Imagine sitting in a darkened room, listening to a recording made during a paranormal investigation.
At first, you hear little more than background noise. Perhaps there’s a faint click, some static and what sounds like a distant whisper.
You play it again.
Someone beside you says, “Listen carefully. I think it says, ‘Get out.'”
Suddenly, you can hear those words too.
You replay the recording several times, and the phrase becomes increasingly clear.
But here’s an interesting question: Did you hear those words because they were actually spoken, or because someone told you what to listen for?
It’s a question that goes to the heart of electronic voice phenomena, commonly known as EVP.
With artificial intelligence increasingly being used to process recordings and identify possible speech, the question has become even more relevant.
Could AI help investigators discover genuine voices hidden within recordings? Or might it sometimes encourage us to hear things that aren’t actually there?
What Exactly Is EVP?
Electronic voice phenomena are sounds captured on recording equipment that some investigators interpret as voices from spirits or other unexplained sources.
An investigator might leave a digital recorder running in an empty room, ask questions during a ghost hunt or record the background sounds of an allegedly haunted location.
Later, during playback, they notice what appears to be a word, phrase or response that nobody remembers hearing at the time.
Some recordings seem to contain recognizable speech. Others are faint, distorted or extremely difficult to interpret.
The practice has been associated with paranormal investigation for decades, originally involving magnetic tape recorders and later digital equipment.
Today, investigators can use portable digital recorders, specialized microphones, computer software and increasingly sophisticated audio-processing tools.
But there’s an important distinction to make.
A recorder can establish that a sound was captured. It cannot independently determine whether that sound came from a living person, radio interference, an equipment artifact or a supernatural source.
That requires further investigation.
AI Is Changing the Way Paranormal Investigators Examine Recordings
In October 2026, IFLScience published an investigation into the growing relationship between artificial intelligence and paranormal research.
The article examined how some investigators are experimenting with AI for image enhancement, recording analysis and identifying unusual patterns in their data.
It also raised concerns about treating AI-generated interpretations as reliable evidence.
Paranormal researcher Paul Sinclair, interviewed for the article, suggested that AI may have useful applications in analysing evidence, while cautioning against assuming it can establish the cause of unexplained phenomena.
It’s an important distinction.
AI can be a useful investigative tool, but the conclusions it produces still need to be examined critically.
Consider an EVP recording containing several seconds of faint background noise.
An investigator might use AI-powered software to reduce hiss, remove unwanted frequencies or enhance what the program identifies as speech.
The processed recording may sound considerably clearer than the original.
Perhaps a previously indistinct sound now resembles a human voice.
That’s interesting, but it doesn’t necessarily mean the software has uncovered a voice that was hidden in the original recording.
Some processing systems attempt to reconstruct what they predict the intended signal should sound like. Depending on the technology and the recording, this can introduce information that wasn’t clearly established by the source material.
A clearer-sounding recording is not automatically a more accurate recording.
That’s why keeping the unprocessed original is so important.
The Human Brain Is Particularly Good at Finding Patterns
Before considering AI, it’s worth understanding something about human hearing.
Our brains constantly interpret incomplete information.
When someone speaks in a noisy restaurant, we can often understand what they’re saying even when parts of their speech are masked by surrounding conversations.
Our brains use context, expectations and previous experience to fill in missing information.
Usually, this is extremely helpful.
But the same ability can lead us to recognize meaningful sounds when the information is ambiguous.
This is related to a phenomenon called auditory pareidolia.
You may have experienced something similar when hearing what sounds like someone calling your name while a television is playing in another room.
Or perhaps you’ve heard recognizable words in running water, a mechanical noise or a song played backwards.
The sound is real. The interpretation may be mistaken.
EVP recordings are especially susceptible to this problem because they’re often faint and distorted.
When we already expect to hear voices, we may be more likely to interpret an ambiguous sound as speech.
And when someone suggests a particular phrase, that suggestion can influence what we hear.
Researchers Have Actually Tested This
This isn’t simply a theoretical concern.
In 2014, researchers James Nees and Charlotte Phillips published a study titled Auditory Pareidolia: Effects of Contextual Priming on Perceptions of Purportedly Paranormal and Ambiguous Auditory Stimuli.
They examined how people interpreted recordings containing purported EVP, degraded speech and other sounds.
Some participants were told the experiment concerned paranormal voices. Others received a more ordinary explanation involving speech perception.
The researchers found that paranormal framing could increase the likelihood of participants reporting voices in ambiguous recordings.
Just as importantly, listeners showed little agreement about what the purported EVP recordings actually said.
In other words, participants sometimes believed they heard a voice without agreeing on the words.
A later study, published in PLOS ONE in September 2022, explored similar questions.
Researchers Jennifer Williams and Mark Blagrove recruited 61 participants and investigated how expectations affected perceptions of possible ghost voices.
Their paper, Paranormal Experiences, Sensory-Processing Sensitivity, and the Priming of Pareidolia, found a more complicated picture.
The researchers did not fully reproduce the earlier study’s overall priming effect. However, participants who were told they were listening for purported ghost voices were more likely to report voices in EVP recordings than in degraded human speech.
Perhaps the most striking finding involved agreement about the actual words.
When participants’ interpretations were compared with the phrases supplied by the original paranormal investigators, only nine of 984 scoreable guesses matched those interpretations.
That’s approximately 0.9%.
These findings don’t establish that every EVP recording is meaningless or that unusual sounds cannot be investigated.
They do demonstrate how difficult it can be to interpret ambiguous audio reliably.
They also suggest that investigators should be cautious about telling listeners what they believe a recording says before asking for an independent opinion.
Why Suggested Words Can Be So Influential
Let’s imagine a recording containing a faint, two-syllable sound.
One investigator believes it says, “Help me.”
Another believes it says, “Harry.”
A third hears a brief burst of static.
Before anyone shares their opinion, all three interpretations are possible responses to the same ambiguous recording.
Now imagine displaying the words “Help me” on the screen while playing the audio.
Listeners may begin to hear that phrase, particularly after repeated playback.
This doesn’t necessarily mean they’re pretending or being dishonest.
Their brains are using the suggested words to help interpret unclear information.
The difficulty is that repeated exposure doesn’t always make an interpretation more accurate. Sometimes it makes the listener more confident in a particular explanation.
This is why blind listening tests are useful.
By withholding the suggested phrase, investigators can assess whether independent listeners identify the same words without being influenced by someone else’s interpretation.
What Happens When AI Transcribes an EVP Recording?
Automatic transcription introduces another complication.
Speech-recognition systems are designed to convert audio into words.
They can be remarkably effective with clear speech, but faint recordings, overlapping sounds and background noise can produce incorrect transcriptions.
A program may identify words where the audio is too ambiguous to support a reliable interpretation.
Imagine uploading an EVP recording to a transcription service.
The software returns:
“Please leave this room.”
That might appear compelling, especially if the investigators already believe the location is haunted.
But what has the program actually established?
It has produced a possible interpretation of the audio.
It hasn’t demonstrated that a person spoke those words, that the words were present as intelligible speech in the original recording or that a supernatural entity was responsible.
Nor should its output automatically be considered an independent confirmation.
Both the investigator and the AI system may be responding to ambiguous features in the same recording.
A more reliable approach would involve testing the original recording, the processed version and the AI-generated transcript separately.
For example, do listeners identify the same phrase before seeing the transcription?
Does the phrase remain recognizable when they listen to the original recording?
Would another transcription system produce the same result?
And does the supposed phrase appear during comparable recordings where no paranormal activity was reported?
These questions can help distinguish a potentially meaningful observation from an interpretation created or reinforced by processing.
The EVP Blind Test: An Experiment Anyone Can Try
Here’s where the subject becomes particularly interesting.
Instead of debating whether a particular recording contains a spirit voice, why not test how consistently people can interpret it?
The experiment doesn’t require expensive equipment or specialized software.
It does require a little planning.
Step 1: Collect the recordings
Start with approximately ten short audio clips.
Ideally, include a mixture of:
- Unexplained sounds recorded during paranormal investigations.
- Ordinary background noises, such as ventilation, electrical interference or distant conversations.
- Clearly spoken human phrases.
- Human speech that has been deliberately made difficult to understand by adding noise.
These last two types are especially useful because you already know what they contain.
They provide a way of checking whether participants can distinguish recognizable speech from ambiguous audio.
For any submitted paranormal recordings, preserve the originals and document their sources. Use recordings you have permission to publish.
Step 2: Remove identifying information
Give each recording a neutral number, such as Audio 1, Audio 2 and Audio 3.
Don’t identify the location, the investigators’ interpretation or whether the recording allegedly contains paranormal activity.
Avoid titles such as “Ghost Says My Name” or “Demon Voice in Basement.”
Those descriptions could influence participants before they even hear the recording.
Step 3: Ask people what they hear
Invite listeners to hear each recording without accompanying subtitles or suggestions.
For every recording, ask three questions:
1. Do you hear what sounds like a human voice?
Yes, no or unsure.
2. If you hear words, what do you think they are?
Allow participants to type their answers without being shown suggested phrases.
3. How confident are you in your interpretation?
Use a scale from one to five, with one representing very uncertain and five representing very confident.
Allow people to answer that they cannot understand anything. Uncertainty is a useful result, not a failure.
Step 4: Compare the results
Once you’ve collected responses, look for patterns.
Do most participants agree that a voice is present?
If they hear words, do they identify the same phrase?
Do participants report high confidence even when their answers differ?
Do recordings containing known speech produce greater agreement than alleged EVP recordings?
The results may prove quite interesting.
If most people independently identify the same words in a recording, that suggests the sound contains recognizable speech-like features.
However, it still doesn’t establish the source of the sound.
If participants hear entirely different phrases, that suggests the recording is open to interpretation.
Either outcome provides useful information.
Taking the Experiment Further: Original Audio Versus AI Enhancement
A second experiment could examine whether AI processing improves the accuracy of listeners’ interpretations.
For this test, use recordings with known speech content alongside the purported EVP samples.
Prepare two versions of each recording.
Version A contains the original audio.
Version B contains audio processed with a clearly documented enhancement technique.
Then randomly assign listeners to one version, without telling them which is enhanced.
Ask the same questions and compare the results.
For the recordings containing known human speech, you can measure whether enhancement actually improves transcription accuracy.
For the EVP recordings, you can examine whether enhancement increases agreement between listeners.
These are different outcomes.
An enhancement technique could make more people hear the same phrase without demonstrating that the phrase was present in the original recording.
That’s especially important when the technique uses AI to reconstruct or generate parts of an audio signal.
The experiment wouldn’t prove or disprove spirit communication. It would examine whether audio processing produces more consistent or accurate interpretations.
And that alone could be useful to paranormal investigators.
What Would Constitute a Convincing EVP?
There isn’t a universally accepted scientific standard for identifying a recorded voice as supernatural.
However, investigators can improve the quality of their evidence.
A potentially interesting recording would ideally have a complete original audio file, accurate timestamps, documented recording conditions and a clear record of who was present.
It would also be useful to examine alternative explanations such as nearby conversations, radio interference and recording artifacts.
Independent listeners should be able to assess the recording without being told what they are supposed to hear.
If enhancement software was used, the original and processed versions should both remain available.
Even when these conditions are met, the recording’s source may remain uncertain.
That’s not necessarily a disappointing outcome.
An unexplained recording can be interesting without being presented as proof of supernatural activity.
The point is to separate what was captured from what people believe it means.
Why This Matters for Paranormal Research
The paranormal community has enthusiastically adopted new technologies over the years.
Tape recorders, digital cameras, infrared equipment, EMF meters, spirit boxes and now artificial intelligence have all been used to explore unusual experiences.
Technology can extend our ability to observe and record the world.
But it can also introduce unfamiliar errors.
AI-powered audio tools offer genuine possibilities for organizing, cleaning and analysing recordings. They may help investigators identify features that would otherwise be overlooked.
At the same time, more sophisticated processing doesn’t guarantee more reliable evidence.
The ability to make a faint sound resemble speech is not the same as establishing that speech occurred.
Blind testing offers a practical way to examine that distinction.
Rather than relying entirely on an investigator’s interpretation, we can ask independent listeners what they hear, compare their responses and measure how consistently particular words are identified.
And perhaps most importantly, we can accept results that challenge our original expectations.
The Real Question: Can We Agree on What We’re Hearing?
Electronic voice phenomena remain one of the most familiar and intriguing aspects of paranormal investigation.
For some investigators, certain recordings represent extraordinary encounters. For others, they’re examples of ordinary sounds being misinterpreted.
The available scientific studies suggest that expectations can influence how people perceive ambiguous recordings, although the strength of that effect varies between experiments.
Artificial intelligence adds another layer to the problem by making it possible to process and interpret audio in increasingly sophisticated ways.
But a more convincing recording isn’t necessarily a more convincing explanation.
Before asking whether a voice belongs to a ghost, there’s a simpler question worth answering:
Can independent listeners even agree on what the recording says?
That’s a question we can actually investigate.
And the answers may tell us something important about how paranormal evidence is collected, interpreted and presented.
Sources and Further Reading
- IFLScience — Ghost Hunters Are Embracing AI in Surprising Ways (October 2026) — An examination of AI adoption in paranormal research, including its potential and limitations.
- Nees and Phillips — Auditory Pareidolia: Effects of Contextual Priming (2014) — Research examining expectations and the perception of purported EVP recordings.
- Williams and Blagrove — Paranormal Experiences, Sensory-Processing Sensitivity, and the Priming of Pareidolia (2022) — An open-access experiment investigating auditory perception, EVP recordings and the effects of prior expectations.
The Ghostly Portal examines paranormal claims with curiosity and an evidence-based approach. The proposed blind listening test is an educational experiment, not a validated method of establishing supernatural communication.