How can ''white noise'' pick up voices?

Question

for those who dont know like when your tv isnt set to a channel and its making that fuzzy noise

Answer 1

It cannot. Only high frequency detection can.

Answer 2

The theory is that the Dead can't actually make noise themselves (no vocal cords, see) but that they can just about modulate random noise. This is a bit like people who have had throat cancer using one of those buzzy things against their throat to be able to speak.

Anyway, you need to set up a source of noise (ideally white noise, cos that's the purest hiss) and then tape it. When you analyze the recoding you might be able to detect voices in it.

Some people use sound-processing devices or software to help them find and enhance the voices. The trouble is, the harder you look the more likely you are to pick up on spurious signals and misinterpret them. There will be random fluctuations in white noise anyway and also TV- or radio-produced white noise might well contain fragments of actual broadcasts in it somewhere.

The brain actually does an amazing job detecting human voices in everyday life. You can successfully have a conversation wit ha friend in a busy street. Unbeknown to you your brain is sifting through all the sounds you hear and using its intelligence to sort out your friend's voice from the background. This is done partly by your knowledge of what your friend sounds like, but also by guesswork on what your friend is saying. At any given time only a small proportion of words would make sense at that point in the sentence. If your friend was reciting random words or syllables you'd find it a lot harder to understand.

Anyway, when you're straining to hear voices in white noise all this sound-analysis in your brain does its best to pick out meaning. From time to time it will do so by guesswork and intuition even when there's no actual meaning in the sound itself.

Look at any EVP website. When they have audio clips of sounds they usually also tell you what it is saying. If you heard the sound clip first without knowing what it was supposed to say I bet you'd struggle to understand it.

Answer 3

The brain will fill in something coherent eventually.  The brain is constantly looking for a pattern.  Either a face with the eyes, movement, or a sound with the ears.

Camoflauge takes advantage of that tendency to trick the eyes.

Answer 4

Current analog devices can and will pick up other distant or partial transmission signals. Everything from tvs, kids walkie talkies to baby monitors This might be one explanation. Everything’s quickly becoming digital or scrambled so the likelihood of picking up these stray radio transmissions is gradually reducing. I don't know much about white noise but I wonder if reports and recordings have reduced over the last 5 years