Paranormal & Fortean : EVPs & The Spirit World Part Three

Friedrich Jurgenson was decorated with the Commander Cross of the Order of Saint Gregory by Pope Paul VI in 1969. The honor was supposedly bestowed on him because of documentary film work on the Vatican and Pompeii. However, Jurgenson told a friend the Vatican was interested in his work. Perhaps this was the case as Pope Pius XII had known of the work of Father Genelli and Father Ernetti's accidental involvement with electronic voice phenomena. Another Latvian, Dr. Konstantin Raudive, who was a well-known psychologist and student of Carl Jung, became involved with the subject in 1965. Raudive had met Jurgenson and became convinced of the reality of EVP. Dr. Raudive started his own research in Germany and eventually received help from physicists and electronic engineers, who helped him create an instrument specifically designed for this task. The instrument's name was the 'Goniometer' and Raudive recorded thousands of discarnate voices with it. In 1968, Dr. Raudive published a German language book with the results of his research in it. The book was translated into English in 1971, as Breakthroughs. The book's English publisher, Colin Smythe, undertook for rigorous scientific testing of Raudive's work.

This testing was run by acoustics engineers and recording engineers from Pye records. The crew set up four tape recorders, which were shielded from radio interference and set to record for eighteen minutes. I do not know why eighteen was the chosen recording time length--perhaps they asked President Nixon's former secretary about the proper recording time:-) The group heard nothing as the recording was in session and they were monitoring the recordings with headphones. However when the tapes were played two-hundred voices were heard! One of the voices was recognized by Sir Robert Mayer, as his deceased friend, Arthur Schnabel. American businessman, George Meek, became interested in EVP the same year that Raudive published his book. An associate named Bill O'Neil helped him as he began building the world's first device to directly communicate with the spirit world. Mr. O'Neil claimed to be 'channeling' the design of the device from 'Doc Mueller', who was a former NASA scientist who had passed away in 1967. When the instrument was finally built it was named 'Spiricom'. The inventors, with the help of their departed mentor said it would provide direct two-way communication with the dead. Bill O' Neil and George Meek made hours of recordings of these conversations, but with all of the money, time and effort put into his research, they could never prove they had made contact with the other-side or afterlife. Spiricom stopped functioning in 1981, as the deceased 'member' of the project had warned it would. In an interesting sidebar to the ongoing study of EVP, it is said that Dr. Raudive who died in 1974 has been communicating with EVP researchers. Dr. Raudive's messages are said to show up not only on tape, but also video and even computers.

Most of the information in this series I am trying to post is from an excellent article in the April 2005 edition of Fortean Times magazine, by Judith Chisholm. I was already aware of a lot of the information, but Ms. Chisholm's excellent article gave me the idea for the series. EVP has always intrigued me and it is yet another one of those things in the fields of the paranormal and parapsychology that I just can't make up my mind about-as with UFOs-at least I think something is happening here-the what is happening is once again the rub, so to speak. I have been going through a major drought as far as my own attempts at writing go. I will post another example of it here soon, before starting the next series. Do not worry about any criticisms of my writing folks who read my blog may have-I know I am going wrong-I just don't know where. I so admire anyone who has ever attempted to write anything-much less get published! My health has not been the greatest lately and I have also been having net connection problems again. If anyone has any comments-please do so-they will get here eventually-with a response from me also, although it may take some time. I hope to have the next post in this series here as soon as I can. Peace and be well to anyone stopping by!