I three days ago I was contacted (via Facebook) by a Phoenix home owner that claims to be experiencing unwelcome paranormal activity. The lady said that she can hear voices while she is in the bedroom and that her bed has been shaken hard enough to wake her up. All of her claims happen in the master bedroom.
Yesterday I met her for 20 minutes at a Starbucks near her house, although I don’t know where she lives because she doesn’t want a ghost hunter in her house at this time. I gave her a KII meter and the voice recorder that I’ve had the best luck capturing EVP’s with. This particular recorder, the Olympus LS10, has the ability to disable the noise reduction feature and has an adjustment dial for the microphone sensitivity. I mounted the recorder on a mini 6 inch tripod and taught her how to start and stop the recorder. She didn’t want the recorder in her bedroom, but agreed to place the recorder outside of her bedroom and to run the recorder all night.
Today we met at the same Starbucks and she gave the recorder back to me and she said that last night was exceptionally active. She said she the KII meter would not “come on” and that she pushed the button and nothing happened. This is most unfortunate because I we needed to rule out the possibility of extreme EMF due to the houses electrical system. It’s also unfortunate because we can’t correlate KII activity with any sound caught on the tape. She did say that she heard the voices in the same room as the recorder and she said that she felt certain that I would be able to validate her claims of voices.
However upon review, the recorder did not capture anything unusual. I have not listened to all 11 hours that were recorded but I have visually inspected the waveform of the audio and even with extreme amplification the waveform is basically flat. On the recording you can hear all of the typical things, like the client setting up the recorder and then leaving the room. You can hear the air conditioner turn on and the sound of the air being forced through the vents. You can here the sound of the refrigerator turning on and off. You can even hear the client snoring. Unfortunately you cannot hear the sound of voices or anything that could be mistaken for human voices.
About an hour ago I called the client to tell her my preliminary review of the tape. I told her that the recorder didn’t capture the sounds that she said were heard while the recorder was running. Her reaction to this news was to cry at first but then became angry and accused me giving her a recorder that was “obviously broken”. She did eventually calm down and I gave her instructions on downloading a copy of the audio file from my secure FTP server. She is at the end of her rope and she ended the conversation by saying that she thinks she’s going crazy and that the sounds are in her head. I don’t know if this is true but she is not willing to allow me in her house to investigate, nor will she allow the recorder back in her house.
I think she’s afraid that further investigation by a third party will not capture the evidence that she claims to be experiencing. I think she’s afraid that she is experiencing a mental disorder, not a ghost.
Note: One possible cause of auditory hallucinations is carbon monoxide poisoning. I told the client that she may want to consider carbon monoxide detectors.
UPDATE: 8/22/2011
I have completed my review of the audio recording captured that night and it does not contain an EVP of any kind. Every sound is completely explainable and most importantly, there were no voices or sounds that could be mistaken as voices.