Looking for Skeptics

[Daylightstar]

... Why not the one Daylightstar has asked you for, for ages?
...

Today flaccon send me two emails. The second one is titled "EVIDENCE", carries some explanatory text regarding the naming of a file and statement of the existence of another 'rather clear' (as she calls is) recording of her deceased sister Julie.

The first email is titled "Records" and appears to contain the requested file, three additional files of which one has not been produced correctly. plus a rather long body of text.
The incorrectly produced file is unrecognized by Windows but can be opened in Audacity as raw data, which causes a hell of a noise racket with clear breaks in the file.


Of the requested file is indicated in the file name where the purported clear statement is to be found.
This is the file I will be looking at in a couple of hours, I have to go out in a couple minutes.

Thank you for sending me the files, flaccon, I may have a look at the other files as well at a later time.


E.T.A.:The recognizable files are .wmv, any reproduction will be without the images as they appear to be irrelevant.

 

[calebprime]

I've uploaded a few files to Box to show how excessive or cheap noise-reduction introduces "chirping" artifacts.

That's the "budgie".




Original voice sample with noise and hum.
https://app.box.com/s/vmqlney1zbkfrd85r09d

Cleaned up with Izotope RX: (Fairly high-quality noise-reduction) I did this just because I'm obsessive and I could.
https://app.box.com/s/weurvajfk0xvmqoauh6p

Chirping artifacts are introduced: My attempt at butchering the sound with bad noise-reduction.
https://app.box.com/s/coo99t74urg06c6e2cat

I don't have really lousy noise-reduction, so this would take more work, but you can hear the chirps starting to emerge.

eta: It occurs to me that it might be possible to really make it chirp by convolving the sound with itself using Sound Hack. That's the next try, then I need to do some work.

eta2: The sound file massacred by convolving with itself a couple of times. Nothing but chirps and garbage.
https://app.box.com/s/8ripqbijcrve44nrh919

 

[Vortigern99]

Avoiding giving answers to direct questions, and refusing to acknowledge rational explanations of events, are forms of lying because they are both ways of withholding the truth.

Tracey avoids answering whether she speaks any other language. She avoids providing us with the files in which voices say, "We don't belong in a circus", and "Oh my god, that JREF can have us arrested, have us arrested Trace". She refuses to make a video to prove her claims that no one is in the room when voices are recorded. She refuses to acknowledge that audio files will change only if she herself manually compresses them before upload, and that she simply misunderstood Alderbank's posts on the subject. She refuses to explain what she means by "2 funerals" and "... a big fib that cost me £8.000, ..." and/or how that relates to her claim of "church protection". She refuses to admit she tells her friends and family what to expect before playing them audio files. She refuses to explain the discrepancy between her earlier claim that she held onto speakers during file playback, and her later insistence that she never held onto speakers. She refuses to acknowledge that anecdotes of events only she witnessed are not evidence of anything. She refuses to post her GP's letter without redactions, regardless of what they may or may not prove. She avoids answering whether she owns a budgie bird. She refuses to acknowledge that because she can't explain an event doesn't make it paranormal.

All forms of dishonesty. Avoidance of truth. Lying.

ETA: I see Tracey has provided Daylightstar with some audio files that purport to be the requested "circus" files. As of this moment, these files have not been confirmed as the correct ones.

ETA: Tracey also refuses to explain what she means in recounting an event in which a jailed man shouted for 72 hours, which she has claimed can prove her "voices" are not hallucinations.

 

[abaddon]

<snip>

Hi Jack.

I ran your suggested test, but first, I must correct an error of mine. There is playback within Youcam. I didn't spot it because their is nothing to spot, no button, menu, right-clicky, nothing. I missed the obvious "Double click the created thumbnail" scenario, which launches your movie in a built-in viewer. Nobodies perfect.

My first thought was to record silence in Youcam, play it back and record again. No joy. The Youcam player opens in a modal window, so no concurrent tasks. The fallback position was record silence, playback in WMP while recording a new file in Youcam, so here we go with what I found.

It is impossible to record silence with a live mic. The best you get is effectively white noise and lots of it, coupled with some high freq elements which I found to be generated by the hum and noise of the PC itself. If flaccon thinks she can record silence, she is plain flat out wrong. At best she can record the white noise that is around everyone.

In any event I proceed to run the recorded silence through WMP to get to the next step, but paused immediately. The playback through WMP and Youcam were audibly different. Playback through Youcam was a mostly consistent white noise. Playback through WMP exhibited a low frequency harmonic...something. VLC showed the same low freq harmonic. Youcam didn't wanna. Suggests to me some codec issue perhaps.

Next step, record another while playing back the first. Basically, the harmonics simply got worse.

ETA: Good grief, reading back my post I discover I am writing the script for "The Hunt for Red October" ROFL.

 

[Vortigern99]

I've uploaded a few files to Box to show how excessive or cheap noise-reduction introduces "chirping" artifacts.

That's the "budgie".


Original voice sample with noise and hum.
https://app.box.com/s/vmqlney1zbkfrd85r09d

Cleaned up with Izotope RX: (Fairly high-quality noise-reduction) I did this just because I'm obsessive and I could.
https://app.box.com/s/weurvajfk0xvmqoauh6p

Chirping artifacts are introduced: My attempt at butchering the sound with bad noise-reduction.
https://app.box.com/s/coo99t74urg06c6e2cat

I don't have really lousy noise-reduction, so this would take more work, but you can hear the chirps starting to emerge.

Thanks Calebprime! Your audio expertise is invaluable to this thread, I think. Similar chirping noises can be heard in recordings of electric guitars being played, as in the opening few seconds of the riff recorded here (coincidentally it's the band Budgie, which may have been named because of this exact effect).

 

[abaddon]

Thanks Calebprime! Your audio expertise is invaluable to this thread, I think. Similar chirping noises can be heard in recordings of electric guitars being played, as in the opening few seconds of the riff recorded here (coincidentally it's the band Budgie, which may have been named because of this exact effect).

Without doubt, Caleb is pretty durn sharp at spotting and identifying audio artefacts. Far, far sharper than I. He has that kind of ear that genetics has denied me.

 

[tuxcat]

The sure fire way to get silence is to go into Audacity and select generate silence. Flaccon's claim is that in the white noise and artefacts of compression the spirits inject their voices pareidolia appears

 

[Pixel42]

She refuses to explain what she means by "2 funerals" and "... a big fib that cost me £8.000, ..." and/or how that relates to her claim of "church protection".

If you're referring to this post ...

Correction, the Church as everything to do with this. It's more their business than it is mine. Despite RIP being a big fib that cost me £8.000, it was actually the Church that gave me this protection in the first place.

... I think I've worked that out. One of the funerals was that of her father (I think the other was her mother's) and instead of RIPing (resting in peace) he's communicating with her from the spirit world. So the promise made by the priest who conducted the funeral was not kept - that's the "big fib" which cost her £8000 (the price of the 2 funerals).

But it was also a priest who told her, when she went to him about the malevolent spirits that were haunting her and her family, that benevolent spirits would now be protecting her - to which she attributes the 13 years of relative peace that followed - and she thinks her recent EVP experiences are a manifestation of these same benevolent spirits. So the church are responsible for her EVP experiences and should be listening to her and investigating them.

 

[Apology]

I had no idea. Sorry for any confusion.

No problem at all. I had figured from all the talk about whistles and chirps that a budgie was some sort of bird. I assumed that it was some sort of special English bird before I googled it

My first guess from context was some kind of spirit -- like a cute little poltergeist or something. Eventually I caught on.

My confusion was because I conflated flaccon's aforementioned bird interference with the budgie sounds, and imagined that the budgie was a wild outdoor bird. I couldn't figure out how all these people got so good at identifying bird calls, since I can't tell a sparrow call from a finch. I had a good laugh at my own expense after I figured it out.

 

[Alderbank]

Tracey I hope that if you are following this thread that you are reassured by the remarkable investigative work done by Calebprime and others that the sounds you attributed to the voice of Reg, your father, were in fact produced by distortions generated by the recording app you were using.

 

[calebprime]

Thanks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3-l_T6AuNk

We've flown far off our twig and have joined the choir invisible.

But, ex-guitarist and pedant that I am, I must point out: Those "chirps" are what happens when you angle a hard pick into the strings with lots of amp distortion. These chirps are distantly related, as a swan is to a parrot.

 

[abaddon]

The sure fire way to get silence is to go into Audacity and select generate silence. Flaccon's claim is that in the white noise and artefacts of compression the spirits inject their voices pareidolia appears

The only way to do it in Youcam is with a dead/disconnected mic.

 

[tuxcat]

Seems to me that the mystery is solved - the "voices" were in actual fact artefacts from the software that flaccon used.

 

[abaddon]

Seems to me that the mystery is solved - the "voices" were in actual fact artefacts from the software that flaccon used.

Well...yes, pretty much. At this point, the only way I will expend any further effort on that crapware is if someone asks me to try a particular test on it, or if Alderbank wants some samples of what I found to add to the Box. Otherwise, can't be bothered.

 

[Vortigern99]

... I think I've worked that out. One of the funerals was that of her father (I think the other was her mother's) and instead of RIPing (resting in peace) he's communicating with her from the spirit world. So the promise made by the priest who conducted the funeral was not kept - that's the "big fib" which cost her £8000 (the price of the 2 funerals).

But it was also a priest who told her, when she went to him about the malevolent spirits that were haunting her and her family, that benevolent spirits would now be protecting her - to which she attributes the 13 years of relative peace that followed - and she thinks her recent EVP experiences are a manifestation of these same benevolent spirits. So the church are responsible for her EVP experiences and should be listening to her and investigating them.

Good, thank you. If only we could convince Tracey herself to compose such a clear explanatory post, we wouldn't feel compelled to spend time doing detective work into her confusing, ambiguously-worded messages.

Thanks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3-l_T6AuNk

We've flown far off our twig and have joined the choir invisible.

But, ex-guitarist and pedant that I am, I must point out: Those "chirps" are what happens when you angle a hard pick into the strings with lots of amp distortion. These chirps are distantly related, as a swan is to a parrot.

Right, gotcha. Thanks. I've always wondered exactly how those sounds were produced.

Seems to me that the mystery is solved - the "voices" were in actual fact artefacts from the software that flaccon used.

/thread

 

[tuxcat]

Well...yes, pretty much. At this point, the only way I will expend any further effort on that crapware is if someone asks me to try a particular test on it, or if Alderbank wants some samples of what I found to add to the Box. Otherwise, can't be bothered.

Hopefully flaccon will accept the fact it's been solved. The case is closed - a non-paranormal explanation has proven to be the case. Over nearly 100 pages we've worked out a definitive way of testing for pareidolia!

 

[Maurice Ledifficile]

If the investigation work done by the skeptics, especially the recent technical analysis by abaddon, calebprime et al. is not satisfactory, one could go to phase two and replicate her results.


Official claim on Tracey's website:

For skeptics: We can offer you a £1000 reward, against a £100.00 donation made by yourself to your chosen Charity, if you can debunk "our claim" or simply re-create the "Art work and Voices" in the same style as spirits have created it.

 

[IXP]

I agree with the English speaking theory of flacon_1.

I believe the man, after the woman's first statement, say "how's that?", and then she repeats, which makes sense.

It sounds to me like she might be saying "I'll pick you up on time", though this is far from clear.

The voices are clearly distorted by bad compression.


IXP

 

[abaddon]

Hopefully flaccon will accept the fact it's been solved. The case is closed - a non-paranormal explanation has proven to be the case. Over nearly 100 pages we've worked out a definitive way of testing for pareidolia!

I admire your optimism. She will not.

 

[Maurice Ledifficile]

I admire your optimism. She will not.

Certainly. The goalposts will move. Or the discussion will shift toward the blood "art".