Things That Go Bump, Famous Author Edition: As I Lay Dead (The William Faulkner Interview)

Welcome back to another edition of Things That Go Bump!

Tonight, we'll take a trip to the grave of Nobel Peace Prize winning author William Faulkner, and we'll pester him with impertinent questions while drawing curious stares from passers-by.

I traveled back in time to 1874 just to take an authentic old-timey photograph.

I live, reside, and/or dwell in Oxford, Mississippi, which is where Faulkner lived, wrote, and was eventually buried, although I'm sure he died first. We're pretty careful about the whole die-first-then-bury thing these days.

Faulkner's grave is located in a genteel old cemetery not far from Oxford's town square. It's a peaceful place, especially when the Rebels are playing Vanderbilt on the far side of town, which is why I chose a game day Saturday night for my EVP session with Mr. Faulkner.

I armed myself with my trusty Olympus voice recorder, my new Zoom H1 digital recorder, my video and still cameras, and my Ball Microphone housing, which I described in last week's blog. Also along was my iOvilus device, which prattled merrily on but did actually startle me once with a single insightful exchange (you'll see it later).

I arrived at Mr. Faulkner's grave at dusk, and was greeted the usual small assortment of empty liquor bottles, which students and fans are prone to leave as hi-octane offerings to the shade of old Bill.

Airline bottles? Red Solo cups? Sheesh, people, show a little class...

My methodology was simple. I placed the Zoom and the Olympus atop the headstone, put the video camera to the side, aimed at the mics. I held a brief EVP session in which I introduced myself and blathered inanities for about four minutes.

I'm posting the audio and the video links below. Note that the Zoom's audio was rendered useless by the faint breeze for the few moments it was outside the Ball Mic housing; I deleted that portion of the audio track, since it was nothing but a deafening roar. Note to self -- the Zoom needs a wind filter anytime it's outside, even in mild breeze conditions. 

The Olympus carried on nonplussed, as did the video camera's audio. Below are links to the full audio and video files, in case you'd like to see and hear everything for yourself without any commentary. Or, if you want, skip down and I'll post the relevant portions to save you some time

LINK TO BALL MIC FULL AUDIO FILE (about 20 minutes)
FaulknerZoomEVP.mp3

LINK TO OLYMPUS FULL AUDIO FILE (About 25 minutes)
FaulknerOlympusEVP.mp3

LINK TO VIDEO (YOUTUBE LINK) (About 25 minutes. Warning: Scenes of graphic violence, full frontal nudity, and a guest appearance by Donald Trump's hair may disturb some viewers. Discretion is advised).
Full Faulkner session video

So, you ask, what did I find?

THE BALL MIC

Well, first of all, The Ball Mic is crazy sensitive. I heard a weird buzz-thump sound at about 9 minutes, and couldn't place it, until I reviewed the video and realized a fly landed on the granite grave-slab next to the Ball Mic. Not on the mic. Just close to it. Here, have a listen to it, looped:

Fly Landing Next To Housing

You can even hear his little fly feet hitting the granite. If that's not a stirring tribute to the awesome power of salsa bowls and duct tape, I don't know what is.

That kind of sensitivity is a double-edged sword, though. Traffic noise, inaudible to the other recorders or my delicate ears, was a non-stop cacaphony  in the Ball Mic. As excited as I was to use it on the Faulkner run, I think the Ball Mic is best suited for remote locations as far away from traffic as is possible.

Aside from the fly-landing, I'm afraid my Ball Mic didn't return a single apparent EVP occurrence. I've been through the audio twice now, and I never heard a thing out of place. 

THE VIDEO CAMERA

Again, nothing out of the ordinary. A few dogs barked. A few cars passed. At no time do any phantom voices admonish me to GET OUT. Camera-shy ghosts? Could be, I suppose. But the audio track is clean, and no visible spectres were observed waving from amid the headstones.

THE iOVILUS DEVICE

The iOvilus device managed to raise my eyebrows tonight, and I caught the whole exchange on all the recorders and the video camera. I was talking, asking questions, trying to engage something, anything, in conversation.

At one point, I said "Mr. Faulkner," beginning to address my host. Immediately, the iOvilus piped up with my name, Frank.

Here's a video excerpt of the exchange:

Now, is that evidence of something paranormal, or merely a statistically insignificant bit of random coincidence?

I lean toward the latter. The iOvilus has a thousand word vocabulary to draw from. Frank is one of those thousand words. It is odd that it chose to speak that word at that time, but until and unless it happens a lot more often than once every session, I'm going to call this happenstance. Although when you're sitting in a cemetery at nightfall and you hear your name called out of the blue it is a genuine hair-raising experience.

THE OLYMPUS AUDIO RECORDER

Of all the night's instruments, once again my humble Olympus returned the most amazing evidence.

I did not hear either of the voices I am about to present during recording. Neither voice was captured on any other piece of gear, though all were operating within a few feet of each other at all times.

The first piece of audio is a female voice speaking as I speak. I can't quite make out the words -- maybe you'll have better luck.

First you'll hear me speaking. I'm joking about my failure to drink the Faulkners any liquor, and I say "maybe I should have brought a case." Then a female voice says...something.

broughtacasevoice.mp3

Here's the female voice, looped:

hiphop.mp3

Hip hop? Hey pop? No clue, but something is there. Not the iOvilus, either -- it has a distinct male voice.

I get an even better voice as I'm leaving. By this point in the recording, I've left the Faulkner's gravesite, and I've taken a short stroll through the headstones. I comment that I'm about to leave, and a bit later, I caught this:

goahead.mp3

It sounds like the very same voice, but this time it's clearly saying 'Go ahead.'

That takes place at 22:32 in the full Olympus file. The wind was calm. The iOvilus was off and my phone was in my pocket. It doesn't have any speaking apps, and none of my gear talks.

So what the heck was that?

I don't have a clear answer for you. Two full words. Not a trick of the wind. Not a snatch of nearby conversation (check the video -- no one was there but me). Not a passing vehicle (again, check the video). I even checked the iOvilus log (it keeps a log of every word spoken, with a time stamp) for the words 'go ahead,' and it never said them.

I suppose some could argue that what we've just heard is an audio artifact created by the Olympus itself. After all, nothing else picked it up.

I really can't say. Do audio artifacts usually tend to present not only clear enunciation, but gender?

goahead.mp3

Very, very strange.

I do find it intriguing that the female voice presented after I invited Mrs. Faulkner to speak. Again, coincidence?

Could be.

I regret, of course, that Mr. Faulkner didn't bestow upon me a rambling 40-minute EVP which analysis revealed to be a single run-on sentence. A ghostly image in a photo, perhaps of Mr. Faulkner posing with one of my books, would have also been quite the coup.

But I am proud of the pair of EVPs I captured. I cannot explain either one in rational terms, which is precisely the kind of phenomena I'm after.

I hope you've enjoyed this week's October blog, even though it's November. I'm not sure when or if I'll switch gears away from the paranormal -- right now it's too much fun.

Next week will feature a visit to another local historical site, as well as the usual nonsense.

I can't let you go without plugging a book, though. I'm a writer, remember? With books to sell? If you haven't read my stuff, consider giving the Markhat series a try. Lots of graveyard gallivanting in those!

Dead Man's Rain

Or, if you prefer print books, here's a list!

All My Books At Amazon

Enjoy, and see you next week!

Things That Go Bump, Bonus Extended Edition

I know. It's November, and my Going Bump series was supposed to be an October bit. But I had a revelation, and a bunch of leftover junk in my parts drawer, and thus this Bonus Extended Edition was born.

I think I've made it clear I'm neither a true believer nor a hardened skeptic where EVP phenomena are concerned. I've heard some remarkable EVPs, recorded by people I have no reason to distrust. I've even recorded a couple of interesting sounds myself, and while I don't trust myself 100% (I have shifty eyes and have been known to partake of the Demon Rum) I do feel like the combined evidence is suggestive of an audio phenomena.

Notice I didn't use the G word. Because while it's one thing to assert that A) disembodied voices are real and B) they have been captured on various kinds of recording gear, it's quite another to start assigning identities to the voices.

I pretty much draw the line right after A and B above. I think we have to concentrate on proving the existence of the voices before we go labeling them as those of the dead.

So I was thinking. Let's go ahead and, just for fun, postulate that EVP voices are real. So, what do we know about these voices?

ONE: They are most often not heard by the person or persons in the area of the recording device. Yes, there are exceptions to this. But on the whole, EVPs appear to take place without the notice of the people running the recording gar.

TWO: Most EVP recordings are brief. Most are just a word or a sound or two. The longest one I've ever heard (the little girl in the Ruffin Theatre was about 20 seconds, and it was remarkable in that it was caught by not just one but two recording devices). But, most EVP occurrences are less than 5 seconds in duration.

THREE: The recording medium doesn't seem to matter. At first, back in the 50s and 60s, the theory was that 'spirits' somehow manipulated magnetic fields in order to impress their voices directly onto the recording medium of the day, which was magnetic tape.

If that were true, then the spirits must move with the times, because we've left magnetic tape for digital recordings formed on memory chips as a series of zeroes and ones. Quite a neat trick, for a spirit to somehow ascertain my Zoom's sampling rate, match it, and create a file which sounds like a word.

So. We've got invisible speakers leaving brief spoken messages across half a century of recording technology.

Then came my revelation, concerning the nature of the EVPs themselves.

What if it's not nearly so complicated as messing with the devices themselves?

What if the speakers, whatever or whomever they are, are just speaking?

Which begs the question why don't we hear them.

Okay, what if the 'voices' are tiny point-sources acting as a near-field event in relation to the microphone?

Stay with me for a moment. Imagine, if you will, that by means and agents unknown, tiny voices emerge from the air around us, now and then. They are so tiny and so far apart we don't hear them, or if we do, we attribute them to something else. The wind. A distant voice. The TV.

But what if these tiny point-source voices are sometimes captured by audio recording gear?

That scenario might explain why your Zoom mic catches the voice, but you never heard a thing. Maybe the 'voice' was tiny and faint and speaking from a point half a millimeter beyond the microphone.

Who does the voice belong to?

No clue. Honestly, until someone can prove EVPs exist, I don't care who might be speaking. Ghosts, aliens, playboy energy creatures from the nearest adjacent dimension -- doesn't matter, right now.

But back to my faint point-source near-field idea.

If that's true, then we've been trying to record EVPs with mics not suited to the task.

Enter my latest creation, the Tuttle Spherical Near-Field Capture Microphone Housing, or TSNFCMH for short. Go ahead, say TSNFCMH out loud. It helps if you cough.

Let's call it the Ball Mic instead.

My idea is simple. Take a parabolic microphone, turn the forward-facing parabolic element into a sphere, and then hang the mic in the exact center.

Any tiny near-field voices get reflected by the sphere and directed right to the mic. The sphere's inner surface acts as a collector and focuser, which renders even tiny little voices louder and stronger.

Here is a highly detailed technical drawing illustrating the concept:

Parabolic mics have been in use for decades. But I've never seen anyone use a spherical mic housing -- mainly because such a thing is absolutely useless in any application other than what I'm trying to do here.

So, the best way to test my small-voices-really-close theory is to build a Ball Mic and see if I catch anything.

First, some math:

Just kidding. Look, I'm on a budget here. I can't exactly run out and have a steel sphere machined down to the nearest billionth of a nanometer, coated in gold, and buffed to a high shine by a team of expert sphere-handlers.

So I rummaged. All I needed was a sphere. It didn't have to be huge. In fact, that would defeat the whole purpose of it.

My friend Denny suggested I obtain a garden mirror ball, which was a great idea. Sadly, I couldn't find one -- but I did find a pair of hi-tech industrial-grade salsa bowls, each of which was half of a perfect globe.

Again, a professionally-rendered technical drawing, detailing my prototype Ball Mic:

A bit of this, a bit of that, a few bolts, some screws, and of course a dilithium crystal later, and it was complete. Behold the wonder that is the first TSNFCMH, or Ball Mic!

There it is, the complete Ball Mic, glorious in its technological prowess. You can see my Zoom H1 inserted into the spherical collection chamber (aka a pair of plastic salsa bowls). The Zoom is held in place by a rubber-coated stop inside the sphere, a pair of Velcro straps just below the RECORD button, and a pivoting backstop rod that rests against the Zoom's rear when the recorder is in use. The handle is aligned so that it holds the Zoom's twin microphones dead center of the spherical volume.

I know, I generally photograph things on top of a scrap of red velvet but that's my actual workbench, scars, stains, and all.

Here's another view:

This is a close-up of the ball itself, with the Zoom in place. Not winning any beauty contests, is it?

Thor looks on, unimpressed.

BALL MIC, FIRST FIELD TEST:

I ran the Ball Mic rig for 52 minutes last night, just to get a feel for performance before I take it on a real EVP run.

Does it work?

Yes. The spherical volume does seem to act like a sort of closed parabolic mic. It's especially sensitive to sounds conducted through the ground and the surface on which the Ball Mic rests. Here, listen to this clip and try to identify the source:

boomboom.mp3

It confounded me at first. Kettle drums? A powerful car stereo? A marching band?

I was absolutely sure I didn't hear it while recording.

Finally, I realized the source was my big bare feet.

That's right. I rested the Ball Mic on our table on the patio. We were outside enjoying the cool evening and a fire. The boom boom booms are the sounds my bare feet made on the concrete patio when I got up to add another log to the fire.

Now, keep in mind I move as does the crafty Ninja. I don't stomp around making kettle-drum sounds with every step, thank you very much. But my stealthy footfalls, inaudible to the naked ear, were conducted up through the table and to the Ball Mic housing, resulting in the thunderous treads you hear now.

I can minimize this effect by adding rubber feet to the Ball Mic. Or I can leave it as is, because I can see how it could prove useful in catching ghostly footsteps in empty houses. I think I'll probably add rubber feet to the bottom prongs on the sphere housing, and leave the top as is, which will allow both options to remain open as I choose. And I dare any spook to stomp around from now on, because I *will* be able to catch it, even if they tip-toe.

The ball housing does nearly eliminate the sounds of nearby speech. High-frequency stuff, mainly bug noise, isn't affected to the same extent. Passing traffic is thunderous, again due to the ground-conduction effect.

I hope to take the rig out on a real EVP run next week. Yes, it's crude, but heck so were the first Marconi sets.

Total cost for construction of the Ball Microphone Housing: $3.00 and tax, since I bought a pair of salsa bowls and made do for the rest out of whatever I had lying around. The Zoom H1 I had already.

Stay tuned for a real field test next Sunday!

Oh, and lest ye forget -- you can grab a genuine printed copy of the latest Markhat adventure, The Broken Bell, for only ten bucks and change from Amazon. It hits the stands on November 6!

Things That Go Bump, Chapter 4: And Now, For Something Completely Different

It's nearly Halloween, so welcome to another installment of Things That Go Bump!

I've got a couple of new topics to explore this evening. We'll play with an Ovilus device, which is a box which alleges to convert spirit-induced fluctuations in the local EM and electric fields into clear speech. Then we'll examine a classic ghostly photograph which is, I believe, one of the most compelling images ever taken. Finally, I'll leave you with something special of mine I hope you'll enjoy.

On to the Ovilus, then!

The fisrt Ovilus device was built by a retired electrical engineer named Bill Chappell. Mr. Chappell went on to found the Digital Dowsing website, which is still active today.

To give you an idea of how an Ovilus recording sounds, here's an audio clip recorded by Gregory Myers of the Paranormal Task Force. The Ovilus is at a site used as a field hospital during the American Civil War.
Listen below:

OVILUS/Caledonia_Ovilus_Shot_Stomach.mp3

It does seem as if the device is interacting with the paranormal crew, doesn't it?

I was intrigued but suspicious. Suspicious not of any chicanery on the part of the device users, but in the inherent workings of the device itself.

Basically, an Ovilus box is a speech synthesizer chip, a power supply, and some EM/RF sensors. Fluctuations in the local EM environment trigger activation of the speech synthesis circuits. This is turn creates speech. The theory is that unseen entities can alter the EM environment with such precision that they can use these fluctuations to build words and sentences.

My problem with this theory is that I'm a corporeal human with access to all kinds of tools and technology and I'd probably die of old age long before I managed to rig up a piece of gear capable to forcing an Ovilus box to recite 'Mary had a little lamb.'

So how are the 'spirits' just squinting at the gadget and making it talk?

Maybe that's how spirits roll. Maybe Google is a lot more advanced on the Other Side. Look, I don't have an answer for that question.

But I do have an Ovilus box, or at least the iPhone app that simulates it, downloaded from Digital Dowsing.

About an hour ago, I fired up this Ovilus simulator, and recorded the entire session for your listening pleasure. This isn't a terribly long piece - -about 8 minutes, I think -- so crank up your PC volume and hear what an Ovilus session is really like!

ovilus.mp3

I admit it was a bit freaky when I asked what kind of creatures were in the room with me (meaning my dogs) and the Ovilus piped up and said 'animal.'

But since it also prattled merrily on about Monica and builds and speed, I'm pretty much ready to chalk the 'animal' word up to a mere instance of coincidence.

Next up, a photograph from 1959 -- the so-called Chinnery photo.

Take a look below:

Nothing much remarkable at first glance, is there? You see a man in the driver's seat (this photo was taken in England, where they drive on the wrong side of the road but that's okay because they also created Dr. Who). You see a lady in the rear passenger seat. The driver is one Mr. Chinnery. The photograph was taken by his wife, Mabel, after a visit to her mother's graveside.

What makes this photo remarkable is that the elderly lady seated in the rear of the vehicle is the deceased mother of Mabel Chinnery. Yes, it's her grave the couple came to visit; both living Chinnerys identified the woman in the back seat as the deceased mother of Mabel. And yes, that was her customary seat in the same car when she was alive.

It's 1959, people. Yes, photos could be altered, but it was a messy business, and the developer had to be in on the joke. By all accounts, the Chinnerys were staid, sensible people, people unlikely to indulge in such unsavory shenanigans.

The image of the back seat passenger appears quite solid. Her glasses are even reflective. I've seen a lot of faked ghost photos from the era in question, and 'attention to detail' is not a phrase often employed in the analysis of such photos. Most are so crude they're laughable.

Interesting, indeed!

Finally, the special treat I mentioned earlier.

Way back in 2004, I wrote a story called "The Powerful Bad Luck of DD Dupree." It's always been one of my favorites, since it's a spooky story set in the Mississippi I remember from 1973. Yeah, there's magic, of a kind, but it's a uniquely Mississippi kind of magic.

What do I mean by that?

I mean it's touched by tragedy. Everything here is touched by tragedy. Which isn't a condemnation, by the way. I'm proud, for the most part, of what my state has become. We've rejected the heinous, inexcusable prejudice of our past, and embraced a new equality. I'm proud to have played small roles in that, from time to time. Yes, the battle continues -- but the forces of good, cliche as it sounds, are winning.

But the past is still there, grim and unchanged. It touches us all. I hope you can see some of that influence in the story.

I sold the story to an online magazine called Abyss & Apex. The story remained up in their archives until some time ago, when the link to it went dead. I've asked the new owners if they plan to put the story back up, but haven't heard back, so I'm presenting it here as a Halloween gift to all of you.

You can read the story, right on your browser, by clicking the READ link below. Or you can listen to the story as I read it in my thick Deep South accent, which for once is actually appropriate for the subject matter, by clicking LISTEN.

Either way, I hope you enjoy it. Many of the characters in the story are based on real people I knew, as a kid. Wade Lee, the one-armed black hoodoo man, is based on a kindly, gentle soul who lived not a thousand feet from where I sit, in a shack exactly as I describe it in the story. The real Wade Lee also lost both legs and one arm in a corn picker. There really was a Piggly Wiggly, and there really was a grease truck, and maybe, just maybe, the shadows on a certain gravel road were a shade darker than they had any business being...

I hope you enjoy the story. Thanks for coming along on my October tour of all things spooky and scary. Oh, and that scratching at the window behind you?

I'm sure it's just the wind.

LISTEN to The Powerful Bad Luck of DD Dupree

READ The Powerful Bad Luck of DD Dupree

Things That Go Bump, Chapter 3: Graveyard Ghost Hunt

Welcome back, fans of all things ghastly and ghostly!

As promised, this week I'm featuring yet another amateur ghost hunt. But it won't be more of the same -- not only did I catch a pair of new EVPs, I got a couple of interesting photographs as well.

This week's venture into the unknown (okay, so they're just local cemeteries, but allow me a little artistic license here) featured some exciting new gear.

As I said last week, I was suspicious that the 'yes' EVP might well be wind noise coupled with the cheap Automatic Limiting Circuit on my modestly-priced Olympus VN-4100PC voice recorder.

So this week, I took out two new pieces of gear. First up is a pro-grade Zoom H1 field recorder, used by musicians and media people to record everything from interviews to live concerts. The Zoom is shown below:

It's small and designed for one-handed operation, even if the dark. Perfect for ghost hunting!

Next up was a sound rig worthy of any movie production company. Donated for the day by a generous interested party, this rig included a Sennheiser PK40 mic, a heavy-duty windscreen, and a Tascam DR-40 digital recorder. Together, they form a recording system composed of of sheer solidified awesome.

I also took the usual array of stuff -- digital camera, Sony Handycam hi-def video camera, Ramsey Tri-Field Meter, my e-field sensor, and the K2.

Since I had a video camera, I made a couple of short movies! Since I'm apparently an idiot, I wound up with only one. Click below to see the gear, being loaded before I left for the graveyards on a clear but windy Friday morning:

So, armed with every piece of ghost-hunting gear eBay and begging can provide, I set out.

I took the whole day off from work to do these cemetery trips. I planned to have all day. I got up early, loaded my gear carefully, crossed every T and dotted every I.

Naturally, the official Ghost Hunting Field Vehicle refused to crank.

You know you're a Redneck Ghost Hunter when your pickup won't start and you wind up fixing it with Vise-Grips and Duct Tape.

ROCK HILL MISSIONARY BAPTIST CEMETERY

After finally getting on the road, I returned to Rock Hill, the site of last week's 'yes' EVP.

By the time I arrived, the wind was ferocious, gusting up to 35 MPH. Hardly ideal conditions for an outdoor EVP session, but having sworn off of rational decisions years ago I forged ahead.

Before we get to the EVP evidence (and yes, there is some!), let's look at a couple of odd photos.

I stood at the cemetery fence and just panned across it, taking pictures snap-snap-snap. Most of them looked like this:

Just a cemetery, in broad daylight.

But look at the images below, which were taken in rapid succession:

That smokey mist wasn't visible to my eyes. According to the EXIF information on the photos, the first one was taken at 11:53:55 AM. The second, at 11:53:59 AM. The light should have been the same. I didn't see smoke or dust.

So what the heck is that, in the bottom photo?

No idea.

Take a look at another set of Rock Hill photos.

There it is again. Top photo was taken at 11:54:11 AM. The bottom, at 11:54:14 AM. Again, I saw no smoke, dust, or mist with my eyes.

There was also a video camera running while these images were taken. The hi-def Sony didn't see any dust or smoke either.

So, are we looking at a camera artifact? If so, it only took place at Rock Hill. None of the Tula or Midway images repeated this effect.

Odd.

Now, on to the EVP!

As you recall, last week I captured a burst of noise that sounded a lot like a spoken YES. I was suspicious because it coincided with a puff of wind.

Well, gentle readers, I had wind by the bushel on Friday, when all this evidence was collected.

The Zoom H1, which arrived in the mail the day before I set out, didn't come with a windscreen. Which means it made stunning recordings between gusts and was absolutely overwhelmed by gusts. The Olympus has a noise floor so high wind has to work really hard to be heard above it anyway.

But the Sennheiser mic inside 'Mr. Fuzzy,' the world's most amazing windscreen, ignored the raging gales completely.

The first thing I did upon arriving at Rock Hill was introduce myself and note that it seemed someone had answered my question "So you guys were all Missionary Baptists, right?" on my previous visit.

I then asked if anyone present had answered me.

Listen for yourself. If you don't have headphones, crank this one up:

RockHillyesclip.wav

Here is it again, with the possible EVP boosted:

RockHillyesclipamped.wav

Here it is, looped, for those without 'phones:

yeslooped.wav

Is that another faint 'yes?'

Not sure. The Zoom was running, but wind noise rendered it useless. The video camera didn't catch a thing aside from me. The Olympus didn't either.

So -- one possible EVP, a couple of weird photos. I'll be going back to Rock Hill soon!

TULA CEMETERY

Tula Cemetery is another of my favorite haunts for EVP sessions. This time, I laid out all my gear, and watched for any fluctuations in electric, RF, or EMF fields.

Got nothing. No surprise there.

I took a number of still photos and ran the Sony video camera the whole time I was there. None of these images captured anything strange.

There you see the video cam, aimed into the cemetery, with my Ectoplasmic Pursuit Vehicle parked majestically in the background.

I ran all three audio recorders, snapped a lot of pics, walked and talked and asked and joked. If I got any responses that day, I missed them.

I did attract the attention of a pair of sour-faced ladies in a minivan, who looked at my gear and myself with the sort of expression one normally reserves for recently convicted felons one discovers hiding in one's jewelry box. Lady Number Two snatched up her cell phone and began describing me, no doubt to the local constabulary, before I could even offer a smile and wave.

That concluded my session at Tula, as ghost hunting is not seen as entirely savory hereabouts.

If you want to listen to the whole audio track, here it is: Tulafull.mp3. Maybe I missed something. This is an MP3 file to save space, but if anyone wants the WAV file, let me know.

MIDWAY CEMETERY

Midway is a tiny hilltop cemetery located at the end of a dirt logging road well off any track, beaten or not.

Moreover, it's familiar to me because many of my relatives are buried there.

As you can see, it's a small place, seldom used. I took a number of photos, and look at this one:

See that odd purple discoloration at the bottom, just to the left of the camera tripod?

I don't know what that is. It never repeated, though.

The next item of interest from Midway is a single brief EVP. Again, I ran all 3 of my audio recording devices. The Sennheiser/Tascam DR-40, the Zoom H1, the humble Olympus.

What follows was caught only on the Olympus. I was carrying the Sennheiser. The Zoom was atop a headstone. The Olympus was three feet away from the Zoom, in my gear bag.

I thought I heard faint music earlier, as I walked about. None showed up on the Tascam or Zoom recordings. But I got this brief clip from the Olympus. Take a listen, and see what you think.

MidwayOLmusicclip2.wav

It's faint, but you can hear the high notes, or what sound like high notes.

Here it is again, looped and amped:

MidwayOLmusiccliploopedamped.wav

I tramped around for a long time, trying to provoke a response. The place is peaceful, but a bit on the derelict side, and the woods are taking it slowly but surely back.

Eventually, I heard the sound of crunching gravel, and spied a vehicle winding its way up the dirt road toward the cemetery. Now, while I'm perfectly comfortable tramping around headstones all by my lonesome, Midway acquired a reputation a few years ago as being a favorite hangout for tweakers and their pals the crackheads, so I packed my gear in a hurry and scooted out of there before I made the acquaintance of anyone calling themselves Snoogie or Rip Hammer.

But, all in all, it wasn't a bad day for dabbling in Things Man Was Not Meant To Dabble Within. I got a couple of unexplained mist photos, a weird purple haze, an EVP that might say yes, and a snatch of faint otherworldly music. And I got to play with some awesome if borrowed gear! Thanks again to my Anonymous Benefactor.

If anyone would like to listen to full audio recordings of the EVP sessions, let me know! I'm running out of time today, so I don't think I'll get the full files uploaded and linked. But I have them, so just ask.

 Next week will be the final installment of my Bump in the Night blogs. Hopefully the wind will be a bit calmer, and I can find some exciting new locations, and not be arrested while recording.

One final note -- that book featured in the opening photo? The one in stacks by the skull, between the gargoyles? This book?

That's my book.  It's the print version of the Markhat novel that came out last December. If you've been waiting for the print version, The Broken Bell goes on sale in print format on November 6! You can pre-order from Amazon now. I'll cry if you don't.

Authors Against Bullying

Kids today have got it tough.

By now, you've probably heard the sad story of Amanda Todd, who committed suicide just 8 days ago after being targeted by a cabal of online bullies.

Amanda's story is heartbreaking, but hardly unique. Do a Google search on 'teen suicide online bullying.' Name after name pops up. Jared High. Rachel Ehmke. The list of kids goes on and on.

And kids they were. 15. 16. 14. Just kids, who should have been worried about acne and awkwardness, not  how best to end their lives.

I'm writing this blog along with a number of other authors at the behest of author Mandy M. Roth, who was also deeply touched by the suicide of Amanda Todd. You can see Mandy's blog here,along with links to all the other bloggers writing about bullying today.

I was never bullied as a kid. Keep in mind, I grew up in an era so different from this one I might as well have grown up on Mars. We had no social media. The Internet was decades away. No email. No smart phones. No texting.

All of our communication was done face-to-face, or on clunky wall-mounted telephones incapable of transmitting photos.

Bullies, in that day, had no choice but to face their victims directly. Which rendered the act of bullying a far more risk-inherent activity than it is today. The possibility of a fist in the face was quite real, as were the consequences of initiating a bullying campaign.

I had friends in all the social strata. Jocks. Nerds. Hot girls. Plain kids. I can't recall ever being in fear of any one person or group of persons; had a hand been raised against me, half a dozen classmates would have appeared in my defense. And I would have done the same for them.

I just realized something -- I grew up in Mayberry.

But Mayberry is gone. Today, from what I've seen and heard, kids live half or more of their social lives in some sort of odd rolling cybernetic mishmash of Facebook and text messages and instantly shared videos.

Which is what seems to be the environment that killed Amanda Todd.

It killed the others, too. These kids found themselves the targets of a violent, tireless mob of vicious online tormenters. Poor kids -- their every moment was scrutinized and attacked. Their appearance, their actions, their every glance and word was mocked, endlessly and without mercy.

No fifteen year old is emotionally suited to enduring prolonged exposure to that dosage of social venom.

Sure, if you need your wifi router unlocked or your email client fixed, grabbing a teenager is a smart move. They know computers.

But teenagers are still just kids. They haven't had time to grow the kind of rhinoceros hide that allows a frowning bull ape like me to respond to insult with a profound and vast indifference.  No. That takes years to learn, and years to master.

A 15 year old kid might as well be tossed into a meat grinder. They aren't coming out uninjured. They might not come out alive.

I grieve for any kid out there who is surrounded by a hateful jeering mob every hour of every day. If I wish I could bestow upon the kid just a small portion of my impenetrable middle-aged ego, which has been rendered indestructible by 48 years of coffee-fueled cynicism. My God, I'd send the jeering mobs fleeing, probably right into the arms of the nearest available therapist.

But I can't do that. I don't know who these kids are. Sadly, some of their own parents don't understand what their kids are going through. "My daughter is just playing on the computer again," I imagine some have said. "She's always online with her friends."

I'm not blaming the parents here, either. Maybe they were neighbors of mine in quaint, scenic little Mayberry,  where the worst kind of monkeyshines the young 'uns got up to was tipping apple-carts or playing in fresh mud.

But as I said, this isn't Mayberry, and the online world appears to be Mayberry's polar opposite in nearly every respect.

If you're a kid, and you're reading this, and you're being bullied, please let me give you a few words of Genuine Old Man (tm) advice.

People only have the power that you yourself give them.

Read it a couple of times. Let it sink in. I promise you -- I swear to you -- it's true.

There is no force in the Universe more awesome than one man or one woman's refusal to dance to music being forced upon you.

Look, kid, you're young. I know everything that happens right now feels deeply and unrelentingly profound. Your emotions are being yanked around. You don't know why you're here, what you're supposed to be doing here, and frankly you don't want to be here at all.

I get that. But hear me out -- give it time. Give it time, and one day in the not-so-distant future you'll realize that nothing those ignorant yammering bullies said meant anything. They're just, pardon the mild profanity, buttholes.

Do what myself and a host of other kids did when we found the world intolerable.

Leave it. No, not THAT way. I mean walk away from the mob, figuratively and literally. Get off the freaking net for a while. Lose yourself in books and music. Learn to play a guitar. Sit in the dark and write bad poetry. Take your power back. Do something.

Do whatever makes YOU happy.

Let the mob rail, if they wish. Fall silent to their taunts long enough, and they'll move on to more amusing targets. Because that's all you are to them -- a target. Something they can poke with a stick, just so they can watch it squirm.

So you really care what people like that say about you? Think about you?

I don't. They are, as I'm fond of saying, persons unworthy of consideration.

Maybe you're shaking your head at my unbelievable naivety. That's fine, maybe I'm utterly and entirely wrong in everything I've said.

But so were the kids who reasoned their dilemmas out and arrived at the conclusion that suicide was the only way out.

If only they'd held on. Told a parent. Logged off the net and stayed off for a month. Thrown their phone away. Run off and joined the circus, I don't know -- anything but a bullet, or a rope.

By comparison, does becoming a devoted Tolkien geek really look so bad?

If you are being bullied, I can guarantee you this -- somebody out there cares for you. If it's becoming too much and you just cannot handle even one more minute of it, talk to someone. I'll post toll-free phone numbers at the end of this blog. Yeah, you'll be talking to a stranger if you go that route. But they're manning the phones because they care. Because they've been there. Because they muddled through, somehow, and now they want to help someone do the same.

There are people who will listen, who will understand. Give them a try.

http://www.yourlifeyourvoice.org/AskIt/Pages/Suicide.aspx?gclid=CKalq-jvjbMCFQSEnQodyXAAfA

http://www.pamf.org/teen/hotlines.html

http://www.teenlifeline.org/

Things That Go Bump, Chapter 2

Welcome back!

In keeping with October's theme, today's installment involves more ghostly goings-on in a couple of local cemeteries. There will be spine-tingling photographs, hair-raising EVPs, and a stern admonition not to forget the Deep Woods Off when planning a trek to far-flung boneyards (if you don't know what a chigger is, look it up. You do NOT want a couple of hundred of them gnawing on your knees).

But first, we'll begin with a location far more sinister and foreboding than even the most fog-shrouded resting place of the dead.

No, first we will face a location that has known more despair, more tragedy, than anywhere else on the University of Mississippi campus.

I refer of course to my office at work.

As you recoil in abject terror, let me explain. Campus lore states that my humble work-space was once used to store cadavers for the Medical School, in the years long ago before the Med School moved to Jackson.

That would certainly explain the odd stains in the carpet, the eerie moans, and the finger-bones the custodian keeps vacuuming up.

Okay, the eerie moans are just my stomach, usually two hours before lunch. Still, my office seemed to be the perfect spot for a quick EVP session, lest anyone get the idea all I do is tramp around old cemeteries.

So below is my brief EVP session, conducted at my desk. It's not a pristine sound environment. People are talking nearby at times. Doors open and shut. I broke down into tears when I heard the vending machine dispensing salty, salty goodness to someone who was not me.

I'll go ahead and skip to the end, on this session.

I got nothing. Nada. Not a single pitiful moan, not a cryptic whispered plea for help, nothing.

Hey, but if you want to try your ears, go ahead! the sound file is below:

Frank's Office

So, another mundane location, another lack of any possible EVP activity.

Why would that be the case? Now look, I'm still on the fence as to what EVPs are. Could they be misinterpretations of audio artifacts generated by the equipment itself?

Yeah, maybe. That's one reason I want better gear. My next acquisition will be a Zoom H1 audio recorder, which is a pro-grade setup that I can actually trust. I've heard skeptics claim EVPs vanish when you start using top shelf equipment. If that's true, then mystery solved -- EVPs were all just a mixture of high noise floors and pareidolia.

My only personal quibble with this theory is this -- if it is true, then why don't I  'catch' possible EVPs in my office, on the patio, in the warehouse, like I do in cemeteries?

Look, I have a huge problem believing that the spirits of the dead hang around graveyards all day hoping some geek with a cheap digital voice recorder comes stomping by. Day after day? Year after year? Decade after decade?

No. No way.

I never expected to catch anything when I first started trying to capture EVPs. But here I am, catching them, and only in the kinds of places that seem, to be honest, a bit cliche.

Which brings me to my first cemetery visit for yesterday, Saturday October 13. The place: Tula Cemetery. That's it, pictured in the first photo of the blog (the BOO sign is mine).

It's a quiet, out-of-the-way graveyard outside Tula, MS. As far as I know, it has no reputation whatsoever for any kind of haunting or other phenomena. It's just a cemetery.

I went in light, with only my camera, my K2, and my voice recorder. That way I can hide everything but the camera if people show up and pretend to be taking photos of headstones. I do that because I don't imagine ghost hunting, no matter how careful or respectful, will prove very popular hereabouts.

I spent about 20 minutes wandering and talking. I put the recorder down on several stones and asked for comments. Here are a few of the markers I singled out:

The good Lieutenant above had nothing to say.

These poor souls were also silent. The sandstone markers and location suggest they died during a yellow fever epidemic in the early 1800s.

Mr. Hartin was equally reticent to speak.

Above we have a doctor, one Dr. Robert M. Webster. I was regaling Dr. Webster with tales of organ transplants in the hope he might express disbelief. I didn't get a voice, but I did get an odd noise (around the 8:30 mark in the full clip). Here it is, amplified just a bit for your convenience:

anythingsiramped.mp3

Right after I say "anything at all, sir" there is a weird rumbling groaning sort of noise. I didn't hear it during recording, and I'm not willing to say it's a vocalization of any kind. I just include it because it's odd.

The best odd recording I got at Tula is next. At the seven minute mark, while I was just walking about inviting anyone to speak, I said "Maybe I can understand you with the help of this instrument."

Apparently that struck someone (or, cue minor chords, something) as funny, because I recorded what sounds like a laugh.

Keep in mind I was alone. I heard nothing at the time of the recording. Here is the audio segment, unaltered:

Intrument.mp3

And here is the laugh, looped so you can hear it better, especially if you are listening with PC speakers:

laughlooped.mp3

To me, it sounds like this: "instrument."  HA HA HA.

The HA HA HA is repeated only 3 times in the original -- I looped it out to 30 in the clip just to make it easier to hear.

Here's another oddity about this item. Look at the screen-shot below.  It's the audio clip, isolated down to "...instrument HA HA HA."

See the first burst of sound, represented on the graph above? That's me, saying 'instrument.'

The next three bursts are the HA HA HA sounds. Notice how nearly they match the first burst -- my voice --in up-and-down space?

That's called amplitude. It directly relates to the volume of a sound. As you can see, the word instrument and the subsequent noises (HA HA HA or whatever they are) and nearly the same in amplitude. And they're all well above the background noise.

So, how did I not hear three bursts of sound that were nearly as loud as my own voice?

I don't have an answer for that. I didn't hear anything at the time of recording.

Those are the only two instances of odd audio I felt were worthy of note. Interested parties might want to listen very hard at the 3:00 and 9:01 marks, because I almost heard something there, but ultimately decided it was probably just wind noise.

Now, you heard me taking a lot of photos at Tula. I saw something odd in one of them, and I'll put it below:

You may have to click on it to get the big image to see it. But there is a weird purple corona around that stone. Chromatic lens distortion, or supernatural energy emission?

I'm going with the former. But hey, it's October.

Next up is another odd Tula photo. Let's play Spot the Apparition!

Okay, I cheated and drew you an arrow. But when I saw that, on my big screen monitor, it immediately looked out of place. In fact, to me it looks like a bad cut n' paste job. The colors don't match the rest of the scene and it just seems to be stuck there.

Too, it looks like a dog wearing a button-down collar shirt peeking around a grave marker. That's not on the list of Traditional Haunting Images.

Now, I think this happens a lot among amateur ghost hunters. They get a weird photo. They post it. Everyone scratches their head.

But, if you look at this photo in context -- i.e., among other pictures taken from different places and angles -- you soon see it's NOT actually a spectral but well-dressed dog peeking about. Look below:

It's just an old foot marker. Whew.

Okay, that debunked, we leave Tula with one.

Final.

Image.

I give you the Phantom of Tula!

Do you see it?

Is that an apparition I've circled? Or is it a trick of pareidola?

You decide....

Next stop -- Rock Hill Missionary Baptist Church and environs, just a few miles away. But first -- a cottonfield!

Here's Rock Hill MB Baptist Church:

The tiny cemetery is off to the right.

The cemetery is fenced in. Since I don't have anyone buried there, I didn't climb the fence, or try to open it. This is the Deep South and people take the sanctity of their dead very seriously. I take shotguns very seriously, so we're even on that point.

So I stood outside the gate and did a quick EVP session.

I got one odd result. It sounded like a whispered 'yes.' At first. then I remembered I turned to shield my mic from the wind and I'm writing that sound off as wind noise.

Note to self: No more cemetery EVP hunts on windy days without a good windscreen.

It was fun, hanging at cemeteries, snapping pictures of weathered grave-markers, talking to thin air like a loon.

Next week will be even more fun. So stick around! It's October. Who knows what might happen next?

Things That Go Bump, Chapter 1

Boo.

That's my theme for the month of October. Yeah, I know, it's a single word, and not a word laden with deep meaning, but on the plus side it's short and easy to pronounce, so boo it is.

I love October. The intense Mississippi heat gives way to a brief Mississippi autumn, which means our weather settings are being moved from INFERNO to TORNADO and we've got maybe a month before the big switch clicks into place and we start hearing the wail of the storm sirens again.

October. The leaves fall. The snakes pack their bags and head for winter quarters. I can stop mowing the bloody lawn every six hours just to keep the jungle from taking over.

But best of all, October means Halloween.

Which brings us back to boo.

Those of you who know me know I'm not just Oxford's least-renowned author. I also have a keen interest in the dubious science of the allegedly paranormal -- in other words, I do a little ghost hunting from time to time.

Let me get a few things straight with you up front. Do I or do I not believe in the existence of ghosts?

Yes and no, with a generous dollop of maybe. 

Glad we cleared that up.

Seriously, I'm not at all concerned with beliefs, even mine. No. I have one interest in this regard, and one interest only, and that is confirming or denying the existence of evidence of the paranormal. Specifically, EVP and related phenomena, magnetic anomalies associated with ghostly phenomena, and photographic evidence of hauntings and so forth.

A lot of people, many of whom just happen to have shows on TV, claim to routinely gather evidence (sound evidence, still and video evidence, etc.) of the paranormal. In fact, they gather evidence with such apparent ease and frequency that I decided to engage in the same techniques, and see if anything spooky happened to me.

It's taken a while, but I've put together a pretty decent ghost hunting kit. I've got cameras, digital and film, still and video. In addition to the usual cameras and so forth, I've got some of the gear you might see on TV, shown below:

From left to right, there's a Ramsey Tri-Field meter, which can sniff out electric fields, magnetic fields, and RF signals. You just select your mode and watch the lights. This thing is extremely sensitive, and in electric field mode it can pick up someone combing their hair from across the room. Would it react if the spirit of a dead person approached?

Maybe. Especially if they'd help out by combing their hair.

To the lower right of the Ramsey, you have an old-school cassette tape recorder. I keep it around because there is a school of thought which says ghosts can imprint their EVP conversations more easily on magnetic tape. Also because I've had it forever and it still works.  Yes, the motor sound can be heard on recordings, but it's pretty quiet as this technology goes.

Next to the tape recorder is the ever-popular K2 meter, first popularized on SyFy's "Ghost Hunters" and used by legions of ghost hunters ever since. This is a very simple, rugged device that measures EMF fields up to 20 milliGauss. One things you may not know about K2 meters (Not my Ramsey, so much, unless it's in RF mode) is this -- a cell phone in use nearby can light it up. Let's say an unscrupulous production assistant decided your show needed a little ratings boost -- stand in the next room, off camera, and order a pizza as the intrepid ghost hunters troop through Blood Mansion.

Look, there go the K2s. Must be a haunt!

To the right of the K2 is a device of my own design. It measures static electrical fields, and it too is very sensitive. You flip the big switch, put it somewhere, and watch the single red light. Changes in intensity signal changes in the nearby charges. Could be a cat walking past. Or not. Bwhahaha...

Finally, above it all, is a big black box that contains my first stab at making a so-called Raudive EVP mic/amp combination.

I started building it Saturday morning, using mostly spare parts. Here is a photo history of the construction, minus the segments of me pulling my hair out or foaming at the mouth:

It's all tucked neatly into its box now, ready to go. I did make one serious mistake in the design -- I planned to mount a speaker in the box, and listen to the device like you would a radio. But due to a math error (stupid math!) the output stage puts out two volts and not the twenty I was hoping for. So it can't drive a big speaker, but it can act as a microphone, and be plugged right into a digital voice recorder. So that's how I'll be using it today, because I'm out of parts, time, and patience.

Konstantin Raudive (pronounced raw-dee-vay, not raw-dive) is the father of EVP research. He was out recording birdsongs and found voices instead, which led him to make more recordings, which led to the discovery of even more voices.

Ask any scientist about this, and most of them will tell you what he and other EVP researchers are recording is simply stray radio noise. Then most scientists will smack you on the back of the head and laugh at you for thinking you were going to get 20 volts when you got only 2. They are often a bitter lot.

Is that what I think? The voices are all stray bits of Howard Stern broadcasts?

Could be. But -- and yes, there is a but -- I have heard EVP recordings which appeared to exhibit intelligence, responding to spoken questions with clarity and apparent reason. I don't believe that can be attributed to radio noise. Also, people are using good gear, and taking pains to reduce any radio interference. I've also heard EVP 'voices' which were captured on more than one device, and which showed evidence of echo and clear directionality -- which makes them an audio phenomena, not a radio one.

At this point, many people cry 'hoax.'  And I'm sure many EVP recordings are hoaxes. That's why I decided to capture them myself -- because that's the only way I can be absolutely sure I'm not being tricked. Because I keep a sharp eye on myself at all times.

The first time I tried to capture EVP activity was in a local cemetery on a bright, sunny Sunday afternoon. I made sure no one was around, I asked a few questions, stepped on a few graves, heard nothing out of the ordinary. Then went to a much more remote rural graveyard, where I did the same thing.

I downloaded the recordings and listened to them on my PC, expecting to hear nothing because after all I'd heard nothing.

But that's not what happened.

In the first graveyard, I caught a faint but distinct female voice saying 'hurry, honey.' In the rural cemetery, I captured part of what sounded like a conversation between a man and a woman, though no one was around having any conversation of any kind.

I didn't fake these. Yes, the sounds are faint. But they are there.

And that was my first time out.

Now, the gear I've been using is designed to capture sounds by use of audio microphones.

The box I slapped together yesterday is totally different. It has no microphone at all -- in fact, it's just a germanium diode (the classic 1n34A), a 0.5 mH coil, and a very basic op-amp which boosts the signal about 200 times.

This is a so-called 'Raudive microphone,' which is actually a crude, detuned AM radio with a tiny 3 inch antenna. All one should hear is static. There are people claiming to hear not just voices but whole conversations.

Well, today we're going to try it for ourselves. And you can be a part of it, because in a few minutes I'm going to set up every piece of gear I have and conduct an EVP session right here at my desk. I'll be running the Raudive unit all the while, and when I'm done I'll pull its audio and analyze it for anything odd. If I find voices, I'll clip them out and post them below.

If I don't, well, I'll reveal that too.

Now, I know many ghost hunters prefer to tramp around deserted old buildings in the dark.  And that does make for good TV. But I'm not on TV, the locals tend to get all shooty and litigious with people they discover tramping around in the dark, and anyway "Hell on Wheels" is on later and I never miss that.

So today's paranormal investigation takes place here, in scenic Yocona, Mississippi. It's finally cool enough so that I can turn off the fans and the AC. I'll be speaking into a pro-quality Blue Snowball microphone for the audio session. I'll be making a secondary recording on my iPhone, just in case. The Raudive unit will be Raudiving away on the table behind me. I'll have the K2 an the Ramsey in plain sight, ready to light up if the room's EMF profile changes (and it shouldn't).

If you do hear a fan, it's one of the four in my monster PC, which is optimized for writing (gaming) and research (gaming). I've got them set to run at minimums, though, so hopefully all you'll hear is my voice.

Present in the room is Lou Ann, asleep in the recliner, Petey, downstairs asleep, and Thor, who comes and goes with all the grace and agility of a drunken water buffalo. You can pretty much ignore sounds of movement, because that's obviously a dog.

Here's how this will work. I'll fire up the microphone and talk for a bit. Then I'll use the old PC to fire up a wall of pure white noise. A lot of EVP researchers claim the white noise is used by entities to form words. I'm more of the belief that loud white noise can trick you into thinking you heard words, but hey, I'll give it a shot.

Once I'm done with the session, I'll post it. Then I'll use my audio software (it's just Audacity, which you can get too -- it's free, and everyone uses it) to look for voices that shouldn't be there. If I find any, I'll post them too.

I won't do any elaborate post-processing. you can either hear it or you can't. I don't tweak the files much, because it's too easy to tweak plain old noise into something that does sound like 'Mustard, I feel the noses, dance my slacks, Portnoy.' 

And you get to be here for it, live! Okay, not live in the broadcast sense, but live as in not dead, I suppose. And if you are dead, please stop being such a prima donna and say something plain and direct, okay? Thanks.

Here's the setup -- K2, Ramsey, and EMF below monitor at to left of mic:

The ambient EMF, which is around 44 microTeslas:

Finally, the meters. The K2 is showing its usual one LED. The Ramsey is set for electric field detection, but is mostly very quiet.

So, the stage is set, the mics are hot, and it's time to see if anyone out there is in a talkative mood.  Join me as I take a brief journey into --

Okay, I won't say it, but you know you heard the theme song.

First EVP session

So that's five minutes of rambling by one more or less living person. Analysis of the entire segment revealed nothing out of the ordinary. 

Next, I added a blast of white noise to the mix. White noise is simply static. It's a very defined kind of static, and I could post a whole page of math about it, but you know what static sounds like.

I really cranked the level. It doesn't sound that thunderous on the recording, because the Blue was set for near field, but it was pretty loud to me.  I talked through it, asked the usual questions. But here, listen for yourself.

Second EVP session

I analysed the audio above, expecting nothing.

Oddly enough, I did find an oddity. At about four minutes, I noted that I was hearing a sort of sing-song high-pitched sound, like a child humming or singing in the distance. I was pretty sure I was imagining it, because I hadn't heard it before, and sing-song kid voices are NOT a component of white noise.

But I caught it, and I've isolated a sample below. It lasted for about 20 seconds. I have no idea what it was. It's faint -- I use a good pair of headphones to listen to my EVP recordings -- but if you crank the volume you can hear it. NOTE: I was forced to do a little noise reduction and loop this sample, because you really can't hear it without headphones otherwise.

Singsong Sound

What was it?

I have no idea whatsoever.  I heard it. The Blue caught it. So it was there, but whether it was Lou Ann playing her hidden accordion or some long-lost relative telling me to knock it off and get a real job, I'll probably never know.

I don't consider that clip evidence of anything paranormal. It's just a weird noise.

I also recorded 41 minutes of audio on my new Raudive box.

Have you ever tried to sit and listen intently to 41 minutes of static?

Oh yeah. Good times. Nothing there. Just static.

Today was a sort of general introduction to EVP recording and EVPs in general. Next week, I take to the field, recording some EVPs in the places ghosts reputably gather. Graveyards. Haunted houses. My book signings. You know, any desolate, lonely place where the living seldom dare intrude.

Thanks for joining me! Stay tuned, because this whole month is about ghosts, goblins, and things what go bump in der nicht.

I started with boo. Now I say bye. Until next time, my friends...