Anomaly At Old Cowtown

 

I recorded at Old Cowtown Museum and thought I had obtained some interesting evidence. The tri-field EMF meter went off at the first pew of the Presbyterian church. I also found a hot spot at the same location with the thermal sensor. It was as if something was there that I could not see with my eyes. I checked every one of the rest of the pews and found nothing. Then I went back to the spot of the front pew and again found the same hot spot and EMF readings.

I planned on combining the video from the body camera with the video from the thermal sensor together with the audio from the field recorder. When I got home I found out that the video from the body camera stopped before getting to the church. The video did not show me touching the camera or even jostling the chest pack. It just stopped on its own. I got incredibly frustrated and angry.

My audio field recorder has a lock switch which disables all the other buttons until the switch is turned back again. I wish the body camera had something like that. Are some kind of stick-on "button guards" for sale on Amazon? I need to look into that.

Since then, I have gone back to the church and the tri-field EMF meter did not go off at all. Neither in that spot, nor anywhere else in the church. This may give credence to the theory that it was caused by a disembodied entity. The effect was not repeatable. Whatever caused it was there one day and gone another.

I may have figured out why the body camera stops recording. It is a problem with the battery meter and the charging port. When I plug a cable into the charging port, the body camera shows the battery is full. Every time. Even when it is not. A couple of minutes later it shows the true battery level, and the battery was nearly dead. This is why the camera stopped recording after just a few minutes.

The battery was dead because while the camera responds whenever a cable is plugged in (the power light comes on), it does not charge when plugged into a high wattage power supply like a 20 or 60-watt charger. I have to use an old 5-watt charger to actually refill the battery.

I have a large flashlight that is the same way. It is poor planning to have a device meant to be run for hours at a time that does not fast charge. So I can't use the same charging station that I use for everything else. I have to use an old power strip that has USB 1.0 charging ports on it.

"Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted."

Capturing the Unheard — Recording EVPs

I got started with the paranormal because of a podcast I produce. When I saw an announcement of a public investigation, I decided to go, and bring one of the audio field recorders I use to record the podcast. I had seen people use them on investigations in programs on television, and I figured I could do the same. Ever since then, I have been hooked.

The primary challenge of EVP audio inspection is not capturing sound, but isolating meaning over the environmental noise. Raw EVP recordings are rarely pristine; they are recorded in environments including acoustic reflections, natural sounds, and atmospheric interference. However, when these recordings are analyzed visually using an audio spectrograph, vocalizations are revealed by their distinct visual signature characterized by harmonic banding and specific frequency modulations that stand out from random background noise. 

Overcoming the desire for flawless recording requires a shift in thinking. If you are participating in an investigation open to the public, you have no control over the environment. Expect people to laugh, talk, whisper, shuffle their feet, and generally contaminate the audio.

To conduct a thorough review of audio data, you must use your eyes as well as your ears. I frequently watch paranormal entertainment shows where investigators spend hours reviewing audio in real-time, when this is totally unnecessary with the proper software. Sitting and listening to hours of raw data sequentially is an inefficient approach when desktop analysis software can process audio files visually. Visual spectrograms allow an investigator to scan a multi-hour recording in minutes, isolating anomalous audio spikes and distinct frequency bands visually without ever pressing play.

Take a look at this image. It is a spectrogram of the words "now is the time for all good men". It represents time, frequency, and amplitude all on one graph. A standard spectrogram plots data across three dimensions simultaneously.

• Horizontal Axis (X-axis): Represents time moving from left to right. 
• Vertical Axis (Y-axis): Represents frequency (pitch), with low frequencies at the bottom and high frequencies at the top. 
• Color / Brightness: Represents amplitude (loudness or volume). Warmer, brighter colors like red, yellow, or white indicate loud sounds, while cooler colors like blue or black indicate low energy or silence.

Notice that words are very distinctive with multiple bands resembling a seismograph. Speech is actually made at a number of frequencies and harmonics. It doesn't take long to learn how to recognize it in the spectrogram. You will also learn how footsteps and knocks "look". Just scrolling the timeline, you will find anomalies that are different from the background room tone. At first, you may stop at a sound, select it and listen to it, then decide that is, say, a bird chirping. After that, you will know a bird chirping when you see it and know not to stop and listen to it.

Scrolling the timeline of the waveform visually is much faster than listening to every second of audio. There are effects you can apply to the audio to reduce background noise. These are problematic. The EVPs are often very weak, and if you mask the background sounds, you could reduce them until they are unusable.

In rooms with no soft surfaces you will begin to recognize echoes. You own voice reflects off of surfaces and bounces back to you with the same pattern, but a lower volume.  One way of knowing what is a person speaking and what is an EVP is in these rooms voices echo and EVPs do not. Remember this when you are looking for evidence.

Another thing that annoys me when watching paranormal investigations on television is people who hold a digital recorder with their hand. All it takes is a slight pressure of the fingers to record a spooky-sounding growl in the recording. This can happen even when they are not aware of doing it.

I always attach a portable shock mount to my recorders, then a mini-tripod to the shock mount. This isolates hand noises almost completely. That is exactly what a shock mount is made to do. You can still collapse the mini-tripod and use it as a handle when carrying the audio field recorder around.

You see some investigators setting their recorder down on a table to avoid handling noises. This is also a problem. It turns the entire surface into the equivalent of a drum, amplifying echoes and hum. It also flattens the sounds recorded, reducing the nuances of the recording. Putting the recorder on a tripod will fix this, even if you don't use a shock mount.

I live in Kansas, which translates to "people of the south wind," and it aptly describes the state. With all the flat plains, there is nothing to stop the wind. When I record audio outdoors, I always use a furry wind muff on the microphones. Some people call them dead cats. The dead cat is a marvelous invention. When air moves across the fur, that fur waves back and forth, dissipating the energy. The harsh scraping sound of wind hitting the microphone grille is almost completely eliminated. These wind muffs only cost a few dollars and will save your recordings. It is better to have one and not need it than the other way around. I leave them permanently on my microphones, even when recording indoors.

If you can afford one, buy a 32-bit float digital recorder. The dynamic range of these recorders is amazing, but better than that is the audio never clips. Clipping is when a sound is so loud it maxes out.

A lot of digital recorders make you adjust the audio recording level. When you do this, you want the recording to be loud enough to be heard when played back, but not so loud that it constantly maxes out the volume. It is difficult to find the right balance when you are trying to record tiny whispers all the way up to people shouting in the room.

Some digital recorders will automatically adjust the levels for you while they are recording. This is bad. If there are a variety of sounds, the louder ones will cause the recorder to lower the level, and then softer sounds fade into the background noise. This most often happens when you are holding the recorder and you ask a question. Because you are so close to the microphone, your voice is quite loud, so the recorder cranks the level down. A whispered response is not going to be picked up following that. Do not use automatic leveling to investigate the paranormal.

A 32-bit recorder does not have this problem. They don't have a knob to even set a level. If microphones were possible to do it, a 32-bit recorder could save the sound of a gnat landing on a flea, to a rocket launch, both in the same file. For those who are not professional sound engineers, a 32-bit recorder is ideal. Consumer-targeted 32-bit float recorders can be purchased for as low as $100.

Record at the highest lossless sample rate your field recorder can generate. I record WAV files at 96 kilohertz in stereo. Some recorders will allow you to save the data in an MP3 file to save space. Don't do that. The compression will introduce artifacts into the data. It is especially bad if you then edit the audio and then save it as an MP3 file again. High-capacity, fast SD cards are inexpensive and keep getting cheaper. I regularly record 4 to 8 hours of audio and have never even come close to filling up an SD card. The WAV file standard doesn't allow files any larger than 4 gigabytes, so when it exceeds that size, the recorder will open a new file automatically. A 96 kHz recording in 32-bit float stereo will hit that limit at 3 hours and 15 minutes. My recordings longer than that are in multiple files.

Speaking of recording time, I recommend turning on the field recorder and leaving it recording. Starting and stopping your recording will eventually cause you to forget to turn the recording back on, which results in lost data. In fact, most recorders have a switch that will disable the recording button so you can't accidentally turn it off. Use it. Remember that you can review the audio quickly on your computer and remove the boring parts while you do that.

My field recorders need batteries and I always replace them right before an investigation. I always bring extra batteries, but have never needed them for the field recorders. If yours is rechargeable, don't forget to do that. I have a power hub that will let me charge up to 20 devices at the same time. That is enough to charge equipment for a whole team of investigators.

Good quality audio field recorders will allow you to plug in external microphones. There are dynamic microphones and condenser microphones. Be sure to use the ones that work with your recorder. Consumer-level field recorders almost always have built-in microphones that are more than adequate for investigating, and you should use them just to reduce the possibility of equipment problems.

Even if you don't believe in EVPs, using a field recorder has its advantages. If you are recording video on a camcorder or a cell phone, the audio is going to be bad. Go ahead and record audio on your camera, but don't depend on it for documentation. The audio on a field recorder will be much better.

The better video editor programs will allow you to import additional audio and automatically align it with the video. If your video editor program doesn't do that, you can manually align them with a loud noise. A clapboard is traditionally used to do this. It's that board that is hinged on one side at the top and somebody slaps it down to make a noise.

Good clapboards are expensive. I use an animal training clicker. It fits in my pocket and makes a very sharp sound that is easy to locate in the waveforms of both the audio and video files, especially if you click it three times in a row.

Reviewing your data shouldn't mean sitting and listening to hours of raw, boring audio. By using a desktop spectrogram, you can use your eyes to scan a multi-hour recording in minutes, letting you spot anomalous audio spikes and footsteps visually without ever pressing play. To get the cleanest data possible, skip the automatic leveling and MP3 compression, and invest in a budget-friendly 32-bit float recorder so your audio never clips. Most importantly, focus on your physical setup. Mount your recorder on a shock mount and tripod to eliminate handling noises, leave a furry dead cat on your microphones at all times to block out wind energy, and just let the recorder run continuously at a high-quality 96 kHz WAV standard. Whether you are looking for EVPs or just trying to get better documentation to align with your video, these simple adjustments will protect your audio and save you a massive amount of time. 

Did you get a postcard?

When you are a new paranormal group, it is difficult to find places to investigate. There are locations in distant cities that charge fees for investigations, but we don't have the budget for that. We know there must be ghost stories in our local area; we just don't know how to find them. Waiting for word-of-mouth recommendations takes too long. 

To speed up the process, we mailed out about 250 6x4 postcards. The front features our logo and the words: "GOT A GHOST? We would like to investigate." The back includes our mailing address, website, email address, and a QR code. 

We compiled our mailing list from several different sources:

• Lists of historical sites and old buildings.
• Places with past reports of paranormal activity.
• Addresses associated with established local paranormal groups.
• Pagan or metaphysical organizations and businesses.
• Locations of famous historical murders mentioned in local newspapers. (If you received a card "out of the blue," you might fall into this category.)
• Local beauty salons and barbershops, since stylists and barbers hear plenty of spooky stories from their clients.

If you know of a group we have overlooked, please send us an email. Additionally, if you know of a haunted location but do not know the current occupant, let us know. We will do our best to find the details and mail them a postcard, especially if it is a business.

Some of our postcards were returned by the post office. I was not aware they returned postcards. In most cases, the return label stated the mail could not be forwarded. I wanted to avoid this. Many of these addresses are historical sites or places where a documented event occurred, so I expected the cards to be delivered to the physical property regardless of the name on the label. 

To prevent this issue in the future, I am adding the words "Postal Customer" on a line between the name and the address. This ensures the mail goes to whoever currently occupies the building. The post office primarily uses the final lines of an address for delivery.

Structured Light 3D Scanner (SLS) Cameras

Structured Light 3D Scanner (SLS) Cameras

A structured light 3D scanner projects a known pattern of light in front of the sensor, then measures the distortion of that pattern when viewed by a detector. This allows a software program to create a virtual map of the objects in front of it. It is most accurate when the scanner remains stationary and the object is stable, though advanced systems can track real-time motion. It is relatively simple for computer vision software to recognize human-shaped objects within this depth data, especially when they are moving. Motion-controlled video games use this data to identify where people are in front of the sensor and overlay a digital skeleton or avatar based on the people in the room.

Paranormal investigators will turn up the tracking sensitivity of these SLS cameras and look for human-shaped anomalies on the theory that they are disembodied entities. Militant debunkers will say they are just a trick of the light or software artifacts, and point out that these devices were never designed to work that way. The truth — as always — lies somewhere in between. While it is true that SLS cameras were not designed to capture ghosts or spirits, hardly anything is. And when a device is created expressly for that purpose, debunkers will say that there is no evidence that it works. You can't win for losing. Using SLS to detect entities is no different from using an audio recorder to find EVPs. It is a tool that has uses beyond what it was originally created for. That doesn't preclude its use in investigating the paranormal.

The biggest problems with an SLS camera are its expense and lack of portability. Currently, a dedicated portable computer or tablet is needed to analyze the depth data and run the tracking software. Combined with the infrared emitter, sensor, and external power source, the overall cost builds up quickly. Even if you already have those hardware components lying around, you still need specialized middleware to drive the system. A complete, turnkey field solution can easily cost several hundred dollars. This high price point places it out of reach for part-time paranormal hobbyists, leaving it generally as an option only for those with financial backing from an entertainment channel or independent wealth.

Probably the most salient reason for using an SLS camera is the "coolness" factor, especially for paranormal entertainment shows. It looks remarkable to see stick figures appear out of nowhere. Because these systems are often handheld, the constant movement shifts the infrared matrix across the environment. This causes the software to misinterpret static objects, making the stick figures jitter and move around constantly. It is fascinating to watch, particularly when investigators ask an entity to wave and the stick figure appears to comply.

Ultimately, the SLS camera proves that in modern ghost hunting, the line between technology and illusion is incredibly thin. Whether those jittery stick figures are genuine manifestations or just an algorithm frantically trying to find human shapes in empty corners, they make for unforgettable moments. Watching a faceless, handless line-figure raise a blunt arm to wave back at you in the dark is a chilling experience — even if it is just a glitch in the machine.