In isolation, one exceptional EVP provides nothing more than a tantalising insight. Since regular recordings began in 2008, I have amassed an archive of fifteen thousand EVP clips, ten thousand of which have been subjectively classed A and B. The ability of communicators to provide consistent and clear sentient messages in different environments, strongly supports the hypothesis of EVP as being evidential of the continuance of human consciousness and testifies to the reality of post-mortem communication. There are important caveats to our understanding; the fine mechanics of the phenomena remains unknown as does the method of our transition to another state of being, and how those who have passed experience their new plane(s) of existence.

To accept unquestioningly that all purported recordings of EVP are voices of the dead, would be a foolhardy assumption. Only when you are personally satisfied that the evidence has been gathered with integrity and is not otherwise accountable, are you able to critically appraise the communication on its linguistic merits. I acknowledge that accepting EVP as evidence based upon my judgement may be difficult for some readers, and I will concede that cognitive bias may be present, but with a wealth of communication directly addressing the subject of death and dying, the mass of data provides a convincing argument.

It may surprise some, but the topic of death and dying is rarely discussed in recording sessions; our preferred focus is on the practical and evidential aspects of communication and on the production of phenomena; and all messages relating to mortality were spontaneously given, not elicited. We are assured by communicators, that most but not all who speak or appear, have lived before in a physical body, we feel this excludes the need for us to repeatedly request a description of a communicators physical state of being. One gentleman captured in a séance, simply states “you’ve got to listen carefully, we are dead” (47); the probability of being wilfully mislead is unlikely, given that further examples such as “the dead ones are coming to arrive” (48) and “Did it really happen to me since I’m dead?” (49), reinforces my supposition.

Communicators who wish to discuss their passing and of being remembered by the living, project their voices well with most clips being class A; this is presumed to be due to the highly emotive nature of their message. Hearing speakers talk of being deceased, and of their eagerness still to be heard, can be heart-rending; especially when it is the voice of a child asking their mother to be remembered50. Our methodology of recording for EVP leaves us sadly lacking in the ability to immediately respond, and we can only hope that in replying to their messages in the next recording session, speakers are reassured that they have not been forgotten. When we call out for communicators to give us their names, speakers sometimes refer to how they were known in the past tense, “I was Mickey Randall” (51), “I was Dale Armson” (52), yet their personalities are as they once were, and their voices remain audibly distinctive.

Most speakers do not want to relive the misery they experience on passing but would rather tell us their name or refer to the period in which they existed, or mention people they knew. As a group we have little interest in the popularist morbid side of EVP investigations and have no pleasure in asking communicators to revisit painful memories. Listening to men vividly recalling their death is upsetting, “You slip under, that’s how I feel”,”Suicide” (53), neither they or us would gain anything by asking speakers to recall their experience in greater depth. It might seem logical to capture the recollections of those who died in tragic circumstances at historic battle sites, and places of torture, but in practice we rarely do; their remembrance is more important and outweighs pain in nearly all instances.

Brief EVP consisting of a singular name are commonly captured; a gentleman who asked, “Who checks up if you’re dead?” (54), poses an important but uncomfortable conundrum. If framed as an expectation for us to validate messages as coming from an individual who is deceased, we are likely to fail. We do not routinely research ad-hoc names unless they accompany explicit messages or are related to a property, because without supporting information the chance of finding a documented personal history is remote. Despite the weakness in our ability to formerly recognise communicators, they are relentless in their efforts to link with us; as one lady’s question illustrates, “is anybody saying they think of us” (55).

For many years we captured the name Billy as an isolated EVP, which although a common name was not personal to any members of the group. The name abruptly stopped featuring on recordings after we captured a man’s voice admitting “I killed Billy” (56). Confessions of murder by the perpetrator, and of committing a violent crime are not uncommon, but these are not EVP that I glibly share. In two incidences, EVP pertaining to an open case were recorded, full names and the locations were identified, and were alarmingly evidential. I made it clear to communicators, that the recordings of those who make criminal confessions will not be made public or passed on to the authorities, so I can only assume the speaker’s air their admission of guilt to leave their crime behind.

The popular perception of gathering EVP to bear witness for hauntings and murders may bring the curious into the subject, and many operators even with very little experience, may successfully capture EVP communication related to these events on their devices; but few who are not dedicated to the subject, repeatedly capture easily heard voices. Most clips presented on social media platforms and television entertainment shows are not clear, but even if a small percentage are genuine, it would demonstrate the pervasive ability of the deceased to communicate. EVP from one group in isolation cannot be considered as evidential, but worldwide thousands of operators consistently capture recognisable human voices. Practitioners are disparate and often geographically distant even from those they work with; many frequent online forums to discuss results and equipment, without ever meeting. A much-needed sense of community within ITC is missing; Tom Butler (2016), founder of the Association of TransCommunication, attempted to bring practitioners together for joint experimentation but due to a lack of participation, the online group was closed, and the project ended.

Please note: the information on this page is an excerpt from my accepted BICS essay. You may download the full text here: CLICK

Analysis