Friday 15 August 2008

Electronic Voice Phenomena


Electronic Voice Phenomena or “EVP” refers to voices or sounds captured on electronic and more often now, digital recording devices such as digital voice recorders and camcorders, where no logical explanation can be found. Proponents of EVP commonly attribute these sounds as communication from spirit while others offer psychokinesis from the living as a possible explanation. Another theory is that what we record is not actually spirit communication but rather echoes of people from the past. This is particularly theorised upon by proponents of “the stone tape" theory.
Interest in spirit communication through EVP dates back to at least the 1940’s and has its roots in the spiritualist movement which was most predominant in the 1840’s to the 1920’s. The term Electronic Voice Phenomena is however a relatively new term for the phenomena, originally it was labelled “Raudive Voices” after parapsychologist Konstantin Raudive who first popularized the idea.The name electronic voice phenomena came in to being as a term used by the publishing company Colin Smythe LTD in the early 1970’s. Despite many recordings and claims of EVP there are many rather mundane explanations for EVP. Sceptics suggest that apophenia (finding of significance or connections between insignificant or unrelated phenomena), pareidolia (interpreting random sounds into voices) radio interference, the effects of low quality equipment or simple hoaxes are the causes of such phenomena.
Recording EVP has become a major part of paranormal investigating, giving what for some is the ultimate in paranormal (unexplainable) evidence. It has recently become popularized by films such as White Noise and The Sixth Sense.
We may never find out what really creates EVP, it might be one of the explanations above, it may be a mix of the explanations above or it might be none of them. What we do know is that it will continue to be one of the most fascinating types of evidence people gather and will always lead to more questions than answers.
To hear some EVP captured by the Esoteric Team members visit http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=jgGJMgqY8S8

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