One of the easiest ways to either freak yourself out or, prove to yourself that there might be something to an afterlife, is doing an EVP.

EVP stands for Electronic Voice Phenomena.

I’m not talking about doing this at your local city/town “haunted house”, I’m suggesting that you are going to do it at your OWN home.

The best way to get a good, clean EVP is either just by your self, or with one other partner. If you have a third person or more, you can risk muddying the waters. People sometimes breathe heavy, cough, clear their throats or mutter things under their breath. The really bad stuff is if they interrupt your questions or interject verbally when you are listening for something. Sometimes there are noises that come from other areas of the body that you don’t need. Hmmm.

Recorders, iPods and phones can be used for recording EVP’s

When you are by yourself in your home, you only have to account for yourself and your own noises. If you do have a second person with you, make sure only one person is asking the questions. And DON’T WHISPER anything!! Golden rule.

The reason why you cannot whisper, is that the spirit population has trouble communicating vocally. Their speech does not come out clear and concise. It takes a lot of energy for them to mutter a couple of words, let alone a whole sentence. So their words come out a little breathy and whispery. You have to account for your words and their words so there has to be a distinct difference and if you whisper, it can get confused with theirs.

Now to the “how to do it” part.

#1 – Make sure you are sitting comfortable in a part of your home that’s not overly noisy with the furnace or water pipes making sounds. Also, make sure there is no paper around you that will make crumpling noises from sitting on it or moving it. And….shut your phone off!!*

#2 – You are going to ask a series of questions with the voice recorder you have (*if you don’t have one, you can use your phone or iPod for this to record). Be very clear in your questions and leave at least 15-20 seconds between questions so they have a chance to answer you.

#3 – Questions to ask: Keep it simple.

• Are there any spirits here with me now? (yes it’s cliché, but it gets the ball rolling)

• May I ask you some questions? (you do need to ask their permission, it’s polite and respectful and you would ask the same of someone that was alive in their corporeal body which is what these people formerly were in)

• What is your name?

• Where did you live?

• Did you live here?

• How did you die?

• Are you happy now?

Don’t call upon your dead relatives right now because you will have to ask them specific questions to make sure they are who you think they are. Some spirits will impersonate who you want to talk to and hijack the conversation. You’ll either get nothing nonsensical out of them or some nasty, stupid stuff.

Remember we are just doing a simple EVP experiment, not asking for Grandma to come through and give us her secret muffin recipe.

Now take your voice recorder or iPod or cell phone and download the sound file. Or just put a headphone jack in and listen to what you have. You might have to listen to it a number of times to figure exactly what they are saying. You might have absolutely nothing on the recording too. Spirits will talk when they want to talk. Don’t be disappointed if you don’t have anything on your first try.

I turned a recorder on one night when I was home alone and asked if anyone wanted to talk to me. When I played the recording back, I heard a strong clear female voice say “No.” Okay then.

Note: Another interesting piece of information about EVP’s – women are better at hearing something speaking on recordings because spirits speak at a higher sound frequency level. Children also hear the higher frequencies; better than adult women. That’s why quite a few can hear ‘things talking in the night’.