What Equipment Do I Need?

No Digital EVPs ! ! The Wizard explains the technical reasons in a non-technical way Click the Wizard for the Details

I am not going to go into everything you need. Flashlights, Notepads, and other investigative tools are essential, but this essay deals only with the technology related tools most investigators utilize

EMF Monitor

This is one of the most improperly used devices by many. I list it first because it is one of the first things a new ghost hunter wants to obtain. The fact is you can do very well without one. Back in the 1970s several movies came out that equated ghosts with electromagnetic fields. Today that is still considered a fact. In reality most EVP and orb activity does not appear to have any direct relationship to EMF. Sometimes an EM field is present when EVP is detected; However in those cases the EM field can often be traced back to some manmade source and that source is also likely the cause of the EVP. About now some ghost hunters are hollering "Heresy!"and a few more expletives, but research by myself and others has backed up that statement.

But still an EMF monitor is useful in ghost hunting. Just not to detect ghosts. Rather, it is good to detect fields which may cause false indications of activity. EM fields can cause sounds which can be mistaken for EVP. Some high frequency fields may cause problems with some digital cameras. (More on that shortly) EM fields may also cause other electronics to behave in ways it is not intended. In any event it is good to know that no strong EM fields are present before your work begins. To this end an EMF monitor is valuable.

There are two primary types of EMF Monitors available. The static monitor will pick up slow changing or steady field intensities. These are generally not considered a problem to be concerned with. If you want to monitor them as a matter of record, you can use an ordinary compass. Any changes in the earth's field, or any other slow magnetic changes, will be detected by a needle swing. If you really want to know the milligauss level you can use any of the low to midprice units on the market. About $50 will do nicely.

The dynamic EMF monitor is more useful. It does not use a meter; Rather it consists of a coil of wire embedded in a probe. The output of this is amplified and delivered to a set of headphones. You use the probe to sweep an area for EM fields. Generally most fields are related to power lines and equipment. When you encounter one of these areas a loud hum, usually at 60 hz in the US, will be heard in the headphones. Often certain parts of a room will have strong fields while others have little or none. You should concentrate your efforts on areas with minimal EM field presence to avoid false activity. A Dynamic Field Monitor can be purchased for about $50 to $400. The more expensive ones will also double as a high gain amplifier which can be used to detect EVP in conjunction with a recorder, so the added expense may be justified.

Thermal Monitoring and Hygrometer

A thermometer is a useful piece of equipment to include on your hunt. You can use a standard thermometer or if you want to spend a few dollars an infrared remote reading unit will allow you to check temperature some distance from your current location. This is one area where digital equipment can be reliably used in an investigation. Cold spots have been associated with orb and EVP activity and having this information can act as a guide to where you might want to set up your equipment.

Why do you need a hygrometer? The humidity is a factor in fog. And fog looks a lot like what some claim is ecto on their photographs. If you have the temperature and the humidity it is easy to determine the relative humidity and the possibility that the ecto you captured may in fact be fog. If you determine the relative humidity is near 100% then fog is a definite probability. If on the other hand humidity is not high then maybe you caught the real thing. Having this data can validate your claim, or at least refute some debunker.

Camera

This is one piece of equipment you should carry. It serves two purposes. Most importantly it can capture what the eye cannot see. Most captures are made with a camera and in many cases the photographer does not even know he got something until the film is processed. The other use of the camera is to photograph the area under investigation. A good visual record will later serve to tie in the exact location of any activity that may occur.

The debate goes on regarding digital versus film cameras. I personally do not accept any evidence obtained with a digital camera. There are just too many technical reasons why CCD imaging does not have the reliability of film. Some of this is covered under the topic, "Those Elusive Orbs", so I won't repeat it all here. CCD Saturation, Initialization of the imaging circuitry, and Pixelization are just three problems associated with digital imaging. These become even more troublesome in low light conditions such as most ghost hunts. Even more of a problem is the lack of a negative. The negative can be used to validate many photographs, if you have one. For that reason alone I use film for any evidence collecting activities.

Some will now speak up and say, "But digital provides the EXIF data". True enough, but technology doesn't stand still. Just as soon as investigators started to rely on that, along comes someone with a program to let them alter the file. So now even that bit of validation can be tainted. We are left with only the word of the photographer as to the validity of the picture.

This is not to say a digital camera is not a useful tool. They are fine for photographing the area or even just shooting pictures to see if you get anything. But if you do get something on digital, be sure to back that up with a shot using your film camera.

While on the subject of cameras, the camcorder is another area to consider. They are subject to many of the same problems as a digital camera, so any results obtained from them is also not as reliable as film. But they do have one thing film does not, that is the ability to show motion. For this reason you may want to have one. Ideally, if you capture something on a camcorder you can also get your film camera and snap off a picture to back it up. It should also be noted that most camcorders and digital cameras do operate well in the near infrared region so for that reason you may want to consider them.

Regarding cameras, I recommend a 35 mm SLR camera with external flash as your primary unit. The external flash is desired in order to keep the distance between the lens and flash some distance apart, thus minimizing false orb photographs. If you want to include a camcorder and digital camera in your inventory, that is acceptable as long as you consider the 35 mm SLR your primary source of evidence.

Tape Recorder

If you are going after EVP, then you will need some way to capture them. As with cameras, I do not advise using any digital recorders. Sounds are analog in nature. We hear in analog. So why compromise the recording by going through an Analog to Digital converter, then risking another chance at modifying it going from Digital back to Analog? I have covered some of this in the section on EVP, but for those who want the details, here goes.

The illustration above is somewhat simplified but shows how digital can fail to properly reproduce an audio signal. Figure 1 shows a sine wave signal. The numbered lines are the points at which the digital recorder samples the amplitude and stores the digital value. For simplicity and to illustrate the point seven samples are made over two cycles. Digital recorders operate by assigning a numeric (digital) value to each sample point along the signal. Here, this is represented by the seven red dots placed along the sine wave. It is this digital value that is stored in the recorder, not actual wave. This is the analog to digital conversion (record) phase of the operation.

Playback is represented by figure 2. The value is sent to the digital to analog converter and the numerical values are used to reconstruct the recorded signal. However when the sample points are reconnected one can see that while there is a representation of the original sine wave, some distortion has taken place. This distortion could cause false EVP to be heard, especially if it caused intermodulation or heterodyning in the signal. These problems do not occur in an analog system.

I recommend a good quality analog recorder for EVP work. Ideally it should be housed in a metal case or enclosure to minimize the possibility of stray fields being picked up by the electronics. Also the recorder should not have a built-in microphone. These can pick up mechanical noise from the tape transport itself. The mike should be located a few feet away from the recorder to prevent this problem. In my investigations I use a standard cassette deck such as you would use in a home stereo system rather than a portable battery unit. The reason for this is that a stereo deck has two channels with two microphone inputs. This feature allows for redundancy. If both channels record a suspected EVP, then the chance that it is false is greatly reduced. With a single (monaural) channel that redundancy is not present.

Microphones and Mixer

The easiest way to set up is to just use one microphone per channel and place them in the area about 6 feet apart. If you are doing it this way, a dynamic microphone is probably the best method. It is cheap, easy to do, and should get you EVP under most conditions.

While a simple microphone plugged into the recorder will work, you may want to use multiple pick-ups to optimize your coverage. To step up to the next level, I recommend at least two microphones per channel, one dynamic and one electret type. This is because when it comes to EVP we are not really sure what it is we are listening for. Some think the source is electromagnetic in nature, others electrostatic, and still others attribute them to actual sounds. In any event, using both types will cover any of these possibilities.

A mixer is required to allow both types to be fed to the same input of the recorder. A simple combiner can be used, however using an active mixer allows for future expansion as your needs grow. How many channels is entirely up to you, how elaborate do want to get? Another advantage of the active mixer is that many have some form of equalization or frequency filtering built in. This may be helpful if you choose to place emphasis on frequencies which are usually present in speech and reduce others. Doing this will lower the overall noise level and allow EVP to be heard more clearly.

Processing Your Recording

There are numerous computer programs available that claim to clean up your recordings and bring out EVP. I have used several and have come to the conclusion that the best filter is the gray matter located between your ears. That's right, the brain. Repeated listening to an unaltered recording is the most reliable way to determine what is on the tape. But sometimes even that isn't sufficient and you just know there is something present. What to do?

Forget the digital approach used with a computer program. These work by altering the original signal in an attempt to determine what you want from background noise. It results in a "watery" sound which is not a true representation of the original signal. In the process false EVP is often generated since this unnatural sound fools the brain into hearing things which are not there. One rule of processing is to NEVER alter the signal you are attempting to recover. Do not add anything to the original. There is a better way.

When something is buried in noise the best thing is to lower the noise level. This is best done by subtracting out those frequencies which do not contain useful information. A graphic equalizer, the more bands the better, can accomplish this. Simply run the signal through it, adjusting the pass band frequencies as needed to bring out the audio you want. The advantage to doing it this way you do not alter the original, only remove unused frequencies that serve to mask what you want. It may not sound quite as clean as a digitally processed EVP, but the reliability of the end product is much higher. You can confirm this for yourself by simply letting several people listen to EVP processed in this manner. There will be much less variation in their interpretation of what they heard using analog processing as opposed to digital.

In Summary

If you are going to investigate ghosts, hauntings, EVP, or whatever, this essay has given you the basics of what you need to get started. A camera, Recorder and microphone, and maybe an EMF monitor are about the only specialized equipment required. By now you might have guessed I am not a fan of anything digital. In general that statement is correct. I base that on my electronics background. As I said previously, we live in an analog world. Common sense questions the logic of converting to digital and back again. Conversion only opens the door to errors. And when dealing with something we don't fully understand anyway, why create errors and doubt?