Spooky Tesla Spirit Radio

Step 10 Spooky Effect # 2 - Disembodied Spirit Voices

""The sounds I am listening to every night at first appear to be human voices conversing back and forth in a language I cannot understand. I find it difficult to imagine that I am actually hearing real voices from people not of this planet. There must be a more simple explanation that has so far eluded me."
-Nikola Tesla 1918

Nikola Tesla, and many others of the early radio pioneers, often thought they heard voices in their radio receptions. Both Edison and Tesla claimed to be working towards communicating with disembodied spirits.

Dale Afrey, in the book "The Lost Journals Of Nikola Tesla", says . "At one point Tesla chided Edison for stealing his idea on using a form of radio to contact the dead."

You can get the impression of disembodied spirit voices by tuning close to an AM station, then use the Au Pitch Controls of an audio software such as Audio Hijack to raise the pitch to a squeaky high, ghostly sound. Add Reverb for the final touch. Au Bandpass is also used in this effect. Check the settings in the screenshot below.

Alternately, the AU Pitch can be used to lower the pitch instead of raising it, for a moaning type effect.

Comments

[msim93]

 In your version of "audio hijack pro" the reverb boxes are set up differently than the version I downloaded a few days ago.

What version are you using? you appear to have many more options than I do. It is just hard to copy settings when it doesnt look anything alike.

[mrfixitrick]

The recent update to Audio Hijack completely changed the AU Pitch control.

You will just have to play with it, or get the previous version (version 2.92) of Audio Hijack.

[msim93]

 I meant Pitch, not reverb. My bad.

[skittlespider]

In the video, this sounded a lot like the "talking" over the baby monitor on Signs.  Do you think they used something like this to make that?

[mrfixitrick]

 They likely used something a lot more sophisticated, and with multiple recordings and tracks. The beauty of this unit is in its simplicity and real-time sounds.