of the serious researcher to uncover all events that can be considered anomalous because they do not fit the established laws of physics. Only in this way will we awaken the scientific establishment to the importance of this kind of research, and only at that time will a revision of the paradigms, now considered unchangeable by science, take place.

In line with Thomas Kuhn’s thought1, we recognize that this may be a very slow process, but the only one capable of leading human society to the conscious maturity that will result from scientific understanding of new discoveries. To that purpose, together with my collaborators at Il Laboratorio, we dedicate our efforts in this way. We use the most up-to-date professional software and hardware to document all the peculiarities and anomalies that are found in the electroacoustical structure of authentic paranormal voices obtained under controlled conditions.

In this presentation I am pleased to share with you some examples of the preliminary findings in this matter.

Investigating Paranormal Voices Using Computer-Based Analysis

On 17 September 1952, Italian Fathers Agostino Gemelli and Pellegrino Ernetti reported a case of alleged anomalous communication received through a magnetic wire-recorder. The reported phenomenon attracted little attention until 1959 when Friedrich Jürgenson, a Sweden artist and documentary filmmaker, obtained the same kind of phenomenon. Intrigued by these claims, Latvian psychologist Konstantin Raudive commenced his own experimentation that confirmed Jürgenson’s results (1971).

Much research has been conducted in several different countries in order to help us understand the mechanisms governing the phenomenon. In Italy, we have an ongoing research program, named Sfinge Project, which is supported by a grant generously donated by the Swedish Helene Reeder Memorial Fund. Before dealing with the preliminary results obtained in the Sfinge Project, it is useful to provide some information about the signal acquisition and processing quality required to perform reliable analyses. See: Instrumental Analysis of EVP Collected via a Sound-Psi Interaction

To obtain voices of sufficient quality to permit analysis, the original recording signal must provide for a reasonably good Signal/Noise ratio (S/N). If the voice signal is at the same level as the background noise or lower, the chance of successful analysis will be extremely low. To obtain a good sound quality the original recording signal needs a relatively high signal/noise ratio, like that obtained through a digital recording rather than an analog recording through an audio cassette recorder.

Digital recording is obtained by recording directly onto a computer or digital audio recorder (solid state or digital tape recorder). The key difference between digital and analog systems consists in their acoustic dynamic ranges: those from digital recording systems are greater than 90 dB while those from audio cassette recorder (analog) are usually not more than 60 dB. That is why it is important to record Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) with a recording system that ensures that the acoustic loss of information is reduced to a minimum.

Unfortunately, we often have to work with very weak or noisy signals due to imperfect recordings. Too often poor quality microphones or audio cassette tape recorders are used and this results in a high distortion effect and makes analysis and decoding unreliable. It is worth repeating that the accuracy of analyses of the signal depends on the acoustic quality of the recording acquired.

In the Sfinge project, we used a personal computer, acting as a recorder of input signals coming from a high quality, condenser-type microphone and processed by a professional microphone preamplifier, with digital output, and a multiband signal processor. This project provides practical experimentation, under controlled conditions, involving four of the most skilled ITC operators in Italy, each working in independent experimental sessions.

We started the project with the first operator by experimenting with the typical microphone recording method, using a cassette tape recorder with built-in microphone.

The first experiment was conducted with a female operator, Mrs. Lida Russo from Livorno, Italy. She used her audiocassette recorder, which was really quite modest. Unfortunately, in the experimental sessions performed, she recorded only some voices of poor acoustic quality.

Exactly the opposite happened to our research team using a professional recording system, operated by Daniele Gullà, which served a cross-referential function. The introduction of professional recording tools to record the whole experiment brought us some unexpected and astonishing results. See: Computer–Based Analysis of Supposed Paranormal Voice

Another important check was carried out using a professional phonometer in order to survey the existing background noise during the experiment. Generally speaking, the main objection currently raised by the critics concerns the ambiguous sonority that mainly characterizes EVP material. In their opinion an ambiguous acoustic event, properly fragmented and cadenced, might be decoded as a linguistic message. They argue that when a high fidelity recording system is used, the alleged paranormal voices reveal themselves to be a simple noise, not voices. Our experimentation demonstrated exactly the opposite. The digital recording revealed the presence of voices not audible on the audio cassette recorded by the operator.

In my opinion, the primary cause can be found somewhere between the recording devices used, the existing psychological and/or psychical condition of the ITC operator, and the whole “Minds System”2 constituted by the people attending the experiment. In fact, the operator under observation was expecting good voices to be recorded by the experimenters from Il Laboratorio. Consequently, Mrs. Russo’s main expectation was the successful recording of voices on the sophisticated recording devices. These were arranged in the room by the researchers. Several times, Mrs. Russo asked Daniele Gullà if voices had been recorded on his devices; she was not worried at all whether voices could be recorded on her own tape recorder.

The great influence exerted on the device by Mrs. Russo (the ITC operator) was experienced again when our psychologist, Dr. Giorgio Gagliardi, and his assistant were ready to perform a psychophysiological examination of her. This examination requires the use of a polygraph connected to a personal computer, which records the neurovegetative and electrodermic changes occurring during the psychological test.

Before leaving his home Dr. Gagliardi checked that both devices were functioning correctly. No problems were found, everything was working properly. Once the electrodes were positioned on Mrs. Russo’s head and everything was ready for the test, the personal computer gave an error message. Several times the computer was checked and restarted but the error didn’t disappear. The most significant occurrence happened when Dr. Gagliardi returned to his home: inexplicably both the devices were found to be operating correctly, without any error!

Lastly, all of the approximately fifty photos taken with a digital camera, many of which show Mrs. Russo ready for the experiment with the electrodes positioned on her head, were inexplicably and definitively lost. It is my opinion that the stressful psychological condition of Mrs. Russo’s mind, probably due to her anxiety about the results of test, set off such occurrences.

In the following, the results of the analyses done on two very short tonal sentences are reported. The tonal sentences are saying: “ami Enzo?” (“do you love Enzo?”) and “oh mamma” (“oh mom”). It must be said that Enzo, the unknown speaker, is the name of the deceased son of Mrs. Russo.

The whole sentence \AMI\ENZO\ is uttered with a light temporal dilatation, with an evident pause between the two words. The voice is a loud, clearly audible voice, well cadenced, which was not heard by either the experimenters or the operator during the experiment. In the first sentence (duration 2.278 sec.) only the first part \AMI\E was analyzed because the word \ENZO\ was partially overlapped by the voices of people attending the experiment.

The analyses revealed several anomalies as follows:

  • Modulations of signals changing mainly in amplitude instead of in frequency.
  • Formants visibility limited to F1 and F2 only.
  • Vibrations of vocal cords detectable in short intervals only.
  • Abnormal fluctuations of voice frequency ranges.
  • Poor melodic and harmonic contents.
  • Vowels expanded in time.
  • Abnormal excitation of cochlear liquid (simulated via software).
  • The voice reverberation differs from the one existing in the room.
  • Aleatory values of vowels in I.P.A. table.
  • High content of noise and significant aperiodicity of signals.
  • Impossibility for the software to structure a model of Vocal Tract due to the low influence of overglottal organs (resonators)
  • Jitter values indicate the presence of possible dysphonias.
il_laboratorio_voice_graph
Spectrograms used for the analysis of the EVP examples
il_laboratorio_spectrograph
Example of vocal tracts anomalous

The electroacoustic measures reveal the presence of significant structural anomalies deviating from normal human speech parameters even if the sentence is uttered with a loud, clearly audible voice, apparently quite similar to the human voice. The second sentence \OH\MAMMA\ (duration 1.897 sec.) is uttered twice; the first utterance is made with a loud, clearly audible voice, while the second utterance is an acoustically very low, whispered voice, saying the same words.

A sound, similar to the one produced by pushing a call-bell (such as used on a reception desk of a hotel to call the personnel), precedes the first utterance. Nobody heard such a ring during the experiment. In the first and in the last vowel \A\ the software functions (L.P.C. and Autocorrelation) clearly reveal the activation of overglottal resonators but the vibrations of vocal cords are not distinctly noticeable.

The analyses performed on the second sentence exhibit the same anomalies as in the first sentence and in addition:

  • Abnormal trend of the fundamental frequency F0.
  • Impossibility for the software to represent the sound using the cochlear model (software simulation).
  • The voice seems to be partially structured both by voiced sounds and whispered sounds with only some structural components pertaining to human speech.
  • Formants are fragmented and apparently generated by a thickening of existing background noise.

The electroacoustic measures carried out on the second sentence confirm the presence of important anomalies in the voice structure. The presence of the fundamental frequency without the consequent vibration of vocal cords is inexplicable. It must be said that, in normal human speech, only the vibration of vocal cords generates the fundamental frequency.

The energy and the high a-periodicity of signals pertinent to vowels are absolutely unusual and detectable only in the zones affected by consonants. This unusual occurrence found in the paranormal voices is very important since it supports my personal hypothesis about the paranormal process of the generation of formants: it seems to come from an inexplicable process of local thickening of the existing background noise.

In particular, it was noted that such formants, mainly modulated in amplitude, are structured in the typical frequency bands pertaining to the vowel sounds. As a consequence – and this is a very important point – such formants, so structured, maintain unaltered the semantic content of the words in the listening phase. In addition, it was found that if some slight deviation or partial lack of signal occurs, causing the software to register an incorrect vowel sound classification, the information already existing in the listener’s brain (at the conscious or subconscious level) is able, during the listening phase, to make a suitable integration of missing parts in the input signals.

In order to exclude eventual deviations interpreted as anomalies due to the software used (Speech Filing System v. 4.6)®, a second professional software (Praat v. 4.3.37)® was used in accordance with a specific requirement in our Operating Procedure. The analyses performed using the second software confirmed the anomalies detected by the first software.

Another very interesting case of paranormal telephone voice that we have analyzed is the case involving Edna. In this regard, Il Laboratorio was asked to analyze a telephone voice sample, sent via email by Sonia Rinaldi, a well-known Brazilian operator who is also a presenter in this Conference. The sample is from an experiment carried out by recording a normal phone call, initiated by Cleusa, on Rinaldi’s personal computer. Cleusa was the adoptive mother of Edna, a young girl who died at the age of sixteen when run over by a car. The phone call lasted fifteen minutes during which Edna spoke seventy-eight times.

The experiment was made in a very original manner. During the conversation between the two ladies, three CDs, containing the utterances of phonemes pertaining to foreign languages (other than Portuguese), were simultaneously played. Using such a tone mixture as background sound-source meant that it was impossible to structure meaningful sentences in the Portuguese language that would be coherent with the topic of dialogue.

The sentence submitted for analysis was found to be half modulated over the sound-source and the other half perfectly clear of such sounds. The latter was recorded when the CD player was switched off. From the voice data provided, the second half of the sentence was analyzed, where the voice resulted without any background sound-source.

I must point out that the sample analyzed was sent to Il Laboratorio via e-mail and therefore subject to all the limitations of that means of communication. The analyses performed on Edna’s voice revealed the presence of the following structural anomalies:

  • Severe fragmentation of fundamental frequency F0 and its too much low fluctuation in frequency (found to be less than 15 Hz, while in normal human speech it ranges from 30 to 60 Hz).
  • Severe fragmentation of vocal cord vibrations, detectable in the positions of existing fragments of fundamental frequency.
  • Unusual increase in sound intensity in the high frequency bands ranging between 2000 and 3000 Hz. In normal speech, when the frequency range increases, the intensity of sound usually decreases. In our case exactly the opposite was found. It seemed to be a voice uttered affecting the soft palate area (glottal voice), or produced by a vocal apparatus of reduced dimensions.
  • Abnormal formant trends with a partial fusion of second formant F2 and third formant F3.
  • Abnormal formant bandwidths.
  • Abnormal increase of sound intensities in the third formant F3 and in the fourth formant F4.
  • The high values of Jitter and Shimmer indicate the presence of dysphonias due to possible phonatory pathologies. In particular the impulsive changes in voice frequency (Jitter) represent an indirect evidence of instability of the vocal system.
  • Abnormal speech fluency characterized by lack of voice breaks. In normal speech, the voice breaks are caused by the occlusions produced by certain consonants, or due to the aspiration/expiration of air to/from the lungs. In human speech, several voice breaks can occur depending on the length of the words.
  • Abnormal fluctuations of voice frequency ranges.
  • Poor melodic and harmonic contents.

Following the detection of such anomalies and in order to investigate further, Edna’s alleged paranormal voice was compared to her lifetime voice. The comparative analyses were carried out using a software named “FBI Image Searching”®, currently employed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States. This software has real-time image recognition capability. It can be used for any kind of images and produces extremely accurate results. This software is able to process millions of images. The computer processing involves artificial intelligence to learn directly the content of an image, or several images, and to retrieve all similar images based upon their content.

The “FBI Image Searching” software provides a tool for image matching through “One-to-One” and “One-to-Many” functions. In the investigation of the Edna communication, both functions were used for comparing the acoustic maps (images) of her voice. The “One-to-One” function provides the identification by matching a single image against another single image. The “One-to-Many” function provides the identification by matching of a single image against a database of images with no declared identity required. The single image under investigation is generally the newly obtained sample and the database contains all previously filed images.

Scores are generated for each comparison, and an algorithm is used to determine the matching record. Generally, the highest score exceeding the threshold results in identification. In our case the images processed were the acoustic maps relevant to Edna’s voice while alive and her alleged paranormal voice. By introducing an accuracy acceptance limit greater than 95%, the “One-to-One” comparative analysis recognized the acoustic map of Edna’s voice while alive in the acoustic map of her alleged paranormal voice.

In order to add weight to our research, the voice of the living Edna was added to the 908 voices existing in the database, where 229 voices belong to Portuguese and Brazilian speakers (Edna was Brazilian). With the same acceptance limit, the “One-to-Many” function provided a comparison between Edna’s alleged paranormal voice (its acoustic map) and the 909 acoustic maps of other voices contained in the database. The matching process took 7 hours to do 48,600 calculations, with the processor (CPU) working at 100% of capacity (Processor type AMD K7 operating at 3 GHz with RAM of 1 GHz). When the computer processing was completed, the “One-to-Many” function had identified the acoustic map of Edna’s alleged paranormal voice in the acoustic map of Edna’s voice while she was alive.

This was the only acoustic map that exceeded 99% similarity through the computer matching process against 909 acoustic maps.

Investigating Paranormal Images by Using Biometric Techniques

Biometrics is a scientific technique for measuring, in a direct or indirect way, the morphologic and anthropometric features of a person for identification purposes. Identification is understood to be the procedure whereby it is possible to recognize a person based on a sufficient number of references, such as the shape and sizes of the face features as they compare to the underlying cranial structure.

In legal matters, biometrical tests are often used to recognize an individual who has committed a crime or an absconder who is trying to conceal his or her identity. Biometrical testing is also used in other cases where a need exists to identify an individual. Consequently, the most frequent users of such methods are police departments, forensic medicine departments, and particularly intelligence services.

It is important to note that identification systems are not yet perfected. Depending upon the quality of the images used as a reference, the existing error rate can still be very high. For this reason, many of the technologies used today for forensic tests are not always able to offer fully reliable results concerning the identification of an individual; basically, they only establish compatibility indexes through similarity of statistical ratings.

In the past decade, major progress has occurred in face recognition systems. Many software packages have been designed with the ability to achieve recognition rates of more than ninety percent. The introduction of more sophisticated and accurate information technologies and the increased capability of computers have allowed the design of new recognition systems that utilize sophisticated and innovative algorithms in their processing systems, like Neural Networks, Wavelets and Computer Graphics.

One of the well-known methods used at Il Laboratorio is the so-called “Anthropometric Face Recognition.” The features taken into account relate basically to the distances between certain points of reference, or landmarks, also known as “Repère points”, situated in the cranio-facial structure. They relate also to the morphological somatic features of the shape of the face or parts of it. When manual or semiautomatic procedures are used, at least a dozen points are measured. Certain techniques require up to eighty points with calculations in three-dimensions (3D).

The accuracy of the measurements of dimensions on the image considered as reference and the corresponding dimensions on the image under analysis is extremely important. The smaller the variances the more evidential and convincing the resulting analysis will be.

Comparisons made at different times on the same face are unlikely to yield the same result with one hundred percent accuracy. This results from the inevitability of error in measurement, even if extremely slight. Though the measurements will always be similar, it is impossible to obtain an absolute measurement. This error relates mainly to the quality of the images that are compared.

In the investigation of paranormal images, due to their poor quality, it is essential that the software used should reduce the possibility of errors during the measurements. Today many improvements have been made in the field of face recognition so that the margin of error is significantly reduced. For the case reported in the following example, the most recent generation of face recognition software was used.

“FaceIt” is a software package used by forensic detectives in many countries as well as in many airports for the purpose of anti-terrorism prevention. It employs a complex method involving mathematic calculations on multidimensional matrixes, as well as making use of algorithms, such as Neural Networks, that operate in a similar manner to the natural neural network in the human brain.

A conventional software program may supply a completely wrong response even if only a single “bit” in the input information is wrong. On the other hand, an application based on neural networks attempts to correct the error by using previously stored information. This is very helpful with paranormal face recognition, since there always is a variable amount of background noise that makes the image unidentifiable. If the noise doesn’t completely cover the features of the image, a neural network is usually capable of producing a response by using the part of the information that is not polluted or distorted. This allows recognition of noisy or partially concealed face images. The reduction of the error rate to 0.03% increases significantly the reliability of the identification performed.

It is interesting to note that this software, while exploring a human face, picks up and learns a lot of information necessary for its identification. That computerized process is performed in the same manner that a human being scans a face for recognition.

Without going into detail, the system works in the following way:

  1. The extraction algorithm for the biometric data generates an image representing a bas-relief reconstruction of the face’s main features.
  2. The Eigenfaces algorithm, certified by MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), processes the input data and the existing data in the database by generating an image constituted by a dispersion of points that allows a quick search for similar faces. The resulting images are displayed; they appear as though superimposed from various images contained in the database.
  3. The comparative analysis between a new sample image and the images contained in the database is carried out by generating an image of contours and automatically performing measurements between approximately 80 contour nodal points. These measurements are then compared to the corresponding measurements taken on the images contained in the database (a total current number of 7,230 faces).
  4. The software is also provided with an option called Reconstruct Face, which makes it possible to reconstruct original images in 3D starting from the processed data, by means of the Eigenfaces algorithm.
  5. The cross-correlation function aims at identifying the images contained in the database that are closest to the sample image. The faces displaying the highest degree of similarity, ranging from 1 to 80, are graphically presented.

The system has both a great strength and a great weakness. The strength is that recognition accuracy reaches 98%, with an ability to even recognize people in disguise (wearing a false beard, moustache, dark glasses, hats or hoods). The weakness is that, since the system is based on probabilities, it always identifies a match, by displaying the three most likely faces contained in the database. However, based on research performed in the United States on a database containing five thousand faces, the false recognition error proved to be lower than 5%, and was therefore considered as acceptable.

The Castagnini Case

In 1992, Massimo Castagnini died in a car accident. One year later, on the anniversary of his death, his friends, who used to play with him in a band, decided to honor his memory by organizing a concert party. On that occasion Massimo’s friends dedicated to him a song titled “Beyond the limit” and one of them took about seventy pictures, but several times the camera jammed inexplicably.

When the rolls were processed, among all the pictures there was one that contained inexplicable gaudy colors and luminous streaks that drew his mother’s attention. In the picture she and a few friends were greatly surprised to find, in the middle, a blurred and semitransparent image bearing human features in which was immediately recognized Massimo’s likeness holding in his hand something that seemed to be a microphone.

il_laboratorio_massmo_image
Photograph in which the face center-top is an “extra.”

In 1999 Daniele Gullà carried out spectro-chromatographic and densitometric measurements on the picture, which ruled out any accidental or intentional counterfeiting of any nature. Then an anthropometric investigation was also performed by analyzing the face displayed in that picture and comparing it to Massimo’s image while alive. The measurements taken, based on the distance rates for the two faces compared on twelve anthropometric points, together with circumstantial evidence suggested that the paranormal face might belong to Massimo.

Two years later Daniele Gullà had acquired much more advanced technology, which is also used by the police in the United States, and obtained confirmation that the two images belong to the same person. For the Castagnini case, Daniele Gullà employed the Face Recognition and FaceIt software packages.

The alleged paranormal image was compared with an image dataset made up by 2,048 faces, including the one of Massimo Castagnini, which had been added to the database.

The choice made by the Eigenfaces function identified the file named “casta01A”, which is a picture of the living Massimo’s face, as the most similar to the paranormal image, with a degree of similarity of about 97.5 %. The result is remarkable in that the alleged anomalous image is lower in quality than an ordinary image; therefore, the number of required biometrical features is lower than the number one would hope for.

il_laboratorio_half_face
Comparison between the “extra” in the preceding. photograph and the person it is thought to be.

In summer 2004, after the acquisition of new software, it was possible for Daniele Gullà to repeat the identification test on Massimo’s paranormal face using the FBI Image Searching® software. That software, already used in Edna’s case, has a capability of reaching an accuracy rate above 99% based upon a database of 40,000 images. The recognition of Massimo Castagnini’s face was successfully accomplished with an identification rate of 99% after more than 1,900,000 cross-tests performed using the One-to-Many function.

Today, thanks to new software, we are able to reconstruct faces starting from the elements contained in the paranormal images and/or make comparisons by laying a reconstructed face on its alleged paranormal image.

How to conclude and explain the results?

The results of the analyses performed to date must be considered as an explorative sample of almost recurrent anomalies detectable in the electroacoustical structure of paranormal voices and of the possibilities of investigating paranormal images. Since the anomalies discovered seem to be of a similar type, it could be stated in a provisional way, that the paranormal voices are characterized by some substantial differences when compared to human voices. From my point of view such differences mainly refer to the process by which they are structured.

The subjective auditory and instrumental tests prove that the acoustic quality of the paranormal voices is the main variable in this phenomenon. In more than three decades covered by my personal survey, the variability was mainly found in the microphone voices where the range of audibility goes from whispered voices to extremely comprehensible voiced sounds. In the telephone voices, like Edna’s voice, the quality changes as well.

In many cases, those voices seem to have originated in the same manner as microphone voices, that is, by modulating the background noise or other sound material available at the moment. In other cases, such as those reported by D. Scott Rogo, the quality of the telephone voices seems to be almost the same as a normal telephone voice. This variability in the microphone and telephone voices was found in the Direct Radio Voices as well. For example, the Direct Radio Voices obtained by Friedrich Jürgenson and many other operators differ substantially, from the acoustical point of view, from those received by Marcello Bacci. Why?

In addition, sometimes the EVP operator’s own voice was recorded on the tape. Both Carlo Trajna, an engineer and well-known Italian researcher, and myself experienced this occurrence. In other instances, direct voices (not radio voices) were heard over the external speaker of the tape recorder while listening to a tape that contained pre-recorded normal acoustic material. A subsequent check revealed that such voices were not recorded on the tape.

In my opinion, the process by which paranormal voices are received may depend upon the degree of sensitiveness or mediumship existing in the operator. Basically, the presence in the operator of a deeply internalized conceptual model, together with expectations consistent with such a model, may be able to activate or create a hidden psychic channel for receiving voices in such a way. This occurrence happens, for example, when an EVP operator believes that the voices may be received through a radio in the same way as normal radio transmissions.

But how can the above mentioned psychic sensitivity or mediumship be rationally conceptualized? To begin, I believe that it is an attribute that everybody possesses to greater or lesser extent; also, it seems that the attribute of mediumship can be developed when a motivated operator devotes himself to experimenting on a regular basis. Secondly, this attribute seems to be supported by the deep inner conviction about the possibility of real communication with other planes of consciousness.

As early as 1985, I defined this particular psychological condition as “Inner Attentive Disposition.” Consciousness contemplates no more profound or perplexing question than this: what is the role of consciousness in the establishment of reality?

In the paradigm of our western culture, the human mind is limited to being a passive processor of sensorial experiences. Conversely, based upon the mystical traditions of oriental cultures, all experience in the physical world is presumed to be created by consciousness such that all tangible reality stems from illusion.

The empirical evidence of paranormal voices and images teaches us that the physical and psychological relationships between consciousness and the physical world entail subtle effects and processes that often appear to violate the most fundamental and consolidated scientific paradigms of space, time and causality. To this purpose I mention the conclusion of the great Danish physicist Niels Bohr about the enigma of modern quantum physics that I consider from many perspectives to be quite relevant to our research: “We are both onlookers and actors in the great drama of existence3

The recent experimental data acquired using state-of-the-art recording and data processing equipment, together with appropriate research protocols and updated interpretation techniques, led us toward a bio-psycho-cybernetical interpretation of the phenomenon. In other words, the final effects entail complex interactions within what I like to define as a Minds System, the definition of which provides for the possible existence of and the effective participation between one or more interfaced minds (incarnate and discarnate) that are able to communicate with each other thanks to the effective and functional psychic model acting in the operators’ minds.

These psychic models are able to produce effects on the physical plane through a kind of action, defined in the parapsychological literature as Psychokinetic effect or PK effect. In this regard I agree completely with the great English parapsychologist John Beloff4 when he said that psychokinesis couldn’t be a force, or energy, or a physical process. He believed that PK was an unexpected action resulting from a direct interconnection between our mind and the Universe with all that it contains.

John Beloff argued that the unexpected action could not result from a super-energy located in the human mind or body, but that it could be something that happens under certain circumstances. In other words, it could be an idea or a mental intention that is able to automatically force a physical system to express that idea or that intention. The occurrence should in itself be a conclusive event and self-explanatory without the need for any other process acting as the bridge to make the final results understandable.

It is evident that different operators obtain paranormal voices that have different acoustic characteristics even if they are experimenting using the same method and device. From my point of view, this could be the result of a different psychic model operating in the mind of each operator, at the conscious or unconscious level. It is probable that different psychic situations produce different physical effects depending upon the psychic model and how it is conceived and internalized by the operator.

I would like to conclude this presentation with a purely speculative reflection based upon from my personal experiences in searching for the dynamics that govern the psychic processes and what I imagine might exist behind what we observe and measure in our investigations.

I believe that in the immediate post-mortem state the surviving nucleus of consciousness does not suddenly become, as many people incorrectly assume, omniscient (i.e., knowing everything about the past, present and future).

I believe that after death, human consciousness continues to act, for a certain period of time, based upon the individual’s knowledge of the psychic models acquired while living.

The new state of existence could imply a more effective level of consciousness, like a more enlarged perception of reality. This situation may differ from individual to individual, depending upon the individual’s adaptation to his or her new state of consciousness. The dynamics for creating new psychic models involves both the consciousness of the living and discarnate.

In ITC, there is often mention of technical means or problems and other references typical of humans living on Earth. This situation suggests the persistence, in the surviving consciousness, of psychic models that were acquired while living in the physical world. This is, I believe, the reason that the vast majority of authentic transcommunication come from personalities who have passed over fairly recently. In such cases of surviving consciousness located “nearby” in the more immediate post-mortem plane, the discarnate being is still influenced by experiences on the physical plane and has therefore the same, or a quite similar, psychic model.

To structure a new psychic model, it is necessary to have a strong willingness to supersede all previous existing schemes with new ones, even if at first sight, they appear impossible. In other words, to reach the desired goal, it is necessary to have an attitude of faith strong enough to set aside any rational interference.

Jesus Christ preached the same concept when He spoke of “the faith that moves mountains”.

Thank you very much for your kind attention.
Atlanta, Georgia, United States, June 9th 2006

References

  1. Thomas S. KuhnThe Structure of Scientific Revolution – The University of Chicago, 1970.
  2. For “Minds System” should be intended a group of interacting psychic beings.
  3. Niels Bohr – Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature – The University Press, Cambridge, 1961
  4. John Beloff – Presidential presentation at Society for Psychical Research, London, 1975.