The Clubroom: Haunted Voices
By Jim Haniford

Wintertime… Darkness comes down upon us quickly and becomes night: an ominous, silent world of frost beneath a limitless sky, dusted with stars like faraway eyes. A frigid wind slices through the branches of gaunt trees, a different kind of white noise, making this the perfect time for the dead to tell us their stories...

For this edition of The Clubroom, I had the pleasure of speaking with members of a very unique group. Haunted Voices is both a web community and an investigative organization. Based in Palestine, Illinois, and specializing in the collection and analysis of Electronic Voice Phenomena, Haunted Voices grew from a membership of five to a society of nearly 2400 members. “Our main focus is Electronic Voice Phenomena and educating the public on it, giving them a proper foundation,” said Todd Bates, founder of Haunted Voices.

The organization strives to educate interested parties about EVP, offering various courses relating to the subject. “We teach basic EVP and advanced lessons, which include how to use software properly, how to clean EVP,” Todd Bates shared. “We also give out EVP specialist certifications. We’re totally donation-based… if you can’t afford lessons, we’ll find some way you can get them.”

This network of dedicated and highly motivated investigators delves not only into the techniques of collecting EVP, but the phenomenon’s background, including the origin of various theories and procedures, and the people who first implemented them. Much credit is given Sarah Estep, a major figure in the advancement of EVP research. She devised a scale, based on three classes, “A” through “C”, to categorize these otherworldly voice recordings. In 1982, she founded an organization, American Association Electronic Voice Phenomena, to, in her own words, “provide objective evidence that we survive death in an individual conscious state.”

Not enough credit can be given to this daring and inventive woman. “Sarah Estep is the pioneer of the American EVP movement,” asserted Jennifer Smith, Haunted Voices’ Staff Administrator. “She’s a huge, huge part of the organization,” Smith said, adding that Estep’s innovative spirit is a major part of the driving force behind the group’s objective. “She’s captured over 20,000 EVP,” Bates stated, agreeing with Smith’s sentiments. Sarah Estep has even been one of the guests on the Haunted Voices Radio Network.

“We have a radio show playing twenty-four/seven, as well as five other servers which are also broadcast twenty-four/seven. Those are filling as we speak,” said Bates. “We also have Haunted Voices International Radio. We now have a show in Scotland that’s broadcast once a week, as well as a show in Canada.” Other guests of the radio program include various notables in the paranormal field, such as Peter James, the renowned psychic, and Joshua Warren, author of How to Hunt Ghosts: A Practical Guide.

For more on Todd Bates and Haunted Voices, see our Winter issue!

Investigative organizations interested in being featured in our Clubroom may submit their queries and criteria to Managing Editor Jack Roth at jroth@ghostmag.com., directed to Attn: Clubroom: Jim Haniford.