Welcome to our E.V.P. Webpage
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You can watch uncut unedited streaming video of paranormal investigator / psychic medium Laura Smith as she takes EVPs in the famous Washoe Club in Virginia City, NV.
What is E.V.P.?
EVP stands for Electronic Voice Phenomena. Sometimes spirits of the dead are able to record sounds and sometimes their voices on electronic recording devices. Exactly how they are able to do this is somewhat of a mystery. There are several theories as to how they can do this and two of those theories are based on the same concepts.

1) Spirits are energy based entities who are sometimes able to manipulate the natural magnetic fields around them.

2) Some believe the method spirits use to make sounds on a recording device is by manipulating the pink noise a sensitive recorder would normally record. Some call it white noise while some call it pink noise but it's the natural hissing sound a sensitive recording device will pick up while recording when there are no other sounds present. The explanation to this effect is that spirits are able to move the pink noise around until it creates words and sounds.

3) Others believe that spirits being energy based are able to simply cause fluctuations in the microphone itself causing the sounds to be heard. This method would produce a similar effect as sound waves do upon the diaphragm of a microphone. Sound waves use air to travel to their destination. The sound waves move the diaphragm in the microphone which move the coil based in the magnetic chamber in order to produce an electronic response into the recording device. But with spirits being unable to move the air around them as they have no physical body instead they move the metal coils themselves producing the sounds.

Sometimes people only hear the hissing sound of their recorder in play back mode but some people can actually hear voices within the pink noise. What may be very clear to some may be very obscure or non existent to others.
How To Capture EVP
There are several things you should understand before attempting an EVP.

Regular tape recorders don't work well because they have motors in them that drown out and otherwise obscure the EVP. You need a digital voice recorder that can be bought any almost any good electronic discount place like Best Buy. The microphones are very sensitive in most of them. They can literally hear through the walls when used correctly. They can certainly hear and amplify things the human ear can not hear.

Ask your question and wait but do not move around. Be absolutely still. Moving your finger from one button to another can drown out any possible EVP that you might capture. Shuffling clothing or moving feet. The sound of a chair squeaking or bed springs can overwhelm an EVP so that it is un-legible or even completely hidden in the other sounds.

Ask your question and wait at least 10-15 seconds for an answer.

If you know of a haunted location and have permission to be there your on the right track. The next thing you should understand is that while ghosts might be found almost anywhere they are not very used to having the living speak to them expecting an answer back. You may speak several times and not receive any response at all. You must make them aware that you are trying to listen to and record their voices. Once they realize you are attempting to communicate with them one or more of them may attempt to answer you. It is my own opinion they must realize you want them to "speak into the little box." They must understand what is required of them before they can leave their sound imprints on your recording device. Some ghost's may be better at it than others. You may ask 50 or 60 questions before receiving one legible answer so do not be discouraged. Sometimes they answer when you least expect them to.

Keep your sentences and questions short and to the point. Though I am new to EVP research it's been my experience that most legible ghostly answers seldom span more than 3 words. I have captured what sounds like entire sentences but I have not been able to comprehend the longer durations of EVP. I've captured other sounds that were not voice but not being able to explain them I am inclined to think it is possible those other sounds were being made by something in the paranormal world. Sometimes they sound like animals. Sometimes they sound like clanking or banging or maybe even footsteps.

Numerous times I've rambled on asking my question with so many words a ghost wouldn't have a fair chance to answer. If they did I would have been talking over them. So keep your questions short and to the point and try not to ask anything that requires a detailed explanation. I don't know how much energy it takes for a ghost to answer so that we can hear them on our recorders but I'm inclined to believe it takes a fair amount of energy on their behalf. It might be possible to frustrate them by asking questions that require long drawn out answers. At Piper's Opera House and at Gold Hill Hotel both the spirits spoke a little bit then quit. Between the two and out of about 60 some odd questions we only received two answers that were relatively easy to understand.
Processing EVPs so you can display them or share them with your friends.
Capturing an EVP is only the first part of your EVP experience. While your voice may be quite loud on your recording device the ghost's voice will most likely be down among the hissing sounds. You must process and separate the hissing from the voice sounds. I keep telling myself that one of these days I'm going to buy a book that describes how to do all this. Until then I've learned a few things I can share with you here.

You need to get your EVP's from your small digital recorder into your computer. Preferably a computer that has audio processing software in it.

Set your record input to the computer to a high level like 44khz mono.

I tried recording directly from my little recorder into my Sound Blaster Platinum Live card in my computer. Though I did manage to capture the sounds after spending two days working with my EVP's I realized it wasn't as good as it should have been. I connected my little recorder/player to my professional mixer. The mixer has a graphic equalizer in it. I began playing the audio over and over and moving the controls until I had isolated the sounds I wished to keep while removing the higher and lower sounds that I did not wish to keep. Then I set the volume as high as possible without clipping or getting distortions and I began re-recording my EVP's. The results were much better than before. The top two EVP's below were processed this way.

Most sound recorders like Sound Blaster Live Recording Studio displays the sound file as a graphic line. You can see where your sounds are located within that graphic line. You may see little bumps where the sounds are being heard. Select that area of the sound file and play it over a few times to be sure you have located the sound you wish to amplify. Then select Tasks in the tool bar at the top of the program and at the bottom it says "volume." Select that and amplify it about 500 times, or until the audio is loud enough you need not strain to hear it. Listen to it a few times to be sure that's what you intended to do. Then save it out to your hard drive under another name. I keep one directory folder with my originals in it and make a copy that I work with in another folder. This way my original files are not lost or changed.

If your file has to much hiss in it you may use another software program that has the ability to change or remove noise in an audio file. Gold Wave is one of these programs that is able to do this. Be careful because some settings remove more than noise. They can also remove the sounds you wish to keep. I've recently learned by listening to each frequency level of the EVP's the voice within them is literally part of the hiss. I can hear the voice at 60 cycles even when I turn everything else off. I can hear it at 300 at 400 at 1000 all the way up to 16,000 cycles. The normal voice is within 1000-6000 cycles. You can cut off everything above and everything below and still hear the voice correctly. But the ghostly voices are literally within or made up of the pink noise or hissing sounds. This seems to disprove accounts other EVP experts have given saying the ghosts only speak below 300 cycles and therefore the pitch must be changed in order to listen to them. Perhaps they should update their equipment. :-) I've yet to find any EVP's isolated below 300 cycles.
Please NOTE! Listening to EVP's!
I've come to the conclusion that people who are tone deaf are generally not able to hear the sounds of the voices within the static or pink noise. I've had two people tell me they can't hear anything but a hissing sound where the ghost responds to the person asking the question. The ghostly voices and sounds are generally within the pink noise or hissing noise.

Something else that's come to my attention is that for some people who have problems hearing the voices, to them it's like those 3D pictures you can stare at and can't see the 3D image until your eyes and mind separate. For some people the harder they listen the more hiss they hear and the less voice or sounds they hear. For them they must relax and let the sound play over and over until suddenly they hear the sound image. As with the 3D computer images the image is hidden within the patterns. With EVP's the sound images are hidden within the pink noise. Some people can hear them without even trying while others hear only noise. Some can view those 3D images and see the picture instantly while others can try for hours and never see the image. Always remember, just because you can't see or hear it, doesn't mean it's not there.

Several professionals in the field of paranormal research having experience with EVP's have told me the first two on this list are perhaps some of the clearest they have ever heard.
The EVP's below have been amplified and have had hiss filters run on them to remove some of the hissing sounds. Upon close examination they appear to be edited but I assure you they have only been processed for clarity, they have not been faked nor has the voices been altered.

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There's a fun ghost story in the Ember Reign novel series.