I consider EVP’s (electronic voice phenomena) to be the second best type of evidence you can capture. The first would be any unexplained visual phenomena but those are VERY rare. So how do you go about catching a quality EVP? For the first several years as a paranormal investigator, I was terrible at this. I assumed it was because my hearing was bad or phenomena just didn’t happen around me. Then a couple years ago, I started to capture some interesting things on my devices. What changed?

First, I learned to pick a spot for my camera or audio recorder that may be well traveled by not just my team but by anyone who would have resided in a location and I leave the device for the duration of the investigation. Carrying your device around seems like a great idea until you realize the amount of sound contamination you encounter almost constantly. Your device needs to sit so you can better evaluate the environment and hopefully confirm that what you are hearing is not you or the rest of the team. I also think leaving a video camera for a long period of time works best because you can learn to identify the various sounds in that specific location and pinpoint when something is out of place. Even if you don’t leave your camera or recorder in one location, at least set it down when you arrive in a space so you reduce contamination. 

Second, and really this is the most important thing, review your evidence. I know that reviewing 8, 16, 24, 48+ hours of video or audio evidence is boring. Really, I know because I’ve reviewed over 60 hours of video for one investigation over the course of a month before. It takes a long time and usually nothing happens BUT this is where the EVPs exist. In my experience, most EVPs do not occur during the EVP session where everyone sits in a circle with 8 different devices running. They happen when no one is paying attention or when the team is just existing in the space. Why hadn’t I captured cool EVPs before? I wasn’t reviewing all of my evidence. We are all guilty of this so it’s best just accept it and move forward. 

Yes, sometimes your burst session works like on TV and you get an automatic response to your questions. But more likely, that won’t happen. I’m not saying you should stop doing this or standard EVP sessions. Instead, what I am saying is that you MUST review your stand alone equipment. You will be amazed at what may appear when you think nothing happened. So, evaluate how much you need to review, plan how much you can do a day (I typically review 10 minutes to 2 hours a day depending on my schedule), grab some caffeine, and start reviewing. Be sure to keep track of your people and fingers crossed, you will find something not quite expected. 

As a side note, I no longer use audio recorders as I need a visual reference for auditory information. This works best for me but I have teammates who prefer audio only devices so be sure to use the types of devices you will actually review. With that said, what do you find works best for capturing evidence? Let me know your thoughts in the comments here or on my Facebook page.

Until next time, Happy Hunting.