I was making some notes on my cassette recorder in a totally quiet room, but when I played back the tape there was a male voice saying "Hello, hello.... Hello, hello...." for about twenty seconds. I've seen on rare occasions voices, sometimes music, coming from my guitar amplifier when it was on and even from te TV set when it was actually turned off, but this was rather freaky. How does a tape recorder do something like that, and especially do it and only have the extraneous voice be heard on the tape but not while it as being recorded?
Ham-radio operator, CB operator, police radio... any strong-enough local source of RF can leak into the equipment and its electronics. Power cords and speaker wires can act as antennas, making the pickup even more sensitive.
Once inside the equipment, the RF can mix into the signals in the active circuitry, be amplified, and you end up hearing whatever was being transmitted. In the case of the "haunted" tape recorder, the RF probably leaked into the microphone circuitry; the recording electronics "detected" the audio and mixed it with what you were saying and then recorded the combined signal onto the tape.
Under conditions of very high RF power (e.g. near an AM radio station's tower) it's very hard to avoid this sort of bleed-in entirely... there are stories of people hearing radio broadcasts "in their head" as a result of RF pickup by the braces on their teeth!
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Hmmm.... in this case, the signals weren't combined: the extraneous signal totally wiped out what I had taped for about twenty seconds. And what I don't get is-- well, there are a couple of things that I don't get now that I think about it.
First, is where such a signal would come from. There are no hams or other sources close by. As many times as I have made tapes over the years, this is the only time such a thing has happened.
And secondly, why just the one word ("Hel-lo...") repeated six times. Someone transmitting would have produced a conversation or at least a part of a conversation in an inadvertent transmission. Hello is sort of "hailing frequencies open, Captain" sort of thing. The few rare times that sound has come from a dead TV speaker, that had been numbers and other things that would indicate part of a larger transmission; this seemed to be... complete.
I read somewhere that something vaguely similar happened here in Portland about thirty years ago when an organ at some local church started picking up weird signals, but this is a little *too* weird. ;- (
I remember seeing a demonstration in the civil engineering lab of Southampton University , 1/4 mile from the student union. We were watching a completely mechanical but sensitive strain follower and someone noticed that there was a small perterbation in the trace that showed morse (30 years ago) for G3KMI, and CQ etc if IIRC, and he knew the radio club was operating at that time and their call sign was G3KMI
-- Diverse Devices, Southampton, England electronic hints and repair briefs , schematics/manuals list on
It most likely the recorder was picking up stray signals from some transmitter in your vicinity.
As for the repeated hello's the person was likely testing his transmitter on an open air connection.
Since CB's arent licensed nor required to be hooked to an outdoor antenna anyone even your next door neighbor could be the culprit and it's not necessarily a fixed station it could be someone with an Illegal high power mobile amplifier who was close enough to overload your recorder.
The signal didn't have to enter by the microphone either it could have found a corroded or loose connection within the amplifier assembly and been strong enough to obliterate your input. One highly likely spot is the play /record switch which is very subject to poor contacts and corrosion.
I see from the way that you have written the word that you heard repeated, it wasn't just a "hello" as someone might say on the telephone. Using the word "hello" repeatedly, and breaking it into one long drawn out initial syllable followed by a second normal speed syllable like in "heeey - lo" is a very standard way of tuning up a radio transmitter, and can be heard regularly on the ham bands. That first long syllable can be used to look at power output from the transmitter - particularly when using SSB - and also for tuning up a linear amplifier, an atu, or the transmitter's internal final. Until fairly recently, any half-way decent amateur operator, would have inserted a couple of "G2XYZ test" in amongst the "hello"s, but the recent relaxations in the requirement to keep a log, or to actually qualify for a license rather than cutting one out from the back of a cornflake packet, (sorry Harry if you're looking in at this group - not intended as a pop at all M's ...) has resulted in much bad operating practice.
I, like the others, would subscribe to the theory that this was as the result of a strong radio signal from a ham operator. He could have been operating mobile from his car just outside your house, or be a fixed station even a mile away, driving 400 watts into a beam antenna pointing your way.
Of course, there could be a ghost living in your tape recorder, or possibly in the cassette itself ...
I can confirm that effect ! I have a porcelain/stainless steel gum implanted prosthetic tooth. I can occasionally hear radio broadcasts in my head. Most often when I am in bed at night when its quiet. I found that clenching my jaw will instantly stop the effect, but I haven't discovered how to make it happen on demand.
You have a ghost in your house and the recorder was picking up an EVP. Do a google search for EVP. Lots of people use recorders to hear what ghosts are saying. You can't hear them while recording, but the playback has their voices imprinted on the tape.
There is an organization in Utah that has recorded some pretty strange things.
First, a radio ham, with a transmitter powerful enough to mess with your recorder would, in the vast majority of cases, be using Single Side Band modulation and would sound like Donald Duck on steroids.
So either somebody found your recorder, and was messing with your head by recording something over top your recording, between the time you made it and then listened to it. Or the erase head in the recorder is flaky and that was what was on the tape beforehand.
Mark Zenier snipped-for-privacy@eskimo.com Googleproofaddress(account:mzenier provider:eskimo domain:com)
Hmmm.... I have an easier time believing that Tesla was in contact with Mars than a ghost in the machine (no pun intended). Still, I guess as Mr. Spock is fond of saying, there are always possibilities.
There's been quite a revival of interest in AM in some parts, particularly on topband. AM transmissions are readily demodulated by base - emitter transistor junctions, or amplifier stages driven to non-linearity by such signals. Also, a powerful FM transmitter can be 'received' on a tape recorder, by the signal getting into, and beating with, the bias oscillator. The bias oscillator's L-C tuned circuit may also operate as a form of simple slope detector. So although I agree that the commonest high power mode is SSB, this by no means rules out a different mode, quite possibly generated by a ham radio operator.
On this side of the pond, it's CB operators (it's hard to actually call them 'operators', but for the lack of a better word....). They often use AM, and they're famous for their lack of technical ability. They often use illegal high power amplifiers. Many have a total disregard for any ill-effect of their silly games.
Any signal strong enough can totally swamp everything else in the recorder circuitry, leaving the detected signal on the tape.
Okay... But why this one word, this one time, in years of using of the tape recorder at this current location? 'Sorry, but this is a little too much like the explanations I have gotten for a couple incidents of SLI (street light interference): credible, but not totally satisfying. But then I suppose there are a lot things like that in the world...
Ron
-------- "Logic is the science of being wrong with certainty."
How long can this go on for? I explained carefully *why* this "one word" and several of us have explained various mechanisms by which the recording could have occured. Asking why it happened on this one occasion out of years, given the number of variables in play such as mobile operation, station maybe a mile away, beam antenna heading at the time it happened, maybe a 'new' piece of kit to whomever was using it, maybe a poorly loaded / tuned antenna giving rise to all manner of spurii from the transmitter, maybe a new licensee just setting up his station, maybe someone newly moved-in, maybe an ex-CBer who's just gone active again after his wife left him and so on, is frankly a bit silly really. It's like asking why, having crossed a certain road successfully every day for years, on this particular day, you got hit by a car ...
If you want a definitive answer to this episode, there just isn't one. Merely a bunch of likely scenarios. Or a ghost in your recorder.
EVP gets recorded regardless of the medium. Its thought magnetic waves are the culprit directly activating the sensitive mic circuitry. The recordings are rarely clear and distinct. Strong RF signals are to be blamed for distinct interference.
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