Otherworld North East Research Society Journal 01 | Page 32

Otherworld North East

yourself witless when you get home and listen to your recording as there is a very good
chance you'll not have recorded anything out of the ordinary.
Some people argue that the best way to record voices is to record through some kind of
background noise. Largely this tends to be that of white noise. White noise is said to be
the noise left over from the Big Bang. You know when you're trying to tune your television
set in and you get the snowey image that makes that highly annoying hissing noise? Well
that's what white noise is. There is nothing more to it, just a whole hissing racket of left
over noise really! Some researchers claim that spirits prefer to communicate through
white noise, perhaps the noise gives the spirits something to focus on or work through?
This is just one theory. It is up to the individual to believe what they wish though. To me,
recording through white noise makes no difference at all in the results you'll achieve. Only
that if you have a constant hissing noise in the background it is often easier to start
hearing voices where there simply is none. To the layman you would be forgiven in
thinking that silence would be easier to hear any voices in but if you are going to sit and
listen to hour upon hour of recordings, you'd be surprised how many times your brain can
try to fool you into thinking you've recorded something as you listen to the annoying
drone of the white noise.
So for me personally I've always preferred direct recordings without recording through
white noise first. It is all down to personal choice though in the end. If you did decide to
record through white noise you have a variety of options. You can either link your
dictaphone up to another device that will either play white noise automatically (yes, you
can actually buy dedicated white noise players!!) or personally I find it a whole lot easier
and cheaper just to link your dictaphone up to an untuned radio or other such device.
Of course, you will always have those people who then claim that any voices you did
happen to record could well just be the interference or cross-modulation from the
untuned radio you were using to produce the white noise. This is an extremely plausible
suggestion in my mind which is another reason why I personally prefer to avoid white
noise altogether.
Of course, if you decide to ditch white noise too and just record directly onto your
dictaphone without any kind of background noise then this doesn't discount the
possibility of such things as interference or cross-modulation. Sound waves can travel vast
distances so just because you can't see anything in range that could affect your readings
doesn't mean to say the radio station or mast 3 miles away may not be affecting your
recording. (Of course, the further the distance away something is may be an indication of
how unlikely it is to interfere with your recording device but this possibility will always be
there and it is exactly this slim possibility that discredits the vast majority of such
experiments).
The only way to get around the interference problem on the whole is to conduct your
experiments in a room specifically screened to prevent such external radio sources but

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