My paranormal adventures

I was sitting here reading some of these posts in the paranormal section, and I decided to share my story with you again but in more detail. You can take it for what it is, I have long since lost all my evp’s except one and only have two eyewitnesses that can back up what I am about to tell you. It’s nothing earth shattering or the like, just something that I think would be appropriate for this topic.

My interest in Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) was something I had read about and found to be an interesting topic… so I decided to try it for myself. I bought a digital recorder and an external microphone. (I actually have a detailed thread on here somewhere on how to record EVP’s) I first tried experimenting in my house using various techniques with background noises such as white noise, tones, running water….this was before spirit boxes became widely available. Running water in my own home gave me some interesting results. I was able to record quite a few voices with varying degrees of clarity…. Some seemed to be direct answers to questions I asked. I asked other people to verify what I was hearing and for the most part they heard the same things I thought I had heard. I didn’t prompt them with what I thought I has heard because I didn’t want to influence them in any way.

For a long time I have struggled to explain the voices I am able to record…. I can’t……but I do know they exist…. I really desperately want to believe that it is nothing more than the person’s subconscious ability to create the voices, to me that is just as plausible as it being the voices of dead people. But I still struggle with this to this day because some things I have recorded just plain baffle me.

I used to live in Virginia, hence the user name Rick in Va. I lived about 2 miles away from the Wilderness Battlefield in which approx. 30,000 or so soldiers died.

www.encyclopediavirginia.org...

The area is rich in civil war history. I thought that if there was any good place to record EVP’s, this had to be it. I tried numerous attempts at going to the battlefield at night, but I never recorded a single word.

Nada. Zip. Nothing.

It was during this time frame that my daughter began to get involved in recording with me. She was in her mid-twenties and had the same interest as I did in EVP’s. Our first session together was in a cemetery close to the junction of Rts 3 & 20. Due to the high traffic area, and the fact that a car sounds like a rocket ship on sensitive microphone, we would go at like 3-4 in the morning to get the least amount of background noise. The cemetery in itself was kind of a cool place, there used to be a church there but it had long since fallen down.

reply to post by RickinVa


We had some moderate success, mainly recording random words or names but unable to associate them to questions we were asking. Then one night I recorded the voice that would be the most significant EVP I have ever personally recorded. It was plain and it was very clear, and it was a warning.

This would have been fall of 2008, cooler temperatures are the best for EVP recording, because it eliminates the bugs. Crickets and what not can be pure torture to listen to for hours on end when doing playbacks of recording sessions. Although I don’t think either one of us ever felt uncomfortable being in the cemetery at night, we did notice temperature changes… there would be areas in the cemetery that were noticeably colder than others. This one night, my daughter and I had been there for a little while when a plane had flown overhead,, I remember her asking me if I thought the recorder would pick it up. That’s when it happened….the sherriff pulled up to the cemetery to see what the hell we were doing in the cemetery at night… we explained ourselves and he said he was familiar with evp recording and left us to go on with our business. We didn’t stay much longer after that.


I told you that to tell you this…. When we played back the EVP session, we could hear my daughter’s voice asking about the plane and me responding to her, and then very clearly there was a loud whisper that said “HERE IT COMES”. This was exactly the same time the sheriffs car was pulling into the cemetery. I had at least 10 people listen to that recording and they all heard the same thing… it was that clear. That was the time I decided to cover my own ass because getting arrested for trespassing would not have been cool with my TS clearance.

reply to post by RickinVa


Here’s a little known fact for people. State Parks are there for your enjoyment. Even if your enjoyment is recording EVP’s. You can apply for a permit to access facilities outside of normal operating hours and they have to allow you as long as you’re not endangering yourself, others, or state park property. I applied for and received from the National Park Service a permit for 90 days to “record night sounds” is what the guy who approved it put on it. LOL. I chose the Ellwood Manor. It’s about maybe a quarter mile from the cemetery and some of the Ellwood people are buried in the cemetery.

www.fowb.org...

Ellwood is a beautiful civil war era house, and it is the place where Stonewall Jackson’s arm is buried. Yes I did several EVP sessions at the grave site but apparently arms don’t talk a lot LOL. During the war, the house was used as Union Headquarters and also as a hospital. So many soldiers died in the house that they buried people on the lawn. Sounded like EVP heaven to me!


My daughter and I went here many nights during that 90 days. We were allowed to go anywhere on the property but not in the Manor itself as it is wired with alarms. I can’t say ever felt scared, I was more worried about running up on a skunk at 2am than I ever was a dead person. We recorded a lot of sessions there, only two stand out in my mind. The first one was a puzzle to me for a long time, I just couldn’t figure it out… for the life of me, I swear it sounded just like a really bad stomach gurgle which was exactly what I was about to write it off as… until I decided to play it backwards…when played backwards, it became very clear… it said “They did….Union shot me in the back”.

reply to post by RickinVa


The second voice we recorded was really quite different from anything I have ever recorded before… it was the longest…. spanning a duration of about 10 seconds, but it was only two words. I listened it to it several times and had my wife at the time listen to it as well. She said she heard the exact same thing I did. It sounded just like someone whispering in a long drawn out breath,,,,,W----I-----L----D----B---I---L---L---H----I-----C----K---C----O----K. Both I and my ex-wife were certain this is what we heard. I was dumb founded… what on earth could Wild Bill Hickcok have to do with the civil war??? Then one day a couple of weeks later I was in the ummm library doing what you ummmm do in the library… reading… I was looking over some of the brochures I had gotten when a name hit me like a ton of bricks….General Winfield Hancock. Wild Bill Hickok….Winfield Hancock….

May 5, 1864, 3 p.m. - Union general Winfield Scott Hancock's Second Corps and a portion of John Sedgwick's Sixth Corps attack Confederate general A. P. Hill's corps along the Orange Plank Road during the Battle of the Wilderness.

www.encyclopediavirginia.org...

Those were the two that stood out from hours of recordings. I would like to say this. EVP recording has changed the way I think about death and its consequences… I think there is a whole lot we don’t know about what transpires at death of the body but not of the consciousness. Doing these recordings has forged a bond between me and my daughter that’s hard to explain… I have seen and felt things and so has she that we couldn’t explain. For instance:


Many of our recording sessions were spent right there on the front steps of Ellwood… At first it was very creepy being on the front steps of a house where so many people had died, especially at two in the morning. The first thing I and my daughter noticed were what I like to call the “Frozen Basketball” phenomena… I think we both felt this phenomena but we never mention it for the first few visits and then finally one night I couldn’t stand it any longer and I flat out asked her..”Do you sometimes feel like there a cold ball of air or something checking you out?” And her answer was basically “OMG… you feel that too??”

reply to post by RickinVa


Too many times to count I have felt something I can’t explain….. areas the size of a basketball that are noticeably colder than the surrounding area…. You could literally put your hand in it and pull it out…there was that big a difference in temperatures…. These areas seemed to be just as curious of us as we were of them…. You could feel one lightly bumping its way up your body and across your face… never any hint of a threat…. Just curiosity and friendliness is the best I can explain it…. We got so used to it that we started joking about it… it occurred that often.

One night I took my son with me… he would have been in his late twenties by then and I think he was just jealous of too much father-daughter time so he wanted to go. He went one time. LOL.

The night I took my son was like any other of the many nights my daughter had been so many times before. It was a total bust…. He just couldn’t keep still…. He kept looking around so much I started calling him Turkey Boy because that’s just what he reminded me of....a nervous turkey at Thanksgiving…finally he freaked….he said “Dude…. Put your hand over here ,,,, its freezing cold only in this spot”…. I replied…. “They’re just checking you out too dude”. He never asked to go again.


I never felt fear, nor did my daughter that I know of,,,, just mostly a feeling of curiosity from something…nothing else.

I only have one file left now... that is with me and my girlfriend at the time in the same cemetery. At one point you will hear me say..."I'd like to get another one of those voices saying "Here it comes".... I think my question is followed by more than one voice,,, but maybe that's me.

How do I upload a raw 6.2 meg audio file?

very interesting post! it actually gave me chills reading that, there is definitely a lot out there that is hard to show non believers of its existence, i like to take pictures of orbs i have not tried evp yet

reply to post by RickinVa


Good stories. S&F for you!

You will have to put your film on a You Tube video, then embed the Y/T video here, I think. If there is another way, I'm not familiar with it on this new ATS format.

Thanks for sharing your experiences.

Maybe putting the file in Dropbox and linking to it ? Id be interested to hear it indeed!