Hearing the first recordings ever captured by wax cylinders may be eerie to many who still hear it when backing an eerie setting. Children’s tunes such as Mary Had a Little Lamb have always been a staple in horror films to elicit feelings of dread and helplessness. But what if the same wax cylinders were used not to collect the singing of the inventors, but to capture sounds from the dead? As wax cylinders were first in use around the time of the spiritualist revolution, it seems hardly unlikely that these devices could have been used to create some of the earliest Electromagnetic Voice Phenomena.
To hear a full grown man singing children’s tunes to himself is eerie enough, but what if that same man had been reportedly dead for a number of years and was recorded in an abandoned hallway? That’s precisely the sort of thing reportedly being reproduced by enterprising ghost enthusiasts. The phonographs, created by those wishing to cash in on the second wave of this spiritualist movement and the popularity of paranormal phenomenon shows such as Unsolved Mysteries and Sightings and even more recently Ghost Hunters, are hoping to bring in a bit of mystery and intrigue into the collection of old relics by audiophiles.
Anyone who collects records will suggest that the creations are definitely far superior to the lower bitrates of MP3s. And in these hidden lost bit rates many ghost hunters suggest there may be even more information decompressed into digital format. And while wax cylinders are not thought to be superior to phonographs, the relics brought back from the dead now reportedly are host to a series of unknown and eerie voices. Perhaps themselves recordings of the hereafter.
Is it possible that ghosts could find their voices on other sound capturing mediums? And if so, why wax cylinders? It stands to reason that anything that can capture sound waves could in theory use the same means to draw out voices overheard or whispered directly into the microphone. So if these latest finds prove to be valid, we still may not know the true origins of the voices themselves.
It may be worth taking note, however, that many recordings have been made over the years. And perhaps counter-intuitively, as technology for sound capture has improved the sound quality of recordings has decreased. A tape recording is superior to a CD, a factory made CD is superior to an MP3 file, and vinyl is superior to all of these when it comes to the actual amount of information stored. So in this case it is possible that vinyl could indeed be a superior form of capture and storage for Electronic Voice phenomena. Of course on the other hand these recordings do have their limitations. Rather than having a compact digital voice recorder, audiophile ghost hunters would have to lug around far larger equipment that is not only difficult to use, but rare and expensive. And even then there is no guarantee that anything will be picked up.