by Xenobia » Mon Jul 05, 2010 9:03 pm
As Silvertop has already explained, the similarities between myself and Mr Ridpath are purely coincidental - I have no experience in the field of radiation, but have a wealth of experience in pompous accents. Where is this presumption coming from that Nevels has wet himself? I feel as if you have created an entire interrogation scene in your mind and are using these abstract interpretations to attempt to prove it to yourself and others.
These 'additions' you have made to the transcript do not, in practice, sound at all like evidence of an interrogation - or even like what you believe them to be - they sound exactly like this: background noise from around four generations of recordings made from the original tape. You are searching for phrases to support your ideas, rather than simply analyzing the tape and realizing much of the dialogue heard is either completely unintelligible or a mixture of background noise and building static.
It would be exciting and wonderful if we could discover any more from this excess audio material - but it turns out, unfortunately, exactly as you say, "It sounds wrong but your brain fills in in the blanks and makes it ok." You are hearing only what your mind wants to hear, inventing patterns rather than finding them. Believers and researchers in EVP suffer from the very same condition as you, Storm - they invent words and phrases where only muffled, microphone sensitive feedback exists.
Surely there are words spoken that are not of Halt's original tape, I agree with that statement - most likely from Halt's original re-recording or from Sam Morgan's later copy. But most of them are either completely garbled by other sounds - even when isolated - or simply are not words at all. There is no gentleman with an 'African accent' that can be heard on the tape, nor does he tell us to put our trust in God. Your imagination is a fascinating thing, Storm, and deserves a forum of its own. "I like dark suits" was simply a good example of this sort of strange audio guesswork, regardless as to whether or not you still believe it to be spoken.
This 'harder stuff' you talk about is almost entirely fictional - there are brief noises to be heard but they in no way indicate your translations, if they indicate anything at all. You appear to read into the smallest static bursts and passages of cluttered silence - setting your scene with a tapestry of mysterious Africans and urination.
I can see you've really tried, which I admire, but your belief in your own particular 'ambient sound' interpretations is nonsensical - once you believe that you hear something it can become very hard to 'unhear' it. It is not to say that there are no 'hidden' messages in this tape, but simply that you have not yet discovered them. We can all hear the ambient noises, but we will either hear what you tell us we can hear or we will not hear it at all. I hope each of us can take any transcript of ambient audio with a large pinch of salt - after all, it was not recorded to be heard and garbled static is in the eye of the beholder.
On the analysis of Halt's 'winking eye' statement made on the original tape, I admit that I am not sure what he says after "it's.. it's" - the sound quality is too rough - but this mystery phrase is certainly from the original tape and not made on an additional recording device, as it has the exact same RMS volume and is spoken in the very same tone of voice - if that's what you were saying.
It would be quite easy to set up a similar mystery scene for the ambient audio to have arrived from, completely unrelated to the concept of interrogation, and connect misheard dialogue to back it up. The passages of scramble you have derived concept lines from - along with descriptions such as DRUGGED AND BEATEN AND SLURRING - immediately place the listener in your interrogation fantasy, suggesting subtly that they interpret background noise exactly as you have, rather than guessing their own version or realizing that the audio is completely incomprehensible to the human ear.
Barely any of your interpretations are rooted in the reality of the audio, and even less are correct. Trust me when I say that I'm glad that there are people like you and I, sacrificing our precious time on earth to analyze background static in communal tape recordings - otherwise we may end up missing important details in this case. With the 81st's best intentions at heart, it is vital we do not get carried away and begin to subconsciously invent that which does not exist.