AVP. Audible Voice Phenomena. Are they really from beyond the grave? Regardless of how you value them, a little knowledge about the most common varieties of them and the issues that should be addressed with them will go a long way to making your account of your investigation something others can depend on....

The American originator of EVP Classification system, Sarah Estep, describes the Class A event of interest as a "clear and distinct voice or sound that is universally accepted and undisputed, because it must be understood by anyone with normal hearing and without being told or prompted to what is being said or heard. It can be heard without the use of headphones.” Estep here is talking about the consensus that forms around what’s clear and trustworthy....

Class B EVPs suffer from an identity crisis, fraught with credibility issues and doubt.  As such, they're easy to misclassify.  In fact, the uncertainty about so many Class B EVPs has raised many a debate as to whether or not another system for classification should be used....

Why are Class C EVPs the most common, you may ask? Probably because they're the least likely to be paranormal. Some could be paranormal, certainly, but they're usually too obscured to say with any certainty that they're not caused by some other normal acoustic source in the environment, much less interpret what exactly they're saying....

EVP are probably the most prolific results produced by paranormal investigations.  There are good things about this, and there are bad things.  The bad news is that, working under the assumption evidence of the paranormal is a rarity, with so many examples of EVP populating the internet, the likelihood any of it being genuinely "paranormal" is pretty low.

The subject of Electronic Voice Phenomena or EVP has provided some of the most compelling evidence of paranormal activity ever captured. But the most intriguing characteristic of Electronic Voice Phenomena is that anyone with a quality recorder can capture it; the phenomena is available to any one willing to spend the time to investigate and carefully analyze their recordings.

Even in the earliest days at PPI, I was heavily involved in the report-writing side of things. In fact, I created the report system PPI continues to use today. Consequently, other team members submitted to me their “evidence”— which is what we were still calling it back then. They provided me with short narratives about their data and experiences, and even if they'd summarily say, "Found nothin'," they’d still burn their digital audio and photos onto writable CDs, which I then documented piecemeal and added to the report as fussily word-processed charts....

Part 3 of our presentation: Science & Beyond - A Look at the Science Behind 21st Century Paranomrmal Investigation -is entitled Evidence Analysis - Wrong Thinking, Seeing Ain't Believing and Can You Hear Me Now? Presented by PPI President Karl Sherlock.

Recorded October 11, 2011

Length: 00:35:48

While it can sometimes become as tedious as any other component of the post-investigation process, audio review is among the most rewarding phases of an investigation. Not only does it tend to produce proportionally more results than any other data set, it generally offers the most intriguing findings. In fact, most investigators will cite their best EVP as their most persuasive "evidence" of paranormal activity. This is because the voices that emerge from out of that an unseen realm, so fallibly human and familiar to us, invariably appeal to our pathos in ways cold spots and orb photos could never hope to....