Paranormal & Fortean : EVPs & The Spirit World Part Five

To finish up the EVP series-at least for now-I wanted to give a link to a site that has many examples of EVP on it and tell readers of this blog some thoughts I have had and would also be very happy to get any comments on the subject from other people. It seems to me that there is an extreme amount of variation in this phenomenon as with a lot of paranormal subjects. I do think that the great majority of EVP are pretty useless as far as sources of information and some are even non-sensical, of course on this side, if the EVP is truly emanating from the spirit world or afterlife-we may just not be able to understand the context of the message. However, as I began to dig deeper into the subject I realized that if certain claims are true, there are actually some EVP recordings that have usable and amazing information on them. For example, in one of the previous posts in this series, Konstantin Raudive (also I have heard of other claims of other dead resarchers helping with EVP on 'this side') was helping researchers into this subject after passing away and also from a previous EVP post, 'Doc Mueller', who was not only supposedly helping researchers, but even gave the date, 1981, that the Spiricom device would cease to function.

Other thoughts and questions I have are: In the study of this subject I have done it seems that if taken at face value, in a lot of EVP recordings where communication takes place, it seems that the 'spirits' are communcating with people in this world almost as if the afterlife is just a mirror-image if this one. This thought is really kind of depressing to me! A couple of examples I would give is a recording where a deceased relative could be telling a living member of her family not to waste sugar by putting too much of it on cereal! Some recordings I have heard will have the 'spirit's' voice communicating or making an observation that would almost seem to indicate they still 'live' in the location where the recording is done. In one tape recorded in a mausoleum a live researcher comments how dark and cold it is and a voice on playback can be heard to say "Its always dark and cold in here." I heard this particular recording on the Coast to Coast AM radio show. The group of people that the radio show has on it normally have a lot, or it seems to me anyway a lot of recordings that seem to suggest the after-life, spirit -realm, whatever you want to call it isn't really that different from this one, and I kind of find this disturbing. Perhaps this is because some spirits can't pass on to a higher level and get 'stuck' here. I am just speculating with this.

Another thing I wonder about is if the EVP recordings-at least some of them are generated by living human consciousness as it interacts with the universe. I very much believe our universe is 'alive' on many levels and that maybe there is some truth to religious and philosophical musings on a 'Cosmic Mind'. Could some EVP recordings just be simple static and radio interference that the human mind 'paints' as a voice from the spirit-world, much as people can pick out faces in clouds and that type of thing? I may come back to this series, here and there as with all of the things I get into here. I would be happy to get any comments from readers if they have any thoughts on EVP (or anything else) and I am incredibly appreciative of the thoughtful and intelligent comments I have been getting!
I have a new series that is ready to go and hope that people will enjoy it-as usual I have no clue as to how many posts it will run to. I had already had a thought of doing this series-but it really became strong-as I think it is a serious-but also kind of fun and different. Both online and in meatspace life (also myself) I have been communicating with some people who are feeling down and unsure about the future, not everyone by any means -but enough people where I thought that doing a series that was paranormal-but also not so deadly serious would be great to take my mind off other things and hopefully just maybe, a smile for anyone who stops by to read. I am also thinking about a complete change in the examples of writing that I post. I am more or less writing my life story for 'therapy' in some ways-not that I don't enjoy it. What I am thinking of doing is starting to try to write a short story-possibly in the horror, sci-fi or fantasy genres-maybe even a mix of genres, that hopefully will get my creativity going and hopefully, although I am not holding my breath-be decent enough that I can post parts of here and get people's opinions. Also in the future I am going to have Tuesday be the day of the week that I do any online research I have and most importantly-get caught up on the work that other people do on their blogs and sites. From Tuesday evening until Thursday I am going to be offline-I am intentionally setting aside this time to do other things (hopefully my new story and work on series for the blogs I have) so I will definitely not post anything on Wednesdays and most likely Tuesdays. Again, I can't express how much I appreciate reader's kind, thoughtful and imaginative comments here-peace and be well to anyone stopping by! the link http://photos2.ghostweb.com/evp.html

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!

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!

Paranormal & Fortean : EVPs & The Spirit World Part Two

The Spirit Electronic Communication Society was a group formed in Manchester, England in 1949. The group published a pamphlet with the goal of "Electronic Communicaton for the Spritual Emancipation of the People." The inspiration to start the group was the work of Dutchman Mr N. Zwann who had demonstrated, at the International Spiritualism Federation's 1948 Congress, an "electrical device which produced a field of energy capable of stimulating the psychic senses into activity." This device went through several name changes and remarkable results were claimed when using these devices. This supposedly included a way to have direct communication with the dead. By 1952, however, the excitement generated by the devices had died down(no pun intended). In the same year however, two respected Roman Catholics, a Benedictine monk Father Pellegrino Marina Ernetti and physician, Father Agostino Genelli, accidentally picked up voices of unknown origin while working on a recording of a Gregorian chant with a wire recorder in the physics lab at Milan University.
The work the two men were doing was not going well. In frustration, Genelli asked his dead father to help him. When the pair listened to what was on their primitive recorder they were astonished to hear Genelli's dead father's voice saying, "I am always with you and help you." Pope Pius XII even got in on the act after word reached him about the event. The pope decided that the Father's should not worry, because the voice they had recorded was a scientific fact and had no spiritual value.

In 1959, seven years after the event took place with Father Genelli and Father Ernetti, is when the real brealthrough came. A Latvian born artist and documentary film producer, Friedrich Jurgenson, was recording birdsong in the woods near his home in Molnbo, Sweden, for a film he was making. When Jurgenson played the recording later he heard a man's voice speaking Norwegian and discussing the nocturnal habits of birds. Jurgenson thought that maybe he had picked up a normal radio transmission even though the synchronicity of the subject matter was surprising. However, weeks later, Jurgenson was rattled and astonished when another recording had a female voice on it. The voice asked: "Friedel, my little Friedel, can you hear me?" Jurgenson instantly recognized his mother's voice calling him by his pet name. His mother had died four years previously. Jurgenson now believed he had found a connection to the hereafter. He continued recording, eventually registering hundreds of voices. Many of them spoke in different languages and many responded to him personally. He also identified some of the voices as belonging to deceased friends and relatives. In 1964, Friedrich Jurgenson published his findings in a book called Voices of the Universe. This book also attracted other researchers and scientists, including Dr. Hans Bender. Dr. Bender was the head of the parapsychological research unit of the University of Freiburg in Germany. Bender started his own team of scientists working on recording the phenomena. Their results, obtained by using blank tapes and regular tape recorders in a quiet enviorment, captured voices also, so this appeared to confirm Jurgenson's results.
The image is of the previously mentioned Friedrich Jurgenson. I hope to have the next post in the series here tomorrow. Thanks again for all of your thoughtful and intelligent comments. All the best to anyone stopping by!

Paranormal & Fortean : EVPs & The Spirit World Part One

I would like to do another small series on a paranormal phenomenom that perhaps readers have heard about, perhaps not. There are several reasons for this. 1) I think it is a very interesting subject to look into. 2) It ties back to the series about the Belmez Faces. 3) I think this subject, as so many other subjects in the study of the paranormal and parapsychological, always get a good round of thoughts and comments going about just what the fabric of our reality is like and what we can say about it. There are several hypotheses about the 'Big Picture' that the study of Electronic Voice Phenomena or EVP can connect with. EVPs are supposedly the 'voices' of discarnate spirits that are either intentionally or accidentally recorded on any type of recording device and the material that is actually used to store the data or voices, magnetic tape for example in a typical tape recorder.

Thomas Edison, America's most illustrious inventor, whose inventions include to name a few, the phonograph, moving pictures and the electric light, wrote the following in the 30 October 1920 issue of Scientific American: "If our personality survives, then it is strictly logical and scientific to assume that it retains memory, intellect and other faculties and knowledge that we acquire on this Earth. Therefore, if personality exists after what we call death, it is reasonable to conclude that those who leave this Earth would like to communicate with those they left here... I am inclined to believe that our personality hereafter will be able to affect matter. If this reasoning be correct, then if we can evolve an instrument so delicate as to be affected or moved or manipulated...by our personality as it survives in the next life, such as an instrument, when made available, ought to record something." There has been some speculation that Edison himself experimented with such a device, although no evidence has come to the fore to confirm this. Edison's linking of the spirit world to that of new technologies may not have been the only one in the world of his day. There is some evidence that Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor of modern radio and Nikola Tesla, also a very celebrated inventor of his day (who we would probably hear more about, but it does not suit the purposes of those really running the show here on Planet Earth)-who invented alternating current (AC) which remains the way electricity is transmitted across power lines and also drives the induction motor, another Tesla invention, that these men also showed an interest in using emergent technologies to contact the other-side independently of Thomas Edison.

Only after a matter of decades would what became known as electronic voice phenomenom come to light. In the 1930s, during the build-up to World War 2, Norwegian and Swedish pilots found unrecognizable and strange voices on their frequencies. The voices were believed at the time to come from stray Nazi transmissions. There was no evidence for this either way. The odd voices the pilots were picking up stopped appearing as suddenly as they had started in 1934. Once the voices stopped being picked up they were largely forgotten. It is also interesting to me that at least in its early days, the science of EVPs had so many Scandinavian connections, as we will see.

In his book, Exploring the Psychic World, John Butler described a very strange event. This event also took place in the 1930s and happened in front of approximately six hundred people. A medium was on stage with a microphone placed ten to fifteen feet away. This microphone was wired to loudspeakers throughout the meeting hall. Abruptly, voices began to speak through the microphone. People in the audience counted between forty and fifty different voices. There was no one near the microphone. Two technical representatives of the well known company that specialized in public address systems heard the voices and publicly stated that they could not have had a human source and seemed to be disembodied in origin. These two men signed a statement later, which was published in Psychic News, that they had become spiritualists as a result of this experience. I am really excited about this series. I do not know how many posts it will run to, if it goes over four posts I will break it up with poetry or something different. I will also have audio examples of EVPs in at least one of these posts. One of the questions that came to my mind as I started writing down information for this series is that if indeed there is an afterlife, I think it would be interesting if 'they' had a kind of technology in their world and needed our technology to catch up, so to speak, in order to be able to communicate with the earth plane of existence. Thanks again very much for all of the thoughtful and intelligent comments people have been doing here, I really appreciate it so much! Peace and be well to anyone stopping by!