Audio & Video from Teledyne Ryan Aeronautics

[Mark.Yates]

My work schedule every night is 2145 to 0545. It would be me, the ghosts, and the bumps in the night. Bring some other pieces of your equipment down if you like and or can. Shoot me an email and I'll send you my cell number.

As soon as I get through browsing on the internet and drinking my first cup of lemon flavored, honey, and peppermint tea I'll be going through the building to do some EVP's, take readings, and photos.

[Gary]

Good luck tonight Mark.  I just sent you an e-mail with my cell number.  Tomorrow is looking good for me! 

[Mark.Yates]

Here's a question for the masses. I was doing yet another investigation on the second floor yet this time I found a wall thermostat that was emitting 3.2 mG of EMF however, in the adjacent office there is another wall thermostat in the exact same spot emitting 0 EMF.  How is this possible?

[PPI Tracy]

Here's a question for the masses. I was doing yet another investigation on the second floor yet this time I found a wall thermostat that was emitting 3.2 mG of EMF however, in the adjacent office there is another wall thermostat in the exact same spot emitting 0 EMF.  How is this possible?

They are two different units.  It's entirely possible. They might be working differently, set differently or wired differently. We had almost the identical thing happen about 3 years ago at a case.

[PPI Brian]

Hi Mark,

Thank you for sharing your digital still images, video and audio clips with us. I apologize for not responding sooner, but I had to finish my evidence review from our last case before I could clear my head and give your audio clip a listen. I am posting the following transcript of your audio file so you can help me identify the anomaly you mentioned:

Mark: Is there somebody in this room with me right now who would like to communicate?
[anomalous sound] bang!
Mark: [sound of footsteps and handling noise as the recorder was picked up]
EVP: [unintelligible]

Is this the correct location of the audio anomaly you mentioned?

[Mark.Yates]

Hi Mark,

Thank you for sharing your digital still images, video and audio clips with us. I apologize for not responding sooner, but I had to finish my evidence review from our last case before I could clear my head and give your audio clip a listen. I am posting the following transcript of your audio file so you can help me identify the anomaly you mentioned:

Mark: Is there somebody in this room with me right now who would like to communicate?
[anomalous sound] bang!
Mark: [sound of footsteps and handling noise as the recorder was picked up]
EVP: [unintelligible]

Is this the correct location of the audio anomaly you mentioned?

The unintelligble part I hear is, I do.

A little further you hear some clicking and inside that clicking I started to hear, not right now.

[PPI Brian]

Hi Mark,

Thank you for sharing your digital still images, video and audio clips with us. I apologize for not responding sooner, but I had to finish my evidence review from our last case before I could clear my head and give your audio clip a listen. I am posting the following transcript of your audio file so you can help me identify the anomaly you mentioned:

Mark: Is there somebody in this room with me right now who would like to communicate?
[anomalous sound] bang!
Mark: [sound of footsteps and handling noise as the recorder was picked up]
EVP: [unintelligible]

Is this the correct location of the audio anomaly you mentioned?

The unintelligble part I hear is, I do.

A little further you hear some clicking and inside that clicking I started to hear, not right now.

Interesting. I'm hearing an anomaly at the very end of the recording. It sounds like three syllables, and I hear something breathy like "directive" or words to that effect. Not exactly sure if I'm hearing the characteristics I normally associate with articulated speech -- these characteristics are features of speech that affect intelligibility when spoken by healthy living people. We look for these same characteristics when analyzing audio clips for potential EVPs. These basic characteristics  include: Articulation, Pronunciation, Speech pauses, Speech pitch, Speech rate and Speech rhythm. Here's a link that explains this better than I can: http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Articulation_(speech)

It is possible that the anomaly was created by handling the recorder, or it might be a Class C anomaly. It has been our experience that many EVP captures are associated with ambient environmental noise, and there are investigators who intentionally introduce noise to the environment (white noise) hoping that paranormal entities will manipulate that sound in order to communicate. We have also identified specific frequency responses of digital recorders that produce digital audio artifacts that have given us "false positives" over the years. Could you tell me the model of recorder you used to capture this clip?  

[Mark.Yates]

My recorder is a COBY CXR190-1G.

I have tried using white noise but only on my laptop and didn't get any results at all but, that's not to say it won't ever happen.

I understand what you somewhat about what you are saying as to it being intelligible and with that in mind I am hearing speech in other parts however, there is so much noise it's hard to decipher.

[PPI Brian]

Hi Mark,

Yes, it is hard to decipher. The use of white noise in paranormal investigation has been debated extensively over the last ten years, and I have always belonged to the EVP  "purest" camp -  I prefer to record without any extraneous and unnecessary elements. The problem with white noise is that it creates an environment that is conducive to pareidolia -- a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimuli (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant. Common examples include seeing images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon or the moon rabbit, and hearing hidden messages on records played in reverse. We can't help it because it's hardwired into our brains. As paranormal researchers we are obligated to control or elimnate as many environmental variables as we can in order to determine a natural explanation for alleged paranormal activity.  

I did some research and found the frequency response on your recorder to be 300 Hz to 3,000 Hz. This is the common frequency response used in all telephonic communication devices, and is commonly referred to as the "voice frequency". Unfortunately this narrow frequency response limits the full harmonic content of the human voice and makes it difficult to to discern between environmental sound sources and potentially paranormal audio anomalies. This is because the recorder filters and "compresses" ambient environmental sounds into the frequency response of the recorder, (in this case the frequency response of the recorder happens to be the "voice frequency") giving an ambient environmental sound a creepy paranormal quality that sometimes sounds like a human voice on play back. The range of human hearing is between 20Hz and 20,000 Hz and PPI recommends using digital recorders with an equivalent frequency response for EVP work. This does not mean you can't capture compelling EVPs with a narrow frequency response recorder, but it does help rule out possible environmental explanations when you catch a good one.  

Here's a link to the manual for your model of recorder:
http://www.cobyusa.com/files/manuals/CXR190_MN.pdf

[Mark.Yates]

Is it possible to change the frequency of the recorder to the recommended frequency of 20Hz to 20,000 Hz? If so, how would I go about accomplishing that feat? Also, I have my mic setting on high. Should I or would it make a difference to set the mic setting to low?

[PPI Brian]

Is it possible to change the frequency of the recorder to the recommended frequency of 20Hz to 20,000 Hz? If so, how would I go about accomplishing that feat? Also, I have my mic setting on high. Should I or would it make a difference to set the mic setting to low?

Hi Mark,

That's a very good question. I experimented with a couple of different models of digital voice recorders with similar frequency responses, believing the frequency response was the direct result of inferior electret condensor microphone installed on the recorders. To bypass the built in microphone, I plugged an external microphone with a frequency response of 20Hz to 20,000 Hz into the microphone jack, but it did nothing to change the record/playback frequency response. The frequency response is hardwired into the digital recorder, so it can't be changed. The microphone settings are only gain settings, and do not change the frequency response. Setting the microphone on "low" will only lower the overall volume of the recording, which can make minute improvements in the sound quality, but you might miss a faint sound by using the "low" setting. 

[Mark.Yates]

Last night I downloaded a new digital audio editor called, MediaVigor Audio Editor. I used it on the EVP everyone is listening to and with amazing results I've reduced the white noise to almost nothing to reveal the anamolous voice after the footsteps. I found that it is easier to use as far as the different passes like, band, high, low, low shelf, and high shelf. For me I find it easier to use since I'm not technically advanced in the area of audio editing. Plus you can open up pretty much any file format and save it as an mp3.

[PPI Brian]

I've never used that audio editor. It sounds very interesting. Most of us use Audacity, which is also a free download. It also has mp3 capability, but the encoder must be downloaded seperately. The only thing that's kind of weird about Audacity is that it only recognizes WAV and MP3 files. If your recorder records in WMA format it won't read the file unless you convert it. Hopefully sourceforge will release a new version that support WMA in the future.  

[Mark.Yates]

I have Audacity too.  This new one I mentioned you can open MP3, MP2, MPEG, WAV, OGG, AVI, g721, g723, g726, VOX, RAW, PCM, WMA, and CDA.  I just looked to get it right.
http://www.mediavigor.com/AudioEditorSetup.exe It's free too.

[PPI Brian]

Thank you for the link, Mark. We're always looking for things that make our evidence analysis easier. I'm going to download the program and experiment with it. Ah, something new to tinker with...