by J H Brennan
Raudive traveled to Sweden with a colleague, Dr. Zenta Maurina, and took a liking to Jürgenson at once. The Swede seemed sincere and deeply committed to his research. He allowed the visitors immediate access to his tapes. The voices were audible enough against a background hiss, but Raudive and his colleague found it impossible to make out what they were saying. They were faint and spoke very quickly with a peculiar rhythm. But as the tapes were repeated several times, their ears gradually attuned. At this point, they had only Jürgenson’s word that the tapes were genuine. The man was a movie producer and might well have hired actors to pretend to be spirits. But Jürgenson agreed to make a new recording on the spot. When he played back the tape, there were voices on it that Raudive believed could not have come from anybody in the room. Nor did they seem to be glitches on the tape or sounds that Jürgenson had somehow prerecorded. The incident that ruled out both these possibilities arose when Dr. Maurina remarked she was under the impression that inhabitants of the Beyond led a happy, carefree existence. Her comment was duly recorded on the tape … as was the reply of “Nonsense!” from a wholly unknown voice. The spirits had become interactive.
All the same, Raudive was not entirely convinced. Although he was now certain Jürgenson was not faking the tapes, he thought there might be explanations of the phenomenon other than the spirit hypothesis. There was the obvious possibility of a freak pickup of radio transmissions, for example. Clearly more research was needed. In June 1965 Raudive joined Jürgenson on his Swedish estate at Nysund to carry it out.
At first they managed to produce only faint, scarcely audible voices, but at 9:30 p.m. on June 10, they got a clear, good-quality recording. Raudive later found that anyone who listened to it could make out the voices easily. First there was one that called, “Friedrich, Friedrich.” Then a woman’s voice said softly, “Heute pa nakti. Kennt ihr Margaret, Konstantin?” After a brief pause, the same voice sang, “Vi tálu! Runá!” Finally a different female voice said, “Va a dormir, Margarete!” Almost all these phrases are a mixture of languages. Raudive, himself a formidable linguist, identified German, Latvian, English, and French. Putting these together, the translation would be: “Fredrick, Fredrick! Tonight. Do you know Margaret, Konstantin? We are far away! Speak! Go to sleep, Margaret.” The name “Margaret” struck Raudive forcefully. He had been deeply affected by the recent death of a friend named Margaret Petrautzki and the coincidence of the name gave him much food for thought. He decided to continue serious research on his own. It was a decision that was to influence the course of his entire career, for the voice phenomenon came to fill almost his whole life.
There are three ways of producing electronic voice recordings, two of them very simple indeed. All that is needed is patience and some basic equipment.
The method that gives the clearest voices requires a radio, a short aerial (somewhere between 6 and 10 centimeters [2 and 4 inches]), a recorder, and something called a diode, which is fairly readily available in any specialist radio or electronics outlet. The aerial is attached to the diode and the diode to the radio. You then turn on the medium waveband and tune the set to what is technically known as an inter-frequency—anywhere on the wave band where no station is broadcasting. This tuning produces “white noise,” a constant hiss of static. The tape machine is set to record from the radio, either via a microphone or, better, using a cable input. If an open microphone is used, it will obviously pick up sounds made naturally within range, and these have to be carefully differentiated from any paranormal voices that might arise. As against that, open microphone recording allows the possibility of recorded interactions between the voices and the experimenter. The diode method is likely to give best results of any method unless the equipment is set up close to a strong radio transmitter, which can cause interference that is difficult to block out.
A second method is almost identical to the first except that no diode is used. The radio is joined to the tape recorder exactly as for recording a program and once again tuned to an interfrequency. The third and simplest method of all involves setting up a recorder and microphone in an empty, quiet room and recording the silence for half an hour or so. It was this method Raudive used initially in his solo experiments, and it took him three months of patient work before a taped voice answered one of his own spoken observations with the words, “Pareizi tá büs!”—Latvian for “That’s right!”
Interestingly, while this was the first voice he heard, it was not the first he actually recorded. When he replayed earlier tapes, he discovered many others he had not noticed before. This is a commonplace in the electronic voice phenomenon. Most people are able to distinguish only seven levels of volume and seven levels of pitch in the ordinary course of events. Because of this, most of the voices remain inaudible until the ear is attuned through practice. It is only when the individual is experienced enough to distinguish single phonemes—the smallest individual units of sound—that it becomes possible to hear all the voices properly. Individuals with musical training typically experience far fewer problems in this type of research than others and it was Professor Atis Teichmanis of the College of Music in Freiburg, Germany, who was first able to confirm accurately that the electronic voices specifically differed in both pitch and volume from those of the average human voice.
But if the voices were so difficult to distinguish, how could anyone be certain they were more than psychological projections? The human nervous system is so well designed to distinguish patterns that it frequently discerns them where they are not really present. Hence we see faces in the clouds and pictures in the fire. More to the point, it is perfectly possible—especially when tired—to “hear” whispers in white noise that are nothing more than the listener’s expectations.
In 1968, the Otto Reichl Verlag of Remagen published Raudive’s account of his experiments in German under the title Unhörbares Wird Hörbar (“The Inaudible Becomes Audible”). On October 13 the following year, the British publisher Colin Smythe was handed a copy while at the Frankfurt Book Fair. In 1971, Smythe brought out an expanded version of the book under the rather more commercial title of Breakthrough.
Breakthrough is not a particularly readable book. Most of its 391 pages are devoted to an increasingly tedious transcript of Raudive’s polyglot tapes. But it did contain an indication that scientists other than himself were working on the voice phenomenon and some were prepared to take a strictly nuts-and-bolts approach. The work was sufficiently successful to persuade one of Colin Smythe’s executives, Peter Bander, to produce a book of his own on the subject. This offering, which was published by Colin Smythe in 1972, was much more superficial in its approach than the Raudive original but also far more readable. It dealt in part with the promotional activity that surrounded Breakthrough and the way in which the media dealt with the idea that ghosts might be recorded on tape. But more important, it detailed some of the work that had been done to establish the objective reality of the voices. Much of it was impressive.
First, tests were carried out to ensure that the voices were actually present as magnetic traces on the tape and not simply psychological projections into the white noise. Jochem Sotscheck, director of the Acoustics Research Group at the Central Office for Telegraphic Technology in Berlin, made use of a voice printer to show not only that the voices really existed but occurred in the same frequency range as human speech.
Once it was realized that something was impressing on the tape, the next stage was to rule out any question of freak electronic intrusions—radio broadcasts, high-frequency transmissions, or even, as one authority suggested, low-frequency communications used by the CIA. This was done by attempting a voice recording from inside a Faraday cage.
A Faraday cage is a device named for the nineteenth-century British pioneer of electromagnetism, Michael Faraday. It screens out all known forms of electromagnetic radiation and consequently creates a quarantine area into which no broadcast energy can penetrate. The recording device was set up inside the cage. Altho
ugh a rational electronic explanation was now ruled out, the voices still appeared on the tape.
As the press became increasingly interested, more and more tightly controlled experiments took place. A typical example was one set up by a Sunday newspaper at the Pye Laboratories. Under the watchful eyes of twelve observers, Raudive was challenged to produce a voice while completely isolated from the machines and control devices set up by electronics engineers. In eighteen minutes there were two hundred voices on the tape, twenty-seven of them clear enough to be played back through a loudspeaker. Pye’s chief engineer of the day, Ken Atwood, tried everything he knew to stop the voices or at least explain them within known electronics theory. He failed to do so and afterward commented philosophically, “I suppose we must learn to accept them.”
Other experts came reluctantly to the same conclusion. The physicist and electronics engineer A. P. Hale examined tests carried out in a screened laboratory and could only say, “I cannot explain what happened in normal physical terms.” Hans Bender of the University of Freiburg went on record with the statement that examination with high-quality technical equipment “made the paranormal hypothesis of the origin of the voice phenomena highly probable.”
With the reality of the voice recordings—and their paranormal origin —established beyond all reasonable doubt, it becomes possible to embark on a logical analysis of their content. The picture that emerges is extremely interesting.
First, the voices are fragmentary. There are no lengthy messages on the tapes and little direct continuity. An entity will typically record a few words—a sentence or two at most—then disappear. Sometimes the same entity will return later but will seldom attempt to pick up where he left off. Where there are multiple voices on a tape, the impression one gets is of people jostling for attention while using a difficult and often faulty telephone connection. Even when a voice gets through solo, the messages are frequently clipped—“Here is Ivarits”—and sometimes nonsensical as in the bewildering: “Statowitz one man eight nought one inch rub off.” It is also clear that the individual entities attempting to communicate all have their own agendas. One complains of being a slave. Another insists it is surrounded by scoundrels. A third cuts through the words of a fourth with the testy exclamation, “Oh you chatterbox!”
Despite this, certain of the entities appear willing, even anxious, to enter into a dialogue with the experimenter. Many are interested in the process of communication and will sometimes put forward their own theories as to how it works. (Raudive was once told he functioned like radar.) Others attempt to describe their current state, but such descriptions tend to be vague, confused, and often contradictory. Thus the importance of the electronic voices is not what they say but the fact that they exist.
Raudive recorded more than thirty thousand of them. At first they claimed to be dead relatives and friends. Later he discovered he had recorded what purported to be the voices of Tolstoy, Jung, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and Churchill. Although Tolstoy and Stalin both spoke Russian, almost all the rest showed the now familiar mixture of languages. As other researchers began to work independently with the phenomenon, it became obvious that multilingual messages were very much a Raudive trademark—others either did not get them at all, or only rarely. This discovery led to the suspicion that Raudive somehow influenced the type of voices that came through. Although he remained cautious in his public pronouncements, Raudive himself came to believe there could be a mediumistic aspect to the whole phenomenon.11 That is to say, the investigator is himself a channel that allows the voices to manifest. Several others have speculated along the same lines.
The entire electronic voice phenomenon is directly in line with all of the other findings. Discarnate mindon entities seem really only capable of contact with matter through the cooperation of another of their kind that has already forged a physical body. But by attempting to imprint directly on magnetic tape, in however confused and fragmentary a fashion, the voices have moved beyond the old, familiar controversy. What the recordings have done is show that they are really there.
CONCLUSION
SOMETIME IN THE DEPTHS OF PREHISTORY, A PRIMITIVE HUMAN WAS BORN with a genetic mutation that allowed him or her to hear a voice, perhaps even see a figure, that others could not. The development proved to have survival potential—the voice might sometimes whisper the location of game or warn of an impending landslide in a mountain pass—so that the mutation began to spread slowly into the community. Not everyone carried the gene, of course, but eventually the principles of Darwinian evolution ensured the emergence of an elite group of people with the power to visit what they thought of as a spirit world and return with information or abilities of use to their tribe. With experience, these people—shamans, witch doctors —came to discover techniques, often including fasting, physical ordeals, or plant narcotics, that encouraged the development of powers of contact like their own. The long association between humans and spirits had begun.
These origins are speculative and may well prove entirely fictional, but the reality of spirit contact is not. Evidence of such contact is not remotely controversial. Historians recognize the phenomenon as a fact of human experience (without necessarily accepting the reality of spirits) from time immemorial. The multitude of examples contained in this book have largely been drawn from perfectly orthodox, well-respected academic sources. But if the phenomenon is accepted, its implications are not. Indeed, its implications have scarcely been examined before now. Yet, as we have seen again and again throughout the earlier sections of this book, spirit influence on human history has been widespread, central, and profound.
It is important to emphasize that one does not have to believe in spirits in order to recognize this reality. But it is equally important to recognize that those who glibly dismiss spirits as hallucination or imagination are expressing opinions based more on assumptions or prejudice than any sound, rational foundation. For the sad, surprising fact is that despite sterling efforts by bodies like the Society for Psychical Research, mainstream science lacks the will, interest, or funding to mount a serious, comprehensive investigation of the subject. Hence a phenomenon that has shaped the course of human history—and will continue to do so—has received ludicrously little attention. We know the Whisperers are here but have yet to discover, definitively, what they are.
I have attempted my own modest investigation of this vital question and the time has now come to draw some conclusions from the effort. But first a summary of the investigation itself:
Although a few rare individuals have achieved spontaneous interaction with spirits through visions and dreams, the two main avenues of contact in the West have been ritual conjuration and the séance room techniques of Spiritualism. The instruction manuals of the conjurers insist, almost without exception, that the spirits may, indeed must, be called to visible appearance. Within Spiritualism, the emphasis has typically been on the conveyance of verbal, or, less often, written, messages from beyond the grave; but even here there is a tradition of visible manifestation through the work of specially gifted “materializing mediums” and “spirit photography.”1
Today’s culture of rational materialism makes it difficult to accept the visible appearance of spirits. The discovery of an unconscious aspect of the human mind led to the theory that “spirit messages” were communications with the deep psyche, such as Flournoy’s unconscious memories, wish fulfillment, and subliminal fantasies. In the case of the conjurer, the dialogue might take place via a full-blown hallucination, so that the “spirit” might become “visible” at least to himself. This is more or less the position of modern Solomonic magicians in America, who argue that the “demons” are, in fact, unconscious complexes (in the Freudian sense) that need to be personified and brought to the light of consciousness for the magician to reach his full potential.2 One authority advocates the use of self-hypnosis to render the personifications visible.3 In the case of the Spiritualist medium, the form of dialogue is often openly subje
ctive to begin with—intuitions, impressions, voices in the head—and lends itself to the Flournoy theory even more readily.
Barbara Lex, associate in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, has shown that patterned, repetitive acts, such as rhythmic drumming, chanting, or the invocations of a ceremonial conjurer, have an impact on the human brain and nervous system. This creates what she refers to as a state of “ritual trance” conducive to “extraordinary behaviors” like glossolalia, the handling of fire, and apparent contact with spirits.4 In essence, lengthy prayers and the repetition of sonorous “names of power” monopolize the verbal-logical activities of the left cerebral hemisphere, leaving the right hemisphere to function freely.5
In her analysis of the poor right-hemisphere performance with regard to verbalization, Lex indicates she has little doubt that this hemisphere is the home of so-called mystical imageries and symbols.6 Thus there is a psychophysical basis for the efficacy of ritual conjuration, and also a mechanism from which Flournoy’s “subliminal fantasies” might emerge, perhaps in the form of culturally conditioned imagery. A similar mechanism exists within Spiritualism. Lex maintains that ritual trance “arises from manipulation of universal neurophysiological structures of the human body” and is consequently a potential behavior of all normal human beings,7 where the grimoires promise successful conjurations to anyone prepared to follow the rituals diligently. Spiritualism relies, by and large, on the presence of specially gifted individuals—that is, mediums—who characteristically self-induce a trance state in order to achieve spirit contact. Here too there may be a question of cultural conditioning. Where the cultural expectation of the Middle Ages was of demonic or angelic visitation, the cultural expectation of the Victorian Spiritualist was of postmortem communication from a postulated, and surprisingly simplistic, “Summerland.” In both cases, the individuals concerned got what they expected. In all cases it seems reasonable to assume we are dealing with right-brain imagery erupting from the personal subconscious.
