Chaotic soundscapes generate the supernatural
voice. Photo: Randolph Femmer /life.nbii.gov

As an electronics technician and a heyoka, I'm fascinated by both the natural and artificial worlds. I've personally had more success with the natural sources of strange experience, but the possibility of re-creating natural power places with technology is really interesting. If I could do it, I would, and that's the reason I experiment with odd technology.

Sound has always been recognized as a powerful trigger for the shamanic journey or contact with the spirit world. Drumming, chanting, mantras and magical languages -- many people swear by them. I've not had much luck with any of that although I don't discount it. Maybe I'm sensitive to other things. Everyone is a little different in that way, triggered by different stimuli into altered states of perception.

For me, natural sounds with chaotic rhythm work the best. The sound of wind rushing through the pine trees over a campsite, or moaning beneath the eaves of the house late in a winter's night; the visceral pounding of stones on the bottom of a rushing spring creek; the echoes of falling water from a cave creek all have that effect on me. I drift into a space where the silences between the sounds fill with new meaning. Spirits talk to me. Music radiates from silent stones.

Sony ICD-PX720

I doubt that digital voice recorders would pick up what I hear, because I'm not listening in a literal sense. There's a mental transition involved into realms undetectable by electronic machinery but real enough to those who wander through those veils. Occasionally things do cross over to this side, and some of that might show up on film or as digital voice, or it might not. I'm still skeptical of EVP or Electronic Voice Phenomena, and at this point I'm betting it's electronic in origin, not supernatural. Digital voice recorders are new, and the phenomenon of ghost voice recording seems largely to have begun with the new devices. Although some stories exist about prior contacts in this same general way, there's no real proof possible from old stories. If no useful information comes through in the form of EVP, it's probably only misinterpreted random noise and quirks in the circuitry.

But. I've experienced quite a few strange things which I do wish I could have recorded.

Follow up:

One of them, in the very early 90's, began as many of my more physical experiences have begun, as a dream. In the dream someone told me I'd be getting a message the following night at 10 p.m. and that I should be awake for it. Ten p.m. might seem early to most people but in those days I was a farmer and chickens governed my sleeping schedule. I slept early and was up before sunrise.

Tascam DR07

It seemed very unlikely that anything would happen. I very seldom get messages of that sort in dreams, though. This one seemed especially important to the person who had spoken to me, someone I knew from other dreams and did respect. Even though it seemed silly, I stayed up the extra hour and was lying in bed awake in the dark listening to the treefrogs sing at ten p.m. the next night. Nothing happened. Or at least I thought nothing happened -- maybe my clock was a little fast, because a moment later a man's voice boomed through the trailer I lived in then, loud and clear. Loud enough to make me jump, real enough to have a point of clear origin in the air and the darkness just across the room. "Now is the time!" was the message. I expected more of an explanation than that, but nothing else talked to me except the tree frogs.

So I know strange things can happen. I just don't think you have to have special static-free equipment to pick them up when they do happen. If I'd had neighbors close that night they'd have probably heard that voice just fine.

On the off chance that EVP does occasionally pick up a ghostly voice that's real and has something useful to pass along, I'd like to recommend some decent equipment. My own DVR is a little RCA pocket model which I bought for other reasons and have never used for gathering EVP. I might try that some time if I visit one of the old battlefields around here, because it would be pretty cool to get some recordings of the things I hear in such places. If it might work, it's worth trying. A better quality machine should have a better chance of getting results, and everybody likes the Sony ICD-PX720 Digital Voice Recorder with PC Link. Another choice, the Tascam DR07 Digital Recorder, gives serious investigators a chance to eliminate one of the possible sources of erroneous noise. The Tascam recorder records to flash memory, allowing secure erasure of the recording media before use. For the best quality recordings, consider the Zoom H2 Stereo Recorder with four onboard microphones capable of spatial location. This is a musician-level recorder with sensitivity to the entire audible spectrum. Good for those ghostly noises that aren't human in origin.

Zoom H2

Digital voice recorders may or may not have the advantage over broad spectrum audio recorders made for musicians and other perfectionists. DVR circuitry screens out everything but the range of the human voice, which might make this type of recorder better for recording human ghosts. If you're interested in ethereal music or supernatural background noise, a wide spectrum recorder would make better sense.

There is a different approach to supernatural sound, one which involves generation instead of detection. If you simply want the experience this is the thing to do. Finding a good natural source might mean a lot of traveling and being lucky, because weather is as much a factor as location. Machines which reproduce those sounds in the comfort of your home might be nearly as good, for sensitive people.

Look for excellent audio quality in these machines -- if possible, run the output through a good sound system instead of the built-in speakers. Listen to the generated sound first. Glitches in the pattern ruin the effect. Recognizable patterns aren't helpful, but if the sounds don't obviously repeat and don't have a phony quality you can probably work with it easily enough. Natural chaotic sound repeats in cycles, but never repeats in exactly the same way. I'm hoping somebody will build a sound generator that does that, but so far there are only machines which come close.

Marpac Marsona 1288A

One of the better choices is the Marpac Marsona 1288A Programmable Sound Conditioner. You may have to let yourself go pretty deep to really get into it, but if you relax and listen not to the sound but to the silences within the sound, you may get there with a little practice. Many people feel the sounds help them sleep. I've scattered links to the Marsona sounds throughout this article to give readers an idea of what the machine is like.

To me these Marsona clips do sound really good -- not perfect but good. The clip of The Brook brings to mind a cave I know, several hundred miles from here, where I spent some strange nights sleeping in a little pocket room above a small waterfall. I was curious because whenever I visited there I'd hear voices. The sound of the water moving among the stones had a strange similarity to the human voice, and always after being there awhile I'd hear people talking just above the level of the water noise, and I'd look around to see who was coming. Nobody was coming. A few times I got into it so deeply that I heard individual voices and words, realizing gradually that it wasn't English I was hearing, but an old language that brought tears to my eyes. A couple of nights there sleeping on the hard stone listening to the creek talk to me really took me back.

So think about that if you get one of these machines, and leave the DVR running by the bed on dark winter nights when the wind howls through the trees outside the window. You might come up with something more remarkable than EVP.

Now is the time . . . .