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Investigation into the Sound of Hell
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Introduction
Russian scientists conducting deep hole drilling experiments in
Siberia break through the earth's crust at more than 14 kilometers.
They find it unusually hot at that depth (2,000 degrees F). As a part
of trying to listen to movement in the earth's crust, they drop a
microphone into the drilled hole and are horrified when they realize
they are hearing the voices of millions of people crying out in
torment. Terrified, they decide to abandon the project, but not before
a bat-like apparition arises from the hole and gives them a message.
How True is it?
This is the combination of an urban legend and a hoax. The
original story of the deep hole drilling in Siberia made the rounds of
tabloid newspapers in the early 1990's. Some researchers have
theorized that the story somehow got started from an authentic deep
hole drilling project, but that has never been proven. That original
story included the account of breaking through the crust, hearing the
voices from the hole, and shutting down the drilling operation. The
plot thickened when a Norwegian school teacher named Age Rendalen
decided to embellish the story with the description of the bat-like
creature coming out of the hole. He did it purposely to see whether a
religious television program would accept the story at face value
without checking it out, and they did.
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The full story is
here
(near the bottom of the page) |
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Our Experiment |
Dissect the sound file
The authenticity of this instance as speculated above ties
much on the authenticity of the sound clip. In order to
prove whether this is only a hoax or is a true occurrence, we put
the sound clips under test by using a sound frequency analysis
software program called AnalFreq Spectrum Analyzer Ver. 1.8 by
Loyola University Chicago.
How do we test the sound files?
After we loaded the sound files in wave format into the
program, we displayed its frequency spectrum using a FFT window of
size 1024 & sampling rate of 22050 for optimum display. The
frequency resolution was set at about a spacing of 43 Hz (0Hz to
22kHz displayed on screen) down to bin spacing of about 1.35 Hz.
Hanning display algorithm was used. The FFT algorithm used by
AnalFreq takes approximately 1 ms for the same size FFT.
The original sound clip was split into 3 sections: (1) only the
first half where only a man was speaking on the narrative, (2)
only the last half where only the "screams" from hell, and (3)
somewhere in the middle where it has both a single man talking and
then the screams.
With these 3 different sections of the original sound clip, we
want to compare the frequency distribution of a single man
speaking, and that of millions of souls screaming as claimed.
We do this by repeatedly showing the frequency distribution by FFT
analysis. Concurrently we run the dual mode of Freerun, in
which the (almost) instantaneous FFT plot is displayed, and Long
Term Average, in which the time-averaged plot is displayed.
Pay close attention to the changes of frequency distribution on
the charting plot when running these 3 different files. |
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Our Findings |
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Figure 1 (Left) Frequency distribution of
file no.1 - pure single man voice
Figure 2 (Right) Frequency distribution of file no.2 - pure souls
screaming
Frequency Distribution of a
Single Man Speaking
The red line in both figures represents the long term average
values in the spectrum, which doesn't fluctuate as much as the
blue bars do. We see that the distribution weighs on the
ranges of 0.5Khz to 3Khz, also some humps on 4.8Khz and 6.2Khz
which are quite normal for a male's voice. High pitches are
rare.
Frequency Distribution of a
Million Souls Screaming
In Figure 2, again, on those frequency ranges where a male
voice would manifested (0.5-3Khz, 4.8Khz and 6.2Khz), the
frequency distribution falls. However, there are two major
differences. Firstly, addition to the low band and mid band
frequencies, some high pitches are recorded in 8Khz, and likewise
from 9Khz to 10Khz. Secondly, the long term average values
in those ranges seem to be more abundant than those in Figure 1.
What do they mean?
Results of a Million Souls Screaming?
The abundance in the distribution can be explained by the fact
that there were multiple voices being recorded making a sound.
It is like putting many single man's frequency distribution
together, so to reach an equilibrium amount. The high
pitches frequencies indicate that there were some high-key
screaming, possibly by female. Although you can not see the
results in motion, the red line in fact has fluctuated very little
during the play. As the voices were going kind of
on-and-off, they made the line vibrates slightly.
So what does it all mean?
According to our observation when playing the file no.2 (pure
screaming), there were "many" voices aggregated together to
produce such a result. However, that "many" would never come
close to a huge number for example a million. If we blend in
a million voices together and we assume these voices come from
different individuals who have different voice patterns, one would
expect it to have some kind of "smoothing" effect to the long term
average curve. That is, perhaps, a bell-shape or a more
uniform curve than what is shown in Figure 2, to be observed.
The frequencies distribution would get more evened out. On
counter-proving our arguments, the souls may have quite a
monotonous voice such that the combined frequencies would only be
concentrated on the ranges (coincidentally?) same as those in
Figure 1. Then these may be like duplicated folks of the
same breed. Technically, on the other hand, this may also
possibly be the results of artificially mixing only several
different tones of screaming so to produce this grand effect of
millions souls screaming. The sound is quite "mechanical"
when it is played in a long run. You can do a little
experiment on your own to test this. Play the sound clip by
using Media Player (or anything that gives you a slide-bar).
When it is being played, move the slide-bar back and forth
randomly. While doing this, you will be surprised to hear
that the sound was still playing smooth and continuous.
Why? That is because you were listening to an aggregated
result of voices that got randomly "pieced" or "cascaded" together
using a mixer.
Our conclusion is, either it is true that the voices are from hell
but the souls were shouting constantly at about the same tones,
same volume and at about the same intervals, or somebody just
mixed several voices to achieve this effect. If the answer
were the latter, then he succeeded very well in blending many
screams together. But the frequencies are too regular and
the tones are too rigid.
So what do you believe, it truly came
from hell or somebody is playing a hoax?
We like to
hear your opinion.
Click here to
download the sound clip no. 1 - pure man talking (*.wav format 2.2Mb)
Click here to
download the sound clip no. 2 - pure soul screaming (*.wav format 3Mb)
Click here to
download the sound clip no. 3 - talking and screaming (*.wav format
2.4Mb)
(Due to the large file size, it may be hard to download.
Please send me an email if you want to get the files)
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Contributed by SPI Agent -
Kenny
Should you have any comments or something you like to
share with us, we would like to hear from you by
email.
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