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 Posted: Aug 21st, 2014 05:36 PM
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EVPfan



Joined: Mar 15th, 2008
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As you perhaps already know, Frank Sumption, the inventor of the 'Spirit Box', has passed away last sunday.

We had contact for the first time in June 2001, when he joined the AA-EVP e-mail group. At this time, my EVPmaker software was only 1 year old, and Frank started to use it, until he developed a device which worked similar to EVPmaker.

In my e-mail archive, I found this "historical" e-mail which documents the birth of a device which should later become famous as 'Frank's Box' (although he didn't like this name):


Date: Thursday, April 4, 2002, 12:24:04 AM
Subject: An analog EVPmaker

Hi Stefan;

I think EVPmaker works extremely well, but some people seem to have trouble with it, I guess just because it's computer based. It also seems to be limited to a certain level of spirits.

I wanted to come up with a way to get the spirit voices on tape, and also try to get direct voice. I didn't like using noise methods, because it makes my ears ring after listening through the noise for the weak voices. I needed something like EVPmaker, that has bits of speech, as well as music, and static that can be used as raw material. I knew that some people get good results from using the radio as a noise source, so the idea I got was to randomly tune a broadcast band radio, and use the audio output as the raw material for the spirit voices.

I used a white noise generator, amplifying, and filtering the noise down to a low frequency. Then rectifying the low frequency noise, so that I got pulses that occur randomly, and also vary in amplitude randomly, right now I've got them set about 5 ms long, and 10 to 20 hz. I can change the pulse width and frequency with only two capacitors. I'm building a radio receiver with a voltage controlled oscillator, that will be controlled by the random pulses, (another possiblity is to use the AM module from a digital radio). The output speaker will be mounted in the end of a wooden box, with the mic for the tape deck mounted in the other end. The box acts as a kind of echo chamber. Hopefully, the spirits will be able to modify the sound on it's way to the mic. I'm still bread boarding circuits, but it seemed like an idea others might want to play with. I tried expressing it on the egroup, but it seems like if it's too technical, it goes over most of thier heads.

Frank Sumption


...and the rest is history.

Now Frank's spirit went into another dimension, where we all will go eventually.

See you, Frank!