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Voices In The Headphones

Richard_Cheese said:
On a similar but much less technical note, I thought I was hering some kind of music at night when all was quiet, so I took a small recorder with sound activation and left it on all night.
The next morning I noticed it had run through some tape, so I rewound it and listened.
What I heard was a wierd harmony of voices that seemed to be slowed down abit and sometimes would speed up for a moment and then back down.
No music ,just the vocal harmonies.
It sounded so bizarre it made the hair on my neck stand. I almost could not play it again but did for someone else to hear to get their opinion, and they too were freaked out by the sounds, although no real words could be made out it was definitley some kind of song, like sounds almost discernable as words but not quite.
We both felt so disturbed by it I erased it and have never tried it again.
I was afraid of what I might hear the next time.
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Neighbours doing some voodoo? :shock:
 
The slowing down/speeding up could be a function of the medium - if you used magnetic tape - esp. if the recorder was a mini/dictaphone or the tape had been over-used.

If it was digital medium then thats a whole other story...
 
I have heard something similar throught m head phones, I don't listen to my music to loud, but I heard whispering through them, thought some was calling me, so I took them off, and no one had said a thing, it happens 3-4 times but only when I am at home

also, with guitar amps, I have heard them pick up radio frequncies (disconcerting when you are plaing Metallica and all of a sudden the archers comes through your amp) and it has also happened with mobile phones, could something similair be happening?
 
I was using a tiny digital recorder at the time , so tape condition was not an issue.
It was new so there could not have been any residual sounds left on the chip.
It was truly creepy to hear.
I was not even using any background sound such as running water to aid in the process as many suggest doing since often the sounds alone are not loud enough to trip the sound activation circuit .
This was quite audible, just not in english perhaps?
Almost sounded like backmasking.
 
That sounds genuinely creepy, Richard, thanks for that!

I once had a bad fright with a similar phenomenon: I was about 16 at the time and still living with my parents. They were out for a night, and I was home alone and amusing myself by playing on the large electronic organ they own.

At one point, I had stopped playing and was looking through the collection of sheet music for another song that I could play. Suddenly, I hear voices. My parents' house is detached, so we never heard the neighbours. I sat stock still, my heart pounding.

They were clearly human voices, seemingly in a dialog. The cadence seemed familiar, I was sure they were speaking Dutch, just below the threshold of understanding. By moving my head, I determined that the voices seemed to be coming from the organ. I strained to make out just what they were saying.

Then, the voices were replaced by soft music, but that only lasted a couple of seconds. Next followed a series of clear, high-pitched beeps. When those were followed by a deep male voice, speaking very calmly, I figured it out. The organ was picking up public radio! I had heard the tail end of some chat show, followed by the station's jingle, and then a news bulletin, which in those days were preceded by a series of beeps, meant to give the impression of a time signal.

I was very relieved when I solved that little mystery. :)
 
EVP of various spirits and also a demon. Or perhaps the effects of drugs.
 
I can attest to the strange things that can be picked up by electronic equipment.

I'm an ex-police officer. Years ago I worked in a police station which had its canteen on the second floor. In the canteen was a one-armed-bandit. During meal breaks I used to allow myself £1.50 per day on this bandit.

On several occasions I recall being startled by eerie voices emanating from the fruit machine. It soon became apparent, however, that this was simply the powerful VHF radios in Panda- and traffic cars being picked up by the machine's circuitry, and relayed over its tinny speaker.

Another manifestation probably gave rise to ghost stories in the county:

Our traffic car ("Tango") crews learned that - if they keyed the "transmit" button on their VHF radios as they cruised past a local motel - the signal would cause the motel's electric front doors to open silently! This was the source of endless fun for motorway patrols in the wee small hours, and may well have reduced the laxative requirements of several night porters.

Thus do legends begin...

maximus otter
 
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Yesterday we heard very weird electronic bleeps from my computer speakers and then a tinny sounding voice. We couldn't understand it but it sounded strange. "Record it, record it!" my son shouted, and I grabbed his digital camera (it has a microphone). But of course we waited in vain for a repeat. Many minutes later we heard a short burst of the same weird sounds, but again could not catch it.

That's how it goes with Fortean phenomena :(
 
Back in the days of record players (back when dirt was first invented) I once heard my record player talking -- it sounded like whispering -- while the needle was off the record. When I listened closely to what it was saying I was able to identify what was happening. Turns out I was picking up frequencies from a radio tower about six city blocks away. More recently, my computer started talking in the middle of the night. Somehow it was picking up one side of a two-way conversation from a city truck radio that must have been in the vicinity.

In today's world of transmissions from phones and satellites and TVs and all sorts of stuff flying about, I'd wonder if you didn't pick up a distorted transmission from something in the area.
 
This is really freaking me out.

I have a set of Sony AF815R cordless headphones. There is a dial on the side which you move up and down to pick up the signal from the base unit.

Anyway I put them on the tonight. The base unit was completely unplugged. All of a sudden I got a whispering voice over the headphones. I could not work out wat it was saying. Then crowd noises like a those at a football match came over the headphones. No commentary, just the crowd shouting and cheering then this stopped and the whispering voice came back, then the crowd again, then the voice and so on for hours.

It was like something was being looped, it seemed the same over and over again, I seem to recall this happening to these headphones a number of years ago.

I put them down for a while and when i put them back I had snow patrol playing in them and then oasis, both were live and I assume I was picking up the V festival set (they both played) which would have been on saturday - again no dj talking or anything. I live in Guernsey so tere aren't too many radio stations to pick up!

Anyway, I put the music down to just picking up the radio but what is the whispering voice and the football crowd? it went on for hours and I have no idea what it is! this isn't the first time it's happened. It's definately a looped recording but it's dead weird.

Simon
 
shifty said:
This is really freaking me out.

Anyway I put them on the tonight. The base unit was completely unplugged. All of a sudden I got a whispering voice over the headphones. I could not work out wat it was saying. Then crowd noises like a those at a football match came over the headphones. No commentary, just the crowd shouting and cheering then this stopped and the whispering voice came back, then the crowd again, then the voice and so on for hours.

...

I put them down for a while and when i put them back I had snow patrol playing in them and then oasis, both were live and I assume I was picking up the V festival set (they both played) which would have been on saturday - again no dj talking or anything. I live in Guernsey so tere aren't too many radio stations to pick up!

Simon
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Hi Simon,

I'd hazard a guess that you're picking up the rear channel of someone's wireless surround-sound setup, while they're watching TV. Normally in a surround setup, all speech, such as football commentary, is routed to the front or centre speakers, while ambient/atmospheric stuff get sent to the back - like crowd noise for example. And maybe the whispering might be a reverb effect applied to speech on the front channels to add depth? Without hearing the speech itself on the front channels, you'd just get whispery-type sibilance from the rear channel.

Can't explain the looping though - although a lot of the digital channels do tend to repeat everything pretty frequently. Maybe a neighbour fell asleep in front of E4?
 
What frequency does the headphone base set broadcast at? It might be worth using a normal FM aerial to match the signal and see what stations are out there around this frequency.
 
I did consider the possible reasons for this but the strange thing about it all is:

1. I had the very same thing happen a few years ago - same pair of headphones exactly the same crowd sounds (I do not remember the whispering that time though, perhaps I did not have the volume up loud enough).

2. It is definately looping and it goes on for hours and then ends abruptly.

This morning I tried them again. This time I got something similar in some respects but different in others. It was different because this time instead of whispering there was birdsong, like being stood in a meadow. Then, when the birdsong finished a tune like the sort that would be played on a small childs program started playing. Again it looped birdsong, tune, birdsong, tune - a few minutes each over and over again and went on for at least an hour before ending abruptly. Over the song a childs voice was saying something like "I'm going on a picnic with my brother George". Again it kept on looping, over and over again. I flicked through all the sky channels on tv but I could find nothing at all which would explain it. Strangely though the birdsong and childrens music was alternating at approximately the same intervals as the whispering and crowd noises.

Man, this is freaking me out so much I've binned the headphones!
 
Radio and TV stations do maintain special channels for their own live feeds. They may need to be kept open by a tape loop. There used to be enthusiasts who tapped into these channels and delighted in unedited versions of political interviews etc. I guess the interesting stuff is scrambled these days. These are usually satellite links but there may be FM relays of them. The channel does not need to be near the frequency of your own local wireless communication. It could be the lead on the receiver unit that determines the frequency. Changing the length of that might get rid of the break-in or bring in something even worse.

There's a whole lot of stuff out there. I'm no expert but I do know how annoying it can be. In the heyday of Citizen's Band, I used to get a lot of break-in on my HiFi system. By operating a noisy switch on the amplifier, I became convinced that my system could also annoy the CBers. I have since learned that probably I was operating as a spark-station, like very early radio. I think it is actually illegal though I did not know it then!:?
 
Repeating messages? Birdsong? Nursery rhyme style tunes? It sounds oddly like a number station to me, albeit a rather limited one. Perhaps we should get nervous if the picnic is cancelled...
 
What's the apparent periodicity (cycle time) for these repetitive 'loops'? I can't tell from your previous descriptions what sort of time scale is involved.
 
Wouldn't it have been a better idea to try another pair of cordless headphones before binning the other ones? Might have saved you a bit of money if you could have tried a borrowed pair.
 
DAB radio...

Hi
On my DAB radio there is a channel just with 'birdsong' and also on the 'chill' channel they play a strange song which has a child repeating phrases like 'I like to play with my brother ...' with various outdoorsy noises...

Sounds like you were picking it up somehow.....Now if the voices spoke to you directly and mentioned you name etc :shock: that's another matter.......

Just thought I'd mention while here that on my old computer speakers I used to pick up strange noises also.(people sneezing and ducks quacking when the pc was turned OFF but speakers on)..........I know there is another thread on this subject. I figured I was picking up some kind of toy or something. I tried not to listen to intently though..........EVP scares me silly....... :lol:
 
Mythopoeika said:
I'm not discounting the possibility that you'd heard EVP, but the following also may be possible explanations:
You may have created some strange harmonics that produced a distortion effect in your ears, causing your eardrums to distort. Then, perhaps you interpreted it as something familiar, like speech.
There is another possibility - that one of the electronic gadgets you were using had an amplifier that was badly shielded, and was affected by radio frequency interference from some of the other devices - or someone speaking on a CB radio was picked up by the amplifier.
Click to expand...

I don't have the physics to employ the right jargon here, but is it not true that separate waves (of any kind) can reinforce one another to a greater or lesser degree as they can cancel lessen one another's intensity depending on how come together?

Could all of those disparate sounds the OP was playing with have massively reinforced one another by sudden fluke: like potting all the pool balls off a single shot.

Would somebody translate my vague sketch into Science-tongue, please?
 
constructive interference vs destructive interference of sound waves from multiple sources depending on whether in/out of phase ?
 
Yithian said:
I don't have the physics to employ the right jargon here, but is it not true that separate waves (of any kind) can reinforce one another to a greater or lesser degree as they can cancel lessen one another's intensity depending on how come together?
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Yes it can, but you have to consider the frequency mix as well. Waves can generally only reinforce or cancel in the way you describe if they are even harmonics of each other and exactly in phase or exactly 180 degree out of phase (actively noise cancellation works like this)

Having said that all sounds are comprised of a combination of sines waves at multiple frequencies, so simply overlaying a set of disperate noises over each other could easily (in theory) end up with a composite waveform that is like a voice. I'd expect such 'lucky' mixes to produce odd words, rather than coherent sentences.
 
Many instances of radiofrequency breakthrough (from a distant conventional sources) will now be ceasing to randomly make themselves heard. This is due to the inexorable migration away from all forms of amplitude (or 'linear') analogue modulation and amplification. Propitious cross-connections, resulting in fringe EVP breakthrough, computer loudspeakers that appear to be possessed by spirits, eerie whines/whistles & wails.....all (from this widely-pervasive and penetrative source) will almost cease within our lifetimes.

The digital mode of transmission and transfer is inherently-resistant to all forms of analogue interference. Presentation systems (visual / aural) are all fed via digital transfer paths (USB/HDMI/Ethernet) increasingly without any analogue transitions or conversion, right up to the point where transducers interface with our senses....digital paths do not accept or tolerate analogue contamination.

The entire concept of unexpected additive sinusoidal signals (cf constructive interference) nowadays can only exist within soundscapes already-present within a physical accoustic domain. And because of the clipped transitional dynamics of modern audio (eg the absence of background tones and buzz) this in itself is also an increasingly-rare occurence (hence the relative rarity of feedback/howl-around nowadays during staged music etc events).

This makes it very-difficult for (umm) ghosties and ghoulies to be able to encroach into modern electronic apparatus of every conceivable variety. Legacy classic analogue transducer:amplifier:transducer circuit chains were all (by definition) only a few decibels short of self-supported oscillation and hetrodyne screams). Nevermore....

I am telling the truth on all this (please back me up; @EnolaGaia @CarlosTheDJ @Mythopoeika @rynner2 @bakelite brain et al )
 
Ermintruder said:
Many instances of radiofrequency breakthrough (from a distant conventional sources) will now be ceasing to randomly make themselves heard. This is due to the inexorable migration away from all forms of amplitude (or 'linear') analogue modulation and amplification. Propitious cross-connections, resulting in fringe EVP breakthrough, computer loudspeakers that appear to be possessed by spirits, eerie whines/whistles & wails.....all (from this widely-pervasive and penetrative source) will almost cease within our lifetimes.

The digital mode of transmission and transfer is inherently-resistant to all forms of analogue interference. Presentation systems (visual / aural) are all fed via digital transfer paths (USB/HDMI/Ethernet) increasingly without any analogue transitions or conversion, right up to the point where transducers interface with our senses....digital paths do not accept or tolerate analogue contamination.

The entire concept of unexpected additive sinusoidal signals (cf constructive interference) nowadays can only exist within soundscapes already-present within a physical accoustic domain. And because of the clipped transitional dynamics of modern audio (eg the absence of background tones and buzz) this in itself is also an increasingly-rare occurence (hence the relative rarity of feedback/howl-around nowadays during staged music etc events).

This makes it very-difficult for (umm) ghosties and ghoulies to be able to encroach into modern electronic apparatus of every conceivable variety. Legacy classic analogue transducer:amplifier:transducer circuit chains were all (by definition) only a few decibels short of self-supported oscillation and hetrodyne screams). Nevermore....

I am telling the truth on all this (please back me up; @EnolaGaia @CarlosTheDJ @Mythopoeika @rynner2 @bakelite brain et al )
Click to expand...
I see what you're driving at...yes, that's true. Up to a point. There are still parts of the electronic equipment (of, say, a radio) that don't use digital encoding. The final power output to a loudspeaker, for example (unless it is a digital speaker). Something could interfere with the power flowing to a speaker by acting as a resistor or insulator (or even an attenuator) to modulate the power going to the speaker. Or...something could directly manipulate the vibrating surfaces of the speaker itself.
 
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