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 Hugh Williams
"Electronic Voice Phenomena" (or EVP) are supposed to be the voices of ghosts, made audible through static on the radio, or on tape recordings. Huw Williams reports:
It sounds like the plot of a Hollywood movie - "Ghost" crossed with "The Cable Guy" perhaps. And in fact it is. Michael Keaton's new film, "White Noise", features a murdered woman who identifies her killer by speaking onto a tape machine.
But there are people who say Electronic Voice Phenomena aren't fiction but fact.
Linda Williamson from Dundee is one of them.
She used to work as a cleaner in a now demolished factory. It was supposed to be haunted, so out of curiosity she left a tape machine running in a deserted room, while she and a colleague worked at the other end of the building.
It was very early, and there was no-one else there, so she was astonished when she played the tape back and seemed to hear several people talking, some laughing, and lots of banging noises.
Dead celebrities and pets that have passed-on
Since then she's made hundreds of recordings which, she says, feature the voices of a range of dead people - from celebrities, to relatives and family friends, and even barking from a deceased dog.
Many of her tapes, she says, include messages from beyond the grave. "They're asking for help, or they're coming over and saying 'I love you'", she says.
She says she's always been fascinated by why some-one who's died would choose to leave an electronic message on a tape machine. "Maybe", she speculates, "it's the fact that man's technology has improved so much that means they're able to do that?"
"Family members who have died go on ..."
Some of the recordings only become audible when they're slowed down, or even played backwards. And Linda understands that some sceptics will accuse of her of doing whatever it takes to manipulate tapes until messages she - or others - are desperate to hear some-how appear.
But she says she's recognised the voices of family members - including her mother. For her, she says "that's proof that my own family members who have died still go on in some form".
A scientific explanation?
Professor Chris French, from Goldsmiths College in the University of London, isn't convinced.
He says some of the alleged EVP recordings come from leaving a microphone and tape machine in a place that's supposed to be haunted.
"In that case", he says, "there's the possibility that you might pick up real voices from real living human beings that happen to be walking near-by".
"People want to believe ..."
Other tapes emerge from static, or un-tuned radios. He says those can be explained as voices from other broadcasters being picked up as transient radio signals.
But he says the common thread behind all the examples he's heard is that people are "reading meaning into what's actually random noise".
"For obvious reasons, people want to believe there's an after-life", he says, and that means the evidence doesn't need to be very good for people to be convinced by it.
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