A SHORT HISTORY OF THE EVP

Judith Chisholm

Before the turn of the last Century
Austrian psychic researcher Baron Hellenbach predicted in his book Birth and Death the evolution of electromechanical means of communication. He foresaw that the content of the earliest contacts might suffer from the inherent difficulties of bridging a gulf between two dimensions and warned against undue optimism.

Beginning of theLast Century
Thomas Edison, Gueglielmo Marconi, and Nikola Tesla, inventors and geniuses who helped harness electricity and laid the foundations upon which electronic communication has been based, spent the last years of their lives trying to develop devices for communicating with spirit.

1920's.
Hereward Carrington, a respected American psychical researcher notes in his book Psychic Oddities an occasion at which he was present when a 'disembodied' voice asking "Can you hear me?"came out of a microphone in a sealed room in a radio recording studio when the rest of the building was empty. This was in the presence of an un-named medium and was heard by everyone else in the room. No-one could give any explanation.

The English writer Thorpe who had developed what he called 'Etheric Vision' (and wrote a book of the same name) whilst a prisoner in Germany, promised his readers details of mechanical means of detecting what he called 'The Voice Phenomenon' in a further book. This never appeared.

Late 1920's
Italian aristocrat and medium Count Centurione Scotto makes gramophone recordings at Millesimo Castle of the 'direct voice'. The Count had contracted the gift seemingly by 'psychic contagion' from the controversial Valiantine.

1930's
Swedish & Norwegian military pick up strange, unidentified voices on their frequencies. These were thought to be stray Nazi transmissions and came to their peak in March 1934 then ceased abruptly. But after war, when archives searched, no evidence of German involvement was found.  American writer John Keel details thes incidents culled from press reports of the 1930's in his book Operation Trojan Horse written in the 1950's.

1936.
Ham radio operator Gordon Cosgrave in London apparently picks up Morse code messages between the 'Titanic' and the 'Carpathia' which would have been sent 24 years earlier in 1912 when the 'Carpathia' was racing to the rescue of the stricken 'Titanic'.

1950.
John Otto, patent engineer and radio ham together with a group of local radio amateurs in Chicago, USA detects unusual signals of unknown origin on undisclosed frequencies. Lyrical voices using what we now know as polyglot (a mixture of languages) sing and speak in rapid bursts which the group recognised were unlike anything transmitted by regular sources.

Early 1950's
An 'Electronic Communication Society' is formed in Manchester, England where serious attempts are made to amplify by electronic means the pervading energies of the seance room. George Hunt Williamson author of Other Tongues - Other Flesh published by the Amherst Press logs reports of intrusive voices of unknown origin on tape while another American John Keel, investigating UFO reports world wide, comes up with dozens of reports of voice intrusion culled from military and civilian sources. In his book Our Haunted Planet Keel devotes an entire chapter to these rogue transmissions.

1956.
Hollywood, USA photographer and independent voice medium Attila Von Szalay and a writer named Raymond Bayless record voices on magnetic tape that should not have been there. Von Szalay had been experimenting since 1947 with phonograph discs and wire recorders and had succeeded in capturing faint whispers. They named the voices they captured 'aeriel' voices and reported their discovery in the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research. There was absolutely no interest.

1959.
In July of this year Russian born Sir Friedrich Jurgenson, an artist and film producer records his mother's voice using a reel-to-reel tape recorder at his estate in Mölnbo, Sweden. She had been dead four years. He went on to record thousands of discarnate voices and is regarded as the 'father' of the EVP. The noted parapsychologist Professor Dr.Hans Bender who headed a team of researchers at the Institute for Border Areas of Psychology and Mental Health at the University of Freiburg, Germany makes a thorough study of the Jurgenson tapes even using voice print tests. He concludes that these voices were susceptible to a paranormal interpretation.

1965
A well-known Latvian Philosopher and Psychologist, author of six books Dr. Konstantin Raudive, hears of Jurgenson's work. He had long been interested in the direct voice physical type of mediumship which may have begun in his early post-graduate days at Edinburgh University in 1934. He meets Jurgenson and sets up his own research project in Germany initially using an ordinary crystal set, the 'cat's whisker' of earlier radio days. Later he enlists the help of Friedebert Karger, a rersearch physicist at the Max Planck Institute in Munich and other electronic engineers. Theodor Rudolph a high-frequency electronics engineer of the well-known firm Telefunken designs an instrument called a 'goniometer' for him. Dr. Raudive eventually records over 100,000 discarnate voices.

1968.
Dr. Raudive publishes his first research on the voice phenomenon in his book The Inaudible Becomes Audible.
1971 Publishers Colin Smythe of England are handed a copy of Dr. Raudive's book at a German Book Fair and after experimenting and, much to their surprise, record the voice of the mother (who had died some time before) of one of their company's Directors. They decide to translate and publish the book in the UK renaming it: "Breakthrough: An Amazing Experiment in Electronic Communication with the Dead". They coined the term 'Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP)  In the same year, American George Meek becomes interested in the EVP and develops an instrument called 'Spiricom' - a two-way comunication with the dead device which works only in the presence of his associate Bill O'Neill, an electronics engineer.

1972.
George Gilbert Bonner from England, a psychologist and artist, using a reel-to-reel recorder and battery radio tuned to 'mush' or 'white noise' to act as a carrier for discarnate voices begins to experiment after reading Dr. Raudive's book. He asks into his microphone: 'Can anyone hear me and would anyone like to speak to me?' not expecting any response. He receives the answer in a hiss and rush of sound 'Yes'. Bonner went on to record more than 50,000 spirit voices over the next 22 years.

At about the same time Raymond Cass, a hearing-aid practitioner in England begins research into the EVP using a small battery-operated radio tuned in to 'white noise'. He recorded thousands of clear discarnate voices over the years, speaking and singing, and theorizes that his proximity to a Mass X-Ray unit only 30 yards away produced an emanation which was 'beating' with the selected airband frequency and producing a transient condition enabling the voices to manifest.

1982.
George Meek (developer of Spiricom) publishes his results and continues his research with a battery of radio oscillators. Electronics engineer Hans-Otto Koenig helps Radio Luxembourg broadcast live what was claimed to be a two-way conversation with a 'dead' person. Koenig uses an ultrasound device after closely following Meek's work. The equipment is set up under the supervision of the radio station's engineers, connected to a set of speakers, and switched on. After a few second a clear voice is heard to say "Otto Koenig makes wireless with the dead".

1986.
Swiss electronics engineer Klaus Schreiber gets pictures of the dead on t.v. by means of an apparatus he calls 'Vidicom' which consists of a specially adapted tv switched  on but not attached to an aerial with a video camera in front of it to capture images that appear on the screen. The word ITC is coined (Instrumental Transcomunication).

1994.
onwards Hans Otto Koenig manufactures a Field Generator to communicate with the dead who he claims oscillate on a width frequency of 5 Khz.

I discover the EVP by accident while attending a weekly seance by using my tape recorder one evening. I inadvertently record a woman's voice saying my name 'Judith'. I was the only woman present that evening, and I didn't say my own name.

1996 Forwards
I form The EVP & Transcommunication Society for the UK and Ireland to disseminate information about the phenomenon and conduct research into it. My own research results increase and I begin to record discarnate voices regularly on my micro-cassette recorder, and eventually, two years after his death, my own son's voice.

1999.
My research takes a giant leap forward with the purchase of a digital recorder which by its nature cannot record extraneous broacast transmissions of any kind - a charge always levelled at recordings made by normal tape recorders to discredit them. I am now able to record two-way conversations at will with 'dead' people, including my son and primarily a friend and colleague of mine who 'died' in 1986.

2000.
My book 'Voices from Paradise' is published by Jon Carpenter, Charlbury, Oxford. It details my paranormal experiences since 1992 leading to my discovery of the EVP, how to experiment with obtaining the EVP, and all that has flowed from the formation of the Society in 1996.

I am writing another book which details the hundreds of hours of two-way recorded conversation I have held since October 1999 and am still holding with 'dead' people and the fascinating and sometimes disturbing information I am being given by them. The book also relates how, when I can't find time to record, spirits seek me out via my digital telephone answering machine in order to give me information and instructions or to comment on what is being said on a certain phone call or what is happening in my life.

THE EVP & TRANSCOMMUNICATION SOCIETY (of Great Britain and Ireland)

e-mail Judith Chisholm  Visit The EVP Website: Voicesfromparadise.co.uk

Founded in 1996 in order to gather and disseminate amongst members by way of a quarterly Newsletter (January, April, July and October) information from each and every source relating to the electronic voice phenomenon (EVP). The Society has produced standard cassette tapes covering the history and method of the EVP and containing voice examples of spirit communication. A reading list is available.

Back numbers of the Society's Newsletters are 50p each to members and £2.50 each to non members (£1 and £3.50 respectively if outside the British Isles).

Annual subscription to the Society is £10 (£14 if outside British Isles)