September 18, 2005: EVP in the House - Brendan Cook & Barbara McBeath
The EVP recordings include a child's voice saying "it ran away," a young female voice stating "Christian tore her clothes," and a male voice responding "I'm a big freak" when asked why he scratched the homeowner. Brendan notes that approximately 80 percent of their captures feature children's voices. He theorizes the different voices may represent a single entity adopting various personas rather than multiple spirits.
Art and the investigators discuss how Thomas Edison believed in communicating with the dead and how the Spiricom experiments produced two-way conversations with spirits. They encourage listeners to try recording EVP themselves with equipment as simple as a twenty-dollar recorder, noting that more than eight out of ten people who attempt it report capturing unexplained voices.
Key Moments
Ham radio operators turned away from Katrina zone: Bell explains that as the New Orleans police and fire radio system 'dissolved' after Katrina, ham radio operators with full mobile rigs were blocked by state troopers and National Guard from entering the city for three days.
Police shooting abandoned dogs in St. Bernard Parish: Bell tells listeners he initially saw the claim on a blog and dismissed it, then verified through ham radio contacts that police are in fact shooting friendly, tail-wagging dogs left behind in St. Bernard Parish, with video posted to coast2coastam.com.
Lesson of Katrina: you can only depend on yourself: Bell distills Katrina into a single hard lesson: civilization is held together by a thin thread, and when it breaks you cannot count on local, state, or federal government - only on yourself and your preparations.
Wiccan house: scratched neck, ripped altar, ash 'he' on the door: McBeath describes a frantic email from two Wiccan women whose altar was torn apart while they did yard work, who were repeatedly scratched as if by needles, and who came home to find an enormous ash letter spelling the word 'he' on their front door.
80% of EVP voices are children: Bell asks McBeath what percentage of recovered EVP voices sound like children; she says at least 80% are children's voices, and neither investigator can explain why.