From: aec1@crux2.cit.cornell.edu (Allen Chen)
Subject: Re: Filmed/Taped Evidence
Organization: Cornell Information Technologies
Date: 29 Sep 92 19:12:44 GMT

ccspjs@gdr.bath.ac.uk (Pete J Suters) writes:

>  After a lot of negotiation, a couple of parapsychologists managed
>to gain access to the church for two nights.  The first night they
>left a tape recorder in the church, and left the building.
>  They stayed outside that night to check that noone was going into
>the building, and the next morning when they played the tape, there
>were all kinds of noises on it.  We were played the tape, and 
>there were some very strange noises on it.  First of all, heavy
>footsteps, thumps and things being moved.  Then a very heavy sigh,
>very close to the tape recorder followed by more footsteps, and
>a heavy door being closed.
>  The door was the strangest thing about it.  There was only one
>door to the church, which was the main one being guarded by the
>scientists.  However, they later found out that there had been
>a second door near the alter which had been bricked up many
>years before - and this was the door that was closing on the tape!!
>  The next night, the scientists decided to tape the church again,
>only this time they would spend the night in there.  Most of
>the night, nothing happened, but the noises started up again,
>accompanied by glowing lights near the alter.  These lights went
>from being small pin pricks to being long staff-like glows which
>began to move down the aisle towards the scientists.  When a large
>book was thrown at them, they felt it best to get out of there pronto!
>  The next morning, they went back in to check on the tape recorder,
>and found it smashed to pieces. 

>  The church was boarded up again, and to my knowledge, no-one has
>been allowed in there since!

That's quite interesting, but exactly what kind of scientists were
performing this "experiment?"  And why didn't they follow-up their
research with more experiments?  It's hard enough to find a controlled
environment to perform experiments in this field of parapsychology
that actual haunted places should be of particular interest.  Why
board it up again?

Anyways, I'm happy to hear people are actually experimenting instead
of just going in there to get a look and running out.  There is too
little known about "hauntings" for that!

Speaking of using tape-recorders, has anyone here heard of a technique
in PS research called Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP)?  It is 
similar to the experiment described above, except that the things
recorded aren't audible at the time of recording.  For instance,
someone with a tape-recorder may ask questions to a supposed "spirit"
and not hear any response until the tape is played back.  Oddly,
sometimes the sounds recorded are found on the opposite side of the
tape!  The sounds/voices are susually terse and trivial-sounding.
If anyone is interested, I know of a few other 'scientific' methods
used in PK research.  BTW, a good book from which I'm getting 
some of my information from is a text-book called 
 _An Introduction to Parapsychology_ by HJ Irwin.
 It's published by McFarland and can probably be found in your
 library.  It's pretty new (1989) so it has recent developments
 such as EVP in there.. good read!

-------
Allen Chen <-> Cornell University
aec1@cornell.edu
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