I used to listen to Art Bell all the time when I lived out west. Didn't believe anything on the show, but it sure was entertaining. The electronic voice phenomena recordings are creepy even though I know they're crap.

All kinds of stuff on EVP at AAEVP.

Tim Powers wrote a book called Expiration Date, in which the ghost of Thomas Edison gets stuck in a prepubescent kid and has to use similar phenomena to evict himself safely. Powers is always a good, and complicated, read.

most likely EVP is just the result of errant radio waves interfering with electronic devices. When a local radio station had one of their antenna cables fall several years ago you could go and listen to the station through the grass in the field it landed in. Electronic broadcasts get picked up by all sorts of wacky stuff.

It doesn't help that most of the EVP sites out there offer up "evidence" that basically amounts to excessive use of audio filters, timestretching, and reversing the recordings. And no, when I listen to a recording that sounds like industrial noises and grunting I don't think I hear "hello, who are you?"

Most of it is just people hearing what they want to hear.

Well, if you read the linked article, those are the two explanations: the wiring of recording devices acting as antennae to pick up radio broadcasts, combined with the human brain's uncanny ability/impulse to make recognizable patters of everything it experiences, even if there's no pattern whatsoever.

For what it's worth, I didn't hear the words I was supposed to hear on Nathan's link, even when the page told me what I was supposed to be hearing.

Another fan of the Mothman, eh?

Freakiest scene in that movie? Nothing at all supernatural: dozens of cars underwater, all with their headlights still on.

A few months after seeing it, I drove across the bridge they filmed in the movie, at night.

White knuckles like you wouldn't believe. . .

Cheers,
Dave at Garfield Ridge

BTW, Ace-- different subject, RE: the Newsweek piece on the "Salvador Option" for Iraq. Check out my post if you care.

http://garfieldridge.blogspot.com/2005/01/newsweek-us-considering-salvador.html

huh. I always thought a bustle in my hedgerow meant my jeans were a little too tight.

That's what I love so much about the EVP websites. It almost never sounds like what they say it is. It's even better to hear these people on a show like Art Bell's because they get so damned worked up as if what they're playing for you is clear as day.

And while I'm on the topic of wacky things I've heard on the radio late at night, check out this. One of my all time favorites...

The Mothman Prophecies sounded half-ludicrous and half-bore-your-ass-off, but that was a surprisingly good movie.

Surely you must have meant fully ludicrous and fully bore-your-ass-off. Unquestionably one of the worst movies I have ever had the misfortune to see.

Mothman,

I hate richard "i'll take Gerbils up the butt" Gere, but I too have a need for the X-files type entertainment. Even though I know it's all bull shit.

Head lights underwater, ever time I see that in a movie I wonder how they do that. Not with a stock car I know ....

Dude, with CD's, how ARE we supposed to play Stairway backwards anymore?

Technology has a down side.