EVP stands for Electronic Voice Phenomena, and is believed to be a form of after death communication. EVP researchers believe that voices of the dead can be caught and played back on various recording devices. Other paranormal investigators believe that this phenomenon could be due to psychic echoes from the past, psychokinesis unconsiously produced by living people, or possibly the thoughts of extra-terrestrials or aliens. Skeptics believe that these captured voices are not from disembodied spirits, but interferences caused by radio, CB transmissions and the such.
History
Thomas Edison was once questioned in an interview if any of his inventions possibly ever having the ability to speak with the dead. He commented that if there were personalities from another existence that wished to communicate with us, a sensitive recording device would probably give better results than the current methods of Ouija Boards and table tipping. Although there’s no proof of him ever creating such a device some believed that Thomas Edison was working on one before he died. Either way Edison clearly believed that communication with the dead was quite possible.
As recording devices started becoming widespread, the “evidence” that other worldly entities could communicate to us through them started stacking up. In 1936 an American photographer and medium named Attila von Szalay, began his attempt to communicate with the dead. He was already investigating the possibility of photographing ghosts and was trying to augment his current research with what is now known as EVP. He started with a record cutter and had moderate success capturing voices on phonographic records. In 1941 he started having better success using a wire recorder but it was not until the early 1950’s that he felt his experiments were truly successful. He and now collaborator, writer Raymond Bayless, started using a custom made device they created, that consisting of a microphone that was inserted inside an insulated cabinet and was connected to an external speaker and recorder that used magnetic tape. Almost instantly upon playback of there first recordings they began hearing faint audible whispers that where not heard during there initial recording phase. In 1956 they published an article documenting their research for the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, with absolutely no response from its readers.
The actual credit for discovering EVP goes to a man named Fredrich Jurgenson. Jurgenson was in some ways a Renaissance Man – an archeologist, a philosopher, a linguist, a painter who was commissioned by Pope Pius XII, a singer and recording artist, and a film documentary maker. One day in 1959, he was recording bird sounds in the Swedish countryside and upon playback, much to his surprise; he heard the voice of a man discussing nocturnal bird songs in Norwegian. Soon after his first experience, while recording in his garden he heard a voice that said “Friedel, can you hear me? It’s Mummy”. Friedel was his mother’s special name for him and she had already passed on 4 years beforehand. These experiences piqued his interest, to say the least, and he began investing his time recording. In the spring of 1960 one of the voices told him to use the radio as a medium and this was the method he used for recording from then on. His studies led to the 1964 publication of his book Rosterna fran Rymden (“Voices from space”). I feel that it’s also worthy to note that these experiences were not Jurgensen’s first. In 1957 he started hearing unexplained voices. He later explained that the voices came from nowhere. He did not hear a sound, voice or whisper…it was all soundless. In the spring of 1959 he “got a message” that a Central Investigation Station in space was conducting studies of Mankind. They said that electro magnetic screens where being transmitted to our 3 dimensional world. These screens were supposed to be able to correctly register and transmute all of our conscious and unconscious impulses, feelings and thoughts. So before capturing EVP’s, and then recognizing familiar human voices, he believed that he was receiving messages from extra-terrestrials. To recent day others have had similar extraterrestrial EVP experiences and it is said that they come through much clearer than disembodied spirit voices.
EVPs are also sometimes called Raudive Voices, named after Latvian psychologist and Baltic scientist, Konstantine Raudive. After reading Jurgenson‘s book in 1964 he arranged to meet with him and they began recording. At first the two had little success working together, until one night while listening to a recording; Raudive heard many voices that came through quite clear. The voices came in numerous languages and the last voice on the tape, in a woman’s voice, said "Va dormir, Margarete" ("Go to sleep, Margaret"). He later wrote in his book Breakthrough, "These words made a deep impression on me, as Margarete Petrautzki had died recently, and her illness and death had greatly affected me." He later started conducting his own experiments and devoted the last 10 years of his life to EVP. With the help of others he recorded tens of thousands of voices. A good portion of his research was conducted under strict laboratory conditions and later in 1968; he published in his book; Breakthrough -An Amazing Experiment in Electronic Communication with the Dead. - featured on your left
In 1979 an electronic audio device named “The Spiricom” (short for spirit communication) was developed by George Meek and William O’Neil. The Spiricom was a set of 13 tone generators spanning the frequency range of the adult male voice and was designed to have actual real time conversations with spirits from the other side. Meek was a well-to-do self made man with an interest for spiritual matters and O’Neil was very sensitive to the spirit world and claimed to work with the spirits of deceased people while creating the device. Due to the frequency generators, the Spiricom gave off a loud buzzing noise while turned on. When he first started working on the machine and spoke in its presence you could hear his voice getting wrapped up in the buzz the device gave off. After many months of work something amazing happened; A separate voice started getting wrapped up in the buzz, something present but invisible…the voice of a spirit. The name of the spirit was Dr. George Jeffries Mueller (a NASA scientist). This entity provided information of his life work and death that O’Neil later confirmed. So along with his newfound spirit friend, O’Neil began fine tuning the Spiricom. Over 20 hours of dialogue were recorded between the two. I’ve personally listened to a number of these recorded two-way conversations and find them very interesting. They sound much different than other “standard” EVPs I’ve heard in the past. This was due to the frequency generators. Their thoughts were to use the different frequency waves being generated, as a type of carrier signal of the voice of any willing disembodied persons who spoke from the other side. This resulted in the spirits voice coming through as a sort of robotic voice. These conversations were very interesting to listen too and I’ve provided links to some of them at the end of this article. In 1982 the Spiricom’s design specifications, by request of the spirits, was given out freely to any who wanted it, with little success. Meek attributed the lack of others being able to replicate the results to O’Neil’s psychic ability, which may have been part of the loop that made the device work.
