Psychics aren't really psychic for the most part. We may have some vague connection to one another, but it's not likely to be in the depth that is understood there.
Instead, a great example is too look at David Blaine, who has performed seemingly miraculous 'psychic' effects of reading minds... except he himself explains it's not about being psychic at all, but rather, in learning to read body language. We all have subtle "tells", where we unconsciously do something very small and seemingly minor; a twitch of the mouth, a smile, a tremor of an eyebrow, the eyes looking a particular direction... this's a very complex science used by interrogators. Looking one direction while attempting to answer a question means the brain is attempting to access its' memory portions, looking another direction means it's using its' creative side, I forget which side is which, but this's readily used regularly in interrogating and questioning suspects for crimes.
Lol, I also knew someone would mention magicians. The funny thing is a magician actually explained how magicians "read minds". Note how everytime they want to read someone's mind they always pick someone out, someone never picks them out? Also note how these are always done in crowded cities where a lot of people walk on the streets, use buses, trains, etc and never in places where 99.9% of the people have cars? I'll explain.
This is what a fellow magician said, when people asked how they do the "mind reading" trick.
It starts with the magicians crew observing a certain location for a while. They take note of poeple that constantly frequent that area. Like how many times a certain person walks down a certain street, rides a certain bus, or how many times a certain person goes to the library/starbucks/etc. This happens over the course of weeks. This is what they call, "Picking out the victim". Eventually they find someone that frequents a certain area regularly. Lets say every mon-wed-sat I walk to starbucks to get coffee, and I become the victim because of this my frequent routine.
What happens next is that the crew members then try and get a taste of my personal life. The only way to get to starbucks would be to from the left or right side of melbourne street. So a female crew member decides to be the first to take a crack at me. She dresses up just like every other normal person on the street. On a monday morning, my regular time to got to starbucks, crew members survey both the left and right sides of melbourne street for my appearance. The female crew member who will approach me is on melbourne street with a commucation device that she uses to get her information on my position. BAM, the crew members see me and tell her i'm coming from the east side, right side of the street. She knows how I look and purposely walks at a pace to intercept me. Me being a gentlemen, I open the door for her into starbucks. She strikes up a conversation, and ask me a couple questions. I usually don't drink my coffee in starbucks, and they know it, so the questions are basically little introduction type questions you ask someone when you meet them for the first time. They decide to skip wednesday, and approach me on saturday. On saturday this time they might send in the same girl, or a different one, or a male. Each and every time these crew members meet me they strike up conversations, asking innocent/non-stalkerish like questions about me that no one can ever know unless I told them. Finally, after days/weeks of finding out enough, they approach me when they see me on my way to starbucks once again, but this time with the magician and the cameras, then they "attempt" to read my mind.
That's why the magician said, "These mind reading tricks are always done in certain cities, and not others, because you have to observe multiple victims over a given period at different locales, and crowded cities provide you with these opportunites. They are also done at certain areas where people are more likely to open up, a bar, a popular hangout spot, shopping mall, library, etc. These observation can take weeks or months. Also, what you see on tv is ONE successful mind reading attempt out of multiple failed ones. They only show you the ones that succeeded."
The funny about this is that before I read the magician's explanation on how they read minds, I had originally questioned one of David Blaines mind reading attempt. There's this really old episode of his, and in this he reads someone's mind. The thing is, the mind reading trick started out with him and his camera crew running down the street, in pursuit of a woman. They finally caught up to her and then did the "mind reading" thing. What puzzled me was, why was he running down the street, passing other people by, just for this ONE woman. I mean if he can really read minds then anyone is fair game, but he wanted only her? Back then I didn't know, so I just shrugged it off. After reading what that magician said, now I know. She was a victim, she had been studied, and out of the others, she was the successful one.
The difference here is magicians go pick out people they want to read because those people have been studied. Psychics invite large numbers or random people from different parts of the world/country to a reading event, and do their readings.
Also, reading and interpreting human behavior is different from saying something about someone that only they knew. Psychics don't interpret or read body language, they say something personal, that no one else but you and the deceased person knew. Hence why you never hear magicians claim to be pshycics, cause they their's is preplanned, whereas a real psychic's readings are not.
This can be taken several steps farther with intense study and observation; in fact, there was an interesting show I saw awhile ago where they were putting magicians in a CAT scan because they understood aspects of how the brain worked that had previously not even been known to science.
For example; if yeu make a horizontal motion, like a wide arc, yeur brain does NOT actually follow the hand making the motion, yeur eyes will jerk repeatedly to different stages along the way, and anything that happens in between does not actually exist to yeu, only the starting and end points, meaning yeu can hide an action in the middle of a sideways arcing motion, such as moving yeur hand from one side of yeur body to the other, and the brain won't recognize anything that happened in the middle, it just fills in the gaps with assumptions.
Our brains are amazing computers, but they don't really process things like a TRUE computer... a true computer has to figure out every single thing 100% accurately and correct. The brain ditches 90% of the information and plays fill in the blanks afterwards if it's decided it needs that information that got ditched. This allows it to handle immense quantities of information quickly, such as sight, sound, and so on, but it ends up leaving out alot of stuff in the process.
A clear understanding of how the brain processes such information is required for 'psychics', for animation, for street magic, and so on. Everything is based off of making use of the sections of the brain that fail to properly process certain types of information, or process it in a particular way.
So, too, shows where most 'psychic' stuff comes from. The vast, vast, vast majority of it is not supernatural in any way shape or form, by our own standards. It's merely being capable of reading the other person's 'tells' with a high degree of accuracy.
I answered this above, but I'll say it again. Reading someone's behavior and saying something personal, like the example I gave visaisahero in my reply to him, are 2 different things. Anyone can read and interpret behavior, saying multiple things that are personal with that accuracy is something completely different.
They recently made a machine for use in interrogations which works in a very interesting way; it can literally read yeur mind.
Not by normal brain reading means, but by subvocalizations.
Any time yeu THINK of anything... such as an inner monologue, yeu actually are physically saying each and every word, but it's waaaaaay lower than even a whisper, just the mere thought of saying such causes yeur brain to automatically adjust yeur vocal chords to the correct position, but yeu aren't breathing any differently so it doesn't make any real sound difference; try whistling, then do so again when breathing normally... there's a very very very subtle difference in how yeu breathe without yeur lips pursed, not enough to create a true whistling sound, but it definitely changes the sound compared to just regular breathing without lips pursed.
Furthermore, we have the issue of seeing faces in clouds; yeur brain is designed to see patterns that don't exist. There's obviously no faces in the clouds, but we still go OOH THAT ONE'S A COW! =D
So pretty much the subvocalizing theory is when you ask a question with a tape recorder and subvocalize, the subvocalized "words", so to speak, will be the EVP responses to your questions, right? And when you play them back it's like a "ghost" responded to your questions.
The problem with this is when someone ask the question, "Where are you from?", and they get the EVP "Canterberry Lake", and the person who asked the question never subvocalized canterberry lake, or even knew there was/heard of a place called canterberry lake, how do you explain that? Or when they ask, what is your name, and get "Kimberly Heyfield", and didn't subvocalize Kimberly Heyfield, how do you explain that? We are consiously aware of what we subvocalize, right? So how can we hear something we didn't subvocalize?
We all see patterns in things that don't exist. The problem here is EVPs do exist, and although some are hard to understand, there are many in which you clearly and articulately hear someone respond to a question that was asked with the kind of response you would expect. This is not a "What is your name" question, and you get a "I lived in canada" response.
Put these togeather, and yeu find that most of these "EVP" are actually not really there at all. The majority of them have to be amplified to an immensely strong level, which's likely just someone subvocalizing such, which can severely distort one's voice in the process. Another issue is listening to static over and over and over with the intent of hearing something in it... yeu have to keep in mind that these "EVP" sessions often last for HOURS on end, and they'll be asking hundreds of questions, and get maybe 1 response the whole time, which is scratchy and doesn't sound like much of anything unless yeu're actively looking for it with a clear idea of whot yeu WANT it to sound like from the start.
EVP aren't amplified simply for the sake of amplification. They are amplified because we can't hear them. That's the whole point of the tape recorder. To tape what couldn't be heard by the ear, and amplify that which couldnt be heard so that it can be heard.
EVPs don't last for hours on end. EVP's last for as long as you want them to last. You can get a ton of EVP responses by asking a series of questions for 3mins. You might get nothing at all by asking questions for 1 hour. The fact that they do happen, and where they come from is the mystery, and not the likelihood of the event happening, because no one knows exactly how to make the event happen. You just take a tape recorder, ask questions, and hope "something" responds.
EVP responses are not static, there is a big difference from "I was a doctor", and "shhuosuohasojhgoagj".
I'd almost be willing to guarantee yeu that if yeu merely shoved a microphone in virtually any home and left it on overnight when noone was home, yeu'd get SOMETHING eventually which would qualify as EVP.
This doesn't mean that 100% of EVP cases are false, but like anything with ghosts, the vast majority of all evidence pointing towards them can be dismissed.
I think the problem is that your assuming that anything that comes up on the tape recording is automatically called EVP. No. That's why they are called EVP, because there is nothing we know of that can explain how you could hear the voice of someone that wasn't there. We know what static is, we know what white noise is, we know what a radio signal interferance sounds like, etc, but none of these are EVP