Just a few polite corrections, Logisti… the report of the "white form" at the door came from the employee's quarters in another area of the hotel (not in the princess' room). Also, the princess in question was partial owner of the hotel; some of the history background they discussed on the show mentions that she would check in with various guests. I'm watching it right now, so I just thought I'd share that!

As for that EVP… if it's real? Wow. I can't really say what that was about, but man, that gave me some serious shudders, and was amazing.

On a side note… I don't know if anyone caught the Destination Truth episode that was on tonight… but after watching their version of paranormal investigation (on Pemba Island), I'll stick with TAPS.

I'm one of those cynics with the commercial location - predestined to be haunted bias haha :). But seriously those were some amazing EVPs, I still am a little skeptical about running words across the bottom of the screen of what we are "supposed" to hear, but in this case it seemed to fit right in. What a welcome break from recent EVPs where I had to wonder if there was something wrong with my hearing cause I didn't seem to hear anything.

"We're plumbers. We just want to check out your plumbing". haha that needs to be a new TAPS slogan.

Ok. This is my take on the 'noises' coming from the towers. If you look at the outside pictures, you will see large flags and flagpoles, and it appears these flags are blowing quite hard. Since all the ghost hunters claim this sound comes from high above them, why did none of them mention the large flags, which would be above them. (and account for the 'cloth' sound, as well)? The posts certainly would cause a creaking or banging noise that could resemble footsteps. The posts have to be anchored on the roof, right?

As for the "foot steps" and other noises from the tower, as Mary alluded to, I can't imagine a huge, old wooden structure not making various creaking and banging noises …

The EVP — so much better than most and fairly impressive. The "princess" was Carolyn Stickney, an American (as far as I can tell) who later married a French prince, so I'm not sure if an accent actually helps authenticate the EVP …

Logisti - LOL with the granite! Why couldn't he leave well enough alone - he might as well have said "One theory is that large, empty hotels with creepy passages attract ghosts … "

I was actually quite impressed with the evp this week. I could hear what "she" said. But, I didn't really think she had so much of an accent, really more like an older woman speaking "properly". Like I would think a peson of royalty would sound, I guess. The fact that "her" voice overlapped with Jason and Grant's seemed to lend it more credibility.

The comment about "We're plumbers…", I just had to laugh and said, "Oh, they've never heard that one before.".

Veronimica, Sorry about that and thanks for the quick corrections!

Mary, that is brilliant. Thumping and fabric moving in time, all wrapped up in the neat package of a flag! Great catch. Even though we can't verify it (because we aren't there) that's one of the most plausible debunks I've seen. Certainly moreso than some of the unlikely "debunks" Jay & Grant come up with

Wes, as Mary JJ pointed out it wasn't much of an accent, and certainly not a full-blown London accent or anything. I would say it sounded like the kind of accent you might hear while watching an old film like "Rebecca" (Classic!) — Certainly American, but with a certain lilt you don't hear in modern speech.

the EVP was the only evidence i found having a potential paranormal cause. and what a GREAT EVP that was, holy crap! i really want to believe that was paranormal, and i just might til proven otherwise. from the skeptical perspective though, you have to factor that this IS the SCIFI channel, so who knows… it certainly seems the TAPS team would not have faked it, just too many of them involved and between picking up their equipment and the review… any tampering would've needed to happen then or during the taping. there are several somewhat elaborate, complicated possibilities that could have caused a hoax or tampering. so it's hard to say with certainty. but wow, great evidence.

interesting that while seeming like an intelligent response, it seems to hear but not SEE them. it's almost like overlapping time and space.

FYI, i picked up on the accent immediately. it may be a more pronounced accent had we been able to hear it more clearly.

Logisti excellent synopsis as usual for this case. Again with the footsteps what is up with the footsteps? I could not really hear them and am growing weary of them. Am I correct in my thought that the footsteps have been the item du jour? That and the residual haunting speel prior to anything being discovered. The crack about we are here to check your plumbing, was as silly as Donna on GHI asking do you like to crochet.

I thought the hotel was beautiful and reminded me of the Stanley Hotel that I have been to and am happy to report did not encounter any jumping tables.

The EVP was very impressive and I could actually hear something this time. This season I have not really been able to hear anything. It did seem to be saying some of the things TAPS said it did. To me it seemed more real due to the length of it. It just began to talk and rambled on regardless of what was happening in the room.

It was a pretty good episode although I think they could have made this one a full hour by itself. It would have been cook to learn more about the history of the place and have them stay over in the Princess Room.

Jason & Grant should've provided their EVP to the TV audience through a direct feed. That is, played through the SCI FI camera's audio input, as opposed to the cameras picking up the audio through lap top speakers.
That EVP should be analyzed by a 3rd party. I know as a rule they do not allow that, but you can really slice n' dice audio today.
Sci Fi cameras never capture anything EXCEPT EXCESSIVE NOISE, FOOTSTEPS, BANGING…
14,987 alledged shadows seen, 109,873 cold spots experienced, but the Sci Fi cameras never experience one. If it's so cold how come their lenses never fog?
If it's true that ghosts PULL energy out of batteries (we've seen countless ghost humter camera batteries drain) how come the Sci Fi cameras never die!?
The only great capture, & most likely their greatest for all time will forever be "DUDE RUN!"

I have to admit. I ride the fence on what is true or believable and what is fake and/or far fetched. I often wonder what "other" beings, alive or dead live amongst us. Watching Ghost Hunters, I want to believe nothing is done or said for Tv ratings and they (Me and Grant) haha are legit. Each week I hope for the evidence that spirits exist and lasts nights episode of the New Hampshire Hotel was by far the best. I wonder though…when you post your debunkings that aren't revealed on the show, are they ever commented on by the cast of the show? I agree with what most of you have come up with for debunking scenes that get sensationalized. Donna

I'm not sure what you mean by "debunkings that aren't revealed on the show". If you mean the debunking that we do here, the reason you don't see it on the show is because we're not affiliated with the show in any way. We're just fans, like yourself.

As for cast members commenting, we've been lucky enough to have a few people stop by from time to time but none of the Ghost Hunters regulars have graced us with any comments to-date.

To play devil's advocate, for all we know, the princess had a lisping, Southern drawl … and so I'm just sayin' I don't think that the "accent" (or however you want to describe the voice) helps validate the EVP at all. When you really stop and think about it, it really doesn't make logical sense that a spirit's "voice" would be the same as the living person's - after all, the lungs, tongue, etc. that produce voice quality are long gone … and if we are "hearing" a residual spirit, it obviously couldn't also be an interactive spirit answering direct questions.

That said ……. I ultimately agree with you Logisti, et. al, that this EVP was a rare ray of evidence sunshine in a sometimes cloudy season.

Well, I dunno about EVPs. Yeah, this one was one of the clearest EVPs we've heard on GH, and it was impressive (and intriguing).

What always bugs me about EVPs, though, is that they're technology-dependent evidence that's discovered after-the-fact. There is always the possibility that something in the equipment could be causing an EVP, or that suggestion is encouraging us to hear what we want to hear, or what we think we should hear — what the GH team calls matrixing, or what I would call the subconscious mind filling in the blanks.

For me, EVPs are just too much like orbs. I guess I'm not going to be convinced until a spook walks up to me personally and says hello!

Wes, considering the location in New Hampshire I'm going to have to stick to my conclusion that the accent makes it more compelling. Not a lot of Southerners in New Hampshire nowadays, not to mention way back when.

But I take your point, we don't really know the specifics. I don't presume to, I'm just saying the slight accent to the voice makes it, in a very general way, seem more plausible to me (than a non-accented voice, which would make me more suspicious) and also adds an additional layer of complexity if this were a hoax.

Regarding voices, lungs and whatnot, again I am not presuming to know specifics of how such a phenomena might work. Using common ideas of a "spirit" or "residual haunting" you're right, it doesn't seem to make sense — but keep in mind that those are just made-up constraints. If this isn't some lady talking on a mobile phone in the next room, and if this isn't a hoax, then really we have no idea what it *is* and what rules apply.

To me, it didn't sound like an accent. It sounded really off, almost like someone with a speach defect, and tinny like it was coming from a cheap radio. I realized what it sounded like. It sounded exactly like a computer-generated voice. Especially the intonation. I just listened to it again on youtube and got the same impression.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=1fkX0LntF-8

What impressed me about the EVP's was that it seemed to be the same voice both times around. Two separate teams catching it. Cool.

Unfortunately, I just barely watched the episode so everything I might have mentioned (how lucky for you folks) has already been covered.

I didnt hear an accent, I dont know what to make of EVP's. I do believe it possible some materials may hold sound. This EVP seems to be answering J.
One thing that puzzled me when the EVP asked " where are you" if its a ghost; can it not see them in the room?

Dixie, that's a good question but at the end of the day we don't know what a ghost sees.

Maybe it has something to do with the granite. Is a hotel built on quartz better for ghost vision? I'll have to ask Jason.

With the majority of people thinking this EVP was authentic and exciting, someone needs to run - not walk - to that hotel with the proper equipment and talk to this spirit. I would love to ask specific questions like "where are you?", "when are you?", and "IS THIS Princess Carolyn?" If there is truly a portal, opened for communication between our time and their time, what a wonderful opportunity to explore it. The skeptics will be skeptics no matter what, but the rest of us that are open to all possibilities, will consider it such a gift - if, of course, responses are captured as it was on GH.

Hey Jeff, I agree at the end of the day we know very little.

I swear the more I listen to the EVP the more its sounds southern. Maybe thats why I didnt hear a accent at first ….because I have a southern accent myself…

Hey Kathy,

I live 45 minutes from the Hotel; what do you want me to bring? :p

Seriously though, having lived up here all my life, and after being sick of hearing all the "testimonies" of people who have worked there, I'm just afraid that this episode has embarrassed us.

Was cool to see Hollis on TV though. He's a great guy.

You know, I think we are all looking for that absolute proof that life continues after this one. So when "evidence" of that is presented, I tend to lean toward believing. We'll be in Boston this summer. Maybe we can take a side trip to that hotel. If nothing else, it looks absolutely beautiful there. And I'm guessing the temps will be a tad cooler than Phoenix.

Really sounds like a computer generated voice to me … not an accent (English or Southern).

I was really impressed with the evp, Im in the camp that the speech sounded proper (victorian-like to be exact) having listened to some audios where actresses use a similar speech pattern.

That said, I wonder under what conditions are the tapes and audio evidence watched over until reviewed. I get the impression that days may pass before they review evidence from a particular case, because you here them say (oh I remember that case, ect..) With that kind of fantastic evp, the viewer needs to know stuff is locked up and guarded from (maybe a production staff member trying to create ratings). So while impressed I need to know more about quality control after tapings to pass complete judgement.

Thought I'd throw this in the mix:

A couple of the users at the SciFi forums were actually chewing over this EVP prettly hotly. Here's the trackback link:

http://forums.scifi.com/index.php?showtopic=2305753&st=80

Relevant pages are 5 and 6. To be honest this kind of stuff goes over my head. But essentially Dustin ran the EVP through the Adobe Addition program and noticed some wierd inconsistencies in the audio.

Whether this "proves" or "disproves" the audio I don't know. But one interesting thing he did note is that there is a latent white noise on the low end of the spectrum on everything SciFi does. So that EVP from a few weeks ago, where the ghost supposedly answered "yes" but no one heard it? It could be that the voice was on the low end of the spectrum and was actually cut off by the programing.

Jason’s theory, granite, quartz and limestone fuel paranormal activity gave me an Ice Cream Headache. The statement is subjective and open to criticism. I find no objective reality in his theory. Jason might want to think about making a claim using a theory which has no meaning to evaluate to a theory.I think he really needs to think about whether he is thinking critically when he is thinking! Using "critical thinking".

Paul Anthony

D, good find. After reviewing DustinTheWind's screen shot of the Adobe Audition Spectral View, I really have no idea what I'm looking at. Just kidding, but it is a mouthful.

All right, I'm certainly no expert but I think I see what he's talking about. I'm sure he's aware that there are limits to how much this can tell us because he's reviewing the audio from a TV episode that has gone through post-production, etc — in fact, that is the most likely source of any audio splices, or at the Sci-Fi channel level (as he said some of the anomalies continued even during the commercials).

Just looking at the differences between the rest of the episode and the EVP portion it's important to note that TAPS has always acknowledged that they "clean up" EVP recordings in order to make them. It's possible that "cleaning up" process (which is basically like fiddling with an equalizer, but can use other types of filters) might cause the anomalies he is indicating.

Simply put, it's entirely possible that this is a hoax, but if it is then I don't think there's any way to prove it without getting hold of the original, unaltered recording.

On a side-note: I saw someone hypothesizing that TAPS *adds* background noise to their EVP recordings — presumably to cover up evidence of other tampering? In any case, this is silly and shows how easily a small knowledge gap can foment misconceptions.

The reality is likely two-fold. Firstly, many of the EVPs TAPS catches are extremely faint and they boost the audio just to make them audible (to their clients, apparently, not to us) and that process also boosts the background noise.

Also, professional audio (like the Pilgrim audio) often uses some form of "Noise Gate" which eliminates any sounds below a certain threshold. This is the reason Pilgrim audio has no background noise and it's likely the reason they never catch EVPs on their equipment. Whether EVPs are background noise or not, many of them are so quiet that a noise gate configured fairly conservatively would cut them out of the mix.

I applaud their efforts, but as a wise man once said, "You can't debunk crap" — meaning that if your source material isn't high quality, anything you find is going to be inconclusive. In this case we have a recording of a recording (played through laptop speakers, I believe). This is the safest ground TAPS could be on if they wanted to stage something fantastic without being caught.

I have a question. Is it possible to catch an EVP of somebody talking in, say, the next room, without it being audible at the time to the investigators? Was anybody staying in the hotel at the time of the investigation? I just got the impression somebody in another room could hear the questions being asked and was playfully answering, maybe not knowing the answers could be picked up on a recording device. How sensitive are the recorders?

Kevin may have a good point here. I thought the EVP sounded like someone in the next room was watching TV or talking. If the walls of the Princess' room weren't very well insulated, it could create an opportunity for mischief. Also, did anyone besides me think the stairs inside the tower looked like they were designed by M.C. Escher? They were really crazy looking.

Bear in mind how accents change over time. Watch any movie from the 40's, do we still talk like that? What you interpret as a slight British accent in the EVP is meaningless when it may be a 100 year-old voice. I would expect an American aristocrat from the early 1900's to have a slight "British" accent.

Good point Annie, I listen to audios of victorian actors and its exactly like that, very prim and proper, can easily be taken for a little British, a person in the next room from our time period does not talk like that, imo. Also wasnt this done really late at nite? Doubtfull imo, someone awake in the next room starts answering question on que in the middle of the nite, and also seems likely that if that were the case they would have heard something as well.

"There's a theory out there…"

So granite, quartz and limestone help fuel paranormal activity? How does this work, exactly? Is there any research, are there any studies, to back up this "theory"? Could somebody provide me a link to a site giving the scientific data on this subject?

I agree with Paul Anthony. This theory has no science to back it up, like a lot of the other paranormal theories out there.

Thank you, Dread1, and I agree with you. In fact, I believe the hotel was closed for winter while they were there.

Well, as Jake knows, NH is the "Granite State" so I don't think the hotel would be particularly prone to granite-related hauntings any more than other places in NH … which would be chock full of hauntings if that theory were true.

They also try to make it very Stanley-Hotel-ish, with long shots of the halls and exterior and the "he's here alone all winter." But winter in NH is not desolate at all - it's one of the prime spots in New England for skiing.

I'd like to think the EVP was real, but if so, wouldn't they want to publicize the hell out of their find? That would be the first ever EVP of an actual ghost talking. Of course, they'd have to turn their materials over. I don't trust Grant at all.

"We're just plumbers" and "Do you have a problem with authority" are two of the best (worst!) yet.

I just checked the Mt. Washington Hotel website. It is open year round with lots of winter activities.

Whether the hotel was open or closed, believe what you want.

You believed the hotel was closed, when, in fact, it wasn't.

Forget the hotel being closed or not, because it doesn't matter.

I think it does. For me, the EVP would be much more impressive if it was recorded in an empty hotel. People possibly occupying rooms adjacent to the room where the EVP was recorded taints the evidence a little. That is, of course, as I asked in my original post, if a recorder can pick up a living voice the investigators cannot hear. Are the recorders more or less sensitive than the human ear?

Fair enough. I'm no EVP expert, but it seems EVP recordings often show up when the human ear heard nothing.

On TAPS' return to the St. Augustine lighthouse, Jason heard "Mommy" and it was picked up on EVP, but that's the only case I know of where an EVP was heard at the time.

I think perhaps the more relevant question (that I don't have the answer to) is can the recorders TAPS uses retain very, very faint snippets of previously recorded material? I remember the old cassette tapes I used for years, when recorded over, would sometimes still have remnants of previous tapings that could be heard faintly.

If that's possible with what they are using, that opens up a whole new realm of possible misidentification/hoaxings.

I think the bottom line is, that because it COULD have been hoaxed in any number of ways, it will remain questionable evidence ..

Kevin, in my experience any recorder that isn't an extremely high-end piece of studio equipment is significantly less sensitive than the human ear. Also, we have seen on many occasions team members reporting sounds (footsteps, etc) that either barely show up on their audio-recording devices or don't show up at all.

It's unlikely the recorder picked up any nearby (audible) voices unless it was significantly closer to the audio source than the people in the room. This was recorded on the wireless audio, so I don't believe it was in someone's hand, which leaves open the possibility that it was right next to a wall, and perhaps the person speaking was on the other side of the wall.

I mention it simply because I can't entirely rule that out, but I think it's unlikely since the voice doesn't sound muffled like a voice coming through a wall, and also it isn't particularly quiet compared to the other speakers in the room either. In fact, it seems to be nearly the same volume — so I would say the "person in the next room" hypothesis can't be ruled out, but I think the evidence indicates it isn't likely.

As for ghost audio common to tapes, the only tapes I know TAPS uses are digital video tapes, and I don't believe ghosting occurs with digital recordings, only analog. Also, the wireless audio transmits (I think) directly to the laptop, where it is recorded as a file onto the hard drive, so it should be completely immune to this sort of "ghost audio" problem.

That, of course, does not rule out the possibility of somehow picking up a nearby cordless phone or something. I don't know enough about the wireless audio and what frequencies it transmits on. Still, even with this it would seem unlikely that such interference would occurs so clearly and seem to interactive/conversational, but be completely absent on the rest of the recording. Then again, we can't be 100% sure it's completely absent on the rest of the recording so…

Ulimately, if we can rule out radio interference, and if we can determine the wireless audio wasn't near a wall (and wasn't very far from Jay & Grant) then I think that leaves us with only two working hypotheses: hoax or paranormal phenomenon.

Also of note: That doesn't mean those would be the only two possible explanations — just the two remaining of the ones put forth so-far.

So does anyone know where in the room the recorder was positioned? Also, does anyone know anything about the model of wireless recorder they use?