When we moved into our house, we were told that a child (girl) had drown in our back yard many years back. After watching our first season of Ghost Busters, we were ready to do our first investigation. Armed with a DVR app on our phone, we were ready to go! It was a chilly night so we had our fire pit going. We were asking all the typical questions and not getting any responses. Ricki suggested that they come closer to the fire because it was warmer. 5 seconds later, she jumped out of her chair because it felt like something ice-cold brushed her leg. We then asked what the child’s name was and we immediately saw a blip on the . Later when we reviewed the DVR, that blip was a direct response to our question and very clear…’Mateo’. Well, that didn’t make any sense because it was a little girl who drowned, so who were we talking with? A couple of years later while talking with a neighbor we found out it was not a girl who drowned, but a little boy. We asked if she remembered the name and she said ‘Yes, it was Matthew…but they were Hispanic and called him Mateo’. Holy crap! We did learn a valuable lesson. Do not make assumptions during your investigation based on ‘stories’. Do your investigation first, then do your research to see if they match up.

My wife, daughter, her girlfriend, and I decided to have a fire pit evening which then led to an impromptu evp session. It was getting late, the girls were starting to get silly and Gina had just went into the house. We were getting responses on one of our phone apps and Ricki asked in a kind of sarcastic tone ‘Okay, how many of us are out here then?’ There was an immediate response of ‘Four’! Ricki then responded with a very sarcastic comment of ‘Hah! There are only three of us; My Dad, Tiffany, and Me!’. Another immediate response was received ‘Baby’. Tiffany was pregnant at the time! That was it…the girls ran in the house…they were done. My lesson learned? If you are going to do an investigation, be ready to capture evidence. We had no recorders going of any kind.

By now, we had learned about the boy who drowned (validated our first investigation) so it was time for another fire pit session. I had been planning my investigation techniques so I was ready. I had already created my motion sensing Yes/No boxes and had my spirit trap camera ready to go. We finally got a response of ‘Yes’ to is anybody here with us. One of the questions I asked was ‘Did you like watching TV?’ and received a ‘Yes’ response. So I started with asking if he liked Sesame Street…got nothing, Electric Company…nothing. Started naming off a few older shows, got a couple of ‘No’ responses. I finally got to Bozo the Clown and received a ‘Yes’. ‘How about some of the games…did you like them?’…’Yes’. Now I am getting kind of excited. I said ‘On this chair is a magic camera. If you walk in front of it, it will take your picture’. One second later, we hear the click of our camera! Alright, we are on to something. A few questions later I said ‘Wouldn’t it be fun to make a silly face in the camera and get your picture taken?’ Again, almost instantly…Click! This went on for about 15 minutes with about 6 pictures taken on cue. After we were done, I rushed downstairs, put the sd card in the computer and…..NOTHING!. What the heck? I found my first design flaw with my spirit trap camera…It uses a servo to press the shutter button. I had not secured the camera into position and while setting up or walking around, the camera had already taken a few pictures. The sound we were hearing was in fact, the servo, but it was missing the shutter button. Trust me, this design flaw has been fixed.

So, we decided to try out some of our new equipment last night in our back yard as it has yielded great results in the past. We had a few undocumentable events but after reviewing the audio, we were impressed. Below are 24 evps that we caught. What do you think of them?