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EVPs or electronic voice phenomena is the practice of placing a tape recorder in a space and waiting for an anomalous sound to appear. Although most EVPs that you hear certainly sound like the person recording it or static that's been played with, there's even one group that professes that the best EVPs can be got by reversing the direction of the tape and putting it through multiple sound filters. Musicians and sound people will tell you that "white noise" or static can be manipulated to sound like ANYTHING! But, this night two VERY odd recordings appeared. ALL the tapes that were used were brand new and shrunk wrapped in the package and were opened in the presence of at least one bystander.
Our first recording was made by Allan Mills who stationed a voice sensitive micro cassette recorder in a small studio adjacent to "Master Control". The room had been where one of the apparitions had been frequently seen. The room was closed and only contained a microphone, desk, chair and Northern Telecom telephone.
The room was darkened and when anyone entered, it filled with light and was readily visible to all in Master Control.
I myself as did several people, watched as the recording light on Allan's recorder went on and off with no one in the room and the room itself, being a studio, was 80% sound proof.
Allan went with Patrick and retrieved the recorder and CLEARLY on it was this sound (downloadable wave file to come...)
Click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click... We can't come to the phone right now, leave your name, phone number and I will get back to you.
The obvious answer was that this tape was a recycled tape from an answering machine... except one small problem.
The recording was not an OUTGOING MESSAGE recorder for an answering machine but was the sound of a phone calling into an answering machine. The click noises were the sound of a machine rewinding itself to play its message to the caller. Anyone who has called into an old single cassette machine will attest to this.
So, logically, this is how it could have been pulled off...
- Someone came up to the mini studio
- They draped a black sheet over the door to prevent the light from being seen by us in Master Control
- They entered the room, QUIETLY picked up the receiver of the phone and dialed the number
- They then hit the speaker phone button just as the answering machine started to answer
- They dove below the desk so that those of us watching the light come on the VOX micro cassette recorder could not see them
- They stealthily put the receiver back down, left the studio removing the sheet and had a good laugh
Unlikely, but that's the only way to successfully pull this stunt.
When we suggested that we ascertain the last number dialed, someone unfortunately went and dialed *69 which retrieves the last number that dialed into the phone. Thus, we lost an important piece of data.
| WAVE File of Answering machine taped in emtpy mini-studio Click Here |