Ghostly EVP Recordings

Hosted byArt Bell

Ghostly EVP Recordings

About the show

In one of their first show appearances, the Ghost Investigators Society's Brendan Cook and Barbara McBeath presented eerie recordings of electronic voice phenomena (EVPs), purportedly from spirits and ghosts. McBeath defined a ghost as "the essence or personality of a person who has lived, had a body, and then died," and which keeps some of its personality in the spirit world. She characterized entities contacted through seances or Ouija boards as "natural spirit beings…who have never had a body," and warned that attempts to contact them may not be controllable, since the spirits have been invited.

Cook shared one theory behind EVPs, which suggests that entities produce sounds on their tapes by using environmental sounds and even people's voices to create vibrations that are picked up by microphones. McBeath emphasized that the voices are not heard in the room at the time of recording, but show up upon playback. The guests had Art play 30 samples of their field recordings from hotels, hospitals, cemeteries, and other locations. One of the first recordings was from an abandoned mental hospital, and sounded like a male voice saying, "You little murdering tramp." A recording from an abandoned military barracks featured what appeared to be a child saying, "It's dark in here." Chillingly, Cook said this happened just after the lights were turned on in the room.

Once, a voice recorded in a mausoleum appeared to say, "Hello. I'm back." A particularly startling recording featured a croaking voice that exhaled menacingly. Cook said that since they seem to pick up a lot of children on their recordings, they often bring candy to encourage these spirits, which he claimed was effective. He also added that newer cemeteries tend to produce more EVPs.