EVPs, Turkey Ghosts, and the Shape of a Haunted House

Cyn, author and founder of Elk Valley Paranormal, shares her experiences with empathic spirit communication, including how she captures and identifies great electronic voice phenomena.

Episode Summary

You walk into an empty room, but you feel like you’re being watched. Pulling out your recorder, you start to ask questions, just in case. Maybe you don’t expect to hear anything. But a few hours later, when you listen back to the recording, you hear a voice that isn’t yours. Shivers run up your spine as you realize you were right. Someone, or something, else was in that room with you.

Our guest today is an expert on electronic voice phenomena, or EVPs. But her true ghost stories aren’t just about phantom voices. She’s been encountering strange things her whole life.

AI-generated transcript of this episode available upon request.

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About the Guest, Cyn Shrader Hill

We met Cyn, founder of Elk Valley Paranormal, through our mutual friend Miranda Young of Ghost Biker Explorations. Cyn of Lincoln County, TN, has caught some creepy EVPs on her many paranormal investigations with her own group and with Ghost Hunters of Southern Tennessee. You can hear some examples of her EVPs right now on her website. She is the author of several books, including Whispers in the Dark, Web Of Terror, They’re Speaking, Are You Listening? and It’s Not Goodbye: Signs from Beyond.

She often partners with her friend, Mark Elliott Fults, author of the book she mentioned on the program, The Darkest Corner: Necrophilia, necromancy, and the functioning of a working psychic. Cyn does public storytelling at Young Vintage Antiques in Fayetteville, TN, where you can apparently purchase some really good sage.

Keep updated on Facebook @ElkValleyParanormal.

Show notes

What is an EVP?

In this case, the acronym EVP stands for electronic voice phenomena (or Elk Valley Paranormal, in other cases). Sometimes, recording equipment will pick up something that sounds like a spoken word or phrase, when no audible words are being spoken in the room where the recording is taking place. Often these messages are too quiet to hear until you turn up the volume.

Are EVP real? Are these actual messages from another realm? Could they be the quiet voices of spirits, amplified by technology? Or are we just hearing what we want to hear within the white noise? After listening to Cyn’s EVP collection, we’re pretty convinced these are actual voices. But whose voices are they?

How to get a good electronic voice phenomenon recording

• Wondering what EVP questions to ask? Try asking direct, open ended questions, but not leading questions.
• If you know a name associated with the location, use it! Try asking if that person is present. Direct your question to that person, addressing them by name.
• Leave plenty of time after asking your question. Remember, you can’t hear an EVP in real time, so you just have to trust something might be happening and keep recording the silence.
• Eliminate sources of background noise, and make sure nobody is speaking in another room while you’re recording.
• Use reliable EVP technology; something that picks up very quiet sounds.
• If you’re using something that records onto physical medium, like a cassette tape, never reuse a tape. Old recordings may not be 100% gone after being dubbed over.

How to protect your empathic self

Cyn gave us some tips for empaths doing paranormal investigations.

• Countdown meditation.
• Opening and closing prayer.
• Always close any kind of questioning by saying goodbye, otherwise the door stays open.
• Essential oils: lavender for anxiety, peach for interrupting an anxious event.
• Crystals, which can be cleansed with moonlight or sage smoke.
• Smoke from burning sage creates a barrier for spirits and ill intent, which you can draw then step over.

Have you caught an electronic voice phenomenon on tape?

While there are many methods of audio communication with paranormal entities and spirits, EVPs are one of the classics. If you’ve got a good EVP from a haunted location, we want to hear it! Show and tell is every day on our Facebook group, because every day is a spooky day.