Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Lazybones EVP's

While ghosthunting itself is thrilling, the actual evidence review is most often, unbelievably, undeniably, hair-pullingly dull. Sitting for hours watching videos of empty rooms or listening to audio of mundane conversations and silence is sleep inducing at the very least. In fact, I usually choose that quiet hour before bedtime to review evidence, because it often proves better than a sleeping pill to keep me snoring all night long. I awake in the morning still wearing my headphones and drooling on my investigation log.

And often, when something that might be evidence is found, it's weeks after the investigation and my memory of those long hours is a bit rusty. I once found what I thought was an EVP. I proudly, and excitedly played it for everyone I could find who would indulge a beginning investigator by listening to what sounded like an unknown male voice whispering in the dark. I was so proud!

It was all well and good, until I got confirmation from several sources that the whisper was saying, "flash." Now why would a ghost from an 1800's farmhouse be whispering that? Grudgingly, I had to admit, that it just might be, possibly could be, alright it had to be far more likely that my EVP was actually my friend, who, being respectful of the quiet, had whispered the word "flash" right before he took a picture. Busted.

There has to be a better, and far less humiliating way to review evidence, right? Reading another paranormal blog recently, I came across a bit of advice that might help with these late night hours of harrowing boredom, and might help clear up these, admittedly embarassing, misunderstandings. The suggestion, by a professedly lazy ghost hunter was this. He had long ago decided that he would do EVP recordings in short 2-minute segments. After the 2 minutes are up he hits the stop record button, and right there on the spot reviews his audio.

This of course has a couple of advantages. The first I've mentioned already, no long hours of evidence review after the fact. The second is that he knows, immediately, if there's some activity going on in the location, after which he can decide to stay in the location or move on to another perhaps hotter spot. And the third reason is that everything that had happened in the last two minutes is still fresh in his mind. So he knows when a possible EVP is real, or his compassionate cohort whispering "flash."

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