Why EVP’s are a Load of Bull
November 9th, 2009
|
| Share |
EVP or “Electronic Voice Phenomena” are sounds caught on tape or digital recording devices which are supposedly the voices of spirits communicating from the beyond. In reality these are nothing more than a jumble of background sounds and possibly electronic interference that only sound like voices if you really try to hear them. In reality there are two forces at work here to create the illusion. The first is pareidolia, the tendency of the human brain to search for patterns and to exaggerate what it – in both audio and visual information.
The other is the fact that the human ear is surprisingly good at adapting to the ambient sounds of an environment. You may be sitting in a room with a ventilation fan and people talking in the background, but you will not even notice these sounds, despite the fact that a recording device will pick up on them to the point that they drown out conversation. Many have experienced this when making a recording in a place that seems relatively quiet only to play it back and find a great deal of background noise.
This added to the fact that electronic recorders can occasionally pick up on crosstalk from phone lines, AM radio stations and other sources of noise can make things seem to be more than they are, as here:
One thing that aids tremendously is adding subtitles. It forces the brain to find patterns where there are none or where the words only barely sound like the sounds being produced. Here is another video which demonstrates this better than anything I’ve yet seen:
This entry was posted on Monday, November 9th, 2009 at 7:41 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Not Even Wrong, Paranormal, media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
View blog reactions
November 10th, 2009 at 12:00 am
LOL! God that is funny!
Quote Comment
November 10th, 2009 at 12:50 am
I’m never going to be able to hear that piece again without hearing those words, at least not unless someone can show me alternate words, which then will simply replace them. Jeez, that illusion is crazy though. It’s ridiculous how convincing it is.
Quote Comment
November 10th, 2009 at 3:09 am
What Gregor said!
Quote Comment
November 10th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
“Oh Four Tuna”…that one should go viral if it already hasn’t. That’s hilarious!!
When I read the first sentence of this post I thought you might include the case of the rock band Judas Priest and their alleged subliminal messages that encouraged the listeners to commit suicide. The singer Rob Halford explained something to the effect, “In the music business we try to sell as many records as possible to our fans, it wouldn’t be good for our business if we tried to kill off our fan base.”
Quote Comment
November 10th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
I cannot resist pasting two more like that:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duNfVq-SxoI
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRk9ugM_tDY
(But they’re only likely to amuse if you like experimental music or metal.)
Quote Comment
November 11th, 2009 at 7:48 am
Actually the first words for that song actually are ‘O Fortuna’!
They’re actually a gregorian poem, and full lyrics courtesy of wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_Fortuna
Quote Comment
November 17th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
Fascinating. It is fun to see how strongly the visual clues affected my hearing. However, having had a lot of Latin (way back when), every once in a while a Latin word would jump out and ruin the illusion. However, I was on the floor from laughing my butt off. Too funny!
Re the hotel “ghost”: what a couple of weasels – convincing the old guy of ghosts in his hotel. Granite enhances ghostly activity? They make up stuff as they go, don’t they? Destabilis decresis vitae (detestible low lives).
Quote Comment
June 17th, 2010 at 10:07 pm
[...] EVP or “electronic voice phenomena” is what people like to call it when they take a cheap tape recorder or a computer with a sound card and crank the volume way up until they start to hear a lot of noise. This noise is a combination of internally generated noise, RF interference, cross talk from various sources and other various random sounds. However, if you listen closely, the human brain can do an amazing job of convincing itself that it hears a voice in the noise. This is even easier if you know what you’re expected to hear. [...]
Quote Comment