EVP, The Next Level: Getting Proof

ELECTRONIC VOICE PHENOMENA, or EVP, is one of the most fascinating areas of ghost research. Human-sounding voices of unknown origin are captured on audio recordings. Ghost hunting groups around the world now routinely include voice recorders as part of their standard equipment for ghost hunts in the hopes of capturing EVP. They are often successful.

For the most part, however, the recordings are as far as they go. Rarely is there any follow-up to determine whose voices they are or where they come from. Are they indeed voices of the dead… or something else?

Today, the American Association of Electronic Voice Phenomena (AA-EVP) is taking EVP research to a new level. Through scientific experiments, they hope to provide more understanding of this intriguing mystery. I spoke with Tom Butler, Co-Director of AA-EVP, about the group’s work.

When was AA-EVP established and why?

Sarah Estep established the AA-EVP in May of 1982 to, as we say in the : “Provide objective evidence that we survive death in an individual conscious state.”

Lisa [Butler, Co-Director of AA-EVP] began recording for EVP after reading Sarah Estep’s first book, Voices of Eternity, which is now a free PDF download from the book page of AA-EVP. That was in 1987, as I remember. Sarah had run the Association for eighteen years and wanted to retire. So in May of 2000, Sarah dissolved the AA-EVP, sent us the old membership list and we reformed the Association without missing a newsletter. We immediately got the Association on the Internet. We wanted members to be able to share their EVP and discuss the paranormal voices, so we established an email sharing group. So that members could learn from the past, we also set up an online document archive, which now holds the majority of past newsletters.

A discussion board, called the Idea Exchange, was recently added. There, members are able to help one another learn to work with EVP, and share ideas for new techniques. It is just the two of us operating the Association, so we are not able to give one-on-one attention to all five hundred plus members. That is why members helping members is very important. We are thankful for the help of volunteer moderators and regional coordinators, as many members have greatly benefited from their help.

We wrote the book, There is No Death and There are No Dead, as a textbook to introduce EVP to people who are interested in these phenomena in a way that is both interesting and rational.

EVP is showing up in many parts of our culture. For instance, just about all ghost hunting clubs have at least one person using EVP as part of the investigation. Scientists seeking to debunk any form of nonphysical phenomena now include EVP in their comments, albeit usually while ignoring the evidence. The media is more often including some use of EVP in television programs and movies. However, not all of these references to the phenomenal voices are accurate, and we spend more and more of our time trying to counter misleading and nonsensical references with evidence-based explanations. We are determined to let the evidence be our guide, but we are also determined to provide at least one resource for the public to use when trying to determine what that evidence really does show and what something is that just “seems to be true.”

AA-EVP is the first group I’ve heard of that is taking a scientific approach to getting results. How did that come about?

Lisa has a degree in psychology and I have one in electronic engineering. We have both worked in the corporate world. We both studied metaphysical concepts since our teenage years and have considerable training in several healing and mediumship modalities. So you can see, our temperament and training tends toward the pragmatic and deterministic, making us uncomfortable being associated with wishful thinking or things wondrous but unsubstantiated.

You will often hear Lisa say that EVP is “objective evidence.” It is clearly a form of communication between two intelligent individuals. From our studies, the only explanation that explains the evidence is the “survival hypothesis,” and if that is true, then the implications of such tangible proof of our survival and the existence of a place in which to survive have profound implications for humankind. For instance, we are beginning to see a substantial body of material that is giving us a clear view of the greater reality:

* People in the physical are the source of the energy needed to cause etheric to physical influence. We see evidence in EVP that we are the architects of our experiences. This also seems to substantiate the belief that we, as Self, are “embodied” in the physical via our physical body.

* We have entities around us all of the time. One of my favorite stories about EVP was told to us by a lady member who was alone recording for EVP. She asked her unseen communicators, “How many people are there from the Big Circle with me now?” The resulting EVP stated, “Twenty-three.” We can demonstrate rather conclusively that people have formed supporting groups on the other side. We think it can also be shown that we live with unseen helpers and that our lifetime is experienced as a cooperative effort between ourselves and our friends in spirit. Who we gather to us and how they are able to help us is a function of our worldview and our attention to the subtle communications from our helpers. This attention can be developed.

* What our religions, culture and family teach us about death and after death has a great deal to do with our experiences concerning the other side. At this time, most western religions are teaching things that cause some people to manifest a fearful experience when they interface with the other side and when they transition there. We can also see the disservice our popular media is giving the public by doing almost always showing contact with the other side as something to be feared.

* We have substantial, replicable proof that EVP can be developed into a powerful tool for etheric studies. If the evidence is considered, it is clear that many of the fundamental beliefs of science will need to be changed, and EVP offers a tangible means for determining how that change should be approached. For instance, central to the superpsi and quantum-holographics hypotheses, which are proposed as an alternative explanation to the survival hypothesis to explain the observed evidence, is the notion that information is “nonlocal.” This is based on the observation that mediums, remote viewers and clairvoyants (all more or less different expressions of the same ability) seem to be able to access information unaffected by time or space. In our work with EVP, we see that information is specific to an entity or a thought form. We do not know where the entity must “come from” to speak to us, but we are told by the communicators that they must, and have been told that they must “now go on” and will no longer be able to communicate. We see what seems like nonlocality as an illusion caused by scientists trying to explain the evidence using only physical world principles.

There are more, but these are the essential points. If you consider that these observations are based on experimental evidence, and then consider that virtually all of the scientific community is taught the assumption that all has evolved from the Big Bang, and that consciousness has a biological origin, then you can see that it is not evidence alone that we must produce. There must also be a change in worldview, probably first of the average person, and then of scientists as funding becomes more available for etheric studies. We see this happening a little in Europe with a few EVP research grants being issued, but much remains to be done.

So, in answer to your question, we set out to make the AA-EVP an organization in which grieving parents can find help, the newly interested can learn about EVP and the community of science can begin their etheric studies in a reasonable and rational environment. It is our hope that the AA-EVP will eventually have the funding to issue research grants to verify and the above observations and find ways to apply the result to the benefit of the community.

Fuente: Paranormal about (Mas Información)