If I produce "Spooky Sounds" that are not Scientifically Explainable, that would be considered Paranormal and I would win the Million. See?
The issue is how you set up the conditions to assure that the sounds are not scientifically explainable.
Suppose I claim that on a certain date, marks will appear on a blank piece of paper. Is that a paranormal event? It depends. There are innumerable completely explainable ways to make marks appear on a piece of paper, from a pencil to photosensitive chemicals to an industrial web printing press. On the other hand, if I could cause or arrange for marks to appear on an
ordinary sheet of paper
randomly selected from a
newly unwrapped ream
never handled by me and
placed inside a closed lucite box that was
built by JREF representatives, in an
ordinarily lit windowless room
without ever being in the room with the paper and with
witnesses watching the paper the whole time and
cameras recording me, the witnesses, and the paper the whole time, then I'm pretty sure I could win a million dollars from the JREF.
In that scenario, what would make it qualify as a paranormal event has nothing to do with the shape or content of the marks on the paper, nor where I say the marks come from. It wouldn't matter whether I claim that the marks were the words "Hello Earth" written in Alpha Centauri language by invisible aliens, or a picture of a news headline from the future sent back in time from a time machine I'm planning to build ten years from now, or God's revelation of the Meaning of Life, or a random scribble created by my own powers of molecular telekinesis. What matters is that the marks appear under conditions that rule out all of the non-paranormal explanations of what could have caused them. It's all those details in italics that make the appearance of the marks on the paper a paranormal event.
(You might, as a performer, enjoy the exercise of figuring out why each of the italicized words and phrases is necessary to make the event demonstrably paranormal in this scenario. That is, figure out how marks might be made to appear on the paper by ordinary means in a test in which any given one of the italicized conditions were not enforced. It's fun! Keep in mind that some of the ways might require expertise in chemistry or physics, and some R&D, to perfect.)
I certainly enjoy the comparable mental exercise of imagining all the ways a performer might cause sounds to occur, either audible or recorded on electronic media or both, whose origins were not immediately obvious. For instance, if I were a performing magician, I'd be looking into the possibilities of
phased speaker arrays to create dramatic and unfamiliar acoustic phenomena, especially in a site that was (1) outdoors (where more obvious sources of spatially localized sounds, such as speakers hidden in walls, ceiling, chairs, etc could clearly be ruled out), (2) located in an area where I might be able to arrange for access to unlit surrounding areas of forest, private property, bodies of water, or other unsupervised space to place equipment in, and (3) known and arranged by me well in advance. Obviously no Faraday cage or any other measure short of building a fixed structure is going to keep out sound waves. It could make for quite a trick, don't you think? (Kind of expensive, but with hopes of TV deals not to mention the hope of winning a million dollars from the JREF it might be worth some investment.)
Given the impracticality of establishing sufficiently controlled conditions over a square mile or so of outdoor terrain to rule out this and half a dozen other possibilities that come to mind, it is highly
unlikely that any audible sounds that are heard (and/or recorded on microphone-equipped electronic devices) in an outdoor setting are ever going to not be scientifically explainable.
Note that "not scientifically explainable" in this context does not mean "the particular method used cannot be established or proven." It means that no known possible means exist that have not been explicitly ruled out in advance. In other words, if strange sounds are heard or recorded around the Devil's Chair this Halloween, it is not up to JREF to prove exactly how the sounds were created by ordinary means, in order to deny you the prize. Instead, it is up to you to negotiate with JREF a protocol under which no such trickery, from off-site phased speaker arrays to a loudspeaker carried overhead on a balloon to a kazoo hidden in a confederate's pocket,
is even possible, in order for you to qualify for the challenge in the first place.
Given the apparently insurmountable difficulty of ruling out all possible ordinary means for creating either audible sound or electronic recordings of sound or both, it is understandable that the more practical-minded people here have suggested that you base your claim instead on the content of the sound, such as the ability to receive sound messages that give you information about the contents of sealed containers (if, of course, you have such an ability).
To return to my marks-appearing-on-paper example, if the marks that appear on the paper could be matched to pictures in a series of sealed envelopes, then there would be no need for the closed lucite box, the separate windowless rooms, and so forth. Instead of ruling out all possible ways I could cause marks to appear on paper, I'd only have to rule out all possible ways I could know what's in the envelopes, to qualify for the challenge. That would be a much easier protocol to design and execute.
But I doubt that there is such a thing as a sound that's not scientifically explainable, in an open outdoor area at night. If you disagree you must prove otherwise. You must describe what it is about either the sound itself, or the conditions under which it occurs, that will make it unexplainable.
Respectfully,
Myriad
