Within ghost hunting and parapsychology , electronic voice phenomena ( EVP ) are sounds found on electronic recordings that are interpreted as spirit voices. Parapsychologist Konstantīns Raudive , who popularized the idea in the 1970s, described EVP as typically brief, usually the length of a word or short phrase.
146-437: Enthusiasts consider EVP to be a form of paranormal phenomenon often found in recordings with static or other background noise . Scientists regard EVP as a form of auditory pareidolia (interpreting random sounds as voices in one's own language) and a pseudoscience promulgated by popular culture. Prosaic explanations for EVP include apophenia (perceiving patterns in random information), equipment artifacts, and hoaxes. As
292-420: A 78 rpm record , but it wasn't until 1956 – after switching to a reel-to-reel tape recorder – that he believed he was successful. Working with Raymond Bayless, von Szalay conducted several recording sessions with a custom-made apparatus, consisting of a microphone in an insulated cabinet connected to an external recording device and speaker. Szalay reported finding many sounds on the tape that could not be heard on
438-502: A million dollars for proof that any phenomena, including EVP, are caused paranormally. In 2015, an investigation by associate professor of Sociology Marc Eaton on the demography of United States paranormal groups that used electronic voice phenomenon found an overrepresentation of white participants, raised in the Roman Catholic Church (which is only 21% of the U.S. population), mainly with some post-secondary education. Although
584-456: A pseudoscience . Parapsychology has been criticized for continuing investigation despite being unable to provide convincing evidence for the existence of any psychic phenomena after more than a century of research. By the 2000s, the status of paranormal research in the United States had greatly declined from its height in the 1970s, with the majority of work being privately funded and only
730-519: A "spirit-hand" was a false limb attached on the end of the medium Daniel Dunglas Home 's arm. Merrifield also claimed to have observed Home use his foot in the séance room. The poet Robert Browning and his wife Elizabeth attended a séance on 23, July 1855 in Ealing with the Rymers. During the séance a spirit face materialized which Home claimed was the son of Browning who had died in infancy. Browning seized
876-588: A 1983 novel by William Peter Blatty , contains a subplot where Dr. Vincent Amfortas, a terminally ill neurologist, leaves a "to-be-opened-upon-my-death" letter for Father Dyer detailing his accounts of contact with the dead, including the doctor's recently deceased wife, Ann, through EVP recordings. Amfortas' character and the EVP subplot do not appear in the film version of the novel, The Exorcist III , although in Kinderman's dream dead people are seen trying to communicate with
1022-436: A 2019 television segment on Last Week Tonight featuring prominent purported mediums including Theresa Caputo , John Edward , Tyler Henry , and Sylvia Browne , John Oliver criticized the media for promoting mediums because this exposure convinces viewers that such powers are real, and so enable neighborhood mediums to prey on grieving families. Oliver said "...when psychic abilities are presented as authentic, it emboldens
1168-526: A causal role in the formation of paranormal belief. Research has shown that people reporting contact with aliens have higher levels of absorption, dissociativity, fantasy proneness and tendency to hallucinate . Findings have shown in specific cases that paranormal belief acts as a psychodynamic coping function and serves as a mechanism for coping with stress . Survivors from childhood sexual abuse , violent and unsettled home environments have reported to have higher levels of paranormal belief. A study of
1314-457: A connecting ledge between two iron balconies. The psychologist and psychical researcher Stanley LeFevre Krebs had exposed the Bangs Sisters as frauds. During a séance he employed a hidden mirror and caught them tampering with a letter in an envelope and writing a reply in it under the table which they would pretend a spirit had written. The British materialization medium Rosina Mary Showers
1460-423: A fascinating application of psychology and not the existence of paranormal abilities. In a series of experiments holding fake séances, (Wiseman et al . 2003) paranormal believers and disbelievers were suggested by an actor that a table was levitating when, in fact, it remained stationary. After the seance, approximately one third of the participants incorrectly reported that the table had moved. The results showed
1606-488: A ghost is a manifestation of the spirit or soul of a person. Alternative theories expand on that idea and include belief in the ghosts of deceased animals. Sometimes the term "ghost" is used synonymously with any spirit or demon ; however, in popular usage the term typically refers to the spirit of a deceased person. The belief in ghosts as souls of the departed is closely tied to the concept of animism , an ancient belief that attributed souls to everything in nature. As
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#17330928311161752-469: A ghost, he reports that only 1% report seeing a full-fledged ghost while the rest report strange sensory stimuli, such as seeing fleeting shadows or wisps of smoke, or the sensation of hearing footsteps or feeling a presence. Wiseman makes the claim that, rather than experiencing paranormal activity, it is activity within our own brains that creates these strange sensations. Michael Persinger proposed that ghostly experiences could be explained by stimulating
1898-440: A global explanation for all manifestations of EVP. In a 2019 investigation of a supposed haunted painting in a West Virginia museum, paranormal researcher Kenny Biddle investigated the claims made by the museum owner and ghost hunters that an EVP recording clearly saying the woman's name, "Annie", is really the voice of the woman in the portrait. The name Annie is written on the back of the portrait, which primes anyone listening for
2044-477: A greater percentage of believers reporting that the table had moved. In another experiment the believers had also reported that a handbell had moved when it had remained stationary and expressed their belief that the fake séances contained genuine paranormal phenomena. The experiments strongly supported the notion that in the séance room, believers are more suggestible than disbelievers for suggestions that are consistent with their belief in paranormal phenomena. In
2190-501: A guide. A radio was tuned to an empty frequency, and over 81 sessions a total of 60 hours and 11 minutes of recordings were collected. During recordings, a person either sat in silence or attempted to make verbal contact with potential sources of EVP. Barušs stated that he did record several events that sounded like voices, but they were too few and too random to represent viable data and too open to interpretation to be described definitively as EVP. He concluded: "While we did replicate EVP in
2336-501: A lot of people believe in it because they "want it to be so". A 2013 study that utilized a biological motion perception task discovered a "relation between illusory pattern perception and supernatural and paranormal beliefs and suggest that paranormal beliefs are strongly related to agency detection biases". A 2014 study discovered that schizophrenic patients have more belief in psi than healthy adults. Some scientists have investigated possible neurocognitive processes underlying
2482-470: A media expert for the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry , examined Fontana's article and suggested an entirely naturalistic explanation for the phenomena. According to the skeptical investigator Joe Nickell "Occasionally, especially with older tape and under humid conditions, as the tape travels it can adhere to one of the guide posts. When this happens on a deck where both supply and take-up spindles are powered,
2628-503: A medium is doing a "reading" for a particular person, that person is known as the "sitter". In the 1860s and 1870s, trance mediums, also known as trance speakers, were very popular; this allowed female adherents, many who had strong interests in social justice, to speak in public in an era where doing so went against existing social norms. Many trance mediums delivered passionate speeches on abolitionism , temperance , and women's suffrage . Scholars have described Leonora Piper as one of
2774-471: A message from his late mother. Konstantin Raudive , a Latvian psychologist who had taught at Uppsala University , Sweden, and who had worked in conjunction with Jürgenson, made over 100,000 recordings which he described as being communications with discarnate people. Some of these recordings were conducted in an RF-screened laboratory and contained words Raudive said were identifiable. In an attempt to confirm
2920-526: A name, because you're listening to radio broadcasts, news reports, commercials, and so on—which often include names." Biddle lists words such as "company, anything, anyone, mahogany, many, or even any" as words that can be commonly heard while listening to the radio. The phrase '"... and he ..."' would also sound like "Annie" to anyone primed to listen for the name Annie. Skeptics such as David Federlein , Chris French , Terence Hines and Michael Shermer say that EVP are usually recorded by raising
3066-527: A new language. Skeptics suggest that the claimed instances may be misinterpretations of natural phenomena, inadvertent influence of the electronic equipment by researchers, or deliberate influencing of the researchers and the equipment by third parties. EVP and ITC are seldom researched within the scientific community , so most research in the field is carried out by amateur researchers who lack training and resources to conduct scientific research, and who are motivated by subjective notions. Paranormal claims for
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#17330928311163212-446: A number of simple scientific explanations that can account for why some listeners to the static on audio devices may believe they hear voices, including radio interference and the tendency of the human brain to recognize patterns in random stimuli. Some recordings may be hoaxes created by frauds or pranksters. Auditory pareidolia is a situation created when the brain incorrectly interprets random patterns as being familiar patterns. In
3358-836: A possible explanation. According to the psychologist James Alcock what people hear in EVP recordings can best be explained by apophenia, cross-modulation or expectation and wishful thinking . Alcock concluded "Electronic Voice Phenomena are the products of hope and expectation; the claims wither away under the light of scientific scrutiny." Interference , for example, is seen in EVP recordings, especially those recorded on devices which contain RLC circuitry . These cases represent radio signals of voices or other sounds from broadcast sources. Interference from CB Radio transmissions and wireless baby monitors, or anomalies generated through cross modulation from other electronic devices, are all documented phenomena. It
3504-484: A preponderance of research shows that women and "less socially integrated individuals" are more likely to believe in ghosts, the demographic samples in Eaton's research did not reflect this. The concept of EVP has influenced popular culture. It is popular as an entertaining pursuit, as in ghost hunting , and as a means of dealing with grief. It has influenced literature, radio, film, television, and music. Investigation of EVP
3650-594: A product of radio interference combined with auditory pareidolia and the Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Biopsychocybernetics Research, a non-profit organization dedicated to studying anomalous phenomena related to neurophysiological conditions. According to the AA-EVP it is "the only organized group of researchers we know of specializing in the study of ITC". Parapsychologists and spiritualists have an ongoing interest in EVP. Many spiritualists experiment with
3796-696: A random sample of 502 adults revealed paranormal experiences were common in the population which were linked to a history of childhood trauma and dissociative symptoms. Research has also suggested that people who perceive themselves as having little control over their lives may develop paranormal beliefs to help provide an enhanced sense of control. The similarities between paranormal events and descriptions of trauma have also been noted. Gender differences in surveys on paranormal belief have reported women scoring higher than men overall and men having greater belief in UFOs and extraterrestrials. Surveys have also investigated
3942-426: A recording device amidst a static/white noise background. In With the people from the bridge , a 2014 play by Dimitris Lyacos based on the idea of the return of the dead, the voice of the female character NCTV is transmitted from a television monitor amidst a static/white noise background. EVP is the subject of Vyktoria Pratt Keating 's song "Disembodied Voices on Tape" from her 2003 album Things that Fall from
4088-400: A report by paranormal investigator Alexander MacRae. MacRae conducted recording sessions using a device of his own design that generated EVP. In an attempt to demonstrate that different individuals would interpret EVP in the recordings the same way, MacRae asked seven people to compare some selections to a list of five phrases he provided, and to choose the best match. MacRae said the results of
4234-413: A response to a player initiated question. It has been featured on television series like Ghost Whisperer , In Search Of… (1981) , The Omega Factor , A Haunting , Ghost Hunters , MonsterQuest , Ghost Adventures , The Secret Saturdays , Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files , Supernatural , Derren Brown Investigates , Ghost Lab and Buzzfeed Unsolved: Supernatural Legion ,
4380-454: A small amount of research being carried out in university laboratories. In 2007, Britain had a number of privately funded laboratories in university psychology departments. Publication remained limited to a small number of niche journals, and to date there have been no experimental results that have gained wide acceptance in the scientific community as valid evidence of the paranormal. While parapsychologists look for quantitative evidence of
4526-571: A television in the home of a colleague, which had been purposefully tuned to a vacant channel. ITC enthusiasts also look at the TV and video camera feedback loop of the Droste effect . In 1979, parapsychologist D. Scott Rogo described an alleged paranormal phenomenon in which people report that they receive simple, brief, and usually single-occurrence telephone calls from spirits of deceased relatives, friends, or strangers. Rosemary Guiley has written "within
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4672-439: A term coined by the subculture. Approaching the paranormal from a research perspective is often difficult because of the lack of acceptable physical evidence from most of the purported phenomena. By definition, the paranormal (or supernatural) does not conform to conventional expectations of nature . Therefore, a phenomenon cannot be confirmed as paranormal using the scientific method because, if it could be, it would no longer fit
4818-458: A trial Monck was convicted for his fraudulent mediumship and was sentenced to three months in prison. In 1876, William Eglinton was exposed as a fraud when the psychical researcher Thomas Colley seized a "spirit" materialization in his séance and cut off a portion of its cloak. It was discovered that the cut piece matched a cloth found in Eglinton's suitcase . Colley also pulled the beard off
4964-904: A user gets is purely coincidental, or simply the result of pareidolia . Paranormal researcher Ben Radford writes that Frank's Box is a "modern version of the Ouija board ... also known as the 'broken radio'". In 1982, Sarah Estep founded the American Association of Electronic Voice Phenomena (AA-EVP) in Severna Park, Maryland , a nonprofit organization with the purpose of increasing awareness of EVP, and of teaching standardized methods for capturing it. Estep began her exploration of EVP in 1976, and says she has made hundreds of recordings of messages from deceased friends, relatives, and extraterrestrials whom she speculated originated from other planets or dimensions. The term Instrumental Trans-Communication (ITC)
5110-667: A variety of techniques for spirit communication which they believe provide evidence of the continuation of life. According to the National Spiritualist Association of Churches, "An important modern day development in mediumship is spirit communications via an electronic device. This is most commonly known as Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP)". An informal survey by the organization's Department Of Phenomenal Evidence cites that 1/3 of churches conduct sessions in which participants seek to communicate with spirit entities using EVP. The James Randi Educational Foundation offered
5256-477: A vast underworld of unscrupulous vultures, more than happy to make money by offering an open line to the afterlife, as well as many other bullshit services." From its earliest beginnings to contemporary times, mediumship practices have had many instances of fraud and trickery. Séances take place in darkness so the poor lighting conditions can become an easy opportunity for fraud. Physical mediumship that has been investigated by scientists has been discovered to be
5402-475: A very serious scientific interest in the work of medium Eusapia Palladino . Other prominent adherents included journalist and pacifist William T. Stead (1849–1912) and physician and author Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930). After the exposure of the fraudulent use of stage magic tricks by physical mediums such as the Davenport Brothers and the Bangs Sisters , mediumship fell into disrepute. However,
5548-514: A way to cope in the face of psychological uncertainties and physical stressors. The deficiency hypothesis asserts that such beliefs arise because people are mentally defective in some way, ranging from low intelligence or poor critical thinking ability to a full-blown psychosis' (Radin). The deficiency hypothesis gets some support from the fact that the belief in the paranormal is an aspect of a schizotypical personality (Pizzagalli, Lehman and Brugger, 2001). A psychological study involving 174 members of
5694-531: Is a factor underlying paranormal belief. Many studies have found a link between personality and psychopathology variables correlating with paranormal belief. Some studies have also shown that fantasy proneness correlates positively with paranormal belief. Bainbridge (1978) and Wuthnow (1976) found that the most susceptible people to paranormal belief are those who are poorly educated, unemployed or have roles that rank low among social values. The alienation of these people due to their status in society
5840-783: Is above, beyond, or contrary to that is para . On the classification of paranormal subjects, psychologist Terence Hines said in his book Pseudoscience and the Paranormal (2003): The paranormal can best be thought of as a subset of pseudoscience . What sets the paranormal apart from other pseudosciences is a reliance on explanations for alleged phenomena that are well outside the bounds of established science. Thus, paranormal phenomena include extrasensory perception (ESP), telekinesis, ghosts, poltergeists, life after death, reincarnation, faith healing, human auras, and so forth. The explanations for these allied phenomena are phrased in vague terms of "psychic forces", "human energy fields", and so on. This
5986-559: Is an indie -developed first-person horror adventure video game released on Steam in June 2015 for Microsoft Windows , PlayStation 4 , Xbox One and, OS X , utilizing the Unity engine . The game is about an audio recordist called Juliette Waters, who records the voices of ghosts through electronic voice phenomenon. She finds herself trapped in an old family park, shut down since a landslide in 1971, and she now needs to use her recorder to survive
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6132-412: Is considered by many as the father of modern paranormalism, which is the study of the paranormal. The magazine Fortean Times continues Charles Fort's approach, regularly reporting anecdotal accounts of the paranormal. Such anecdotal collections, lacking the reproducibility of empirical evidence , are not amenable to scientific investigation . The anecdotal approach is not a scientific approach to
6278-589: Is even possible for circuits to resonate without any internal power source by means of radio reception . Capture errors are anomalies created by the method used to capture audio signals, such as noise generated through the over-amplification of a signal at the point of recording. Artifacts created during attempts to boost the clarity of an existing recording might explain some EVP. Methods include re-sampling, frequency isolation, and noise reduction or enhancement, which can cause recordings to take on qualities significantly different from those that were present in
6424-438: Is in contrast to many pseudoscientific explanations for other nonparanormal phenomena, which, although very bad science, are still couched in acceptable scientific terms. Ghost hunting is the investigation of locations that are reportedly haunted by ghosts . Typically, a ghost-hunting team will attempt to collect evidence supporting the existence of paranormal activity. In traditional ghostlore , and fiction featuring ghosts,
6570-448: Is independent of extraversion and psychoticism ". A correlation has been found between paranormal belief and irrational thinking . In an experiment Wierzbicki (1985) reported a significant correlation between paranormal belief and the number of errors made on a syllogistic reasoning task, suggesting that believers in the paranormal have lower cognitive ability . A relationship between narcissistic personality and paranormal belief
6716-585: Is known as channeling . Belief in psychic ability is widespread despite the absence of empirical evidence for its existence. Scientific researchers have attempted to ascertain the validity of claims of mediumship for more than one hundred years and have consistently failed to confirm them. As late as 2005, an experiment undertaken by the British Psychological Society reaffirmed that test subjects who self-identified as mediums demonstrated no mediumistic ability. Mediumship gained popularity during
6862-436: Is natural for our brains to work too hard at it, thereby detecting human or ghost-like behavior in everyday meaningless stimuli. James Randi , an investigator with a background in illusion , felt that the simplest explanation for those claiming paranormal abilities is often trickery, illustrated by demonstrating that the spoon bending abilities of psychic Uri Geller can easily be duplicated by trained stage magicians. He
7008-540: Is played by fraud in spiritualistic practices, both in the physical and psychical, or automatic, phenomena, but especially in the former. The frequency with which mediums have been convicted of fraud has, indeed, induced many people to abandon the study of psychical research, judging the whole bulk of the phenomena to be fraudulently produced. In Britain, the Society for Psychical Research has investigated mediumship phenomena. Critical SPR investigations into purported mediums and
7154-423: Is said to encourage them to appeal to paranormal or magical beliefs. Research has associated paranormal belief with low cognitive ability , low IQ and a lack of science education . Intelligent and highly educated participants involved in surveys have proven to have less paranormal belief. Tobacyk (1984) and Messer and Griggs (1989) discovered that college students with better grades have less belief in
7300-399: Is the practice of purportedly mediating communication between familiar spirits or spirits of the dead and living human beings. Practitioners are known as "mediums" or "spirit mediums". There are different types of mediumship or spirit channelling , including séance tables , trance , and ouija . The practice is associated with spiritualism and spiritism . A similar New Age practice
7446-618: Is the subject of hundreds of regional and national groups and Internet message boards. Paranormal investigator John Zaffis claims, "There's been a boom in ghost hunting ever since the Internet took off." Investigators, equipped with electronic gear – like EMF meters , video cameras, and audio recorders – scour reportedly haunted venues , trying to uncover visual and audio evidence of ghosts . Many use portable recording devices in an attempt to capture EVP. Films involving EVP include Poltergeist , The Sixth Sense , and White Noise . Sylvio
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#17330928311167592-557: The American Society for Psychical Research in 1959. Bayless later went on to co-author the 1979 book, Phone Calls From the Dead . In 1959, Swedish painter and film producer Friedrich Jürgenson was recording bird songs. Upon playing the tape later, he heard what he interpreted to be his dead father's voice and then the spirit of his deceased wife calling his name. He went on to make several more recordings, including one that he said contained
7738-494: The Society for Psychical Research completed a delusional ideation questionnaire and a deductive reasoning task. As predicted, the study showed that "individuals who reported a strong belief in the paranormal made more errors and displayed more delusional ideation than skeptical individuals". There was also a reasoning bias which was limited to people who reported a belief in, rather than experience of, paranormal phenomena. The results suggested that reasoning abnormalities may have
7884-479: The Spiritualist religious movement became prominent in the 1840s–1940s with a distinguishing belief that the spirits of the dead can be contacted by mediums , new technologies of the era, including photography , were employed by spiritualists in an effort to demonstrate contact with a spirit world . So popular were such ideas that Thomas Edison was asked in an interview with Scientific American to comment on
8030-548: The pseudosciences of ghost hunting , cryptozoology , and ufology . Proposals regarding the paranormal are different from scientific hypotheses or speculations extrapolated from scientific evidence because scientific ideas are grounded in empirical observations and experimental data gained through the scientific method . In contrast, those who argue for the existence of the paranormal explicitly do not base their arguments on empirical evidence but rather on anecdote, testimony and suspicion. The standard scientific models give
8176-589: The " noise floor " — the electrical noise created by all electrical devices — in order to create white noise . When this noise is filtered , it can be made to produce noises which sound like speech. Federlein says that this is no different from using a wah pedal on a guitar, which is a focused sweep filter which moves around the spectrum and creates open vowel sounds. This, according to Federlein, sounds exactly like some EVP. This, in combination with such things as cross modulation of radio stations or faulty ground loops can cause
8322-404: The "materialization" and discovered it to be the bare foot of Home. To make the deception worse, Browning had never lost a son in infancy. Browning's son Robert in a letter to The Times , December 5, 1902, referred to the incident "Home was detected in a vulgar fraud." The researchers Joseph McCabe and Trevor H. Hall exposed the " levitation " of Home as nothing more than his moving across
8468-638: The "products of the medium's own psychological dynamics." A fraudulent medium may obtain information about their sitters by secretly eavesdropping on sitter's conversations or searching telephone directories, the internet and newspapers before the sittings. A technique called cold reading can also be used to obtain information from the sitter's behavior, clothing, posture, and jewellery. The psychologist Richard Wiseman has written: Cold reading also explains why psychics have consistently failed scientific tests of their powers. By isolating them from their clients, psychics are unable to pick up information from
8614-512: The 'spirit voices' from a 1970s flexitape. The original recording is from the 1971 record which accompanied Raudive's book 'Breakthrough', and which was re-issued as a flexi-disc in the 1980s free with The Unexplained magazine. Bass Communion 's 2004 album Ghosts on Magnetic Tape was inspired by EVP. The band Giles Corey, founded by Dan Barrett composed a song called "Empty Churches" which features track 2 called 'Raymond Cass', track 36 called 'Justified Theft' and track 38 called 'Tramping' from
8760-515: The 1920s, was among the most prominent debunkers of psychic fraud during the mid-20th century. Many 19th century mediums were discovered to be engaged in fraud . While advocates of mediumship claim that their experiences are genuine, the Encyclopædia Britannica article on spiritualism notes in reference to a case in the 19th century that "...one by one, the Spiritualist mediums were discovered to be engaged in fraud, sometimes employing
8906-419: The 19th-century anthropologist George Frazer explained in his classic work, The Golden Bough (1890), souls were seen as the 'creature within' which animated the body. Although the human soul was sometimes symbolically or literally depicted in ancient cultures as a bird or other animal, it was widely held that the soul was an exact reproduction of the body in every feature, even down to the clothing worn by
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#17330928311169052-695: The Biblical account of the Witch of Endor . Mediumship became quite popular in the 19th-century United States and the United Kingdom after the rise of Spiritualism as a religious movement. Modern Spiritualism is said to date from practices and lectures of the Fox sisters in New York State in 1848. The trance mediums Paschal Beverly Randolph and Emma Hardinge Britten were among the most celebrated lecturers and authors on
9198-471: The Chinese students showing greater skepticism. According to American surveys analysed by Bader et al . (2011) African Americans have the highest belief in the paranormal and while the findings are not uniform the "general trend is for whites to show lesser belief in most paranormal subjects". Polls show that about fifty percent of the United States population believe in the paranormal. Robert L. Park says
9344-671: The Damned (1919), New Lands (1923), Lo! (1931) and Wild Talents (1932); one book was written between New Lands and Lo! , but it was abandoned and absorbed into Lo! Reported events that he collected include teleportation (a term Fort is generally credited with coining); poltergeist events; falls of frogs, fishes, and inorganic materials of an amazing range; crop circles ; unaccountable noises and explosions; spontaneous fires ; levitation ; ball lightning (a term explicitly used by Fort); unidentified flying objects ; mysterious appearances and disappearances; giant wheels of light in
9490-696: The Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), is an organization that aims to publicize the scientific, skeptical approach. It carries out investigations aimed at understanding paranormal reports in terms of scientific understanding, and publishes its results in the Skeptical Inquirer magazine. CSI's Richard Wiseman draws attention to possible alternative explanations for perceived paranormal activity in his article, The Haunted Brain . While he recognizes that approximately 15% of people believe they have experienced an encounter with
9636-552: The Sky , produced by Andrew Giddings of Jethro Tull . Laurie Anderson 's "Example #22", from her 1981 album Big Science , interposes spoken sentences and phrases in German with sung passages in English representing EVP. During the outro to "Rubber Ring" by The Smiths , a sample from an EVP recording is repeated. The phrase "You are sleeping, you do not want to believe," is a 'translation' of
9782-635: The United States, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom. In the United Kingdom, over 340 Spiritualist churches and centres open their doors to the public and free demonstrations of mediumship are regularly performed. In 1958, American Spiritualist C. Dorreen Phillips wrote of her experiences with a medium at Camp Chesterfield , Indiana : "In Rev. James Laughton's séances there are many Indians . They are very noisy and appear to have great power. [...] The little guides, or doorkeepers, are usually Indian boys and girls [who act] as messengers who help to locate
9928-458: The album An Introduction to EVP by The Ghost Orchid which features excerpts from different EVP experiments produced by many researchers, although most are unknown, some have been pointed out to be more known researchers who studied EVP recordings including Friedrich Jurgenson, Raymond Cass and Konstantin Raudive. The 2017 album Katharsis (A Small Victory) of Polish theatre group Teatr Tworzenia by Jarosław Pijarowski contains EVP recordings in
10074-567: The arts of the séance" by Herne and was repeatedly exposed as a fraudulent medium. The medium Henry Slade was caught in fraud many times throughout his career. In a séance in 1876 in London Ray Lankester and Bryan Donkin snatched his slate before the "spirit" message was supposed to be written, and found the writing already there. Slade also played an accordion with one hand under the table and claimed spirits would play it. The magician Chung Ling Soo revealed how Slade had performed
10220-464: The background of its second track "Katharsis – Pandemonium". Paranormal Paranormal events are purported phenomena described in popular culture , folk , and other non-scientific bodies of knowledge, whose existence within these contexts is described as being beyond the scope of normal scientific understanding. Notable paranormal beliefs include those that pertain to extrasensory perception (for example, telepathy ), spiritualism and
10366-442: The belief in unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and the phenomena said to be associated with them. Early in the history of UFO culture, believers divided themselves into two camps. The first held a rather conservative view of the phenomena, interpreting them as unexplained occurrences that merited serious study. They began calling themselves " ufologists " in the 1950s and felt that logical analysis of sighting reports would validate
10512-407: The best-known forms involve a spirit purportedly taking control of a medium's voice and using it to relay a message, or where the medium simply "hears" the message and passes it on. Other forms involve materializations of the spirit or the presence of a voice, and telekinetic activity. In Spiritism and Spiritualism the medium has the role of an intermediary between the world of the living and
10658-544: The brain with weak magnetic fields. Swedish psychologist Pehr Granqvist and his team, attempting to replicate Persinger's research, determined that the paranormal sensations experienced by Persinger's subjects were merely the result of suggestion, and that brain stimulation with magnetic fields did not result in ghostly experiences. Oxford University Justin Barrett has theorized that "agency"—being able to figure out why people do what they do—is so important in everyday life, that it
10804-409: The brain. Physical mediumship is defined as manipulation of energies and energy systems by spirits. This type of mediumship is said to involve perceptible manifestations, such as loud raps and noises, voices, materialized objects, apports, materialized spirit bodies, or body parts such as hands, legs and feet. The medium is used as a source of power for such spirit manifestations. By some accounts, this
10950-582: The brief scattered wave may carry a foreign voice which can interfere with radio receivers. Meteor reflected radio waves last between 0.05 seconds and 1 second, depending on the size of the meteor. There are a number of organizations dedicated to studying EVP and instrumental transcommunication, or which otherwise express interest in the subject. Individuals within these organizations may participate in investigations, author books or journal articles, deliver presentations, and hold conferences where they share experiences. In addition, organizations exist which dispute
11096-453: The case of EVP it could result in an observer interpreting random noise on an audio recording as being the familiar sound of a human voice. The propensity for an apparent voice heard in white noise recordings to be in a language understood well by those researching it, rather than in an unfamiliar language, has been cited as evidence of this, and a broad class of phenomena referred to by author Joe Banks as Rorschach Audio has been described as
11242-567: The content of his collection of recordings, Raudive invited listeners to hear and interpret them. He believed that the clarity of the voices heard in his recordings implied that they could not be readily explained by normal means. Raudive published his first book, Breakthrough: An Amazing Experiment in Electronic Communication with the Dead in 1968 and it was translated into English in 1971. In 1980, William O'Neil constructed an electronic audio device called "The Spiricom". O'Neil claimed
11388-726: The creation (in 1976) of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (now called the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry) and its periodical, the Skeptical Inquirer . Eventually, more mainstream scientists became critical of parapsychology as an endeavor, and statements by the National Academies of Science and the National Science Foundation cast a pall on the claims of evidence for parapsychology. Today, many cite parapsychology as an example of
11534-418: The dead as well. Spiritualism declined in the latter part of the 20th century, but attempts to use portable recording devices and modern digital technologies to communicate with spirits continued. American photographer Attila von Szalay was among the first to try recording what he believed to be voices of the dead as a way to augment his investigations in photographing ghosts. He began his attempts in 1941 using
11680-462: The dead. Sumption claims he received his design instructions from the spirit world. The device is described as a combination white noise generator and AM radio receiver modified to sweep back and forth through the AM band selecting split-second snippets of sound. Critics of the device say its effect is subjective and incapable of being replicated, and since it relies on radio noise, any meaningful response
11826-407: The definition. (However, confirmation would result in the phenomenon being reclassified as part of science.) Despite this problem, studies on the paranormal are periodically conducted by researchers from various disciplines. Some researchers simply study the beliefs in the paranormal regardless of whether the phenomena are considered to objectively exist. This section deals with various approaches to
11972-457: The device was built to specifications which he received psychically from George Mueller, a scientist who had died six years previously. At a Washington, DC press conference on April 6, 1982, O'Neil stated that he was able to hold two-way conversations with spirits through the Spiricom device, and provided the design specifications to researchers for free. However, nobody is known to have replicated
12118-454: The explanation that what appears to be paranormal phenomena is usually a misinterpretation, misunderstanding or anomalous variation of natural phenomena . The term paranormal has existed in the English language since at least 1920. The word consists of two parts: para and normal . The definition implies that the scientific explanation of the world around us is normal and anything that
12264-489: The exposure of fake mediums has led to a number of resignations by Spiritualist members. On the subject of fraud in mediumship Paul Kurtz wrote: No doubt a great importance in the paranormal field is the problem of fraud. The field of psychic research and spiritualism has been so notoriously full of charlatans, such as the Fox sisters and Eusapia Palladino –individuals who claim to have special power and gifts but who are actually conjurers who have hoodwinked scientists and
12410-426: The formation of independent ghost hunting groups that advocate immersive research at alleged paranormal locations. One popular website for ghost hunting enthusiasts lists over 300 of these organizations throughout the United States and the United Kingdom. Scientific skeptics advocate critical investigation of claims of paranormal phenomena: applying the scientific method to reach a rational, scientific explanation of
12556-587: The formation of paranormal beliefs. In a study (Pizzagalli et al . 2000) data demonstrated that "subjects differing in their declared belief in and experience with paranormal phenomena as well as in their schizotypal ideation, as determined by a standardized instrument, displayed differential brain electric activity during resting periods." Another study (Schulter and Papousek, 2008) wrote that paranormal belief can be explained by patterns of functional hemispheric asymmetry that may be related to perturbations during fetal development . Mediumship Mediumship
12702-598: The hopes of finding evidence of extrasensory perception . However, it was revealed that Rhine's experiments contained methodological flaws and procedural errors. In 1957, the Parapsychological Association was formed as the preeminent society for parapsychologists. In 1969, they became affiliated with the American Association for the Advancement of Science . Criticisms of the field were focused in
12848-429: The hypothesis that spirits speak independently of the medium, who facilitates the phenomenon rather than produces it. The role of the medium is to make the connection between the physical and spirit worlds. Trumpets are often utilised to amplify the signal, and directed voice mediums are sometimes known as "trumpet mediums". This form of mediumship also permits the medium to participate in the discourse during séances, since
12994-525: The impression of paranormal activity to some people, in fact, where there have been none. The psychologist David Marks wrote that paranormal phenomena can be explained by magical thinking , mental imagery , subjective validation , coincidence , hidden causes, and fraud. According to studies some people tend to hold paranormal beliefs because they possess psychological traits that make them more likely to misattribute paranormal causation to normal experiences. Research has also discovered that cognitive bias
13140-533: The impression of paranormal voices. The human brain evolved to recognize patterns, and if a person listens to enough noise the brain will detect words, even when there is no intelligent source for them. Expectation also plays an important part in making people believe they are hearing voices in random noise. Apophenia is related to, but distinct from pareidolia. Apophenia is defined as "the spontaneous finding of connections or meaning in things which are random, unconnected or meaningless", and has been put forward as
13286-412: The ionosphere) there is a possibility of meteor reflection of the radio signal. Meteors leave a trail of ionised particles and electrons as they pass through the upper atmosphere (a process called ablation) which reflect transmission radio waves which would usually flow into space. These reflected waves are from transmitters which are below the horizon of the received meteor reflection. In Europe this means
13432-480: The listening panels indicated that the selections were of paranormal origin. Portable digital voice recorders are currently the technology of choice for some EVP investigators. Since some of these devices are very susceptible to Radio Frequency (RF) contamination, EVP enthusiasts sometimes try to record EVP in RF- and sound-screened rooms. Some EVP enthusiasts describe hearing the words in EVP as an ability, much like learning
13578-453: The living by radio. In Pattern Recognition , a 2003 novel by William Gibson , the main character's mother tries to convince her that her father is communicating with her from recordings after his death/disappearance in the September 11, 2001 attacks . In Nyctivoe , a 2001 vampire -inspired play by Dimitris Lyacos , the male character as well as his deceased companion are speaking from
13724-455: The materialization and it was revealed to be a fake, the same as another one found in the suitcase of Eglinton. In 1880 in a séance a spirit named "Yohlande" materialized, a sitter grabbed it and was revealed to be the medium Mme. d'Esperance herself. In September 1878 the British medium Charles Williams and his fellow-medium at the time, A. Rita, were detected in trickery at Amsterdam. During
13870-634: The medium and that there was no evidence for the spirit hypothesis. The idea of mediumship being explained by telepathy was later merged into the " super-ESP " hypothesis of mediumship which is currently advocated by some parapsychologists . In their book How to Think About Weird Things: Critical Thinking for a New Age , authors Theodore Schick and Lewis Vaughn have noted that the spiritualist and ESP hypothesis of mediumship "has yielded no novel predictions, assumes unknown entities or forces, and conflicts with available scientific evidence." Scientists who study anomalistic psychology consider mediumship to be
14016-420: The medium's voice is not required by the spirit to communicate. Leslie Flint was one of the best known exponents of this form of mediumship. Senses used by mental mediums are sometimes defined differently from in other paranormal fields. A medium is said to have psychic abilities but not all psychics function as mediums. The term clairvoyance , for instance, may include seeing spirit and visions instilled by
14162-427: The modern form of the old mediumship, where the "channel" (or channeller) purportedly receives messages from "teaching-spirit", an " Ascended master ", from God , or from an angelic entity , but essentially through the filter of his own waking consciousness (or " Higher Self "). Attempts to communicate with the dead and other living human beings, aka spirits, have been documented back to early human history, such as
14308-556: The most famous trance mediums in the history of Spiritualism. Trance speakers believed that entering a trance gave them access to the spirits and, through them, to knowledge inaccessible in the waking world. Sometimes an assistant would write down the medium's words, such as in the early 20th century collaboration between the trance medium Mrs. Cecil M. Cook of the William T. Stead Memorial Center in Chicago (a religious body incorporated under
14454-404: The name, to know what name to listen for. The EVP was created using a Radio Shack radio "modified to allow it to continually scan through the available AM or FM frequencies without muting the sound." Regarding a general question by the ghost hunter "What is your name?", Biddle writes, "I can guarantee sooner or later you'll hear something that sounds like a name, and there is a good chance of being
14600-567: The night. A sequel, Sylvio 2 , was released on October 11, 2017. Phasmophobia is a co-op horror video game , in which a team of one to four players play as ghost hunters who try to identify hostile ghosts in varying locations. The game features a Spirit Box item used to capture EVPs of certain ghost types, which helps the players identify the type of the ghost they're dealing with. EVPs in Phasmophobia consist of singular words, such as "here", "attack", "death", "adult", etc., each denoting
14746-457: The nineteenth century when ouija boards were used as a source of entertainment. Investigations during this period revealed widespread fraud —with some practitioners employing techniques used by stage magicians —and the practice began to lose credibility. Fraud is still rife in the medium or psychic industry, with cases of deception and trickery being discovered to this day. Several different variants of mediumship have been described; arguably
14892-731: The notion of extraterrestrial visitation. The second camp held a view that coupled ideas of extraterrestrial visitation with beliefs from existing quasi-religious movements. Typically, these individuals were enthusiasts of occultism and the paranormal. Many had backgrounds as active Theosophists or spiritualists , or were followers of other esoteric doctrines. In contemporary times, many of these beliefs have coalesced into New Age spiritual movements. Both secular and spiritual believers describe UFOs as having abilities beyond what are considered possible according to known aerodynamic constraints and physical laws . The transitory events surrounding many UFO sightings preclude any opportunity for
15038-406: The observed behavior). Specific data-gathering methods, such as recording EMF ( electromagnetic field ) readings at haunted locations, have their own criticisms beyond those attributed to the participant-observer approach itself. Participant observation, as an approach to the paranormal, has gained increased visibility and popularity through reality television programs like Ghost Hunters , and
15184-404: The oceans; and animals found outside their normal ranges (see phantom cat ). He offered many reports of OOPArts , the abbreviation for "out of place" artifacts: strange items found in unlikely locations. He is perhaps the first person to explain strange human appearances and disappearances by the hypothesis of alien abduction and was an early proponent of the extraterrestrial hypothesis . Fort
15330-686: The origin of EVP include living humans imprinting thoughts directly on an electronic medium through psychokinesis and communication by discarnate entities such as spirits, nature energies, beings from other dimensions, or extraterrestrials . Paranormal explanations for EVP generally assume production of EVP by a communicating intelligence through means other than the typical functioning of communication technologies . Natural explanations for reported instances of EVP tend to dispute this assumption explicitly and provide explanations which do not require novel mechanisms that are not based on recognized scientific phenomena . One study, by psychologist Imants Barušs ,
15476-429: The original recording. The first EVP recordings may have originated from the use of tape recording equipment with poorly aligned erasure and recording heads, resulting in the incomplete erasure of previous audio recordings on the tape. This could allow a small percentage of previous content to be superimposed or mixed into a new 'silent' recording. For all radio transmissions above 30 MHz (which are not reflected by
15622-403: The paranormal because it leaves verification dependent on the credibility of the party presenting the evidence. Nevertheless, it is a common approach to investigating paranormal phenomena. Experimental investigation of the paranormal has been conducted by parapsychologists . J. B. Rhine popularized the now famous methodology of using card-guessing and dice-rolling experiments in a laboratory in
15768-458: The paranormal in laboratories, a great number of people immerse themselves in qualitative research through participant-observer approaches to the paranormal. Participant-observer methodologies have overlaps with other essentially qualitative approaches, including phenomenological research that seeks largely to describe subjects as they are experienced , rather than to explain them. Participant observation suggests that by immersing oneself in
15914-475: The paranormal. In a case study (Gow, 2004) involving 167 participants the findings revealed that psychological absorption and dissociation were higher for believers in the paranormal. Another study involving 100 students had revealed a positive correlation between paranormal belief and proneness to dissociation. A study (Williams et al . 2007) discovered that " neuroticism is fundamental to individual differences in paranormal belief, while paranormal belief
16060-795: The paranormal: anecdotal , experimental , and participant-observer approaches and the skeptical investigation approach. An anecdotal approach to the paranormal involves the collection of stories told about the paranormal. Charles Fort (1874–1932) is perhaps the best-known collector of paranormal anecdotes. Fort is said to have compiled as many as 40,000 notes on unexplained paranormal experiences , though there were no doubt many more. These notes came from what he called "the orthodox conventionality of Science", which were odd events originally reported in magazines and newspapers such as The Times and scientific journals such as Scientific American , Nature and Science . From this research Fort wrote seven books, though only four survive: The Book of
16206-460: The parapsychology establishment, Rogo was often faulted for poor scholarship, which, critics said, led to erroneous conclusions." In 1995, the parapsychologist David Fontana proposed in an article that poltergeists could haunt tape recorders. He speculated that this may have happened to the parapsychologist Maurice Grosse who investigated the Enfield Poltergeist case. However, Tom Flynn,
16352-407: The person. This is depicted in artwork from various ancient cultures, including such works as the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead ( c. 1550 BCE ), which shows deceased people in the afterlife appearing much as they did before death, including the style of dress. The possibility of extraterrestrial life is not, in itself, a paranormal subject. Many scientists are actively engaged in
16498-405: The phenomena to account for the paranormal claims, taking into account that alleged paranormal abilities and occurrences are sometimes hoaxes or misinterpretations of natural phenomena. A way of summarizing this method is by the application of Occam's razor , which suggests that the simpler solution is usually the correct one. The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), formerly the Committee for
16644-509: The possibility of using his inventions to communicate with spirits. He replied that if the spirits were only capable of subtle influences, a sensitive recording device would provide a better chance of spirit communication than the table tipping and ouija boards mediums employed at the time. However, there is no indication that Edison ever designed or constructed a device for such a purpose. As sound recording became widespread, mediums explored using this technology to demonstrate communication with
16790-405: The precepts of Prophecy and Healing are Divine attributes proven through Mediumship." "Mental mediumship" is communication of spirits with a medium by telepathy . The medium mentally "hears" (clairaudience), "sees" (clairvoyance), and/or feels (clairsentience) messages from spirits. Directly or with the help of a spirit guide, the medium passes the information on to the message's recipient(s). When
16936-423: The public as well–that we have to be especially cautious about claims made on their behalf. Magicians have a long history of exposing the fraudulent methods of mediumship. Early debunkers included Chung Ling Soo , Henry Evans and Julien Proskauer . Later magicians to reveal fraud were Joseph Dunninger , Harry Houdini and Joseph Rinn . Rose Mackenberg , a private investigator who worked with Houdini during
17082-487: The relationship between ethnicity and paranormal belief. In a sample of American university students (Tobacyk et al . 1988) it was found that people of African descent have a higher level of belief in superstitions and witchcraft while belief in extraterrestrial life forms was stronger among people of European descent . Otis and Kuo (1984) surveyed Singapore university students and found Chinese , Indian and Malay students to differ in their paranormal beliefs, with
17228-557: The religion and its beliefs continue in spite of this, with physical mediumship and seances falling out of practice and platform mediumship coming to the fore. In the late 1920s and early 1930s there were around one quarter of a million practising Spiritualists and some two thousand Spiritualist societies in the UK in addition to flourishing microcultures of platform mediumship and 'home circles'. Spiritualism continues to be practised, primarily through various denominational Spiritualist churches in
17374-432: The repeat testing required by the scientific method . Acceptance of UFO theories by the larger scientific community is further hindered by the many possible hoaxes associated with UFO culture. Cryptozoology is a pseudoscience and subculture that aims to prove the existence of entities from the folklore record, such as Bigfoot , chupacabras , or Mokele-mbembe . Cryptozoologists refer to these entities as cryptids ,
17520-451: The result of deception and trickery. Ectoplasm, a supposed paranormal substance, was revealed to have been made from cheesecloth, butter, muslin, and cloth. Mediums would also stick cut-out faces from magazines and newspapers onto cloth or on other props and use plastic dolls in their séances to pretend to their audiences spirits were contacting them. Lewis Spence in his book An Encyclopaedia of Occultism (1960) wrote: A very large part
17666-486: The result of fraud and psychological factors. Research from psychology for over a hundred years suggests that where there is not fraud, mediumship and Spiritualist practices can be explained by hypnotism , magical thinking and suggestion . Trance mediumship, which according to Spiritualists is caused by discarnate spirits speaking through the medium, can be explained by dissociative identity disorder . Illusionists, such as Joseph Rinn have staged fake séances in which
17812-401: The results O'Neil claimed using his own Spiricom devices. O'Neil's partner, retired industrialist George Meek, attributed O'Neil's success, and the inability of others to replicate it, to O'Neil's mediumistic abilities forming part of the loop that made the system work. In 2020 Kenny Biddle wrote a comprehensive article explaining the origins of the Spiricom as developed by O'Neil and Meek. He
17958-616: The search for unicellular life within the Solar System , carrying out studies on the surface of Mars and examining meteors that have fallen to Earth . Projects such as SETI are conducting an astronomical search for radio activity that would show evidence of intelligent life outside the Solar System. Scientific theories of how life developed on Earth allow for the possibility that life also developed on other planets . The paranormal aspect of extraterrestrial life centers largely around
18104-560: The sitters have claimed to have observed genuine supernatural phenomena. Albert Moll studied the psychology of séance sitters. According to (Wolffram, 2012) "[Moll] argued that the hypnotic atmosphere of the darkened séance room and the suggestive effect of the experimenters' social and scientific prestige could be used to explain why seemingly rational people vouchsafed occult phenomena." The psychologists Leonard Zusne and Warren Jones in their book Anomalistic Psychology: A Study of Magical Thinking (1989) wrote that spirits controls are
18250-451: The speaker at the time of recording, some of which were recorded when there was no one in the cabinet. He believed these sounds to be the voices of discarnate spirits. Among the first recordings believed to be spirit voices were such messages as "This is G!", "Hot dog, Art!", and "Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all". Von Szalay and Raymond Bayless's work was published by the Journal of
18396-458: The spirit friends who wish to speak with you." A spirit who uses a medium to manipulate psychic "energy" or "energy systems." In old-line Spiritualism, a portion of the services, generally toward the end, is given over to demonstrations of mediumship through purported contact with the spirits of the dead. A typical example of this way of describing a mediumistic church service is found in the 1958 autobiography of C. Dorreen Phillips. She writes of
18542-581: The spirit world. The Parapsychological Association defines "clairvoyance" as information derived directly from an external physical source. Spiritualists believe that phenomena produced by mediums (both mental and physical mediumship) are the result of external spirit agencies. The psychical researcher Thomson Jay Hudson in The Law of Psychic Phenomena (1892) and Théodore Flournoy in his book Spiritism and Psychology (1911) wrote that all kinds of mediumship could be explained by suggestion and telepathy from
18688-546: The statutes of the State of Illinois) and the journalist Lloyd Kenyon Jones . The latter was a non-medium Spiritualist who transcribed Cook's messages in shorthand . He edited them for publication in book and pamphlet form. Castillo (1995) states, Trance phenomena result from the behavior of intense focusing of attention, which is the key psychological mechanism of trance induction. Adaptive responses, including institutionalized forms of trance, are 'tuned' into neural networks in
18834-526: The subject in the mid-19th century. Allan Kardec coined the term Spiritism around 1860. Kardec wrote that conversations with spirits by selected mediums were the basis of his The Spirits' Book and later, his five-book collection, Spiritist Codification . Some scientists of the period who investigated Spiritualism also became converts. They included chemist Robert Hare , physicist William Crookes (1832–1919) and evolutionary biologist Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913). Nobel laureate Pierre Curie took
18980-448: The subject that is being studied, a researcher is presumed to gain understanding of the subject. Criticisms of participant observation as a data-gathering technique are similar to criticisms of other approaches to the paranormal, but also include an increased threat to the scientific objectivity of the researcher, unsystematic gathering of data, reliance on subjective measurement, and possible observer effects (i.e. observation may distort
19126-522: The tape continues to feed, creating a fold. It was such a loop of tape, Flynn theorizes, that threaded its way amid the works of Grosse's recorder." In 1997, Imants Barušs , of the Department of Psychology at the University of Western Ontario, conducted a series of experiments using the methods of EVP investigator Konstantin Raudive , and the work of "instrumental transcommunication researcher" Mark Macy, as
19272-520: The techniques of stage magicians in their attempts to convince people of their clairvoyant powers." The article also notes that "the exposure of widespread fraud within the spiritualist movement severely damaged its reputation and pushed it to the fringes of society in the United States." At a séance in the house of the solicitor John Snaith Rymer in Ealing in July 1855, a sitter Frederick Merrifield observed that
19418-429: The trick. The British medium Francis Ward Monck was investigated by psychical researchers and discovered to be a fraud. On November 3, 1876, during the séance a sitter demanded that Monck be searched. Monck ran from the room, locked himself in another room and escaped out of a window. A pair of stuffed gloves was found in his room, as well as cheesecloth, reaching rods and other fraudulent devices in his luggage. After
19564-466: The tricks she had used. Frank Herne a British medium who formed a partnership with the medium Charles Williams was repeatedly exposed in fraudulent materialization séances. In 1875, he was caught pretending to be a spirit during a séance in Liverpool and was found "clothed in about two yards of stiffened muslin, wound round his head and hanging down as far as his thigh." Florence Cook had been "trained in
19710-506: The validity of the phenomena on scientific grounds. The Association TransCommunication (ATransC), formerly the American Association of Electronic Voice Phenomena (AA-EVP), and the International Ghost Hunters Society conduct ongoing investigations of EVP and ITC including collecting examples of purported EVP available over the internet. The Rorschach Audio Project, initiated by sound artist Joe Banks, which presents EVP as
19856-408: The way those clients dress or behave. By presenting all of the volunteers involved in the test with all of the readings, they are prevented from attributing meaning to their own reading, and therefore can't identify it from readings made for others. As a result, the type of highly successful hit rate that psychics enjoy on a daily basis comes crashing down and the truth emerges – their success depends on
20002-504: The weak sense of finding voices on audio tapes, none of the phenomena found in our study was clearly anomalous, let alone attributable to discarnate beings. Hence we have failed to replicate EVP in the strong sense." The findings were published in the Journal of Scientific Exploration in 2001, and include a literature review. In 2005, the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research published
20148-474: The world of spirit. Mediums say that they can listen to and relay messages from spirits, or that they can allow a spirit to control their body and speak through it directly or by using automatic writing or drawing . Spiritualists classify types of mediumship into two main categories: "mental" and "physical": During seances, mediums are said to go into trances , varying from light to deep, that permit spirits to control their minds. Channeling can be seen as
20294-743: The worship services at the Spiritualist Camp Chesterfield in Chesterfield, Indiana : "Services are held each afternoon, consisting of hymns, a lecture on philosophy, and demonstrations of mediumship." Today "demonstration of mediumship" is part of the church service at all churches affiliated with the National Spiritualist Association of Churches (NSAC) and the Spiritualists' National Union (SNU). Demonstration links to NSAC's Declaration of Principal #9. "We affirm that
20440-467: Was achieved by using the energy or ectoplasm released by a medium, see spirit photography . The last physical medium to be tested by a committee from Scientific American was Mina Crandon in 1924. Most physical mediumship is presented in a darkened or dimly lit room. Most physical mediums make use of a traditional array of tools and appurtenances, including spirit trumpets, spirit cabinets, and levitation tables. Direct voice communication refers to
20586-610: Was also the founder of the James Randi Educational Foundation and its million dollar challenge that offered a prize of US$ 1,000,000 to anyone who could demonstrate evidence of any paranormal, supernatural or occult power or event, under test conditions agreed to by both parties. Despite many declarations of supernatural ability, the prize was never claimed. In "anomalistic psychology", paranormal phenomena have naturalistic explanations resulting from psychological and physical factors which have sometimes given
20732-562: Was caught in many fraudulent séances throughout her career. In 1874 during a séance with Edward William Cox a sitter looked into the cabinet and seized the spirit, the headdress fell off and was revealed to be Showers. In a series of experiments in London at the house of William Crookes in February 1875, the medium Anna Eva Fay managed to fool Crookes into believing she had genuine psychic powers. Fay later confessed to her fraud and revealed
20878-425: Was coined by Ernst Senkowski in the 1970s to refer more generally to communication through any sort of electronic device such as tape recorders, fax machines, television sets or computers between spirits or other discarnate entities and the living. One particularly famous claimed incidence of ITC occurred when the image of EVP enthusiast Friedrich Jürgenson (whose funeral was held that day) was said to have appeared on
21024-556: Was discovered in a study involving the Australian Sheep-Goat Scale . De Boer and Bierman wrote: In his article 'Creative or Defective' Radin (2005) asserts that many academics explain the belief in the paranormal by using one of the three following hypotheses: Ignorance, deprivation or deficiency. 'The ignorance hypothesis asserts that people believe in the paranormal because they're uneducated or stupid. The deprivation hypothesis proposes that these beliefs exist to provide
21170-487: Was prompted to do so by the re-emergence of the device on the television series Ghosthunters . He comprehensively debunked the "science" behind the device in both the original development and the Ghosthunters episode. Another electronic device specifically constructed in an attempt to capture EVP is "Frank's Box" or the "Ghost Box", created in 2002 by EVP enthusiast Frank Sumption for supposed real-time communication with
21316-504: Was unable to replicate suggested paranormal origins for EVP recorded under controlled conditions. Brian Regal in Pseudoscience: A Critical Encyclopedia (2009) has written "A case can be made for the idea that many EVPs are artifacts of the recording process itself with which the operators are unfamiliar. The majority of EVPs have alternative, nonspiritual sources; anomalous ones have no clear proof they are of spiritual origin." There are
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