Do You Hear What I Hear?

 

Sèphera Girón

Much like looking at photographs, listening to EVPs (Electronic Voice Phenomenon) requires a certain skill, a way to hear between the noises of real life—that we naturally focus on—to the noises of “something else.” I call them between-the-cracks sounds. Once you get the hang of what you’re hearing and how you hear it, EVPs can become increasingly easier to pick up the more you practice. There are those who are lucky enough to be able to hear “ghosts” without even trying, without even needing recording devices, but most of us need more tools and techniques to hear the ghostly voices in the ether.

What are EVPs?

EVP is the name given to the sounds on a recording that are unexplainable. Some people may call them spirits or ghosts. Some people will say they are frequencies caught from radios, planes, trains, cars, neighbors, baby monitors, and so on. Others may believe the unusual sounds caught in recordings are residual energy from other times, wrinkles in time, or even parallel universes.

EVPs can be voices speaking, screaming, crying, moaning, and more. They can capture movement, banging, clanging, walking, running, bells, birds: in essence, any sound you can imagine.

Often the sounds caught on EVPs aren’t audible at the time they are captured. An investigator may ask questions to an empty room and feel like she hasn’t gotten any response, yet upon listening to the playback, there are voices—sometimes faint and gurgling, sometimes clear as a bell—answering her.

Me and EVPs

I have difficulty hearing EVPs—likely because I have hearing loss—so I can’t pick up certain vibrations. I didn’t have much luck with the audio software already on my computer when I first attempted to decipher obscure sounds on the recordings we made at the Haunted Mansion in 2010. However, once I played a file through a basic program called Audacity, I could detect more sounds than before, especially after I fiddled with a few settings.

One night, I decided that boosting the bass and trying to “blur out” the investigators’ voices might work best for me when I’m listening for ghosts. I slowed down the speed of the investigators’ voices, so that I wasn’t listening to what they were saying. Nikki from the GhostGirls told me before that the more I can boost the bass, the more likely it is that I’ll hear something.

With the familiar living voices blurred, the bass boosted, and the sound cranked high enough that it was almost painful, I was finally able to hear what the others have heard. Once I heard the first few faint noises and recognized them, it was like a floodgate.

Those other sounds.

Laughs and whispers.

Before I returned to the Haunted Mansion in 2012, I listened to all the EVPs and watched all the videos that the GhostGirls shared, then examined the other Survivors’ evidence as well. Piecing together the images and sounds after the fact was fun and intriguing. I was able to finally hear most of the EVPs in edited form on the GhostGirls website. The ladies had spent painstaking hours isolating the sounds and magnifying them in tiny clips so you could have a focused experience. When the sound is pumped up, some of the EVPs are very clear.

Sometimes the voices were so clear I had to double-check with the GhostGirls to be certain they didn’t belong to someone in the room. There are a couple of EVPs that I’m sure will be on the GhostGirls site (http://www.ghost-girls.org/) where it sounds like someone is talking right along with us—but he wasn’t there in the flesh. Still, his voice is close to the mike and seems to be in conversation with us.

Instances like that remind me that I need to be certain in the future to write in a journal who is actually in the room during a given EVP session. I always think I’ll remember, but my memory is just not what it used to be.

The Evidence from 2010

While Rainy and I slept in the Black Mass Room in 2010, with the DVR recording us snore and snuffle, there were other sounds in the room as well: People talking around us. Children saying things to us.

I couldn’t hear them at first, even in edited form, but now that I’ve learned to hear, there were so many sounds in the Black Mass Room. It gives a sense of a portal to another dimension, where sounds echo up from somewhere else: noises like a train rumbling, but it never stops—or else it suddenly stops—nothing at all like real-life train behavior. I heard sounds that made me feel like I had been immersed in a Seventies horror movie or slept in the path of a tornado.

I will admit, I’ve been a bit of a chicken when it comes to listening to the evidence. There were many clips (most of them recorded in the Black Mass Room) where I stopped listening because I got creeped out. Yes, way over here in Toronto!

In reviewing all of the 2010 evidence before the 2012 trip, I realized that there were more layers to the Mansion’s history than I’d previously realized.

The 2012 Retreat

The Mansion welcomed me back upon my arrival in 2012. I was one of the first to arrive in Rainy’s caravan. As I entered the Mansion, the smell was familiar. Déjà vu. A dream. I felt recognition in the house’s energy. There were the thick musty smells and pockets of hot and cold energies. Shadows fluttered at the corners of my eyes. I wondered if children peeked down through the bannisters at me.

There was also the corner of the second floor that pulsed in my mind as if the house were alive somehow, like the Black Mass Room throbbed with anticipation at my arrival. The thought wasn’t comforting.

There was also a sense of excitement and welcome. It’s hard to describe the feeling, except that it felt like coming home.

Loren and I toured the house, putting out nametags for the others on various beds. I remembered the old rooms. This time, there were also new rooms. This time, people were allowed to sleep on the third floor as well.

n the Black Mass Room, I knew I was expected, but I was not clear for what. I could sense the eerie, creepy embrace, a taunt daring me to enter. The room was still the Black Mass Room. No shortage of heavy energy in that particular place.

After discussion, Rainy and I ended up sleeping in another room in 2012. A suite opened up this time that hadn’t been available the previous year. The kitchen and office at the back of it were massively creepy, but the room where Rainy and I stayed seemed rather tame. And it was.

The First Night of the 2012 Retreat

After it got dark, Scott, Wes, and I went to see if we could stir up activity in the room where—in 2010—Scott had a nocturnal encounter with a ghost we named “Gretchen.”

We did.

We captured an EVP of someone else’s voice—someone we didn’t recognize, who wasn’t in the room with us—on Scott’s cell phone recorder. The K2 meter flashed and we felt chills and static. We were stunned when we played back the session and heard a whisper say, “Paul.”

This particular EVP was easy to hear: Scott simply played back the phone recording and we heard it. We didn’t have to strain to hear it or pump up the volume or wear bass-boosting headphones. This was just a whisper—”Paul”—right into the microphone.

Yet we had been the only ones in the room. The cell phone sat on the bed by the K2 meter. We had cameras. We all stood around the bed, talking to the ghosts and freaking ourselves out. In reality, we had good reason. Someone was there and saying the name “Paul” in response to our asking who was there.

We ran down to the Safe Room to tell the others of our first find. Unfortunately, the others thought we had rigged the whole thing. Their disbelief didn’t crush our fears, as we were there and knew that none of us had talked into the microphone and said a name. By the end of the weekend, the others did indeed believe that what we had captured that first night was real. There were other recordings with the name “Paul.”

Playing with the Kids

I knew I wanted to talk to the children when I returned to the Mansion in 2012. I brought eyeball balls from Toronto and took a few into the Black Mass Room to entice the kids. The GhostGirls brought a pink foam into which you could press your hand and it would retain heat imprints for a few minutes. The GhostGirls also had machines that blinked, made noises, spun, flashed, and so on. The kids should have had a blast.

I saw imprints left on the foam. I felt chills and cold spots. I heard inexplicable noises. When we played back some of the recordings in the main room, we heard voices.

I sat in the Black Mass Room by myself a few times over the weekend. I asked the children to play with the toys, the devices left by the GhostGirls. There was a camera pointed into that room for about twenty hours, so hopefully some evidence was captured.

In Summary

Leaving the Mansion was more difficult this second trip. As I wandered through the hallways, giving the house one last goodbye, the walls sighed. Since I was one of the last to leave, I could feel the energy in the house shifting. Near the end of the weekend, by Saturday night, there had been little activity that we could feel. I had sensed the ghosts were bored of us. However, once the house was nearly empty again, it seemed like spirits were peeking out of doors, slipping from closets, blowing in from the opened windows to roam the hallways once more.

When I went to say goodbye to my nemesis—The Black Mass Room—the air was thick again. The atmosphere felt gloomy and sad. I sensed little boys, but wasn’t sure if I was just missing my own. Even with the bright sun bouncing off the walls, there were still deep shadows in parts of that teeny, tiny room. I was sad. I still didn’t know the mystery of the room and hadn’t slept in it to observe the Black Mass again. A pang of guilt shot through me, but then I remembered it was a sunny, bright Sunday afternoon and I had a plane ticket back to Canada. Of course, I wasn’t scared anymore.

For the first time in all of my ghost-hunting adventures, I was able to witness and participate in speaking to “something” through flashlights. In several rooms, the ghosts would play along for a while, blinking the flashlights in response to questions. But much like children, they grew bored or stubborn and stopped or were just fooling around.

There are still many EVPs and videos to comb through, notes to read, and observations to glean. It is with great eagerness that I look forward to the Haunted Mansion Writers Retreat in 2014. Maybe I’ll stay in the Black Mass Room. One night. Well, maybe a few hours.

As of this writing, I’ve only been able to “hear” paranormal activity for a few weeks. I’m interested to see if, one day, I’ll be able to hear spirits in real-time, like some of my friends can.

How to Listen to EVPs

Making EVPs is one of the easiest and most inexpensive components of paranormal evidence collection. You can use any recording device. It’s better to have a digital recorder that you can hook into your computer for easy uploading, but ghostbusters were recording evidence decades before computers existed.

Remember to give the ghost loads of time to answer. Most of us have a tendency to talk too much in sessions. Silence is best for playback purposes.

Writing down who is present will help you in reviewing your recordings so you don’t have to hurt your brain remembering who was in the room and where and what was going on outside of the room that might have been picked up by the recording devices.

Don’t forget to listen to unusual activity in real life while you are present in a session. Make note of aircraft, radios, other people moving around, moving furniture, eating, copulating, cooking, the sounds of animals, cars, and so on.

Taking notes, using multiple pieces of equipment, and keeping records of unusual sounds or noises as they happen can save hours of guesswork later on in the evaluation process.

Some sounds can be heard with regular everyday ear buds through a digital recorder or a laptop. These are just tip-of-the-iceberg sounds. If you are lucky enough to hear this much evidence without any enhancement, just imagine how much more you might hear once you set yourself up with very basic equipment.

Headphones that fit over the ear are great. Noise-cancelling ones are recommended. Ones that emphasize bass are even better. Sometimes the cheaper ones can pick up better sounds in the ghastly frequency than the more sophisticated ones.

There are a variety of programs you can use to play the EVPs back through your computer. The most popular free ones are often listed on paranormal sites. There are different types in various price ranges, so read the reviews and talk to your ghost-hunting friends. If you are already recording music, chances are you’re good to go with whatever kit you have.

Don’t play music, don’t watch TV, and make every attempt to have a quiet room while you are listening to the sounds on your ear-covering noise-cancelling headphones.

Don’t get discouraged if you don’t hear anything at first. Practice by going to the GhostGirls site and listening to very short EVPs that have been edited and “pumped up.” Once you learn what “ghosts” sound like, you can try it with “raw data” and see what you can find out.

Instead of straining to “hear” other sounds, enter a state of relaxation. That can be difficult when you’ve been trying to hear voices for months or years. It can also be difficult when you hear something and then become frightened of what else you’re going to hear.

Relax.

Let your mind float beyond the sounds of the investigators.

Much like blurring your eyes when trying to see auras or meditating, “blur” your ears. Hear what you’re not hearing.

Always approach listening to EVPs with the idea that you are searching for logical answers to the sound.

Keep notes where you think you hear sounds on the recordings. Indicate the counter for easy reference.

Isolate small segments where you think you hear something. Try to boost the sound.

Make different copies so that you don’t lose your original. Play with different settings. Use the visual graphics on the programs to hunt for the sounds between the sounds.

Make the best of what you have, but remember, pen and paper are the best tools of all.

It’s also good to know that hearing EVPs can be enhanced by videotaping the event as it happens. For instance, the Haunted Mansion Survivor recently shared information by email about a specific EVP that had been recorded at the Mansion. When I first heard the EVP, before I learned how to hear the ghost part, I thought I had followed the conversation and there was no ghost.

It was chilling to hear a voice exactly like the human voices piping in with a comment, but the voice belonged to no one in the room. The video shows where everyone was in the room and yet a voice spoke right into the recorder. The ghost was playing with us.