listening to the dead...
February 27, 2007 10:01 PM   Subscribe

NOT the grateful dead, but... the OTHER dead... sounds from "beyond the grave". recordings since the dawn of recording, allegedly capturing voices of the deceased, other "entities", alien beings. the cd "an introduction to evp"...proof of?? you can find it on amazon (or anywhere in this earthly realm) or you could watch the really bad movie, "white noise"... anyway...my first post here, forgive the missing links... (someone link some more of this!)
posted by fisherKing (7 comments total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: there's lots of stuff on HowStuffWorks, this isn't particularly notable.



 
Hint: this is how it's done.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 10:18 PM on February 27, 2007


OK, I'll bite.

EVPs are interesting because they potentially fall into the grey area of "physical evidence" in support of supernatural phenomenon (or just rare, currently unexplained natural phenomenon). But human beings ARE really good at pattern recognition, and are from from objective.

EVPs won't be impressive until actual controlled experiments are done:

1. Tape recording in a "haunted" location, microphone on.
2. Tape recording in a "haunted" location, microphone off.
3. Tape recording in a "neutral" location, microphone on.
4. Tape recording in a "neutral" location, microphone off.

The hours of recordings are then only analyzed using voice recognition software. Or, less strictly, blind observers that don't know where the tapes came from... preferably double blind, so that the people handing out the recordings don't even know which experimental condition the tapes are from.

Evidence in favor of EVPs would happen if the software (or less strictly, the human observers) actually detected voices in conditions 1 or 2, but not 3 or 4 (while assuming that the levels of ambient noise are constant across conditions). If voices were detected in condition 2, then either the recording is picking up stray signals somehow, or the "entity" is affecting the recording directly. This leads to a follow up experiment in which the experiment is repeated, but the recorders are located inside a faraday cage to block out external EM noise.

Once this experiment is done, and repeated, only THEN would EVPs be really intriguing.

/rant off
posted by Nquire at 10:47 PM on February 27, 2007


Are all those periods for the numerous dead people whose voices were captured?
posted by Falconetti at 12:11 AM on February 28, 2007


What do you mean? You mean the only part of those long memorial comments you can see are the periods?
posted by whir at 1:00 AM on February 28, 2007 [3 favorites]


Pepsi Boo.
posted by Schlimmbesserung at 4:16 AM on February 28, 2007 [2 favorites]


i gotta stop using this "..." and gotta learn how to post links!
meanwhile, listened to "an introduction to evp" last night, and am not convinced. i love when the "scientists" "explain" what we are hearing, the phrases. meanwhile, gotta go, my late grandmother is calling me over my ipod.
posted by fisherKing at 5:44 AM on February 28, 2007


So you found one link about a subject on a well known web resource, and you want to the rest of us to turn it into a fpp for you? Is that what's going on here?
posted by empath at 5:44 AM on February 28, 2007


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