EVP with PRG: An Interview with Cindy Heinen, EVP Specialist

By Robin Strom-Mackey

 “There are a lot of ideas that haven’t been put to the test. A lot of things are put out as common knowledge just because they’ve been repeated so many times. But I want to do the testing for it, and I want to put them through the paces. And that’s kind of what we do.”

 Cindy Heinen is the Electronic Voice Phenomenon (E.V.P.) Specialist for the Paranormal Research Group (P.R.G.), formerly the Southern Wisconsin Paranormal Research Group (S.W.P.R.G.). The group recently expanded to include Wisconsin and Pennsylvania..  Heinen granted me an interview when I was in Wisconsin and is a wealth of information on E.V.P. She and Jennifer Lauer (P.R.G. Director) are members of the AA-EVP and have been guest speakers at the organization’s yearly conference.  Heinen also wrote the chapter on E.V.P. for the book co-authored by Lauer and Schumacher entitled Investigating the Haunted: Ghost Hunting Taken to the Next Level (see the Resources section).  In this interview, Heinen discusses the rigid protocols that her group uses for investigating E.V.P.’s

Robin: First of all, how does one become an EVP specialist?

Cindy: I came into the group five years ago already having four years experience doing EVP. When I came into the group, they didn’t really have anyone specializing in EVP. I was in the group for a year, and what I did was try to keep advancing it. Basically it was Jenn [Director of P.R.G.] who said, “Hey, we need an EVP specialist.” And I said, “Oh….ok!”

Robin: So I’m guessing you had some experience or…interest in the area EVP?

Cindy: I did.  I had read a book called “True Hauntings” It was written by Dennings, a psychologist out of California. It was her psychological approach to ghost hauntings. So, I read her book, and in the foreword of her book was a little paragraph about Constantine Raudive who had done EVP back in the 60’s and 70’s, and that intrigued me. And so from that little paragraph I started researching. I actually didn’t record any EVP for the first year; I just studied it, sort of the theory of it.

Then after that I went to Gettysburg to record my first EVP. Where else would anyone go? I went there. I took a little class there. And then I went out in the field, and I got nothing. Or I thought I got nothing. I’m sitting in the airport in Pittsburgh listening and listening to these recordings and finally…I was at Devil’s Den. So I’m there in the middle of the night, my team is way ahead at the rocks. So it’s me standing by this water and you hear a little voice on the recorder asking for somebody. And that was the first EVP that I got. It was just a little, ity bity recorder, and not the kind I would use nowadays, but it was enough to make me say, “Hmm, I think I want to study this some more.” That was my beginning.

Robin: Yes, well the first one you get is like a heart attack. Its like, “Oh my God, how did that get there?”

Cindy: Yeah, you can’t believe it. Its like, “How did that happen?”

Robin: So, you said you were there. You took a class on it. What is it about EVP that most people don’t know?

Cindy: Well, what I study today and what I studied at the beginning is totally different. It was very rudimentary, although I didn’t know that at the beginning. Listening to people and what sort of recorders they use, what sort of audio editors they would use. It’s the same thing that any EVP 101 course would teach you. Back then, nine years ago, there weren’t as many people doing it. I mean the AA-EVP, the American Association of Electronic Voice Phenomenon wasn’t even as developed as it is now. But I still got a lot of information from them as to how to record.

 So, I read that and listened to people’s thoughts about things. That was still when people were thinking that EVP’s were imprinted on audio – on analog cassette tape – different theories and ideas were floating around out there. And so I just took that all in. But as I got involved in this group so many years later, especially in my association with Dave [Schumacher, Director of Anomalous Studies] I started researching other things, like what makes sound. What about acoustics? What do we know about digital recorders? There’s the quantization of the recording process, and about psychology and how we perceive things.

 The study of EVP can entail much about acoustics and much about equipment, but also does go into psychology, and how we perceive sound. So there are lots of avenues you can actually study to make good judgments…to understanding hearing and how it works....

 Robin: Well, you’ve intrigued me know. The psychology of how we perceive sounds, meaning what?

Cindy: Well, one of the things we did in the P.R.G., I’d say it was two years ago now, we started to upgrade the equipment. But we still had the old equipment. We still had the integrated circuit hand-held recorders everyone else is using. But we started using an analog backup.  So every time I would do a digital recording we would have an analog recorder right by it. If I thought I got an EVP on the digital recorder I would compare it to the analog.  And I have to tell you that 99% of the time the sound was so distorted because of the poor recording quality that I thought it was an EVP. If I hadn’t had the analog I would have said it was an EVP, the analog was a superior piece of equipment and it would reveal things.

 Someone could hear this vague sound and they would perceive it as an EVP if they don’t have the backup. We’re also looking for confirmation. When we’re in an investigation we have to think past that and figure out what the sound is, and where it came from, and whether we can validate it in any number of ways.

 Another thing we do, besides doing backup recordings is to look at what is happening on the D.E.A.D. system (Direct Environmental Acquisition Data-Logging System developed and used by P.R.G.).   Does something happen at the time when this supposed EVP happen? And sometimes it’s yes and sometimes no.

Considerations for EVP Recordings - Acoustics of a Room

Robin: You were talking earlier about determining where the sounds came from.  What do you mean by that?

 Cindy: Well, when you’re in a building –and I learned this when I was learning how to build a soundproof room for doing experiments in…I actually learn more these days, not in the paranormal community, but more from stepping outside of it. If I say I want to learn about acoustics I’m not necessarily going to go to the paranormal community, but look into the regular science of it. And that’s what happened.

 I wanted to soundproof a lab.  I found out how sound travels in a building. They call it structural borne sound. Sometimes it can be a low vibration, say a truck going by. That sound can travel as a low frequency through a building.  It can travel through the walls, it can travel through the joists, and it can travel through the floors and then come as a sound that you can hear. In apartment buildings we find that a lot. Certainly we’ve had experiences with it in duplexes. There are also impact sounds which are just people dropping things. And there are normal airborne sounds like talking, like we’re doing right now. Looking at all those different [types of] sounds, we started going into buildings and saying, “Ok, what are the acoustics of this room that we’re going to do this recording in?  One of the things we do now is to take a base line audio reading. So, with no one in the room, I will take a baseline audio reading of that room.  And I can go back to that and find out what are the normal acoustics of that room, what are the normal sounds of that room really like. And it’s been really interesting.

 We did one restaurant in particular, where I could hear sounds in the room from two floors down, of somebody in the basement.  They were doing something with the pipes, whether there was water running or whatever. But I could hear that throughout that building, and I could hear investigators from several rooms away.  So that is all really important when you’re going to claim that that sound is paranormal. Have you checked all your bases? EVP is not simply a matter for us of listening to a recording and saying, “Ah, I got something.” It’s a much more laborious process actually, to go through all these checks that we have to prove whether an EVP is actually that or just a false positive.

 Backup Necessary to Determine an EVP

 Robin: So, I’m an investigator, let’s say [laugh] for the P.R.G.  And say, I’m sitting with one other investigator in a room.  And I record an EVP session, and I’m going over my tape, and I find something, and I bring it to you. And I say, “Listen to this Cindy, this is rockin!” And you say?

Cindy: And I say, “Did you have your backup?

 Robin: So, in other words you have to have two recorders at least?

Cindy: Yes. And this has happened more than once, because, let’s admit it, everyone loves it, everyone loves to have a recorder and go out and do stuff. So this happens to me a lot. And they say, “Listen to what I got!” And I have to say, “Listen, what were you doing?”

Robin: So, for your group if there’s one EVP and there’s no backup you throw it out?

Cindy: Yes.  I know that’s harsh, but we do.  Unless…let’s say something happens and the data logging system goes wacky at the same time.  I actually look at that, because now I have the data logging system that says that your radiation dropped and your EMF spiked at that precise moment.

Robin: So, I go into this same investigation with one other person and we both have voice recorders on us and we’re in different parts of the room. He’s [hypothetically speaking] over by the window and I’m by the back wall. Ok?  I pick up an EVP and he does not. And I come to you and say, “Cindy, this is rockin, you’ve got to hear this, and you say?”

 Cindy: Well that’s pretty interesting. Because, I would have to say – well, when we set up our microphones you’d have to see them, they’re in a grouping together….

Robin: So, you put all your microphones together?

Cindy: Pretty much, because we’re trying to find out a lot of different things when we’re trying to do experiments. But in your case I’d want to know where he was, what sort of microphone he had, was it uni-directional or omni-directional. You know, there are a lot of different factors. I’d want to know where was he pointing [the microphone] and where were you pointing? But it wasn’t a true backup recording, because backup recordings should be right by the other recorder.

 But, there’s been times that - and a lot of people claim that - it is not a true EVP if you hear it on two or more recorders.  An EVP should only be on the one recorder because it’s the manipulation of that one particular recorder.  That means it’s not an audio but an electrical effect.  It’s a theory, a hypothesis; I’m not even going to say it’s a theory.

 Robin: Ok, have you found that to be true?

Cindy: [sigh]

 Robin: I mean you’ve got all your equipment set up right there in the room. You’ve got two or three recorders and all the microphones set up.  I don’t know what kinds of microphones you’re using, but I’m guessing you’re never going to use a recorder without a [external] microphone and probably a sensitive one.  I know that we all have budgetary concerns [regarding cost of microphones].

 Cindy: Right.

 Robin: So, you set them up and you’re doing your EVP and you get something. Is it likely to be on all of them or is it likely just to get picked up on one?  And, if it only got picked up on one, why wouldn’t you throw it out?

 Cindy: I have to be completely honest with you, since we started the backup regiment and also were using higher end professional equipment; we get almost no EVP’s. [chuckles] Because when we get them we realize that they were false positives.  Now, I have had in the past where I have had the incidence where we have gotten only a voice on one recorder and not on the other recorder. So I’m thinking, well that wasn’t an acoustical effect and but an electrical effect – that’s all I can figure. Do you understand what I’m saying?

 Using White Noise

Robin: Yes, I understand what you’re saying now, yes.  You’re saying that it was an EVP, because it was on only one recorder, because if both recorders picked it up then it would be something in the room [or building].

 Cindy: Then it would be an acoustical effect.  It would be a sound wave that we could hear.  Now there are a lot of ideas on how that would work. We won’t go into all of them here [laughs] it would be long.  But that’s an idea that some people have put forward, that that is an electrical effect. Now, you’re going to have people on the other end saying, “No, that’s an acoustical effect, but it’s so faint signal that it needs a boost through another sound source.”  That’s why people use these little IC recorders, they are, or they used to be very internally noisy.  Some people will say that that’s why you’re getting so few EVP’s now, because you’re using extremely clean equipment – because you’ve no longer got that sound source [white noise] anymore to work with. That’s actually an experiment we’re working with at the moment.

 Robin: So this is a white noise theory, in other words?

 Cindy: Yes, it provides resonance. You have your weak signal here, and you’ve got your sound source and that actually amplifies that sound into the microphone, for example.

 Robin: What are your thoughts on white noise?

 Cindy: I don’t know. That’s one we’re actually working on with this higher-end equipment. We’re actually set up to do some experiments with a stereo system so that we can have one mic that does have that background sound source and another mic doesn’t have it.

 They’re recording at exactly the same time on different tracks. That should be interesting. Let’s see which one gets more EVP’s, if we get any EVP’s. There are a lot of ideas that haven’t been put to the test.  A lot of things are put out as common knowledge just because they’ve been repeated so many times. But I want to do the testing for it, and I want to put them through the paces. And that’s kind of what we do.

 Robin: So you buy all this expensive equipment.

 Cindy: [laughs] When I have the money!

 Robin: And you buy expensive microphones for a pristine, clean sound, and then you’ll have to go buy a white noise generator to create noise.

 Cindy: [laughing] On just the one mic though.

 Robin: And I bet you don’t want me to go and explain that to your husband! [both laughing]

 Cindy: Actually I run all my experiments past my husband. He’s a PhD, a Physicist. And that’s part of the deal. I am in crazy land, in the paranormal, but I have a very smart Doctor of Physics in my house. So I was asking him, if I was going to set up this experiment, what you would think of this experiment and its flaws? And he looked at the experiment and said, “Yeah, this one will be ok.” And that’s really important to me. We try, as best as we can to use the scientific method, to use critical thinking, to use very clean experiments. Because that’s the only way we are going to get the particular answers that our group is looking for.

 Debate over Analog versus Digital

 Robin: OK. I was working with a investigator not too long ago. Now, he’s old school, but he says that digital is crap and that analog is better. Especially tape, because it has in particular a magnetic tape that is controlled by the entity. Or that because of its magnetic tape it is more easily imprinted. Thoughts on that, is analog better?

 Cindy: We use both.  We use a high-end Marantz set recorder – it’s another field recorder. I’ve got some interesting things on it, by itself. The only thing I don’t like about cassette is the hiss of it.  There are also some questions about tape type and bulk erasing your tapes so that you can get your original artifacts off. There’s a whole other world about cassette tapes you can get into the pros and cons of that.

I have a new digital system. I wanted the new digital system because it was going to eliminate the tape hiss that I found very annoying, and that is such a high quality system that it will be very clean – it is better than CD quality. It will actually reproduce a sound that is top quality. With the frequency and the bit rate it should be pretty good and that’s what we’re going to look at.

 Robin: So your theory is that analog isn’t better simply because it’s analog, because of the tape?

Cindy: I don’t think that’s ever been proven out.

Robin: So is digital better? Or do you not know?

 Cindy: I’ve seen no one do an experiment with magnetic tape.

Robin: So you’re going to take both of them to an investigation?

Cindy: We take both of them, yes we do. Why I went to analog first it was for monetary [reasons]. We all get things [equipment], as we can get them. I could afford the analog first, and I kept upgrading that until I got the one that I wanted. Basically that was better quality; the analog was better quality – even with the hiss – than any of the 24 little recorders I have. Because I wanted to try…all of them. I wanted to try the old-school, first-generations ones, the second generation ones. I wanted to try the new ones.  I want to try them in slow play, fast play; I wanted to do a lot with them.

And I finally concluded, they’re just not very good for voice reproduction.  I wanted fidelity. I wanted a good sound.  Yeah, I’m not getting my white noise, crackly sort of thing that the voices are in. But what I did find out from the cassette was that they are probably not paranormal voices anyhow.  It’s just that – a bad recording. What can I say? So, I did like the analog for that. But now I’ve decided I wanted to look some more, and so this particular recorder, it’s a Fostex FR-2 Field Recorder, it just seemed to have everything I wanted at a price I could afford. So, we’ll see. It’s brand new for me, it’s my new toy. [chuckles] I’ll let you know in a year what I think about it. Either that or you may find it on EBay in a year [laughs].

And I do have several cassette decks that we’ve used in home experiments, and those are fine.  But I’m looking for something different even in cassette now.  I’m looking for a stereo system in cassette, because I just have a mono system right now. So I’m even looking to upgrade that a little bit.

 How does a Ghost make an EVP?

 Robin: You’ve been at this for a while now, so do you have a theory? Do you have a theory because ghosts don’t have voice boxes?  So how can there possibly be a sound coming off onto your [recording equipment]?

 Cindy: That’s why it may be more…I don’t know. It’s so difficult. Is it an electrical effect or is it an acoustical effect from a weak signal? My money is riding on that one right now. But until I get through a whole series of experiments I can’t say to put my money on that for sure. But that’s just it; you have to pick one thing. If you’re going to do a long term experiment you have to pick one thing and say, “This is what I’m going to look at.” So that is what I am going to look at now within the Anomalous Research Department. So maybe within a year, maybe within two years, I will have more data to tell you for sure that, “Yeah, I’m getting more EVP’s when I’m using this sound source, and that I think the weak signal is getting boosted within  the microphone.”  Well, that’s what I’m going to try [laughs].

Microphones

Robin: Microphones, what types of microphones do you recommend?

Cindy: Well, I was using electrical condenser microphones, and I started using those because back in 2000 that was what I read to use. I never questioned it, because I had never read much on microphones back then. So I started with them, and I liked them because I felt they had a nice, clean, high-end sound. I liked them, but then I started reading that people liked these dynamic microphones because they have the magnet with the coil and the coil is attached to the diaphragm, and we’re working with a magnet here and a magnetic-electrical effect. That’s really intriguing, because more and more groups are saying that EVP is EMF related.  

 I figured the only way I’d know is if I tried it. So I have actually been comparing the two for a couple of years now and I haven’t seen a lot of difference. But now I’m going to go strictly with the stereo and the dynamic mics, and the computer system is going to use with electro-condenser mics. My background isn’t audio and technology, but I’ve been forced into audio and technology. You do what you have to.

Protocols for Running an EVP Session

Robin: Yes, it can be quite an education. So, what are the proper procedures for running an EVP session?

Cindy: Let me see, the protocol is like two pages long [laughs] when we teach sessions.  Right now we’re starting with a sound-scape of the room.

Robin: How long do you run it?

Cindy: Well I’ve run it for up to a half hour, sometimes as little as 10 minutes. I’m just trying to get a taste of the [natural sound] room. I want to know what it is like right before I do a session. I will have the people come into the session. We videotape all of our sessions. We have multiple recorders plus the D.E.A.D. system set up. So you can imagine we’ve got a lot of equipment. It’s not intimidating at all [chuckles].

 Robin: Do you also have the tinfoil hats [both laugh]?

Cindy: But then those who want to come into the session are allowed in. I don’t like my session to be too big because people move. And you’re listening for an EVP and it could be just someone shuffling their feet.  But then people come in. I have everyone introduce themselves because I want to get a voice print of everyone who is in the room. And then the session is timed to the DEAD system. So we start.

We usually do a question and answer sort of thing. Sometimes I know what’s going on, but sometimes I don’t know what is going on in the place because, especially when you’re going back to review you don’t want to be biased.  It’s much better if I don’t know what is going on, and say on review I pick up on the word Mary. Maybe that’s relevant to the homeowner, that holds a little more credence than me trying to make the sound into something like that. Anyway, I will go through with my spiel. I will ask those in the room if they have something to say.

If anything happens during the session, say we start hearing something off to the side, as has happened before we will direct the EVP session to what is happening at that time. I ask people to be still and do voice marking for every little thing like if a car goes by, or a dog barks, if you sneeze, whatever. That’s really important to us. Sometimes we’ll take notes.

The new thing we’re going to do, which I talked about in the protocol, we are going to be hooking someone up to headphones so they can be monitoring what is being said in the headphones as we’re running the sessions.  And that’s pretty much it. That’s, I think, the easy part of EVP.  And they last for 10 to 15 minutes, and we may do, depending on the location, three to four sessions a night. That’s enough to keep me busy for a couple of weeks.

Evidence Review

 Robin: Do you do all of the review of the tapes.

Cindy: I am one of the persons that do the review. We’re splitting up the reviews now, so that there are two people reviewing the same things. The new idea is that hopefully the second person will not have been at the investigation, because we want to see, if two people hear something do they hear the same thing. So there’s paperwork that we do with the review.  We don’t do any sound editing until we can confirm that a suspected EVP is not a false positive from another recorder. And so I will mark that.  If I heard something on one of the digitals then I have to go back to all the other recorders and check those recorders and also check it on the video so it’s quite time consuming. But I can get rid of probably 99% of my stuff that way.  I think EVP is actually a very rare phenomenon.  I don’t think it is as prevalent as people think it is. That’s just from my experience.

Robin: So most of the time when someone picks up an EVP what do you think it is?

Cindy: Well it depends. I have to ask a lot of questions. What sort of a recorder did you use, where was the recorder? I very rarely hear very clear voices on a recorder. Sometimes when I do it might sound like the person in the room. People forget what they do all the time.  They don’t realize they whisper, they don’t realize they’re talking to themselves. We’re forgetful creatures; we don’t remember these simple things. So it’s hard for me to say without a backup what it is.

Robin: So for an EVP to actually make it into your…hall of fame [chuckles] what are the filters?

Cindy: It would pass the backup recording test. We’d make sure on the better recorder that we can’t identify that voice.  Chances are that it’s on only one recorder.  That would be a plus.

Robin: I’ve noticed that that happens a lot in investigations. The sound will only be on one recorder when there were three or four recorders in the room.

Cindy: Which suggests that it was just that one recorder affected?  And then we’ll look at the DEAD system data at the same time.  That may or may not tell me much.  Sometimes we do get interesting data at the same time as we get an EVP. So we’re kind of looking at all that. It’s a lot to look at actually. What else do I do? Well just that takes forever.

 If I do get a voice and it has passed the backup recorder test then we have to decide are we going to filter it or not.  Are we going to do any cleanup on it or not? We do very little, because I really don’t want to mess around with the frequencies we have there. I want to be able to tell where this was and what it was originally and keep that data on hand too.  What was the top frequency, what was the amplitude of that particular sound and just try to keep track of all that over time.  Maybe it will tell me something some day.

Robin: Well, and I’ve always been worried about taking what I think is an EVP and putting it into an editing system and tweaking it and then trying to present it to the paranormal community. I can only imagine what the skeptics would say about that.

Cindy: Well, exactly because you can give me any sound and I could make it sound like an EVP with enough tweaking. And I’m hoping, honestly, with this new recording system that I’m not going to have that much trouble anymore because I’m hoping not to have to deal with bad recorders.  We’ll see what happens.  And if I do use a sound source [white noise generator] that it will be a very controlled sound source and I’ll have a record of that sound source and I’ll be able to take that out. That will still mess with my frequencies, but just for my own knowledge it would be interesting to see what happens when I take that out. I’m speculating here.

Asking Questions at an EVP Session

Robin: More on the emotional side of EVP work here, I’ve heard people say that they look into the history of the place and try to find something to say, even going to the point of scripting up questions.  You’ve already said that you don’t believe that…

Cindy: Well let’s say I went to West Virginia State Penitentiary and I knew all the history of that. So when I did do an EVP session there I would probably direct my questions to who I thought I might be speaking to. And interestingly enough, some of the better responses and activity we’ve generated has been when I’ve started asking about family members.

Robin: Yes, I’ve found that to be true too.

 Cindy: “So, tell me about your mother,” or “is there a loved one…” And you get an emotional response and you wonder was I projecting it or is that the entity out there projecting it back to me. And I don’t know. But sometimes we have had some interesting things happen, not EVP’s but interesting activity happen around those questions. I’ve been in this long enough where I’ve done it all, scripted things out to the nth degree. I feel like I’m a little more stifled when I do it that way, it’s not so free flowing. I’ve also done round robin with people. I’ve done all sorts of different ways. Right now I’m a little more laid back on it, just as long as I can control my environment.

 What I’m actually doing now is stepping back as the session leader and letting other people do the sessions. I’m doing more monitoring because we had a huge drop off of EVP. Now is it me? Let’s see what happens when other people control the session, and I’ll just monitor the equipment – so there’s another question to look at here. So let them run the session as they see fit, just as long as I can monitor the environmental control, and my sound is controlled, I’m a happy camper.

 Robin: Well, I’ve found too that after a strenuous EVP session that I’m kind of empty emotionally inside. I’ve had some very emotional EVP sessions.

Cindy: Hmm, I can’t say that’s ever happened to me. I think I’m probably too analytical in my thinking and how I approach that. And, who knows, that’s why I’m trying to get other people involved in the sessions, because maybe that is an important element. And maybe I’m too analytical about it, too skeptical about it, whatever, but too distanced. And maybe you do need that person that does have that glimmer.

Robin: Yes, because don’t you think if there is an entity out there and you’re trying to entice it to speak with you, don’t you think you’d have to make an emotional connection with them in order for them to respond?

Cindy: Well, and that is what I try to do, especially when I get into the more psychological questions. I try to draw emotions that are triggers for me, personally, or for someone who had a troubled background. But that’s why I’d like to see more people in our group step forward in the process just to see what happens.  But no, I can’t say I’ve experienced what you’ve experienced because I don’t know what happens really, unless we start to have activity start to happen during an EVP session, I don’t know what it is until I get home. Because we won’t and don’t at this time analyze onsite.

Thoughts on Provoking an Entity

Robin: How about provoking?

Cindy: I don’t. We do have some people in the group that do. On the cases I’ve been on, I can’t say that I’ve seen anything happen with it. I have heard from other investigations before I was in the group where they’ve done provoking and it’s not that they got EVP’s but they did get activity. And we had instances where we’ve had audible voices but they don’t show up on the recorder. I don’t know what that’s about!  Now that seems like more of a mind connection, but that’s a whole other topic.  And they got that through acts of provoking.  I’m just not personally comfortable with it; it’s just not my personality. But I generally don’t stop somebody if they want to.

Favorite EVP’s

Robin: So, favorite EVP?

Cindy:  Oh, yeah, but I can’t back it up. It was in the early days. I was doing a session for a gentleman who – well, I used to go to people’s houses in the early days and do sessions – so I went to a house for a gentleman whose wife had died. I was using one of the first, early edition recorders from Radio Shack. It literally looks like a Bic lighter! I still have it [laughs].

Robin: Let me guess it’s in the box with the other hundred recorders you bought.

Cindy, Yes, but it’s still my favorite because it was my first one. I used no external mic, just the one that is in there. But very, very clearly, you hear…sometimes you get interesting things when you’re just having conversations with people and you’re not careful about it and you get that third voice.  And we got that third voice, and it’s in a lull between when I’m speaking and he’s speaking – you hear a whispery voice that is extremely clear that seems to say, “Do you want this person?”

And yes, he does want that person; he’s looking for that person.  Other people have heard it, and as you know you’re best loved EVP’s nobody else can hear what you hear! [Laughs] They don’t necessarily hear what I hear. But that was pre-group, and that one has always stuck with me. I have no data to back it up, it was one little recorder. But it was one of those little things that has kept me going, especially when I was doing this pretty much by myself.

Within the group, some of the interesting ones…

Robin: I really love the one of the ghostly PA system.

Cindy: Yes, that one’s cool. But that’s not so much an EVP as a Direct Voice Phenomenon, because they could hear it. So it wasn’t an Electronic Voice Phenomenon because it was through a PA – but the PA system wasn’t plugged in!  It was wild. But it’s things like that that keep us going, because once you shift through all the data there’s not a lot out there that we can validate.  We’re looking for that 1% that’s showing something. If we come up with nothing maybe that’s showing us something too.  What we need is for other groups to step up and buy this similar equipment, and to have some really stringent protocol, not just waving recorders around because that doesn’t prove anything. That just gives us a lot of questionable sounds. We need other groups to step up so that we can get some answers.

Resources mentioned in this Article:

AA-EVP The American Association of Electronic Voice Phenomena
www.AA-EVP.com/index.htm

Dr. Dennings, Hazel M. (1966) True Hauntings: Spirits with a Purpose

Llewellyn Publications.

Fostex FR-2LE Compact Flash Field Recorder B&H Photo, Video, Pro Audio Catalog Summer 2011 Catalog.  www.BandH.com

Lauer, J., Schumacher D. (2007) Investigating the Haunted: Ghost Hunting Taken to the Next Level. Xlibris Corporation. Additional Copies of the Book can be ordered at Orders@Xlibris.com

 Marantz  2-Channel Portable Recorder. B&H Photo, Video, Pro Audio Catalog Summer 2011 Catalog.  www.BandH.com

Paranormal Research Group (P.R.G.) incorporates Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and was formerly known as the Southern Wisconsin Paranormal Research Group (S.W.P.R.G.)

http://www.paranormalresearchgroup.com/

Strom-Mackey, R. (2012) “Interview with Dave Schumacher of the P.R.G..” www.delawareparanormal.blogspot.com  January 23, 2012

Interview with Dave Schumacher of the P.R.G.

Author, scientist, investigator, Dave Schumacher of the Paranormal Research Group discusses the scientific process that his group uses to investigate all those things that go bump in the night.

by Robin M. Strom-Mackey

Dave Schumacher, Science and Technology Advisor and Director of the Anomalous Research Department for the Southern Wisconsin Paranormal Research Group (S.W.P.R.G.) which just recently expanded to include Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, changing their name simply to the Paranormal Research Group (P.R.G.).  Schumacher granted me an interview when I was in Wisconsin for my podcast, during which time I got a wonderful education into how this organization ticks. It struck me then that the S.W.P.R.G. really was taking Ghost Hunting to the Next Level, which, not coincidentally, is the name of the book Schumacher co-wrote with fellow director Jennifer Lauer. (See the Resources at the end of this article to find out more about the book and the organization.) Under Schumacher’s technical direction the PRG was embarking on some very thorough research into the paranormal, and exploring the use of fascinating technologies.  In this interview, Schumacher discusses some of his pet projects including the use of the D.E.A.D. system and random number generators on investigations.

Strom: You’ve been with the S.W.P.R.G. since 2004, how did you become involved with the group?

Schumacher: It’s rather interesting how I became involved in the S.W.P.R.G., because I had my own group in Janesville. In about 2003, Jenn Lauer sent me an email saying, “hey, you’re another group, and what’s going on?”  At the time I read, and filed it and never got back to her. Then about a year later I was researching groups in the Janesville area and came across the S.W.P.R.G.. I called Jenn, and we went and had lunch…and we were all on the same page, so I joined the group.  I’ve always been into the technical aspects. My official training in school and graduate school was in the sciences: Biology, Molecular Biology, and Statistics. So I like to approach things from that point of view, a very scientific approach to things as well as a lot of the psychology involved.  So it was just a natural progression. I had a lot of equipment, and I was at the time designing a data logging system – and it was just about together by the time I joined Jennifer’s group. So, it just seemed natural to step into the Science and Technology role with the group.

Robin: So you say that you and Jenn were on the same page. So what was the page?

Schumacher: The page we were on is really bringing credibility to the field of paranormal research and investigation.  And really getting at what’s going on. Trying to understand what these experiences are, why people experience them and what they are due to. Not just assuming there are ghosts. There may be, there may not be. But what we’re trying to do is gather the data and evidence and then analyze it and come up with a hypothesis and then maybe a theory as to what is happening.

Strom: So much more of a scientific research standpoint.

Schumacher: I’d say definitely, more a scientific research direction.

Strom: Do you find a lot of groups out there don’t take that approach?

Schumacher: Yeah, I’d say there are a lot of groups out there that don’t take that approach.  Then there are some that say they take that approach, but when you look further into their reports and what they’re doing…they’re trying. You’ve got to learn. No one comes into this as an expert, so you’ve got to learn. But if you’re going to do science, or say you’re going to do science there is a specific way and a set of criteria that you need to follow when you’re doing things that way. But it also depends on what you’re in it for.  For me, and most of the members of the S.W.P.R.G., we’re more in it to find out the real answers. For other people it’s a fun hobby. They like to go out and like to be scared and experience some things and that’s perfectly fine. But we just approach it from a different way.

Strom:  With your background in the sciences. Do you ever feel ridiculed or do you feel derision from other members of the scientific community when you talk about that which you do?

Schumacher: Yeah.  It’s not really looked down upon but they kind of joke about the ghosts and hauntings. The reason for that is that most of them are only familiar with what they see on TV and in the movies. A lot of people don’t understand, even the hard-core scientists, that yes; you can approach this from a very scientific point of view. Not just coming out and saying, well, definitely ghosts exist and things are flying around and that’s what causes it. There’s a lot of psychological and a lot of environmental things that go into this as well. So since we approach it a little differently than most groups, once we explain it to people they’re a little more understanding and we really don’t get too much grief from the hard-core scientists.

What is it that you do professionally, if you don’t mind my asking?

Schumacher: I work for a pharmaceutical company as a clinical sciences liaison between the company and some of the physicians and specialists. And I also work with a couple of the national speakers and thought leaders in the area.

Strom: Do you tell your colleagues what you do?

Schumacher: Yeah, yeah. I have nothing to be ashamed of. It’s an interesting field and I’m comfortable with the way we approach things.

Direct Environmental Acquisition Data-Logging System (D.E.A.D.)

Strom: A lot of what you sent me was about the D.E.A.D. system, which is an acronym – and I’m not going to try and do it off the top of my head. What does D.E.A.D. stand for?

Schumacher: D.E.A.D. stands for the Direct Environmental Acquisition Data-Logging System. We have to give Jenn Lauer credit for coming up with the name. It was very clever. 

Strom: Can you tell me about it? How did it come about? Did you build your own?

Schumacher: it is a multi-computer based system where we hook sensors into the computer such as electromagnetic field, natural magnetic field, radiation, temperature, humidity, ions, light intensity; pretty much anything we want to measure in the environment. It’s all fed into a computer system which date-time stamps it. That way, if someone has an experience or we pick something up on video or audio, we can go back and try to correlate any changes in the environment with those experiences or pieces of data. We use some very specialized equipment. One of our electro-magnetic field sensors runs at a rate of about 300 to 400 samples per second.  So not only can we see any changes in the field real-time, but after it has happened we can go back and analyze it to see which frequencies are present.  We also run random-number generators. That’s something a little new to the field.  It’s preliminary, but we are getting some interesting data from that as well. 

The reason that we’re doing this is because a lot of people report changes in the electromagnetic field, temperature drops, and radiation changes. But if you go back and really dig into how that information was gathered…I do not doubt anyone. However, hand-held equipment just doesn’t have the sensitivity and the ability to date-time stamp or correlate with an experience that were happening.   So we’re really trying to understand what was going on in the environment when people experience these things.  And of course, just because there was a correlation with an experience and something that was going on in the environment doesn’t necessarily mean that it was caused by a ghost. But this is the type of good, hard, data that we need to make those determinations. And of course, with electromagnetic fields, there’s a lot of research out there to suggest that exposure to fields can cause people to experience things that might seem “ghostly.”  But in reality it’s the electromagnetic field and your brain trying to make some sense out of it.  So we’re really just trying to pick apart the environment and see what’s going on. That also helps us rule out natural causes for various experiences as well. 

Strom: So how long have you been using this system?

Schumacher: I’d say ever since I joined the group. I’d say since 2004 or 2005. It’s changed a few times. We started out with very basic, and the sensors and equipment wasn’t as sensitive. It was better, cost-effective wise. But now it’s become much better. We’re always looking to improve and upgrade the equipment that we have.

Geomagnetic Field Detectors VS Electromagnetic Detectors

Strom: In the book you were talking about the D.E.A.D. system and the different types of detectors that you were using. You were talking about a geomagnetic detector, as well as the age-old electromagnetic field detector. And because I’m not a scientist, can you explain, what is the difference between a geomagnetic field and an electromagnetic field?  Are they not interrelated?

Schumacher: Well, they’re both magnetic fields, but that’s about it. With the electromagnetic field, that is the field that is controlled by the flow of electricity. That is the man-made stuff. When you turn your lights on…

Strom: But there are certain natural electromagnetic fields as well aren’t there?

Schumacher: Exactly. Right, and that’s D.C. and you measure that with your electromagnetic field meter, your little digital ones or the cell sensors. They’re basically measuring the man-made stuff within the 50-60 Hz range. Everything we use in America is at the 60 Hz level. So that’s mainly what those are picking up. But with the natural ones, the way that they are supposed to work – and you’re probably familiar with the Tri-Field Natural Meter – that one has a filter on it. The idea is that it filters out all those other frequencies in order to keep you at 0 Hz – anywhere between 0 to 5Hz.  And that is more of the natural or DC current of a normal magnet.  So the Earth, of course, has its own magnetic field, and those sensors are so sensitive that they are able to detect changes in the Earth’s magnetic field.

Strom: so there at a much lower frequency?

Schumacher: Yes, they’re supposed to filter out all of the man-made stuff. Right. So it’s a very, very low frequency basically 0 to .5Hz at most. So a geomagnetic field is the Earth’s magnetic field or a certain location.  A lot of people change out the terms geomagnetic and actual magnetic field – but they’re basically measuring the same frequencies. A lot of people have the Tri-Field Natural meter, and that’s very sensitive. But they also make much higher-end, expensive meters and they’ll call them natural field meters or sometimes they’ll call them geomagnetic meters and they are very sensitive. They can detect a change in the Earth’s magnetic field of about .05 %. So even if it changes just a little bit they’ll pick that up.

Results of D.E.A.D. System

Strom: So you’ve had the system in place, and over the years you’ve done numerous investigations. So, what have your findings been?

Schumacher: Well there are two things that seem to hold true in places where people report a lot of activity. The first is changes in the electromagnetic field. And it’s not just how much of a big spike you get, but there are certain characteristics – how it’s pulsing, the frequencies that it is at. And those tend to correlate; these changes tend to correlate with areas that are reported to have paranormal activity. And we’ve also detected big spikes in the EMF when somebody has an experience and when we’ve captured EVP’s as well.  The other thing we’ve found is that in some situations is that radiation will drop. Usually you will have a background radiation level, and when there’s an experience – and we’ve even seen this with EVP’s – at the time of the experience it dips from a background level of maybe 10 counts per minute down to  zero.  But then when the experience is over it goes back to normal.

And one good example is a case in Milwaukee that you can take a look at on our website. Cindy Heinen, our EVP person, was sitting in this upper flat of a location where people said all kinds of things had happened.  And all of a sudden she said that she felt a cold breeze or draft going down my neck and my arm. So one of the investigators took a picture. The picture before all of this was fine. During the time she reported all this, there was a black form or mass kind of covering where the cold spot was and further up. And then when she said the cold spot was gone the black mass wasn’t there, the pictures were normal again.  We went back and looked at the data. The time this happened the axis or direction of the electromagnetic field had flipped around and the radiation had gone from around ten to twelve down to zero.  And then when she said it was over, and the normal pictures were taken, the electromagnetic field flipped back to the direction they were before and the radiation bounced back up to normal as well. So there were a bunch of different things that correlated, so that’s great for us. I mean if you’re looking for science.

Strom: Yes! From a scientific perspective…that’s got to be an exciting moment.

Schumacher: Yeah, it’s great. We got a personal experience, we got some pictures with anomalies, and we got two other environmental changes that correlated with what happened. So we were pretty excited about that.

Radiation, Random Number Generators and Haunted Locations

Strom: Why is it, and I’m sure you’ve got some sort of theory about this. But why is the radiation connected to the electromagnetic field. Or is it connected to the electromagnetic field, and why would it drop?

Schumacher:  If you look at that historical case “ The Entity” that the movie was based on from the U.C.L.A. investigators investigated it. They also found drops in radiation when things were happening.  So, what is going on? Some people hypothesize that whatever is there is drawing upon energy in the environment and it may be using that radioactive decay to manifest or do something.  I’m not sure if that’s it. I don’t know yet.  The other thing that we’re finding is radiation is…what you’re sensing is radioactive decay which is a very random process.  And a lot of people use that as a means to generate random data or random numbers.  The interesting thing is that now that we’ve moved on to using a random number generator that we’re starting to see deviations from randomness in locations where people report things.  So it’s almost like there’s something there controlling the randomness in the environment.  And the very basic tenet of information is that you kind of put things together it’s not random. You put things together to give information.  We’re not really sure what’s going on there yet.  It could have something to do with a quantum physics level phenomenon as well. We’re just not sure. It’s everything from it’s using that energy to manifest to something changes in the environment that causes a reduction in this randomness.

Strom: So this random number generator that you’ve started to use. Tell me a little bit about how that works. I mean do you count the number of times 100 comes up during an investigation?

Schumacher: How it works, basically, it’s like flipping a coin.  But it bases it on circuit noise or a quantum process. So it’s completely random. It’s not like one of the ones in the software where it just knows to spit out equal numbers of ones and zeroes.  So when you flip a coin you either get a head or a tail. With this thing you either get a one or a zero. And what it does, every second, it’s like flipping 200 coins. And then it tells you how many ones and zeroes there are. Then by doing this for a certain period of time there’s a cumulative add-in amount of deviation. And there’s certain parameters that if it’s truly random you’re going to see a little fluctuation within the line.  But the way that the program is set up, and the way you can do the statistics is you will be able to see over time if it deviated from its normal, random output. And you can see it in the graphs and some of the statistics we run as well.

Strom: So you’ve found that it is completely random except when you take it to a location that is supposedly haunted and then how much does the randomness decrease?

Schumacher: Sure. We usually use something called a standard score or a Z score which measures how far it deviates from a certain level, or from a certain level where it should be random. Normally if you’re getting a Z score of anything from a 0 to about 2 that’s pretty well within…it’s still pretty random.  But anything beyond that we start taking an interest in. And we’ve seen things as low as 2.5 or 2.4 all the way up to 6. And one of the ones – we’ve got a paper that’s going to be published, hopefully in the next issue of Psi Journal of Psychical Research – we ran a random number generator in a location that we thought there was poltergeist activity or RSPK.  And when the person was not paying attention to the random number generator and was just going about their normal business there was a poltergeist experience – a loud banging on the wall – it deviated significantly from random. And when that activity wasn’t going on the random generator worked just as it should.  So we’re still playing around with it, still trying to collect data, but it seems to be very interesting.  But it also goes back to the research done out of the Princeton Engineering and Anomalies Group, the Global Consciousness Project where they had these random number generators all over the world, and they’re looking at what happens when there is a world-wide event. So we’re taking that and trying to put it in more specific locations.

Understanding Transliminal Personalities

Strom: Ok, transliminality. The definition I had found defines it as a concept envisioned by the Parapsychologist, Michael Thalbourne – an Australian psychologist at the University of Adelaide. It’s defined as a hypersensitivity to psychological material, imagery, ideation, affect and perception originating in the unconscious and/or external environment. High degrees of this trait, it has been shown by Thalbourne, tend to be associated with increased tendencies toward mystical experience, greater creativity and greater beliefs in the paranormal. Thalbourne also found evidence that transliminal personalities may be connected with increased chances of developing psychosis or a psychotic personality – in particular schizophrenia. All right, so that’s the textbook definition, but can you explain a bit more about what it is and why you feel the theory is important to the study of the paranormal?

Schumacher: Sure. The basic concept is that there is a threshold between your subconscious and your conscious mind. And transliminality is a measure of how ideas pass between the two. So people who have high scores on a transliminality scale, they tend to have more flow of information from their subconscious to their consciousness and back and forth. And all the other things Dr. Thalbourne talks about: imagery, things in the environment you might be picking up on. Now what they found is that transliminality is a key factor in a lot of the different parapsychology question sets that people use to assess experiences like belief scales or schizo-typal personality disorder. Schizo-typal is not schizophrenia, but there’s a spectrum of it. Magical ideation…these are all different sorts of concepts and question sets that have been used in research and they’ve found that transliminality basically contains components of all of it.

So, why is it important to ghost hunting? Well for paranormal investigating and ghost hunting, obviously if there’s nothing really going on, there is no real haunting, but you have information flowing from your subconscious to your consciousness you may think it is actually coming from the Great Beyond. You’re not aware of it, but then it pops in and suddenly you become aware of it. So that’s one thing.

The second thing is that if you look at some of the older literature by William James or G. Tyrell, some of the original founders of Parapsychology, they speculated that what ghosts are, what apparitions are, are actually telepathically induced hallucinations and they hypothesize that the signal from (chuckle) the dead guy’s consciousness out there is telepathically picked up in the subconscious of the living and then it processes out and then you become consciously aware of it. So transliminality would fit very nicely with what their model was.

Strom: Ok. And this would also explain – and tell me if I’m right or wrong about this – why people would have dreams about dead people because they would be in a…state in which their subconscious would be taking control?

Schumacher: Yes, and that’s an interesting comment. That’s very true, because they found that there is a correlation between the scores on these transliminality scales and people who have a lot of dreams and who like to interpret them and the meaning in them. So, a lot of this stuff that is out there as far as the psychology of the supernatural you can really bring most of it back to transliminality in one way or another. So it’s an interesting concept to look at. We just had an article that was published in the spring 2009 issue of Haunted Times Magazine which was basically a two-pager on transliminality, and it reviews all the history and why it’s important to the field of paranormal research.

Strom: So would you say that mediums or people that are sensitive are highly transliminal?

Schumacher: Yes the studies have shown that the people who do or do not say they’re psychics but have a lot of paranormal experiences, they tend to be good at figuring out what people are thinking, they do score significantly higher on that transliminality scale than people that don’t do that.

Strom: So there is a test for this?

Schumacher: Yes, it’s called the Transliminality Scale, or there’s the new one called the Revised Transliminality Scale which is better and has a little more internal consistency.

Strom: So, and this may seem like a strange question, but is this scale readily available?

Schumacher: Yes, it is readily available. You can find it in the research literature.

Strom: Because it might be a good thing for a paranormal investigator to have to give to clients before an investigation.

Schumacher: Yes, I reference it in the paper I was just telling you about and you can find it in the journal. So they can get their hands on it.

From Scooby Doo to Auerbach – How Schumacher Got Hooked

Strom: So everyone that ends up in this area seems to have a story to tell. Either they had a paranormal experience or they knew someone. So would you be kind enough to tell me what got you into the field?

Schumacher: I was really interested in this field ever since I was a little kid. I watched all the scary movies, of course I started out with Scooby Doo. The ghost was always fake, so maybe that’s where my scientific skepticism comes in. In time I would pick up and read every book on haunted areas and local haunts, haunted locations in America, watch the movies: Entity, Ghost Busters, Poltergeist. And I just loved it. But instead of it fading, going from pure excitement and fear, instead it kind of switched. Something hit me, and I wanted to know why. Why are people having these experiences and what is really out there? And one of the key books that really got me hooked from wanting to look at it professionally versus just pleasure was a book written from a parapsychology standpoint. It was a book by Loyd Auerbach, ESP, Hauntings and Poltergeists: A Parapsychologists Handbook. I got that in either 8^th grade or freshman year of high school. I read that book and I was like, “wow, there are actually people who study this stuff seriously, and you can get degrees in it!” So I went from a standpoint of being scared to a, “let’s figure on what’s going on out there.”

Strom: It’s so much better than Scooby Doo!

Schumacher: Yes, it’s much better than Scooby Doo, although I have sometimes thought about getting an old van and painting it up.

Strom: And getting a really big dog!

Schumacher: It would be awesome.

Resources

Lauer, J., Schumacher D. (2007) Investigating the Haunted: Ghost Hunting Taken to the Next Level. Xlibris Corporation. Additional Copies of the Book can be ordered at Orders@Xlibris.com

You can check out the S.W.P.R.G.’s (now the P.R.G.) at websitehttp://paranormalresearchgroup.com/