I first learned how to make EVP's about four years ago when my boss at work explained how too. This was then followed by a period of about two to three years where I believed what he had showed me was silly and he was just hearing some fan in the background that he interpreted any way he wanted to. They are so simple to make. You just plug a headphone or microphone into your computer, use a free download of audacity to record, and find a very quiet room. Record yourself asking a question like "what street am I on?", put the mic down and record about fifteen seconds of dead silence. In Audacity there is an amplify command under the effects menu. Use that and amplify the silence in the recording as max as possible. When you listen back through headphones you can hear the white noise create a sort of rambling, you don't listen for that. Instead you will look for a voice that answers your question in a word or too that stands out from the rest of the noise in the recording. The voice is very faint, however distinct. I didn't believe this would work at first but after listening to the name of the street I was on clearly pronounced over and over about 100 times my mind changed and I became a believer in Edison's phenomena.
This used to be better understood than it is today, because nowadays people don't have much experience with static. Radio, audio, even TV is either working or it's silent. Decades ago, when people had to listen to radios that had far more static than signal, this was a common phantasm called apophenia. Not surprisingly people generally heard what they wanted to hear - a message to a controller from a long-overdue bomber crew, a message to a shipwrecked crew that help was on the way. If you listen to static long enough your brain will do what evolution shaped it to do and try to pull meaning out of the noise. And imaginary voices result.
Not on shortwave, but as a pilot I've spent a lot of time listening for unicoms, VOR and ATIS stations from out of range on very old VHF SSB/SC radios.
Nice, what did you ask and what was the response? For me sometimes the answer is really clear and sometimes I can't make it out. It's probably just a reflection of my verbal skills.
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Well, Edison also thought that humans didn't need to sleep, he enjoyed making cats fight each other, he once killed an elephant merely for publicity, and eventually killed himself with a fad diet (a milk-only diet to be specific.) So while he was a great inventor, he wasn't smart about everything he did.
Here is an EVP I made. In it I ask "what color is the sky?", at 6.5 seconds you can hear blue. https://soundcloud.com/trevor-barrett-johnson/evp-blue
I have been experiencing nightly pareidolia recently. I have a standing fan blowing cool air into my bedroom, and it generates a fair bit of white noise. I cannot - no matter how much I try - not hear a rock song, playing on a cheap clock radio. It's so intrusive, I am just on the verge of making out the melody - and even the lyrics. It's not just a monent; it goes on and on for minutes. Every once in a while, just to make absolutely sure I am bananas, I pick up my clock radio and listen very carefully in case it's on and I didn't know it. It isn't. I want to leap out of bed and shut the fan off to see if I can catch someone in my backyard playing a radio. The mind, really really wants to make sense of noise. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! [EDIT] I just mentioned it to my wife. She knows exaclty what I'm talking about. She hears it too. She thinks I've been leaving my clock radio on in the morning.
