Paranormal & Fortean : EVPs & The Spirit World Part Four

By the time Spiricom had ceased to function the interest in EVP was worldwide. Groups interested in the subject had started up in many nations. In Britain George Gilbert Bonner, a psychologist and artist and Raymond Cass, a former hearing-aid consultant used reel to reel recorders and battery radio tuned to 'white noise' or static, to act as a medium for the voices. In 1972 Bonner asked into his microphone: "Can anyone hear me?" He was not expecting an answer, but he got one. A reply of "Yes" could be heard coming through the background static. During the next twenty-two years Bonner recorded more than 50,000 voices. It had taken him five years of practice to be able to perfect a listening technique that allowed him to hear voices, as they sometimes registered only the tiniest prescence. Even with the massive amount of voices Gilbert Bonner had archived over the years, along with research and theories as to their origin, and even their technical characteristics, Bonner died in 1997 without being able to interest fellow scientists in continuing his resarch. Ray Cass, who died in 2002, had said, "There was great enthusiasm at that time, and many experimenters, but as it became clear that weeks or months of effort was necessary before a single voice came through, most people dropped out. Only a few survived--George Bonner and myself, amongst five or six others. We eventually assembled a body of objective voices, which clinched the case. However, the Establishment ignored the evidence. The Society for Psychical Research was frosty; the Spiritualists relied on mediumship, so the EVP people were pretty isolated."

Some researchers tried to find different ways of finding voices. The traditional way of recording and playing back tapes could be very time consuming. Many times, EVP voices were faint or hard to pick out from the background static. In 1982, Hans Otto Koenig, performed a supervised experiment on live television, which used his 'field generators' that used ultrasound signals in the kilohertz range to 'boost' the 'live' voices which came through an intricate electronic system. Koenig's experiment was presented by a major European network, RTL and its commentator Rainer Holbe. Holbe had also done other things to make EVP known to European audiences. Hans Koenig's ultrasound instrument was erected under the supervision of the station's engineers. It was then turned on. After a matter of just seconds, a clear voice said: "Otto Koenig makes wireless with the dead." The engineers and supervisors of the experiment stated there was no evidence of fraud.

I think EVP and the study of it is fascinating. The interest in the phenomena is worldwide and continues to grow. Instrumental Transcommunication (ITC) is a term that is used to describe not only EVP, but other paranormal phenomena involved with electronic devices; from video recordings, phone calls 'from the dead' and even what some feel are messages from the afterlife left on personal computers. In the next post I would like to sum up my own thoughts on EVP and again ask people who read this blog their feelings about the subject and also have an example of an EVP recording. Thanks again for all of the thoughtful and intelligent comments! Peace and be well to anyone stopping by!