By Dr. Joel Ramsey, The Paranormal Professor

Today I want to delve into one of the most compelling and often misunderstood aspects of paranormal research: Electronic Voice Phenomena, or EVP. For those new to the field, EVP refers to unexplained sounds and voices captured on electronic recording devices, often interpreted as communication from spirits.

Throughout my work as The Paranormal Professor, I examine paranormal claims through communication theory, psychology, environmental science, and careful field investigation, and EVP is one of the clearest examples of why that interdisciplinary approach matters.

The emotional impact of hearing a voice from an unknown source is powerful. People have become emotional during my investigations when they believe they've heard a deceased loved one speak through a recording device. And I understand why. The desire to connect with those we've lost is one of the most fundamental human experiences.

But it is our responsibility as researchers to apply a rigorous scientific lens to these findings before we attribute them to the paranormal. The study of EVP sits at a fascinating intersection of acoustics, psychology, and communication theory, and before we declare that a sound is a ghost, we must first rule out all plausible natural and technological explanations.

Let me walk you through what that actually means.

The History of EVP: How Dead Voices Became Big Business

The modern investigation of EVP began in 1959 with the Swedish painter and film producer Friedrich Jürgenson. While recording bird songs in the countryside, Jürgenson played back the tape and heard what he believed were voices, including one he interpreted as his deceased mother calling his name.

Jürgenson spent the rest of his life recording and analyzing what he believed were spirit communications. His work inspired Konstantin Raudive, a Latvian psychologist, who made over one hundred thousand audio recordings he claimed contained voices of the dead. Raudive's book, published in German in 1968 and in English translation as Breakthrough in 1971, brought EVP into mainstream awareness.

It also brought scrutiny, and this is the part of the history that usually gets left out. In the 1970s, the British researcher David Ellis spent two years examining the Raudive voices under a Perrott-Warrick research fellowship at Cambridge, and he was not a hostile outsider. He was funded specifically to find out. His conclusion was that the voices were best explained by radio interference, ordinary environmental sound, and the listener's own tendency to impose meaning on ambiguous audio, particularly when told in advance what to listen for. Raudive's followers were not persuaded, which is a pattern anyone who has read my other work will recognize.

By the 2000s, paranormal television had popularized EVP as the primary tool for communicating with spirits. Millions of viewers watched investigators ask questions into empty rooms, then play back audio recordings that supposedly contained answers from the dead. EVP became gospel in the paranormal community.

But here's what those shows don't tell you. Most EVP can be explained through well-understood scientific principles. And the devices marketed as spirit communication tools are often just radios with fancy names.

The Spirit Box: A Radio By Any Other Name

One of the most popular tools in modern paranormal investigation is the spirit box, often marketed under model names like the SB-7, SB-9, or SB-11.

Here's what I tell every guest on my paranormal tours and everyone who attends my keynote addresses: the spirit box is a radio. That's it. It's a radio that scans rapidly through AM or FM channels.

The theory behind the spirit box is that spirits can manipulate the white noise and static produced as the device sweeps through radio frequencies, using this electromagnetic chaos to form words and communicate with the living. In practice, what you're hearing is fragments of radio broadcasts, commercials, talk shows, and music stations as the device rapidly flips through channels.

I've used spirit boxes in dozens of investigations. And yes, sometimes I've gotten what appears to be an intelligent response. I define an intelligent response as an answer that comes almost instantaneously after I ask a question and that directly addresses what I asked. I might ask, "Is there anyone here with us tonight?" And within a second, the spirit box produces the word "yes."

That's compelling. That feels significant.

But I've also picked up Elvis Presley's "Heartbreak Hotel" on the spirit box. And I'm reasonably confident Elvis isn't haunting the basements of Wisconsin.

The spirit box is a radio. Sometimes it picks up coherent words because it's scanning through actual radio stations broadcasting actual content, and the intelligent responses are often fragments of talk radio, weather reports, or commercials that coincidentally align with the question asked. This doesn't mean every spirit box session is explainable. It does mean we need to be extremely cautious before declaring that we've made contact with the dead through a device that is, fundamentally, just scanning radio frequencies. I've written more about the devices and about the language we build around them in Speaking Paranormal, Part One: The Language of Contact.

Auditory Pareidolia: Why We Hear Voices in Static

Even when using traditional audio recorders instead of spirit boxes, EVP analysis faces a significant challenge: auditory pareidolia.

Pareidolia is the psychological phenomenon in which the brain perceives familiar patterns in random or ambiguous stimuli. Visual pareidolia is when you see faces in clouds, or a figure in a wood grain pattern, and I've written about how it shapes the photographs people bring me in The Spooky Science Behind Ghost Photos.

Auditory pareidolia is when you hear meaningful words in random noise.

The human brain is a pattern-seeking machine. It evolved to detect threats, recognize voices, and make sense of incomplete information, which is a survival advantage. If you hear rustling in the bushes, your brain assumes predator rather than wind, because false positives keep you alive.

But this same pattern-seeking tendency causes problems in EVP analysis. When you listen to static, white noise, or ambient environmental sounds with the expectation of hearing a voice, your brain will work overtime to construct meaning from randomness.

The Research: This Has Actually Been Tested

For years I explained this to tour groups as a principle. It is more than a principle now, because researchers have run the experiment.

In 2015, Michael Nees and Charlotte Phillips at Lafayette College played participants a mix of audio: genuine EVP recordings, ordinary speech, degraded speech, and pure noise. Half the participants were told the study concerned identifying voices in noisy environments. The other half were told it concerned electronic voice phenomena, the purported voices of ghosts in recordings from paranormal research. That single sentence was the only difference between the groups. Participants primed to expect the paranormal detected voices more often, not only in the EVP samples but in the degraded speech as well.

The second finding is the one I would put on a poster in every investigation group's meeting room. When participants did detect a voice, they showed low agreement about what it was saying.

That is the whole problem in a single result. It is not that people are lying about hearing something. They hear it. It's that what they hear is being generated substantially by expectation rather than by the recording, which is why ten investigators listening to the same clip produce ten different messages. One hears "get out." Another hears "help me." A third hears "red truck." Later work by Drinkwater and colleagues found that after simply watching videos explaining EVP, more than a third of participants reported hearing voices in random noise.

The related perceptual illusion worth knowing is the McGurk effect, first reported by Harry McGurk and John MacDonald in 1976. If you watch a video of someone mouthing the syllable "ga" while the audio plays "ba," most people hear "da," a sound that was never produced by either channel. What we hear is not determined solely by the sound waves entering our ears. Our brains actively construct auditory perception from expectation, context, and other sensory input.

This is why investigators should conduct blind analysis, listening to recordings without knowing what questions were asked or what anyone else claims to have heard. If your evidence only survives when the listener has been told what to expect, it isn't evidence. It's a demonstration of priming.

Radio Frequency Interference: The Ghost in the Machine

Another common source of false EVP is radio frequency interference.

Modern electronic devices are surrounded by electromagnetic signals. Radio stations, cell towers, Wi-Fi networks, Bluetooth devices, baby monitors, walkie-talkies, and even garage door openers all emit radio frequencies that can be picked up by sensitive recording equipment.

Audio recorders, especially older analog devices and cheaper digital recorders, can act as unintentional radio receivers. Stray signals bleed into recordings, creating voices, music, or static that investigators mistake for paranormal communication. This is not a fringe concern; it was Ellis's central finding about the Raudive voices half a century ago, and the electromagnetic environment has become vastly more crowded since.

This is why professional EVP analysis requires understanding your recording environment. Before you claim you've captured a spirit voice, you need to rule out radio stations, cell towers, nearby electronics, and other potential sources of contamination.

Infrasound and Environmental Audio Contamination

I've written extensively about infrasound in Ghost Frequency: What Infrasound Teaches Us About Haunted Places, but it's worth mentioning here as well. Infrasound, sound below 20 Hz, can't be consciously heard by humans, but it can be picked up by recording equipment, especially professional-grade microphones.

Infrasound sources include HVAC systems, traffic, wind, and structural resonance. When these low-frequency sounds are captured on a recording and played back, they can create rumbling, groaning, or droning sounds that investigators misinterpret as voices or paranormal phenomena.

Similarly, environmental contamination from wind, footsteps, clothing rustling, breathing, and background conversations can all create ambiguous sounds that, when played back and analyzed with expectation bias, become EVPs.

This is why controlled recording environments matter. If you're conducting an EVP session outdoors on a windy night near a busy highway, you're going to capture a lot of noise, and some of that noise, filtered through auditory pareidolia, will sound like voices.

The Ramsey Communication-Based Investigation Protocol and EVP

In my investigations, EVP analysis is never treated as standalone evidence. It's one data point among many, evaluated only after environmental and psychological factors are carefully examined. The full protocol is laid out in Speaking Paranormal, Part Two: The Tools of Responsible Investigation, and here is how it applies to audio.

Phase 1: Pseudocognition Assessment. What do investigators expect to hear? If someone believes they're in a haunted location and expects to capture spirit voices, their brain will be primed to hear those voices in ambiguous audio. I document these expectations upfront so I can later assess how expectations shaped perception. After the priming research, I consider this phase non-optional.

Phase 2: Environmental Baseline. Before recording any EVP session, I map the environment. Are there radio stations nearby? Cell towers? Electronics that might cause interference? Sources of infrasound? Environmental noise like wind, traffic, or HVAC systems? I document all potential contamination sources.

Phase 3: Communication Network Analysis. If an EVP is captured, I examine how the interpretation spreads. Who first claimed to hear a specific word or phrase? Did others independently hear the same thing, or did the first interpretation shape what everyone else heard? This reveals whether we're dealing with genuine anomalous audio or social reinforcement of pareidolia.

Phase 4: Controlled Investigation. I conduct blind analysis whenever possible, having people listen to recordings without knowing what questions were asked or what others claim to have heard. If multiple blind listeners independently hear the same message, that's more compelling than a group of primed investigators all agreeing they hear "get out."

Phase 5: Data Triangulation. I compare EVP with other data. Did the supposed voice correlate with EMF spikes, temperature changes, or visual phenomena? Or was it an isolated audio event with no other supporting evidence? For how audio fits alongside the broader categories investigators use, see The Four Types of Hauntings.

Only after working through all five phases do I consider whether an EVP might represent something genuinely unexplained.

My Honest Approach to Spirit Boxes and EVP on Tours

When I lead paranormal tours or give keynote addresses, I'm completely transparent with participants about the limitations of EVP and spirit boxes.

I hand out spirit boxes. I let people use them. I encourage experimentation. But I also tell them the truth. This is a radio. You're hearing fragments of radio broadcasts. Sometimes those fragments will seem to answer your questions, and that's coincidence, not spirits.

I define what constitutes an intelligent response: immediate, relevant, and contextually appropriate. If you ask, "What is your name?" and three seconds later the spirit box produces the word "Sarah," that might be worth noting. If you ask, "Are you here with us?" and ten seconds later you hear static that vaguely sounds like "yes" if you squint your ears hard enough, that's pareidolia.

And I'm honest about the Elvis Presley incident, because if we're going to claim spirit boxes work, we need to explain why they also pick up "Heartbreak Hotel" and advertisements for car dealerships.

This honesty doesn't ruin the experience. It deepens it. People appreciate being treated like intelligent adults rather than credulous believers. They learn to think critically. They ask better questions. And when something truly unusual happens, they're better equipped to recognize it because they've already ruled out the mundane explanations.

The Emotional Power of EVP: Why People Want to Believe

Here's what I've learned after years of working with EVP. People don't just want evidence of ghosts. They want a connection.

When someone believes they've captured the voice of a deceased parent, spouse, or child on a recording, the emotional weight of that experience is profound. It offers comfort. It suggests that death isn't the end. It implies that the people we love are still with us in some form.

I don't take that lightly, and I don't dismiss it. But I also don't exploit it. I don't tell people they've made contact with their deceased loved ones when what they've actually captured is radio interference or auditory pareidolia. That's not compassion. That's manipulation.

Instead, I offer them tools to investigate their experiences rigorously. I teach them how to rule out natural explanations. I show them how expectation shapes perception. And I respect their need for meaning without reinforcing false beliefs.

Because here's the thing. If EVP is real, if genuine spirit communication is possible, then we owe it to ourselves and to those we've lost to pursue it with scientific rigor. Calling every burst of static a ghost doesn't honor the dead. It cheapens the search for genuine evidence.

Every Captured Sound Is a Puzzle

EVP analysis is not about disproving personal experiences. It's about strengthening the entire field with a foundation of verifiable evidence.

Every captured sound is a puzzle, and it's our job to find all the pieces, not just the ones that fit our preconceived notions. That means ruling out radio interference, accounting for auditory pareidolia, testing for environmental contamination, conducting blind analysis, and correlating audio with other data. This systematic approach is what separates scientific exploration from simple storytelling.

So, the next time you capture what sounds like a voice on a recording, ask yourself whether it could be radio interference, whether it could be pareidolia, and whether it could be environmental noise. Then ask the harder question, the one the research points at directly: who told you what to listen for, and when?

Only after you've exhausted every natural explanation should you begin to consider the possibility that you've captured something genuinely unexplained.

That's not skepticism. That's good science. And good science is the only path to understanding whether EVP represents genuine communication with the dead, or just the ghosts we create in the static.

Sources

Ellis, D. J. (1975). Listening to the "Raudive voices." Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 48(763), 31–42.

McGurk, H., & MacDonald, J. (1976). Hearing lips and seeing voices. Nature, 264, 746–748.

Nees, M. A., & Phillips, C. (2015). Auditory pareidolia: Effects of contextual priming on perceptions of purportedly paranormal and ambiguous auditory stimuli. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 29(1), 129–134.

Drinkwater, K., Denovan, A., Dagnall, N., & Parker, A. (2020). Predictors of hearing electronic voice phenomena in random noise: Schizotypy, fantasy proneness, and paranormal beliefs. Journal of Parapsychology, 84(1).

Dr. Joel Ramsey is a certified paranormal investigator and paranormal research scientist with a Ph.D. in Communication from Regent University. He applies the Ramsey Communication-Based Investigation Protocol (RCIP) to unexplained phenomena and has been conducting evidence-based investigations for more than fifteen years.

If the approach in this article interests you, the full framework behind it, including the complete RCIP protocol and case studies described at length, appears in his book The Paranormal Professor: Investigating Belief, Perception, and the Unexplained, available here. He also speaks regularly to libraries, museums, historical societies, community groups, and paranormal conferences on perception, belief, grief, and responsible investigation. For investigation inquiries or speaking engagements, contact him at paranormalprofessor@yahoo.com.

Want to learn how to analyze EVP critically? Join The Paranormal Professor on a Paranormal Investigation and Ghost Walk in Madison, where you'll use spirit boxes and digital recorders and learn to separate signal from noise.

If you want to go further, read these in this order

1. The Four Types of Hauntings: Frameworks, Not Answers — the categories investigators use, and why none of them is a conclusion

2. Ghost Frequency: What Infrasound Teaches Us About Haunted Places — how buildings themselves produce the sensations people report

3. The Spooky Science Behind Ghost Photos — the same analysis applied to visual evidence

4. Why Every New Home Feels a Little Haunted — why expectation shapes what a room feels like

5. Speaking Paranormal, Part One and Part Two — the methodology in full