The EVP Circle Technique: Try It On Your Next Investigation!

If you are familiar with modern paranormal investigation, you have likely heard of Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP). It is a cornerstone tool for paranormal investigators either on-location or at home trying to contact someone on the other side of the veil. EVP is a tried-and-true field technique utilized for over sixty years, but due to poor documentation of early EVP practices, some of the early techniques of obtaining EVP evidence have been lost.

One of those techniques is called the EVP Circle Technique.One of those techniques is called the EVP Circle.

This article presumes that you are somewhat comfortable with the basic tenets of EVP as a practice. If you are unfamiliar with EVP, or if you want to expand your knowledge of Electronic Voice Phenomenon, including history, examples, and theories about formulation, then you may want to view our EVP lecture before reading any further.

EVP Questions

The Circle Technique is a way of honing your EVP questions and informing their possible responses. To conduct an EVP Circle session, you will need three or more participants as a circle is necessary for the technique to work. 

If you have partaken in a paranormal investigation before, you know that questions are often typically asked in a random fashion by those present. Proceeding this way may have an advantage in that a responding consciousness may answer a specific question due to the number of questions being asked. If a response is forthcoming, you may receive an EVP that does not directly correspond the question that was asked directly before the EVP capture. 

An EVP capture is the ultimate goal of doing conducting an Electronic Voice Phenomenon session. But, if the capture is a seemingly random response, it really does not help with research purposes. We may also want to consider that with dozens of questions being asked, the response may be an answer to a question that was asked minutes prior, or potentially, a question asked in the near future during the same session. Without the answer being directly tied to the question, there is no way to judiciously correlate the two. More importantly, random responses cannot be applied anachronistically and remain true to research purposes.

A key part of the Circle Technique is that it refines the process of questioning which helps alleviate this concern. For a circle to be successful, only a single question is to be asked at a time. When all investigators are focused on a single question, then there is the chance that a direct answer to the question being asked may result.

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The Circle Technique

Once you have your group of three or more investigators and have settled upon a question that you would like to be asked, you can start the EVP Circle Technique.

It is often easiest if the participants can sit around a table. If a table is not available, then the participants can sit or stand in a circle on an open section of floor. Either way, the audio/video recorder(s) should be placed in the middle of the circle. 

Everyone participating will need to hold hands to form a complete circle. 

Once the circle is created, the person designated will ask a question. When the questioner feels that enough time has elapsed, they will gently squeeze with their left hand the right hand of the person next to them. That person whose hand was squeezed will then ask the exact same question. This cycle repeats until everyone in the circle has asked the same question. All persons present should be focused on this question as it gradually gets asked by all circle participants.

When you are asking questions, you need to make sure that there enough time has elapsed before squeezing the hand of the person next to you. This can be done by allotting a time of at least ten seconds. Many EVP captures have been ruined by people not allowing enough time between questions and thereby talking over a response thereby making the EVP unusable as evidence. 

After the question has been asked by everyone in the circle, you need to immediately review the audio for responses. It is useful to have an external speaker for this process so everyone in the room can listen to the audio at the same time with a reasonable volume. 

An interesting phenomenon can occur when you are playing back the circle audio. In effect, the questions will be asked twice with the second time being through the speaker. This may potentially yield additional responses. Because of this phenomenon, a backup recorder is recommended that records the entirety of the investigation without pause in case there is a possible response to playback. To not encroach upon second-tier answers, everyone should be silent when the circle recordings are initially being played back. Any possible responses should be marked down by time with a pen and paper for group review after the initial playback.

You may find through several experiments that having one or two specific persons in your group might will lead to either more or fewer valid responses. 

Hopefully once you begin practicing designed techniques like the EVP Circle Technique during your investigations, you will start to receive more responses that have a direct answer. When direct answers are received it will greatly advance your research into a location or specific aspects of the other side.

Did You Learn Something New?

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About Tim Woolworth 74 Articles
Tim has been educating in the paranormal field since 2010 when he launched the site ITCvoices.org. He is the founder of Paranormal Study (2018), the creator of the Walk in the Shadows podcast (2022), a renowned conference lecturer and author of several articles and book sections. When he isn't enmeshed in the paranormal, he enjoys a career as a professional brewer and spending time with family and his pets.

3 Comments

  1. This sounds like a great technique. Have you heard of the missing number? Same sort of concept but you say numbers in sequence like 1, 2, 3, and so on and after everyone in the circle says a number you then skip a number allowing spirit to fill in the missing number and then you continue. It has worked several times for me, may be a good warm up exercise. Thanks.

    • I’ve not tried that specific technique. Thanks.

      On a couple of occasions, when everyone states their names before beginning a session, there have been anomalous names present like they are joining in.

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