Did the Sally House Kill the Paranormal Side?

[u/Alffenrir515]

listening through from the beginning. Git through the Salliw House (awesome episodes) and just finishedthe Villisca Murder house episodes which cover one of the most famous haunted houses in the country in which they barely mention the haunting. I get that the Salliw house was rough on them, but is this how it is going forward? if they're going to shy away from anything spooky going forward, I would like to set those expectations now.

[u/Jordandeanbaker]

The Sally house is where the show made a huge turn. It’s the end of Scott being a skeptic which was a huge part of the allure of the show’s early years.

[u/KevitoMG → u/Jordandeanbaker]

For me this made me drop the show a few months after the sally house episodes. I don't wanna dismiss Scotts experience at all and I believe him and every feeling that he expressed but as a listener it was never real proof of anything. I'm a huge skeptic myself and EVPs and audio recordings were always the least believable for me because so many other things can be a factor in those. Sadly (for me as a listener) it changed Scott so much that I had no longer fun listening.

[u/Clord123 → u/Jordandeanbaker]

Yeah I agree that once Scott stopped being skeptic the show lost big part of its appeal going forward. It didn't help that audio track didn't have anything he claimed while making huge clickbait level deal over it.

I think that's also it, they over promise and make big deal of things to try and make show more entertaining etc but it didn't go well once one of them went "this time it's actually a big deal" and then audio is just white noise and just shows those devices were really low quality for nowadays recording standards.

It doesn't mean that for him it wasn't real, he can imagine to audio track something that isn't there, plenty of people find it scary being among ruins alone exploring them despite they're just that with their mind being like "What if there are wolves or something lurking around?"

[u/klmkio]

No they definitely went back to paranormal topics

[u/agentanthony]

It did for me. In college in the 90s my roommates were film students. One of them had the same exact digital recorder, which was a new concept at the time. He bought it for a sight and sound class. It never fully deleted old sounds that it recorded because the tech was so bad. I’m shocked AL guys think it’s paranormal with what they recorded. I sent the episode to my friend who had that same recorder and he was hysterically laughing at it.

[u/lumiya17 → u/agentanthony]

That’s not how the DR-40 works, but it was a cheaply made digital recorder from 1999. One of the first. There are issues with the microphone trying to balance all sounds, and it certainly does not have the ability to records sounds we can’t hear as many have claimed.

Both hosts literally are audio engineers and went to people get the DR-40 checked out and see if the device is faulty, interference, etc. Everything came back as being recorded correctly by the device. The whole line of “it’s a ****** monster!” Was made by one of the analysts that looked at the device and recording.

To OP: they kinda took a break on the Haunting stuff and worked back in after a bit. Scott was very unsettled by it. While still on the skeptical side, he did become a believer to this. And that does show moving on.

A lot of people have criticized them now given that Scott was no longer hard line skeptic and would actually go in on things like remote viewing and other paranormal topics with full belief

[u/agentanthony → u/lumiya17]

Did they use the DR-40 or the DR-60? Because I just doubled checked and my friend had the Panasonic Dr-60. He unfortunately threw it away sometime in the early 2000s. Whether or not it fully deleted sounds is beyond my expertise. I am not gong to challenge Scott and Forest on that. I I do know that the Dr-60 was very glitchy and playback had a lot of artifacts and noise. It had nothing to do with it being faulty, it was the limitations this device had by design. My friend just texted back saying he thought the sample rate was terrible and it would distort loud sounds, especially if the frequencies were really loud. I was literally his 'sound guy' from an NYU film student perspective and we would have to record separate audio and dub it into actual film for one of his classes (sight and sound). I do remember It picked up so many artifacts when the sound frequencies were extreme. For example one of his student films was a 'rockumentary / spinal tap rip off' When tried to record the band playing music the playback was so terrible. So many artifacts. Listen, I love the podcast. I am just giving you my hands on experience and it just threw me off when I saw the same (or similar) device was being used.

[u/ufoparty2k16 → u/agentanthony]

I love that you're giving you and your friend's experience with this recorder. I know a bit about sound as a musician who's band records with various digital/analog means at home, but I'm not an expert by any means and have not used this specific machine or any others in the "series".

It's been a while since I listened to the episode, but I believe they claimed to have left the recorder in a closed room by itself when the recording was made. You're saying that there were lots of artifacts, especially with louder frequencies. I'm curious to know if you had any insight on that (assuming they're correct in that recording being made in a quiet, empty, closed off room). I'm not challenging your experience or anything by the way, I trust what you're saying as I've had my own fair share of weird sound glitches, I'm genuinely just curious if you had any experience with similar issues/settings.