EVP and related phenomena occur spontaneously; a person can only attempt to evoke them. It cannot be precisely predicted, and its repeatability is rather low. At best, my work can be described as research in a specific field, that is, observing conditions, collecting data, and trying to identify common characteristics. In most cases, the term "operator" is more appropriate than "experimenter."
All of these difficulties are well known in parapsychology. Along with cultural bias, they have likely blocked any official research in our field until today.Let us begin by outlining the first few steps of root development, which can be traced back at least to the beginning of our [20th] century.
In 1952, two Roman Catholic scientists from the University of Milan in Italy began analyzing music recorded on a steel tape recorder. While listening to the tape, they were surprised to hear voices of unknown origin.
In our country [USA] similar spontaneous observations were described in 1959 by Bayless in the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.Shortly thereafter, Friedrich Juergenson in Sweden attempted something that eventually attracted the interest of several thousand amateurs from dozens of countries, expressing their belief that the voices he had recorded came from dead people.
It is with some nostalgia that we read in Peter Banders's book "Voices from the Tapes" about another EVP pioneer, Konstanty Raudive, who on March 27, 1971, was invited by David Ellis to Enfield to conduct an experiment in the radio imaging laboratory at Belling and Lee Ltd. There was Mr. Ralph Lovelock, an electronics engineer and physicist, and Mr. Peter Hale, who was one of the leading experts on electronic shielding interference in the West and certainly the most eminent expert in Great Britain.
After conducting an extremely important experiment, Mr. Hale wrote in a letter to Peter Banders, who also allowed it to be quoted in the press:
"From the results we got last Friday, it appears that something is happening that I cannot explain in a normal scientific way."
A few months later, Hale confirmed this opinion and added in a letter to Ellis:
"I feel we are dealing with something that is not related to normal radio transmission."
At the same time, Ellis stated that the experiment was not convincing because the microphone used could only pick up normal acoustic sound.As far as I know, the well-known German parapsychologist Hans Bender, a former professor at the University of Freiburg, was the only official academic who briefly observed Juergenson's work. He found it so interesting that he published the results in the "Zeitschrift fuer Parapsychologie und Grenzgebiete der Psychologie" (The Journal of Parapsychology and the Borderlands of Psychology) in 1970. Bender wrote that the analysis conducted using the visible speech method fundamentally contributed to casting doubt on the sound signals and made the paranormal origin of some vocal phenomena very likely.
My interest in the voice phenomenon began with a controversial television discussion I stumbled upon by chance in 1974. As an experimental physicist, I wondered whether voices from nowhere could actually appear on magnetic tapes. After several contrary statements, I decided to investigate this myself by conducting tests. Unexpectedly, I had to convince myself of these anomalies and was able to determine their characteristics in 1977. My publication in Bender's "Zeitschrift" in 1979 must be considered independent confirmation of earlier results, which were completely unknown to me at the time.
In 1982, I practically ceased my technical efforts to improve the quantity and quality of voices on the tapes. The results revealed irregularities that I could not avoid. I continued to collect material from operators in various languages (German, English, Italian, and French) and established contacts with prominent operators One of the first I met, in 1985, was Klaus Schreiber from Aachen, Germany, a very humble and simple man who, without any technical background, somehow invented the well-known electronic-optical feedback system. He detected individual frames of images of people in videotapes containing interference.
Together with a small group of interested individuals and Vladimir Delavre, MD, we founded the small Psychobiophysical Society in 1990, which publishes its own journal every six months. We critically observe developments in this field, attempting to encompass a broader scope and understand the processes taking place.
The extraordinary audiovisual material documented over the past decades can be analyzed from various perspectives. Careful observation seems to indicate that the anomalous behavior of electronic devices is related to their operators. If this is true, we are dealing with psychophysical processes or human-device interactions, and we cannot expect much insight by addressing the technical side of the issue alone.One of the most common characteristics of disturbing voices and images is their low signal-to-noise ratio (S:N), which makes them significantly difficult to interpret. Understanding the overall response of the receiving system to a noisy signal is crucial.
In a simplified model, the receiver has a noisy internal structure N (REC), an input signal S (IN), accompanied by noise N (IN), which are somehow mixed in the receiver into N (REC), and the output signal may differ significantly from the input signal and depend on S (IN) / N (IN) and the properties of the receiver.
There are a large number of often nonlinear parameters that influence this process, leading from the reception of an unknown signal to its final interpretation or comprehension. These parameters have been extensively studied in psychoacoustics and psycholinguistics.
Table 1
[ S (IN) + N (IN) ] + N (REC) =>
[ S (IN) + N (IN) + N (REC) ]
(OUT) does not equal (IN)
If, in our case, the "receiver" is a complex human being listening to a tape containing noisy and/or distorted audio or visual signals, it is inevitable that conscious or unconscious personal beliefs, expectations, attentional focus, experience and practice will co-determine the interpretation of these signals.
EVP operators using sensitive microphones with a standard recording system find that most signals are below or equal to a fairly uniform background noise. Signals exceeding this level are rare exceptions.
If you add an acoustic background, for example words in a foreign language coming from a radio receiver - thereby trying to increase the likelihood and quality of these paranormal events - then they become covered up or mixed with the normal transmissions.Table 2 shows how the interpretability of signals depends on the signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) in three ranges.
For S/N < 1 - left - fantasy, illusion, and even hallucination are included. Personal interpretation is purely subjective, in a sense unrealistic, and cannot be confirmed by other listeners.
For S/N around 1, we enter a "gray area" with uncertain boundaries, where limited intersubjective agreement of interpretations is possible. Voices, however, may be considered partially real. In both cases, wishful thinking and expectations play an important role.
Table 2
S / N < 1 S/N ~ 1 S / N > 1
Fantasizing Illusion Hallucination A gray area with fluid boundaries Technical Analysis
Wishful thinking and expectations Wishful thinking and expectations Correct perception
Unconfirmable Subjectively "unreal" Partially confirmed
"Unreal" => "Real"Unambiguous confirmation Objectively "Real"
As for the right column with high S/N values, we must clearly confirm the objective reality of these signals through independent subjective control and technical analysis.
A significant amount of research into telecommunications applications has led to the development of standards that define voice intelligibility and the reliability of voice communication under simple, noisy conditions as a function of the signal-to-noise ratio (S/N). Because it is impossible to predict in advance the countless types and combinations of interfering noise, such standards cannot cover all practical situations. They must rely on the sensitivity and selectivity of the trained human psychoacoustic system.
Ultimately, one might ask whether real paranormal voices even exist. Undoubtedly, many skeptics like to undermine their existence by overestimating the left side of the table. Our positive answer is based on a corresponding number of votes on the right side.A loud and intelligible message emanated from the speaker of my shortwave receiver. It was immediately understood by all four people in the room and recorded using a microphone on a reel-to-reel tape recorder. It occurred late in the evening of February 1, 1977. Three sentences referred to the specific situation of a close family member living in Berlin. The correlated events were confirmed in a telephone conversation the following day.
Even an English speaker should be able to understand this voice shouting, "Hier is Berlin." The oscilloscope clearly showed that the signal was far above the noise floor.
Dear colleagues, I think some of you will find this hard to swallow, but I'm sorry, there's no getting around it: one white crow proves that not all crows are black, and we are certain of the existence of many white crows! It is unjustified to dismiss them as artifacts or anecdotes, so we feel entitled to continue listening for a few characteristics of these calls, which have been captured in similar or identical forms by different operators:Speech is generally faster than normal, in some cases extremely slower, with rumbling, bouncing, or shaking sounds. Loudness and intonation exhibit unusual time signatures, for example, starting high and falling, or starting low and rising. Non-laryngeal speech is characterized by a lack of fundamental frequencies, as identified in an official analysis at the University of Turin in Italy. Many speakers have documented rhythmic or robotic, non-human-sounding speech. Altered or abbreviated grammar and syntax. Obsolete terms and neologisms result in a kind of compressed speech. Multilingual phrases have been observed. The meaning of metaphorical or symbolic content is often difficult to determine.
In addition to the vast amount of relevant subjective reports, certain voice characteristics were statistically analyzed. The first project was conducted by Dr. Carlo Trajn in Florence, Italy. Based on 24,000 words from four different operators, he determined the relative frequency of anomalous strings, depending on their length in syllables. The resulting distribution curve shows a clear maximum of about five syllables per string. My own assessment, based on recorded material from other operators and my own recordings, aligns with Trajn's findings. Further independent confirmation comes from Alexander McRae in Scotland, a former NASA communications specialist, who determined a relative maximum of about 1.6 seconds per string of five syllables. McRae considered this "time compaction" a clear indication of the improbability of such strings and experimentally rejected the hypothesis that complete structures of this type could result from stochastic excision from normal sentences.
To describe the fact that voices prefer short words with few syllables, Trajna coined the term "Psychophonic Style." He compared 24,000 words taken from the normal writings of four writers with the aforementioned 24,000 words [provided by operators]. The reduction in the number of syllables per word was up to 20%. I have confirmed this value myself. Furthermore, Trajna found that the individual differences in the normal writings of the four writers were greater than those in the voice material. The results are presumably language-independent. They have been observed in at least three languages: Italian, German, and English.
Interestingly, the number of syllables per word increased in the 1980s. In the material I compared, it reached a final value of 2 in ordinary German speech.In my introduction, I mentioned that several thousand people attempt to tape-record their voices. Overall, their experiences—even though the interpretations remain questionable in many cases—suggest that EVP is a common, low-level phenomenon.
In terms of communicating with someone unknown, voice phenomena of this type are quite unsatisfactory. While there are many convincing examples of voices sensibly responding to the operator's questions, the entire process remains tedious and time-consuming. Most recording procedures begin with a few minutes of recording, followed by listening to it to detect and, if possible, understand the supposedly paranormal sequence, and then possibly asking another question without finding another answer.
From the very beginning of my tests, it was clear that only a system suitable for seamless two-way communication could overcome these difficulties. The first step in this development required directly intelligible voices, perhaps coming from a radio receiver loudspeaker or a dedicated system. This possibility was provided by an event called "Hier ist Berlin."
At that time, I didn't know that a group of operators in Grosseto, Italy, under the direction of Marcello Bacci, had already achieved bilateral contacts that I would only dream of many years later. In 1986, I visited them and actively participated in this type of two-way communication. A female-sounding voice answered my questions in German, a language the Italian operators were unfamiliar with. It was Dr. Trajna who coined the term "Direct Electroacoustic Voices." In the meantime, I met many successful operators from four countries and observed their activities.
I am familiar with two objections:
Isn't this far too little basis for serious consideration? Perhaps. Yes—but only for critics who, like townspeople, are accustomed to the sight of small sparrows. Suddenly, a traveler reports having observed a huge condor, spreading its wings 10 feet wide, high in the mountains of South America. But these people don't believe him, yet they shudder to leave their small town with the sparrows, afraid to climb a mountain and stand long enough to see the condor with their own eyes.Sorry for my stupid-sounding question: who of you has ever seen a flying fish?
There are many facts confirming the reality of these anomalies, and some extraordinary properties of direct electroacoustic voices have also been analyzed.
During several one-sided transmissions, speech is clearly accelerated. Here are three examples from two operators. Despite the rather large differences in the underlying material, we observe approximately 50% more syllables per unit of time in the final part of the transmission compared to its beginning. Paranormal speech may be realized as single, clearly separated syllables, presumably formed with considerable effort.
Some messages are accompanied by complex tonal signals of unknown origin and meaning. Their structures constantly change in phase, frequency, and amplitude. Often, the lower-frequency component is superimposed on higher-frequency oscillations.
I should add a few words about paranormal images. I briefly mentioned Klaus Schreiber, who introduced a feedback loop and searched for individual objects frame by frame. Many of these images were poor quality, blurry, with low contrast, and like many voices on tapes, they lend themselves to broad subjective interpretations. In such a noisy example, it's hopeless to choose between a free interpretation of chaotic forms and the ultimate paranormal image.
Other images are astonishing. For example, this one, which bears comparison to a photograph of Dr. Alois Wiesinger, a former Austrian abbot whom Schreiber did not know at the time of the demonstration.
Several operators in Italy, Switzerland, England, France, Germany, Spain and in your country have used or are still using the coupling method with more or less comparable results.
The general development of paranormal images can be compared to the development of voices.
The first direct images appearing on televisions tuned to an empty channel were probably observed in Italy as early as 1978. They were preceded by tape recordings of voices and showed connections between the deceased and the operators, so their normal earthly origins must be ruled out.The number of operators receiving images directly on television screens is still smaller than those recording electroacoustic voices. I personally know of only three. With one or two exceptions, the images are black and white, in most cases static for a few tenths of a second to a minute, sometimes accompanied by direct voices. In a small number of cases, the paranormal image appears after a few black frames—reminiscent of Ted Serios's black frames.
Before concluding, let me touch on two more issues: the first concerns the role of the operator in the realization of anomalous phenomena. If we are dealing with psychophysical interactions, or more generally, correlations in decoupled information systems, then we should be able to compare our own results with those of researchers investigating "consciousness and reality." Three important findings from the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) group seem to confirm our experience.
1. The existence of operator-dependent signatures in weak psychokinesis experiments and comparison of their results with other systems suggested that individual ability is the primary variable in the experiments, and the specific type of technical device is less important. This is consistent with our experience: low-level results can be achieved by virtually anyone with sufficient motivation and patience, whereas peak results such as high-quality direct voices or clear images on television screens are achieved by particularly gifted operators—say, those with strong psychic abilities—and/or those who started out like anyone else in the field but, instead of having fun, devoted many hours, weeks, and months to improving their results by trying again and again.
2. In the quantum metaphor created by Jahn and Dunne, the informational interaction between an operator and a machine (or between people) is understood as a complex process of "tuning" and resonance of consciousness - and matter wave functions - in which a huge number of psychological and technical levels of freedom are contained.
In our field we like to say that an operator should be "married" to his device, and we also have information showing that a device's sensitivity to unusual phenomena can even be permanently increased through psychological influence.3. The PEAR group found that the operator's analytical state of consciousness seemed to diminish or inhibit their abilities. Willpower tended to be on the meditative side. Observation of accomplished EVP operators in action suggests that they enter an alpha brainwave state—or shift to even lower frequencies.
There's a striking example where a German operator managed to jam the audio output of an FM radio receiver. A few minutes before the morning news, he sat almost motionless in front of the receiver. He concentrated and told the receiver to turn the volume down to zero. When it did, he took a deep breath and said, "I know I could have done that," then turned to the receiver, "Now you can play it louder and louder"—and the device obeyed like a loyal dog.
In my analysis of anomalous audio and visual recordings, I have had to reduce the vast amount of irregular or unusual phenomena that have been documented over the past decades, and I have barely touched on the content of the voices and images. However, in deference to our "Topics in Survival Research" session, it seems appropriate to declare that thousands of these voices in dozens of countries, under changing conditions for four decades, have reiterated to us that these so-called dead are quite alive outside our space-time system. The irrefutable fact that so-called dead communicators provide valid data unknown to living operators requires a reasonable explanation for the strange selectivity of information received by the operator, as if he were the only active party.
Anyone here or anywhere else can take all of this for granted and draw their own personal and/or scientific conclusions. They might even dismiss the possibility of paranormal effects and question the existence of life after death. All of this isn't paranormal at all, but it's quite normal.
Please remember my first table: the output signal depends not only on the input signal, but above all on the internal structure of the receiver and - what should be added - its adaptability.
In the meantime, it's worth considering all types of anomalies, their significance for science and humanity, and their possible future developments, including paranormal voices and images. It may be necessary to revisit the old question, "How do we know what we believe we know about the world?" and attempt to answer it within the framework of a new epistemology, as, for example, recently proposed by Willis Harman and his colleagues at the Institute of Noetic Sciences.Let me finish with one last example:
On the morning of October 13, 1994, Adolf Homes felt drawn to his equipment. He switched the television to a free channel, turned it on, and aimed his camera at the screen. At the precise moment he pressed record, a man's face appeared on the screen and remained there for 24 seconds. The image was correctly recorded and presumably showed EVP pioneer Friedrich Juergenson. The date recorded by the camera is incorrect. I'm not saying the image showed Mr. Juergenson in his "heavenly" state. I'm rather convinced it was a projection from nowhere to nowhere, through a chain of transformations that ultimately manifested on the television screen, the final link.
Thank you!
Professor Dr. Ernst Senkowski
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