LuminEarth &#187; Paranormal

Friend Us Up!

Paranormal Investigating: Complete Sentence EVP “Ghosts Are Supposed to Like Dogs” by Becki Baumgartner

Spectral Analysis Reveals Complete Sentence EVP “Ghosts Are Supposed to Like Dogs” Lacks Harmonics & Cannot be Human Voice

Becki Baumgartner — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 16:56:59 +0000

We were honored to have the opportunity to consult with Nick Reiter of The Avalon Foundation for spectral analysis of our “Ghosts are Supposed to Like Dogs” Full Sentence EVP.

Nick is co-author of “The Bridges of Avalon: Science, Spirit, and the Quest for Unity” and maintains a website: www.theavalonfoundation.org , and has also been interviewed on Coast to Coast AM.

The Complete Sentence EVP “Ghosts Are Supposed to Like Dogs”

This has to be my best EVP capture to date.This was captured on March 5, 2010 during the day at a slave cemetery in a well-known park in the Middle Tennessee area. I was with fellow investigator, Joyce Dierschke. This was not an official investigation, but a “spur of the moment” idea to grab our recorders and check out the cemetery after being confidentially informed of some happenings at this cemetery. (Because it is confidential, I can not disclose the name of the park or the cemetery.) The only people in the cemetery at the time of the recording were Joyce, myself, and her dog, Katie. When this spirit voice was captured, we hadn’t even really started the EVP session yet. We were in the process of getting the recorders on and finding where we wanted to be seated.

When listening to this clip, first you will hear some leaves rustling and me saying “then all the cars came”. Then you will hear what to me sounds like a young boy’s a voice say “Hi Katie! Hello.” After that you will hear me say “Ghosts are supposed to like dogs”, (Joyce and I had previously been talking about contamination, and how Katie walking around in the leaves might make too much noise for us to obtain good recordings.) and then the same young boy’s voice repeat my entire sentence, word for word… “Ghosts are supposed to like dogs.” followed by Joyce talking about high frequency energy and the sounds of walking in leaves.

This EVP is just amazing to me for several reasons. First of all the spirit voice is very plain and clear, and you can tell it intelligent because the words directly pertain to the situation at hand. Also, the voice is clearly different from my voice and Joyce’s voice–combined with the fact that there were no other people present, we know that it cannot be contamination. Also, I thought it was very interesting that the spirit chose to talk to the dog, Katie, and seemed to speak her name to get her attention. To me this voice sounded like a little boy, and this is just what a live little boy would do to get a dog’s attention.

The Spectral Analysis by Nick Reiter and Trevor Reiter

The audio recording which was received came in the format of a 32-bit Wav file, with a 32000Hz sampling rate. The recording was done on an Olympus WS-100 sound recorder. It is unknown which mode the recorder was on, but I would estimate that it was on SP quality mode due to the sharp decline in frequency response of the clip above 4,000 Hz. The Olympus-100 recorder on SP mode has a frequency response of about 100-5,000Hz.

Figure 1 – Frequency Spectrum of Entire Clip

Note that because of the 32,000Hz sampling rate, the highest frequency possible in the recording is 16,000Hz.

There are five sections of spoken audio in the clip. Three of them are distinctly human, and there are two areas of purported EVP activity. The anomalous areas in question seem to be mimicking the words said to be the human voices. What follows is a frequency analysis of each of these five sections.

The first clip shows clearly human voices. You can plainly see the harmonic content of the voices in the stacked wavy lines of frequency. There is a distinct noise floor from 0 to about 200Hz, which is the grainy portion at the bottom of the spectrograph.

The next portion, in the white circle, is the purported EVP response. At the far right of the spectrogram, I have included a part of the second section of human speech for comparison. There are two things worth noting. One is that the “EVP response” does not share the same shape as the original human “call,” this would indicate that the response is not copy pasted-duplicate of the original “call.” Secondly, the harmonic content is significantly less than would be in a regular human voice. There only seems to be a fundamental frequency and one harmonic in the spectral content of the first anomalous section.

However, because it is known the file was edited from its original format, it still would be possible to distort the spectral and temporal content to achieve a similar result. If, however, it is proven that the “EVP” response was in the unedited version of the file, then this would be evidence that whatever made the anomalous portion of the audio was of a different source than the original voices.

The next section is again plainly human voices. We can see the natural harmonic content of the voices as we did in the first spectrograph image. Of note, on the far right of the spectrograph, we see that the noise floor drops off. This is highly unlikely in a natural scenario, and is most probably evidence of audio compression or equalization of the file.

This is a spectrograph of the fourth section, and the second anomalous section. Here we are seeing more harmonic content in comparison to the first anomalous section, but still much less than would be expected from a normal human voice. On the far right of the spectrograph, I have included part of the next human voice section as comparison to the anomalous section. Of a more drastic note, we see that the noise floor completely drops for this section. Again, this is extremely unlikely in a natural situation, and points to editing of the original sound file. A compression algorithm may have released and lowered the noise floor, or there may have been equalization to take out the noise floor entirely.

The final section is the return of the human voices and the noise floor.

Conclusions:

It does stand to be said that nothing in the audio is beyond the ability to be manufactured by a skilled audio engineer. One could mimic the effects of the anomalous sections by copying the human parts, and applying spectral and temporal processing; perhaps a combination of time stretching and vocoder processing.

It is impossible to prove the existence of a sound source beyond the original people involved in the recording. This is because the change in file formats, and the disappearance of the noise floor, allow for the possibility that the anomalous sections were added to the recording after the fact. However, if it can be proven that the anomalous sections of the recording were in place pre-editing, then the content of the audio would then indicate that the anomalous sections did indeed come from a different source than the human voices.

The simplified explanation, as Nick related it to me, is this as follows.

The primary question of Trevor’s was whether or not any equalizing or tweaking was done to bring out (enhance for clarity) the EVP portions of the clip, before or during conversion to a .wav file. Essentially two odd features are seen with both of the EVP sections of the recording. One is that the EVP voice has a definite lack of the rich harmonics that any normal human voice has. It seems to be pure tone, with maybe one or two harmonics at most. Secondly, during the periods of the EVP voice, there is a reduction in the “noise floor” or low frequency background. On this second point, we debated what could have caused it. If someone had fabricated the clip from the get go, it might be an indicator of that. However we know from your testimony that this was not the case. As Trevor said, anything can be recreated in a studio, but it would take a lot of time, skill, and bother to do this. The more likely possibility is that the incoming signal of the EVP was low enough in magnitude, that some of the filtering circuitry or compression circuitry in the recorder didn’t handle the signal during that time in the same way as it did during the times you are speaking. The most important feature is the first of what I mentioned above. The EVP voice lacks harmonics. Thus it is very unlikely it is a human voice. Trevor told me that in some ways, it reminded him of Vo-coder modulation. Way back in WWII, vocoder was used or experimented with to save bandwidth in military transmission. It was a very early fore-runner of Autotune. Vocoder modulation stripped voices down to just a few harmonics for easier transmission on a narrower band. It literally produced a “machine” or robot type voice. Not saying that some time traveller was using a vocoder of course – but just to the extent that the voice by lack of its harmonics, seems almost synthetic or machine-generated. It is not like a human larynx, even if it is meant to sound like one.

Unfortunately for me, this is the only copy of the clip I have. I had a computer crash shortly after obtaining this EVP, and lost the original unedited version before I had transferred it to my backup drive. I think I may have edited this clip to bring out the clarity of the EVP. I use WavePad Sound Editor for my EVP analysis, and often use the “High-Pass Filter” and “Noise Reduction” functions, which probably would have caused the reduction in the “noise floor” or “low frequency background” that Trevor had mentioned. However, I can attest to the fact… as can fellow investigator Joyce Dierschke, that the clip was not fabricated from the beginning. Knowing that, and knowing that the spectral analysis shows the voice lacking the harmonics necessary to be of human origin… is validation enough for me, in my ongoing investigation and research… that yes… this is unexplained paranormal phenomena.

VISIT THE AVALON FOUNDATION

Many thanks to Nick and Trevor from both LuminEarth.com and Vounteer State Paranormal Research for your assistance in analyzing this data!

Visit Our Websites:

Friend Us Up!

Becki Baumgartner on Facebook

Spectral Analysis Shows Full Sentence Frank’s Box Hack Reply to Originate from Device, Not Human Voice

Becki Baumgartner — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 13:00:35 +0000

We were honored to have the opportunity to consult with Nick Reiter of The Avalon Foundation for spectral analysis of our ”My Name is Sunshine” Full Sentence Frank’s Box Hack Reply.

Nick is co-author of “The Bridges of Avalon: Science, Spirit, and the Quest for Unity” and maintains a website: www.theavalonfoundation.org , and has also been interviewed on Coast to Coast AM.

The “My Name is Sunshine” Full Sentence Digital Recorder Capture of Frank’s Box Hack Reply

My Name is Sunshine by Becki Baumgartner

First you will hear Mike Sears, founder of Volunteer State Paranormal Research, ask “Can you tell us your name?” Then you’ll hear a voice saying “My name is Sunshine”. We think this is a slave girl.

This capture is from a private investigation. We were using Mike Sears’s Frank’s Box Hack and my Olympus Digital Voice Recorder WS-100. A Frank’s Box Hack is a Radio Shack Radio altered so that it continuously scans through the channels without stopping. The theory as to how this works is that it supposedly allows spirits to communicate with the living by manipulating the voltage or electromagnetic frequency in a randomly or continuously scanning AM/FM radio. According to the theory, Spirits can learn to stop the random or sweeping scans of the radio on particular words or phrases being broadcast to convey a message to the living.

I thought this particular capture was quite amazing for a few reasons. First, the reply repeats the question and then provides the answer. Secondly, the entire team was sitting in on the session, and none of us audibly heard the reply with “our naked ears”. It wasn’t until later, analyzing the session slowly on the computer, that I heard the response. Another team member, Joyce Dierschke, also captured the same reply on her recorder, which is a different model than mine.

The Spectral Analysis by Nick Reiter and Trevor Reiter

This audio recording was received in a .wav format, and was recorded on an Olympus-100 recorder. The device has an effective frequency response of 100-5,000 Hz. The device inherently records to a lossy wma format, which was then converted to a lossless .wav format. In the recording, a male and female voice are hear, and there is the sound of a device called a “Frank’s Box.” The Frank’s Box is heard from an external speaker.

The large vertical geometry in the spectrogram is from the Frank’s Box operation. Below, I’ve identified the areas of human voice in white, and the area of a voice saying “My name is Sunshine” in purple.

What can be seen here is that the two portions circled in white have frequency content around 300 Hz, which is what would be expected from a natural human voice. However, the “EVP” voice, in purple, does not seem to have any frequency content below 500 Hz. More so, the speaker on the Frank’s Box has a limited frequency response, which looks to be around 500-2,500 Hz. The “EVP” voice seems to be contained in this spectrum as well, which would indicate to me that the voice is logically coming from the Frank’s box. The harmonic content, albeit being limited by the frequency range of the speaker on the Frank’s Box, would seem to be in line with a human voice.

Conclusion:

The audio sources in the recording seem to be two people and the Frank’s Box device. The Frank’s Box device, because of its limited frequency response, seems to be the origination of the voice saying “My name is Sunshine.”

The simplified explanation, as Nick related it to me, is this as follows. The audio from the Franks Box has a characteristic distortion, because it is being sent to a small speaker, and then picked up by the recorder. Mike’s voice has a typical human set of harmonics, as you might guess. However “Sunshine’s” voice has the same distortion pattern as the rest of the Franks Box garble afterward. This suggests that it DID come over the Franks Box speaker. Although, for some unusual reason the statement was not heard by the listeners at the time. Trevor suggested that one possible explanation is that it follows so quickly after the Mike’s question, that it literally could have overlapped in the listeners’ perception. Or some more unusual property could have been at work. Regardless, though, the “My name is Sunshine” audio pattern looks identical to the “Frank’s Box” audio pattern.

VISIT THE AVALON FOUNDATION

Many thanks to Nick and Trevor from both LuminEarth.com and Vounteer State Paranormal Research for your assistance in analyzing this data!

Visit Our Websites:

Friend Us Up!

Becki Baumgartner on Facebook

Renown Psychic Debra Lynn Katz Joins Volunteer State Paranormal Research on Investigation of Clement Railroad Hotel Museum (Dickson, TN) on Oct 29

Becki Baumgartner — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 12:00:48 +0000

Debra Lynne Katz is the Founder and Director of the International School of Clairvoyance (ISC), author of three successful and popular books about identifying one’s innate psychic abilities, developing techniques for practicing ones clairvoyant powers and finding greater inner peace, growth and the power of manifesting one’s greatest desires through spiritual awareness, visualization and clairvoyance.

While Debra is a very talented and highly sought after psychic, she is perhaps more unique in her belief that all people have the innate, potential to tap their own intuitive powers of clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience and telepathy. Her desire to share this belief is perhaps most readily available in her three books on the subject.

Debra will be teaching her Psychic Bootcamp in Nashville on October 28th and 29th, with a special teleconference presentation for the members of the Nashville Psychic Meetup the week before, on Sunday, the 23rd.

CLICK HERE TO GET DETAILED INFORMATION ON PSYCHIC BOOTCAMP WITH DEBRA KATZ (NASHVILLE)

CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE NASHVILLE PSYCHIC MEETUP GROUP

For a certain number of participants, the weekend of psychic bootcamp activities will include a full-fledged paranormal investigation of the Clement Railroad Hotel Museum guided by Volunteer State Paranormal Research. This will be the first time ever to allow the public to investigate and learn about the spirit/paranormal activity at this historical location. (I can personally attest to this location being haunted, I have had a couple of personal experiences there!!)

But HURRY, there are limited spots available that include the museum investigation!

The Clement Railorad Hotel Museum, also known as The Hotel Halbrook, is located in historic downtown Dickson,TN. The hotel was constructed in 1913 and is one of the few remaining examples of a railroad hotel in a small Tennessee town. The Museum features exhibits and programming involving the Civil War, railroading, and local and regional history. The location and building has been used for various business and functions through history. The museum opened in June of 2009. Since the opening, there has been reports from some of the employees that they have encountered unexplained sightings and events at the Hotel Halbrook.

Volunteer State Paranormal Research is a NON-PROFIT team of Paranormal Investigators who investigates in the Middle Tennessee and Western Tennessee area. for most of our investigations. Their primary goal is to document findings from each investigation and to link these findings to any past history of that particular location.

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT VOLUNTEER STATE PARANORMAL RESEARCH

Volunteer State Paranormal Research Conducts ITC & EVP Session at Rippavilla Plantation (Spring Hill, TN)

Becki Baumgartner — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 12:00:20 +0000

Click Here For The Volunteer State Paranormal Channel on YouTube

The above clip is from a session held by Volunteer State Paranormal Research in the cellar of Rippavilla Plantation, located in Spring Hill, Tennessee. A great deal of paranormal activity had previously been experienced in the cellar. Our team used the PX Oviluss with great results. This is just a short clip of the hour we investigated in the cellar.

“ITC” stands for Instrumental Trans-Communication. ITC is communication between the living and spirits or other entities utilizing any type of electronic device. Some examples of common household devices that have been used int he past are tape recorders, fax machines, TV sets, and computers. ITC can include visual effects in addition to audio anomalies. The term “Instramental Trans-Communication” found its orgins through Professor Ernst Senkowski whp was a physicist at Faculty of Engineering in University of Mainz, Germany. Unfortunately, the the scientific community per se has not yet accepted the validity of ITC.

The electronic device we used for our ITC experiments in this video is a PX Machine. The PX was invented by Bill Chappell. It is an electronic device that reads changes in the EMF (Electromagnetic Field) and converts those readings into words. The theory behind this piece of equipment is that spirits seeking to communicate learn how interact with the device by changing the EMF causing the PX machine to announce the words they wish to communicate to the audience.

EVP stands for Electronic Voice Phenomena. EVP’s are intelligible speech generated on electric devices, but are not the result of intentional voice recordings by the person using the recorder. Elecgtronic Voice Phenomena is created with static, radio, or background noise, etc. The theory behind EVP is that the spirit can create a shift in frequency outside of the normal human voice range that shows up on audio recorders. The length of EVP can range from a single word or an entire sentence. The recorder I used in this investigation was an Olympus Digital Recorder WS-100.

Visit Our Websites:

Friend Us Up!

Sources:

Transcommunication White Paper With Emphasis on Electronic Voice Phenomena. (n.d.) Association TransCommunicaton. Extracted October 11, 2011 from http://atransc.org/theory/white_paper-evp.htm
Instrumental Trans-Communication. (n.d.) Spiritinvestigations.org. Extracted October 11, 2011 from http://www.spinvestigations.org/ITC.pdf

Paranormal Investigating: Spirit Footsteps Caught on Recorder at Octagon Hall Museum?!?

Becki Baumgartner — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 12:00:33 +0000

Paranormal Investigating: Spirit Footsteps Caught on Recorder at Octagon Hall Museum? by Becki Baumgartner

First you will hear Monique Sears, co-founder of Volunteer State Paranormal Research, say “OK”, then immediately after you will hear a series of what sounds like five footsteps. To me they sound like boots on hardwood, and seem to be echoing and walking around us in the room.

This capture is from our public investiagtion at Octagon Hall Museum on September 18, 2011. It was our first session of the night, we were upstairs in Mary Elizabeth’s room. The people in attendance were Volunteer State Paranormal Research team members Monique, Richard and Becki with guests Rebecca and Scott. The footsteps were caught on my Olympus Digital Recorder WS-100. Everyone was sitting down, and there were no other groups inside the house at the time.

I thought this paticular capture was really cool for a several reasons. First off, we were all sitting down and even the guests were doing a great job of tagging–so we know it was not any of us. Secondly, there were no other groups inside the house at the time. This means that nobody could be walking around. Also, we all heard the noise with our “naked” ears–but to us it just sounded like random tapping on the floor. It wasn’t until later listening with the recording that it sounds like echoing footsteps, possibly a boot, walking in a circular pattern around the room.

Upon hearing this capture, Billy Byrd (owner of Octagon Hall Museum) wrote this: “You finally got a recording of the steps that I and numerous others have heard dozens of times. but never captured. I usually hear them when I’m alone and quiet.”

Visit Our Websites:

Friend Us Up!

Paranormal Investigating: “My Name is Sunshine” Full Sentence Digital Recorder Capture of Frank’s Box Hack Reply

Becki Baumgartner — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 00:55:08 +0000

My Name is Sunshine by Becki Baumgartner

First you will hear Mike Sears, founder of Volunteer State Paranormal Research, ask “Can you tell us your name?” Then you’ll hear a voice saying ”My Name is Sunshine”. We think this is a slave girl.

This capture is from a private investigation. We were using Mike Sears’s Frank’s Box Hack and my Olympus Digital Voice Recorder WS-100. A Frank’s Box Hack is a Radio Shack Radio altered so that it continuously scans through the channels without stopping. The theory as to how this works is that it supposedly allows spirits to communicate with us by manipulating the voltage or electromagnetic frequency in a randomly or continuously scanning AM/FM radio. According to the theory, Spirits can learn to stop the random or sweeping scans of the radio on particular words or phrases being broadcast to convey a message to the living.

I thought this paticular capture was quite amazing for a few reasons. First, the reply repeats the question and then provides the answer. Secondly, the entire team was sitting in on the session, and none of us audibly heard the reply with “our naked ears”. It wasn’t until later, analyzing the session slowly on the computer, that I heard the response. Another team member, Joyce Dierschke, also captured the same reply on her recorder, which is a different model than mine.

Visit Our Websites:

Friend Us Up!