Firstly, although they’re often called “EVP vigils,” truthfully they can involve all types of equipment, and the purpose need not be primarily to acquire EVPs.  Establish beforehand with your colleagues just how much you would like to achieve by conducting a vigil:  What’s sorts of evidence do you hope to acquire?  What kind of communication are you looking to establish?  How much do you know (or feel you know) about the background of your case, and which background details do you want to emphasize during the vigil?  Are there buzzwords, target objects, hot-button issues, or specific behaviors that you intend to use to “bait” activity?  Which of your colleagues are involved in any of these?  Etc. 

Secondly, try not to get stuck in a single assumption about who or what you’re interrogating.  For instance, if you presume that a child is the source of paranormal activity, but your evidence points to an adult male, you will have wasted your time using childish appeals and using childhood activities as your frame of reference (not to mention an insulting amount of “baby talk”.)  Leave some options to switch gears and test the range of possibilities.

Thirdly, talk frankly and clearly about where the equipment in the room is, and how it might be identified.  A nineteenth century spirit is not necessarily going to know what a K-II meter is, nor understand the concept of a device capturing a voice. Try to explain how “recording” might be a process already familiar to them—digital audio is like a printing press to reproduce sound instead of printed word; a video camera is like a moving picture book that captures sketches of what’s in the room; a tape recorder is like a tiny Victrola.  And so on.  Encourage them to experiment with the equipment and figure out how to influence it, but reassure them that they can’t do anything to harm it, nor will they be harmed by it (e.g., that the different colored lights are not hot, like flames, and won’t burn them).  Explain to them, however, that you won’t necessarily be able to hear or see their responses, and that they shouldn’t think you don’t care if they’re not making themselves understood; reassure them that the recorded evidence will let them hear and perhaps see what you can’t now.

Don’t focus too much on just the equipment, either.  After all, you’re investigating this location because others have reported activity, and “activity” is another way of saying that an entity has made its presence known.  Make use of what entities already know how to do, as well as encourage them to experiment with what they don’t.  Ask them to use old-school knocks and taps, to touch people in the room, to change the temperature, etc.

One last basic caution to recommend is, don’t make too many assumptions about what you’re trying to communicate with, including the fact that the entity understands it’s dead.  Truthfully, we don’t always know that we are dealing with spirits of dead, instead of, say, elemental spirits, parallel universes, time shifts, or something else altogether.  Instead of asking, for example, “Do you know you are dead?” you may wish to ask, “Do you know where you are and why?”  Even if you strongly suspect that you are dealing with a posthumous soul, calling attention to that—maybe for the first time—comes on a little strong.  Be sensitive to the needs of what you can’t see.

Now that basics have been covered, let’s review some of the finer points of using equipment and interrogation techniques during a vigil.

Synchronizing and Documenting

Whether or not you bring along an audio recording device to do the job, noting the start time of your vigil, the specific location, and the names of all parties present is an indispensable practice.  Later, in the post-investigation stage of evidence analysis, it will help you to cross-reference your eyewitness experiences and media evidence, and in the event your group provides outreach to private clients, it will also assist in the report process.  Furthermore, faithfully announce any outside or inside noise, any activity that might create a sound that could later be interpreted as anomalous.  The most frequent offenders in this are whisperers.  Don’t whisper during a vigil; use your normal tone of voice.  That way no one will mistake something you said under your breath as an EVP.

Baselines
Although general baseline sweeps are conducted before the investigation goes “lights out,” it’s still good practice to enter into a vigil session reestablishing what the norm is for temperature, EMFs, light quality, and, most importantly, sounds.  This last factor is too often overlooked, and in the evidence analysis random noises that could have been accounted for in an on-the-spot baseline sound reading become false EVP hits, time-consuming as well as disappointing to discount.

Equipment Placement
Obviously, it’s necessary to place equipment like K-II meters in a central location where it can be monitored, and it’s handy to have tools like EMF readers, still shot cameras, video cams, thermocouples and anemometers at the ready.  However, audio recorders are not always best placed nearby or even centrally.  If three or more investigators bring digital audio recorders, this is an opportunity to triangulate the location of an EVP in the room by comparing clarity and volume of the same EVP.  Furthermore, such comparisons will provide a system whereby anomalous sounds can be cross-checked.  (For example, what sounds like a voice across the room in one recording might well be the zipper of an investigator’s jacket on another recording.)  Likewise, a video record of a vigil sometimes reveals that the investigators’ own activities are responsible for an anomalous sound in the audio evidence.  When one piece of equipment can be positioned to enhance the effectiveness of another, everyone wins:  placing a digital audio recorder beside a K-II meter, for example, allows for the possibility of EMF communication as well as articulated speech, and training a video camera on the both of them at worst documents the activity as it’s happening and at best captures unseen anomalies that coincide with the activity visible on the K-II.  Whatever your strategy, good documentation is half the battle of an effective investigation.  If you can place your equipment to assist this process—all the better!  However, be sure to announce where you’re placing your audio equipment, and include those details in the log you submit for the report.

Introductions and Explanations
Let’s say you wake up tomorrow morning to find that there are workers in hazmat suits and you can’t get a straight answer from any one of them as to who they are, why they’re in your home, and what the hazard might be.  You’d either be panicked or you’d order everyone to get out.  Either way, the lack of communication would adversely affect your mood.  Similarly, introductions and explanations of your intentions are polite, productive and reassuring to any unseen entity that might otherwise be experiencing such frustration at strangers in its midst.  It’s good for at least one team member to state who the group is, who invited it, and why it has come.  However, individual introductions are also encouraged, followed by an invitation to disclose the name of any unseen presence in the room.  Creating a rapport with alleged spirits starts with a show of the rapport you already have with one another as colleagues and friends.  

Names