Passing Lane Paranormal Investigations

They are still blaming all of these bird deaths on fireworks. Really? Fireworks? People all over the world shoot off fireworks and it doesn’t usually result in thousands of dead birds falling from the sky.

Fireworks were blamed for the deaths of thousands of blackbirds last year, but it’s unclear whether fireworks were the cause this time. Police imposed an impromptu ban on fireworks when the birds began falling this year.

Lt. Brian Duke of the Beebe Police Department told ABC this year wasn’t nearly as bad as last year, when the birds covered the streets of Beebe. This year, they were concentrated in a smaller area and the birds were cleaned up quickly.

Many years ago, a friend of a friend was visiting at my apartment in Colorado. The conversation was about everyday things. Nothing unusual or esoteric. I had a drawing table and various art supplies scattered around the apartment because I like to draw and paint.  As we were talking, she took up one of my tablets of paper and drew the drawing you see here.

She said, “This is an alien alphabet. If you ever meet someone who can read it, please let me know.”

And I never saw the girl again.

Is this actually an alien alphabet? And if so, how did she know it? Was she herself an alien or was she just trying to freak me out by telling me this? I have no idea but I have spent many years thinking about it. I’ve looked for the original drawing but I can’t find it. All I have now is this digital scan of the original.

EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena) are widely believed to the the voices of spirits or other non-human entities. This is still something that is open to debate, but the ease of the technique for capturing EVP makes EVP recording one of the most popular ways for a paranormal researcher to capture and present evidence.

It takes no special equipment. Anything which records sound can be used – digital voice recorders, tape recorders, VCR recorders, camcorders, and your laptop computer can all be used to capture EVP. However, like any kind of sound recording, the better your equipment, the better your chances of gathering some clear recordings. It is also helpful to listen to the recordings with good quality headphones.

When we listen to these recordings, it is imperative to listen objectively. There is a real danger of hearing what we want to hear or even creating words out of something which is not human speech at all.

In the 1960s, Dr. John C. Lilly was doing extensive research on human/dolphin communication and trying to understand the workings of the human brain. One of his experiments with humans was called the “Repeating Word Experiment.” With this experiment, Dr. Lilly tried to see how people would interpret a single word repeated over and over. Here is his description of the experiment:

“If one listens to a tape loop of a repeated word for fifteen minutes, one may hear as many as thirty different words other than the one which is on the tape loop. We did an extensive study of the word “cogitate” We exposed something of the order of three hundred subjects to this word for periods of fifteen minutes to six hours. We asked each subject to write down the words that he heard or to report them with a microphone  on another channel of the same tape recorder.

From these three hundred subjects we got on the order of 2,300 different words. Three hundred of these were in the dictionary; the rest were words that we do not ordinarily use, i.e. nondictionary words as we began to call them.”

If you apply Dr. John C. Lilly’s experiment to EVP recording sessions, you can see how listening to EVP recordings can be extremely subjective. If listening to a single word can cause people to hear as many as 2,300 different words, imagine how many different words can be “heard” on the average whispery EVP recording which usually consists of a short phrase or even an unintelligible sound. Futhermore, the expectations generated from doing these EVP sessions in dark, spooky locations will often cause the listener to hear what they expect to hear – common phrases like “get out” are often heard as well as the investigator’s name.

Because of this “repeating word effect” and other factors which may influence what a person would hear when listening to EVP recordings, I think it is a very good idea to have your evidence reviewed by objective people, preferably people who were not present during the investigation. Tell the listener nothing about the investigation and, if possible, do not let the listener know the names or personal details about the location or about anyone involved in the investigation.

Maybe your research team could have a separate “EVP Analysis team” which would have only one duty – listening to and analyzing EVP evidence. Ideally, I think these analysis experts should be young people, no older than 30 years old. The reason for this is, a young healthy person can hear sound in the frequency range of between 20 and 20,000 Hertz. As we get older, we lose the ability to hear sound in the higher frequency ranges. The highest frequency that a normal middle-aged adult can hear is only 12,000 – 14,000 hertz. To put it simply, young people can hear a lot better!

Equipment for Normal EVP Experiments:

Probably most important of all, record your EVP recordings with the best equipment you can afford. If your recording device has a cheap built-in microphone, consider buying a fairly nice external microphone. Check the specs. Make sure the microphone is capable of recording a full range of human hearing, 20 to 20,000 Hertz. And of course make sure the recording device itself is capable of recording the proper frequencies.

Another important factor is the quality of the headphones you are using to listen to your EVP recordings. Don’t use cheap headphones made for Internet teleconferencing or games. Instead, try to obtain some quality studio headphones. Check the specs on the headphones to make sure the headphones will reproduce frequencies in the range of 20 to 20,000 Hertz. Even some cheaper headphones will do this but if your headphone speakers can’t reproduce these frequencies, it won’t matter how well you can hear.

Recording Other Frequencies:

There is a common theory among many paranormal investigators that EVP are somehow being produced at a frequency above or below the range of human hearing. If this is true, you aren’t going to be able to record these sounds with common recording devices and you certainly won’t be able to hear them when you play them back on common voice recorders or tape recorders. Sounds in these frequencies MUST be recorded and analyzed with special equipment.

For example, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology has done research with infrasound because they believe that elephants may use low-frequency calls to communicate. To record infrasound, the lab uses a specialized unit called an ARU (Autonomous Recording Unit) developed by engineers in the Cornell University Bioacoustics Research Program. It consists of a small microphone mounted on a signal conditioning board that connects to a more generalized filter amplification board. The output from the filter amplification board then feeds into a circuit that converts the analog signal into a digital one and then stores the data to a laptop hard drive. The unit runs off of a car or truck battery (or a few lantern batteries). These units allow researchers to set the sampling rate as they wish (typical CD-quality sound is recorded at a sampling rate of 44.1kHz). ARUs are not commercially available at this time.

If you are attempting to record and analyze sound below the range of human hearing (infrasound) or above the range of human hearing (ultrasound), you must either shift the frequencies into the range of human hearing or else record them some other way such as a graph. Remember that YOU CAN’T HEAR these frequencies, so they must either be frequency-shifted or recorded as visual data for analysis.

So, to sum this all up:

1. Use good quality microphones and recording devices to record your EVP recordings. Avoid cheap microphones or voice recorders with poor recording capabilities.

2. Have a young person listen to the recordings later at a neutral location free of distractions. Preferably the listener should be someone who knows nothing about the investigation and little to nothing about the people involved. Do not attempt to listen to the EVP recordings on site.

3. When listening to the EVP recordings, use good quality headphones (and of course listen in a quiet location away from distractions.)

4. If you are attempting to record EVP in the infrasound or ultrasound range of frequencies, special equipment must be used. This can’t be done with ordinary recording devices.

At last, drivers on I-75 near Florence, Kentucky know why traffic is so bad. A massive horde of zombies have taken over the city and are spilling out onto the highway. Well, not really. It was just a prank. “The sign was apparently hacked,” said Nancy Wood, Kentucky Transportation Cabinet spokeswoman.  Gee, really? You think so? This sign was changed to read “NIGHTLY LANE CLOSURES, ZOMBIES AHEAD.”

But what, no zombies?

I bet the sign caused a few people to pay closer attention to the road, just in case.