Ghosts

[zoegirl]

Let me ask you then, what, aside from minuscule words or two word phrases, have we managed to learn about the spirit world? (other than we can pick up the odd phrase or two)...

[chance]

Let me ask you then, what, aside from minuscule words or two word phrases, have we managed to learn about the spirit world? (other than we can pick up the odd phrase or two)...

That there exists a place where people/spirits exist and they are attempting to communicate with us but we have not evolved technically enough to be able to communicate with them beyond what we see now.

Up until the invention of telescopes all we could tell about space is what our eyes showed us - some stars and maybe a few planets. Little snippets of the universe.

Now we can see so much more and have learned a lot because we wanted to know more.

Before the rings of Saturn were just some faint dust. Black holes were just a theory, a mathematical idea.

All we had up until now were just snippets of what is really out there. Up until Einstein we thought we had it all figured out. Bit by bit we have taken those few minuscule ideals and built on them. We developed a means to look beyond on what little we could see and expanded it.

Some seem afraid of learning more when it comes to the continuation of life - whether it be because they don't believe in an afterlife or because they believe it all goes a certain - predetermined - way and anything outside of that should be ignored.

I go along with that Jesus died for my sins, when I die there is something better beyond all this, but the science guy in me wants to understand it all more - but I keep butting heads with the people who don't believe there is more and others who believe there is nothing more than what little they know of the afterlife.

Why do so many react in such a negative way to all of this? If ghosts exist then the non-believers will be upset, if they do exist then the faithful think it causes a problem with their faith.

I'll stay neutral and open minded and look for answers and not let my own biases or bigotry decide what is real or not.

[zoegirl]

It seems, however, that there is no new technology that is evolving like the telescopes have to advance that.

EVP's remain, at best, psychologically nebulous...

I wouldbe curious to see if there has been any studies using the EVP's and letting multiple people listen to them to see the different interpretations. Without someone "interpreting" the noise, it seems that most people don't hear anything. This seems highly suggestive.

The placebo affect alone shows that we shouldbe cautious with such things as these.

As Nathanial said in the beginning, I think it'sfar more dangerous, offers little in real understanding (even in your response for what we have learned there is really nothing new, we know from scripture that there exists spirits).

What about an open mind that these might be abstract noises and psychological?

[chance]

What about an open mind that these might be abstract noises and psychological?

That is something very worthwhile and which I have used myself over the years.

When I have asked others to listen to EVP's I had captured I did not tell them what I heard - and I sent them as well to several of my Engineers (back when I had engineers working for me...).

I am an old school skeptic - and I really respect your posts here. I have at times debunked my own evp's and photo's my now X and I took. The idea was to find truth.

When I set out to record EVP's it was because I did not buy into it all, heard some online and felt they were either too cryptic or someone had messed with them because they were too clear. I did not want to rely on others.

At one point in my life I was also an atheist/agnostic.

In my own experience now I can say that the things I have caught were not just 'noise' or my own interpretations that others bought into from the power of suggestion. At one point I would have been glad to dismiss it all. It did not fit into any world view I had.

NOW? Now I have looked into all for myself and while I can ignore the evidence of others and pretend they were fake and such, I cannot do the same for what I have myself experienced.

My goal was to find out for myself if it was all just fake or people hearing what they wanted to hear. When my mom died I just wanted to believe one of a few possibilities - you die and go to heaven, or to hell, or to paradise, you sleep until judgment day, or nothing happens because outside of this biological body nothing exists.

I cannot say which is right anymore from my own experience. I think it is a mix of all of the above. I have heard things on evp's which I cannot explain.

Jesus died for my sins, I believe in Heaven, and yet over the years I have caught things on tape which I cannot explain.

It does not shake my belief, it does not affect how I feel about a great many things - but it does make me pause long enough to say that I don't know enough to tell others I have all the answers on how this universe plays out.

I think looking for answers is part of what makes us human - and while I have some answers (based both on science and faith) I don't have them all. And I sure won't tell others who have looked into it all, like I have, that they are only hearing what they want to or need to. Because I know better from my own experience.

*IF* they were all demons - then we would hear things to lead us astray, if what we heard was only what we wanted to hear then we would hear spirits telling us simply that Jesus is Lord, etc - but we hear so many more things.

Why? I don't know. But I sure won't just ignore what I found.

[zoegirl]

so what have you heard?

what have been the most complex things recorded?

[chance]

what have been the most complex things recorded?

(BTW - thanks for the kindness in your replies)

I have heard replies to Questions (like, what is your name). One time, while at Greenlawn Cemetery I was walking away from Georgie Blount's grave (a little boy who is well known around these parts) and I heard the voice of a little boy saying 'Behind you' when I asked 'Where are you?'. His grave was indeed behind me. At other times I have heard nothing there (been there many times). Why? Why did I not hear something each time? I have no idea (though I could speculate).

Keep in mind the prevailing idea now is that in order for spirits to communicate they expend a lot of energy, hence the shortness of their replies (think of a huge particle accelerator which expends a ton of energy for a millisecond of results).

The most disturbing one I heard was when my now X went into a reputed haunted house. It still makes my hair stand on end as it does those who heard it. There was a voice, a chorus of them, which said 'we got youuuuu...' and then a woman moaning.

But let's look at your question more in depth - the idea is that if spirits could communicate why are they not spilling the beans, talking in full paragraphs, etc?

I think there are several things to look at here. One is that most people (especially certain TV shows) spend a short time on one place and then move on. I advocate a more scientific method - spend a year or more in one location recording everything from temp. to sounds and video.

Then there is 'why not more'? IF (and I don't know enough here, speculating) spirits are to communicate with us on this plane they must create a vibration (ie, sound waves) in order for us to pick up their answers. I don't know how energy between worlds is expended - and I fall back here to the idea that spirits are using what tools they have because ours have not caught up to their form of communicating.

Think about Radio signals for a moment - without the right hardware those things fall silent - but they still exist. If all you have is a potato radio (old science experiment) you would only get short bursts before things fade. If you only had a few words to pass on what would they be?

One could also ask - why didn't God give us more info? He is God after all. He could have plopped down a big manual with all we needed to know about science, life, earth, etc - but he chose to reveal himself though short bursts of communication over centuries.

I don't know the WHY's of it all - I only know that if I get a few short words or a whole sentence in response to something I ask than that means something.

If you prayed to Jesus for a sign and you heard him say 'I am here' would that mean anything at all to you?

[touchingcloth]

Chance - a few questions about your personal EVP investigations (if I may )

• How did you determine the "interactiveness" of any EVPs you recorded? Were the criteria strict (i.e. X percent of questions responded to, responses given within X seconds of question being asked), or more open-ended?
• How did you control for any spurious recordings of EVPs (e.g. picking up radio frequencies, voices from other people that may have been around, noises produced by other people in the vicinity etc.)?
• If your contention is that the EVPs are produced by air vibrations (sound waves) then are they audible to those present at the time of recording, or only upon listening back to the recording?
• What equipment do you use for your recordings?

[chance]

Chance - a few questions about your personal EVP investigations (if I may )

* How did you determine the "interactiveness" of any EVPs you recorded? Were the criteria strict (i.e. X percent of questions responded to, responses given within X seconds of question being asked), or more open-ended?
* How did you control for any spurious recordings of EVPs (e.g. picking up radio frequencies, voices from other people that may have been around, noises produced by other people in the vicinity etc.)?
* If your contention is that the EVPs are produced by air vibrations (sound waves) then are they audible to those present at the time of recording, or only upon listening back to the recording?
* What equipment do you use for your recordings?

Hi Sorry for being so long getting back to you.

On your first point - I determined it by what I heard based on what I asked. Sometimes it had nothing to do with what I asked, other times I did. I leave it open-ended and often just ask that any spirits just say what they want.

Your second point is one that is important to me:

* How did you control for any spurious recordings of EVPs (e.g. picking up radio frequencies, voices from other people that may have been around, noises produced by other people in the vicinity etc.)?

The whole reason one uses a sound program (like Goldwave) in situations with EVP's is to mask out such things. I have spent hours listening to recordings and you can tell when something is related to birds, planes, passing cars, etc. Many of the EVPs I have gotten have a much lower tone but show up as a distinct mark on the sound graph. It is like a weird spike if you will. It does not fit. I have gotten to the point that I can recognize them many times easily. They just do not fit into the normal range of things.

All I can say is record many hours yourself and listen to them (use a good program and really good head phones).

Let me give an example: MP3 versus WAV files. WAV files use up a lot more disk space because they capture all the sound, MP3's use an algorithm to remove things most people won't hear (unless you are an audiophile, in which case vinyl is still best). We can take a 40 meg file that is a wav and reduce it to 1-3 megs because we strip out what most people are not able to hear - it is still there though. Same with JPG versus TIFF files and how the eye does not see all the variances in color.

* If your contention is that the EVPs are produced by air vibrations (sound waves) then are they audible to those present at the time of recording, or only upon listening back to the recording?
* What equipment do you use for your recordings?

For the first one, see my last answer. For the last one:

Panasonic digital recorder, files saved in WAV format to avoid the lossiness in compression (again, similar to what one loses in the compression from a TIFF image to a JPG or GIF).

[touchingcloth]

Thanks for taking the time to answer.

I'm still not clear as to whether or not the EVPs are audible at the time they are recorded, or only afterwards when playing the files back?

Do you just use a single recorder? I guess the ideal would be to use at least 2, both from different manufacturers (and probably a mix of digital and analogue recorders too).

Controlling for external noise is probably fairly trivial (and like you say would fall into a normal range when doing spectral analysis on a PC), but controlling for extraneous radio carrier waves would be quite a lot harder; I know from my experience with recording music that I'll on some occasions pick up radio stations or walkie-talkie chatter through my guitar/amp.

[chance]

I'm still not clear as to whether or not the EVPs are audible at the time they are recorded, or only afterwards when playing the files back?

Do you just use a single recorder? I guess the ideal would be to use at least 2, both from different manufacturers (and probably a mix of digital and analogue recorders too).

Controlling for external noise is probably fairly trivial (and like you say would fall into a normal range when doing spectral analysis on a PC), but controlling for extraneous radio carrier waves would be quite a lot harder; I know from my experience with recording music that I'll on some occasions pick up radio stations or walkie-talkie chatter through my guitar/amp.

A person after my own heart I think most professional ghost hunters should do is use several different brands/models of digital recorders. I don't right now but I did at one time.

Picking up other signals has never been an issue for me - if I did pick them up why would I not hear more than I do? But you raise a point worth considering:

know from my experience with recording music that I'll on some occasions pick up radio stations or walkie-talkie chatter

On SOME occasions - not all? Why not some? For me it is similar to EVP's. On some trips I will pick up things, on others I won't. Is it the time of day, time of year, weather, etc?

See - I don't know - which is why I am not just going to say it is all bunk or that it is all spiritual and ghost filled.

That is the whole reason I started to look into it for myself. It is not consistent. Why is it that someone sees a ghost one day, but not the next someplace?

If I ever get wealthy enough I plan on buying multiple recorders - both voice and video, and putting them into a 'haunted' house and record it all over the period of 24 months.

I do not pretend to have all the answers, but from my own personal investigations I have found a lot of questions.

And if I want answers then it is up to me to find them, but I can say I have found enough to make me question conventional wisdom.

[touchingcloth]

On SOME occasions - not all? Why not some? For me it is similar to EVP's. On some trips I will pick up things, on others I won't. Is it the time of day, time of year, weather, etc?

There's probably multiple factors at play - weather (especially the conditions in the upper atmosphere) can have a big impact on the behaviour of radio waves. Where My amp/guitar/computer are physically located will have an impact too, as well as how the leads and whatnot are coiled. I'd imagine that the interference is always there, but sometime conditions lead to it coming through on the recording to greater or lesser degrees.

[chance]

There's probably multiple factors at play - weather (especially the conditions in the upper atmosphere) can have a big impact on the behaviour of radio waves. Where My amp/guitar/computer are physically located will have an impact too, as well as how the leads and whatnot are coiled. I'd imagine that the interference is always there, but sometime conditions lead to it coming through on the recording to greater or lesser degrees.

And there you have it.

Things we think would be consistent are not always so. It does not mean that don't exist, it just means we do not always take into account all the factors.

Sometimes I get an EVP, sometimes I don't.

Think of ghosts as interference, always there but sometimes the conditions are not right for us to pick them up.

[touchingcloth]

So have you landed at the conclusion that EVPs are definitely ghosts?

[chance]

So have you landed at the conclusion that EVPs are definitely ghosts?

Nope, only came to the conclusion that I cannot say for sure.