Electronic voice phenomenon
From RationalWiki
This topic is a pseudoscience, and is not accepted by the scientific community as a valid discipline.
Although it may use scientific terminology, it does not use scientific methodology.
Remember: just because it sounds right doesn't mean it's actually right.
Electronic voice phenomenon, or EVP, refers to the belief that spirits can communicate from "beyond" on electronic audio recording equipment. Practitioners often set up a recording device in a room where it is thought that ghosts reside. The practitioner then asks various questions while recording. Later the tape is analyzed both forward and backwards, searching the "white noise" for anything that might sound like a sentence or word.
This may seem familiar to anyone as a child that ever played the game of finding animals in the shapes of clouds. Humans are pattern recognition machines and it is no surprise that in hours and hours of white noise people can find what they hear as voices. The recordings are never anything more complex then one sentence or two very short sentences, and are often just single words. Usually in order to "hear" it, you must first be told what it says. This gets into the power of suggestion.
It is used fairly prominently in the Ghosthunters comedy television show. They show quite clearly, depending on your level of gullibility, that it is amazingly true or what a bucket of moldy tripe it is.
