Spiritual Interaction?

Recently, group member Mike aquired a new piece of equipment, an Olympus 2100PC Digital Audio Recorder. He decided to test the equipment, leaving it running overnight downstairs in his living room as the rest of the family were asleep upstairs mostly to check out the recording time and quality that the device offered. Also in the room was the family dog, but she was in her bed all locked in (the audio recorder picked up on the noises she made shuffling or moving during both nights, but these were easily distinguishable).

The first test was very positive and, surprisingly, a small number of unusual sounds were recorded, but because the conditions that the recorder was left in was not strictly controlled they cannot be considered as hard evidence.

However, on the second night, Mike decided to try an experiment. When the recorder was set up again he spoke out, asking that if any spirits were indeed in the area then could they do their best to say the word 'honeysuckle' into the recorder. Now, Honeysuckle is an unusual word. It's length means that it couldn't be mistaken for a simple one syllable noise and it isn't a word that you'd hear on a radio station. It's also complicated with four syllables, all four of which with its own individual sound - Huh:Nee:Suh:Kel. The possibilities of four random noises being created one right after the other, each creating these sounds and in this order are slim, nigh on impossible.

So, imagine Mike's surprise when he checked over the recording the next day and caught the following audio. The first part is Mike (apologies for the accent!) as he asks out to anyone there to say the word 'Honeysuckle'. The next audio segment on the clip is a section of the audio recorded later that night. Then, after that, the same small clip but with the volume enhanced. This is the only thing that has been done to the recording - no filters or anything have been applied to this.

The sound recorded does, in our opinion, sound a lot like the word 'Honeysuckle' and sounds like it's being said in a female voice. The sound captured contains four distinguishable syllables, the first being a 'Huh' sound, the second being a little hard to make out, the third having a definite 'Ss' beginning and the last with a hard start.

The following are possibilities of what may have caused this sound...

The brain making order out of chaos
Out of all the possibilities this is the most probable explaination, that a rational sound has been recorded (such as a car going by outside or movement from upstairs), but the way it's been captured by the microphone has made it sound like the word I requested. However, although such monotonous sounds are common, the chance of them forming the appropiate syllables in the right orders directly one after the other is pretty slim, nigh on impossible. However, that is of course assuming that the sound is an amalgamation of different noises. Listening to it, it is much more probable that it is just the one sound that has been misinterpreted as the word 'Honeysuckle'.

Saying that, however, 'honeysuckle' was a word chosen to try and eliminate this particular possibility. It is a complex word with individual sounding syllables that an indistinct noise would be very difficult, if not impossible to emulate.

Perhaps it doesn't sound much like Honeysuckle at all - perhaps it's just an indistinct noise that the brain has interpreted as that particular word because we've told the brain that that's what it's looking to find? The brain is celever at doing that. It hates chaos - it cannot interpret it. So, what it does it take chaos and actually adds to it, fills in the blanks, in order to create order. That sound could just be chaos which the brain has added to too create order.

Radio bleedthrough
This is always a possibility, that a stray radio signal has somehow been picked up by the recorder and captured something that was, or at least sounded like, the word 'honeysuckle'. The problems with this theory however is that, mainly, the DAT does not have any appropiate technology whatsoever for picking up and converting radio signals into an audible sound, let alone recording it. Also, if it was a stray radio wave, what is the the likelihood that the word (or sound) 'honeysuckle' would be said at all, let alone at the precise time that the recorder picked it up?

Outside Sound
The location that the recorder was left in was in a room with double glazing, the room door was closed and the house's general location is in a quiet, secluded part of town. Traffic is very rare during the day, let alone the night and of the very few people that walk outside on the during during the night hours, none were heard during the night that the recorder was running.

A hoax
This is an impossible possibility but since there's always the chance then it has been listed here. Although the experiment conditions were quick relaxed, the only people who were in the location at the time was Mike, his parents and the family dog. All main doors were locked and no other unusual sounds were captured. Everybody was asleep at the time and I personally stayed up for a period of time so I can vouch that nobody was downstairs at the time the sound was recorded.

Spiritual contact
As Sherlock Holmes once said, "When you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." Yes, the likelihood that a spirit has crossed the realm to come and tell us the word 'Honeysuckle' is, in a scientific sense, impossible, but then what is the point of doing such experiments if we take that line of thought? The question was directed to any spirit that was there at the time, and such a reply was seemingly given back so there is the possibility, however small, that this could indeed be spirit making contact.