2005 supernatural horror film White noise (now broadcast on Peacock) hinges on the concept of electronic voice phenomena, or EVPs, the idea that ghosts communicate with the living through electronic noise. There is no reliable scientific evidence for supernatural rockets hidden in radio static, but scientists have discovered messages from the universe itself, embedded in white noise.
In the film, Michael Keaton plays Jonathan Rivers, a man whose wife, Anna, disappears under mysterious circumstances. With the search still ongoing, Rivers meets a man named Raymond Price (Ian McNeice) who introduces him to the notion of EVPs. Price claims to have caught a recording of Anna’s voice, suggesting that she is not just missing, but dead. When Anna’s body is discovered soon after, Rivers harbors an obsession with connecting with the other side, with dangerous consequences.
Explanation of electronic voice phenomena (EVP), as described in White noise
In supernatural circles, white noise, electronic noise or static is seen as a means of communicating with the beyond. There are various models for capturing these ephemeral communications, but they all rely on the belief that ghosts, spirits, demons, and other non-corporeal entities can manipulate electrical devices and signals to create meaning.
Some EVP devices are simply radios tuned to a frequency between stations. Others are radios modified to continuously scan each AM and FM frequency. In this way, the listener ends up listening to static punctuated by snippets of songs, conversations or commercials broadcast by radio stations. Others work by raising the noise floor, increasing the electrical noise generated by the device itself, resulting in what sounds like open vowels.
People then listen to sounds produced or captured by their device and hear words or phrases from unseen sources. Outside of paranormal circles, EVPs are easily explained by pareidolia, the tendency for the brain to find meaning or patterns in otherwise meaningless data. It’s the same phenomenon that causes us to see shapes in clouds or faces in Martian geology. EVPs have been described as a kind of auditory Rorschach test, which says more about the listener than any apparent meaning in the actual recordings.
What is radio and TV static?
Your radio or analog television does not know what it is receiving. These are devices equipped with instruments for detecting and translating RF (radio frequency) signals. Radio signals are transmitted through the air and received by a television or radio antenna.
As its name suggests, the tuner allows you to tune the antenna to pick up specific frequencies, allowing you to narrow in on a particular station or channel. It works because the station broadcast on that frequency is louder than the ambient radio background noise. When you tune in to a channel that doesn’t have an active transmission, whether it’s a blank channel or between stations, the antenna picks up that ambient background noise and presents it as best it can, as static.
We are immersed in the airwaves all the time; we simply cannot see or hear them without the right tools. They come from atmospheric interactions, from lightning and from the Sun. Some of it is left over from the birth of the universe, a space-time birthmark known as the cosmic microwave background.
When you turn on a radio or TV on a free frequency, you’re getting all that natural radio noise along with signal interference from other electrical equipment, thermal noise from the radio or TV itself, and a host of other environmental sources. It’s the chaotic radio chorus of reality presented to you in audiovisual form. In a way, the static carries messages from the ghosts, not of people, but of the stars and the universe itself.
Catch White Noise, streaming now on Peacock.