PARC | the ghost orchid | An introduction to EVP

Rorschach Audio

My initial reaction to the release of Raudive recordings* on flexidisc in 1982 by 'The Unexplained' magazine was one of sheer disbelief, sincCi in addition to my instinctive scepticism about any claims to the existence of physical evidence of the supernatural, outright forgery of such material would be child's play. Any discussion of this subject will be incomplete without pointing this out The most primitive tape recording and over- dubbin9 techniques could produce phenomena of this nature - not least because the more basic the technology used; the lower the signal to noise ratios produced would be, and so the more the finished product would resonate with the aura of menacing low-fidelity mystique which, if anything, lends a subjective impression of authenticity to these voices- It seemed amazing that, in assuming a shared belief in the alleged origin of these recordings, the publishers of this flexidisc had the confidence to expect such a leap of faith on behalf of their readership;

Readers can refer to a broad overview of the history of Electronic Voice Phenomena by Jurgen Heinzerling in Fortean Times magazine [I], in which John Fullers book 'The Ghost from 29 Megacycles' [2] is described; Heinzerling cautions that one should 'remember this book was written for a mass-market readership, which might explain its utter lack of technical detail and scientific sobriety'; While Heinz- erling's article is generally very good. this particular comment is a clear example of understatement in the first-degree; In contrast James Gleick's 'Chaos1 was written for. and achieved, a mass-market readership, and it is a masterpiece of scholarly; systematic and lucid popular- science writing - whereas The Shost;;/ is quite possibly the worst book I have ever bibliography or index make this diluted and badly-written book no less than useless in attempting any objective evaluation of the alleged phenomena - and this naturally served to reinforce my existing suspicions and hasten its flight into the wastebin; Heinzerling describes EVP as an area 'more complex perhaps than even the contradictory abyss that is ufology', and speaks of 'field research often hampered by a remarkable lack of critical judgement'; in correspondence with the publishers he describes the 'most cherished recordings1 of some German EVP researchers as self delusional to the brink of being outright hoaxes'; I freely admit that my own opinion of EVP is prejudiced by previous knowledge limited to this flexidisc and Fullers book; How ever, since Heinzerling argues that the sci entific community's ignorance of EVP 'indirectly supports the spreading of this cult. as potential followers are confronted with convincing demonstra tions that are only 'explained! by the quasi- religious musings of the convinced cultists, what I want to add to this debate is evidence from outside this hermetic environment which I hope will place EVP in their correct context; My explanatory model is of the evolutionary development of a positive feedback loop in which primordial, superstitious beliefs about the afterlife are themselves sufficiently powerful to actively create EVP (and. far- fetched as this may seem I will describe the mechanism by which this takes placet - and so created, EVP are recycled as 'evi- dence1 of a factual basis upon which, in the mind of the converted, the original belief system feeds and grows;

Since I started recording unusual radio sounds for release by Ash Internationali it has become quite clear that a general tendency exists to wilfully misinterpret some of these signals; One EVP website mentions two classes of radio phenomena which this record label has previously published - whistling atmospherics [3] and numoers stations W ~ which are only related to EVP inasmuch as all three are subjects of quasi-anthropomorphic inter pretation [5]; During WW1 German army signals intelligence operators described hearing the 'ghosts' of artillery shells whistling across battlefields; Study of whistler phenomena was popularized by the influential American scientist Mike Mideke. particularly through the formation of INSPIRE, the NASA - funded space- physics society; He imagined these signals as the singing of Chinese dragons, pro viding this society with the imagery used in its logo; It has been suggested that the mysterious voices characteristic of numbers stations are coded military broadcasts, which may well be true, but perhaps not surprisingly I have yet to see any evidence substantiating this; Jean Cocteau used similar broadcasts to represent transmissions from Hades in his masterpiece 'Orphee1 ¥ an idea that in 1949 would presumably have resonated with audiences used to tuning-in to the radio traffic of WW2; During early radar research RAF technicians interpreted unidentified echoes on their screens as 'angels' [6]> Similarly this record company published three versions of the track Theophany' [7]i in which I offered radio recordings of electrical storms as an 'authentic' voice of god - a strictly artistic exercise conducted in a spirit of theolog¬ ical sarcasm. I am not suggesting that Mike Mideke, Jean CocteaUi myself, or radar and telecommunications operators ever attributed these projections to anything more than manifestations of their own sense of humour - but in these anecdotes we may register faint echoes of the belief-systems which in their most concentrated forms generate EVP. At first the persistent suggestions I encounter that on the strength of my interest in exotic radio I might be interested in voices from the afterlife crop circles, UFOs and so on seemed intellectually insulting. However. over time and in the light of information to be discussed shortlyi evidence accumu¬ lated which implies the existence of at least some, in a sense 'genuine' EVP phenomena< whose origin lies outside the realm of deliberate forgery; These phenomena are not metaphysical, but psychological and also cultural in essence, EVP is a cultural phenomenon because even people who do not actively believe in it sometimes share a tendency to generate similar ideas; and because dedicated converts constitute what is effectively an informal social cult - therefore EVP is of genuine anthropological interest,

The neurologist Oliver Sacks wrote on the subject of acoustic projection in 'Seeing Voices' [8]. describing the 'eye music' and 'phantasmal voices' experienced by the poet David Wright in his autobiographical work 'Deafness [9]. Having lost his sense of hearing in childhood; after the onset of language; Wright found himself able to experience reconstructed sound-images projected by his mind into his perceived environment as an extension of visual cues; Lip reading stimuli triggered actual voices despite the fact that no environ¬ mental information was being provided by his ears. The projecting effect was so strong that he reported ghost-sounds conjured by the motion of trees swaying in the wind. 'My deafness was made more difficult to perceive because from the very first my eyes had unconsciously begun to translate motion into sound. My mother spent most of the day beside me and I understood everything she said. Why not? Without knowing it I had been reading her mouth all my life. When she spoke I seemed to hear her voice. It was an illusion which persisted even after I knew it was an illusion. My father; my cousin; everyone I had known retained phantasmal voices. That they were imaginary; the projections of habit and memory; did not come home to me until I had left the hospital; One day I was talking with my cousin and he; in a moment of inspiration; covered his mouth with his hand as he spoke. SilenceF Wright's experiences are extreme versions of a capacity for projec¬ tion that manifests in all senses in most people, able-bodied or otherwise. Sacks describes examples involving anosmia; blindness, and tactile senses (the 'ghost limbs' a condition that is quite commonly experienced by amputees).

In Assigned to- Listen' Olive Renier and Vladimir Rubinstein observed that 'the mechanism of projection plays a major part in hearing' [10]. Projection is the mechanism by which we read familiar shapes into clouds, or melodies into the monotonous rattle of a train. In a similar way we can read speech into a medley of noises [emphasis addedl. Leonardo da Vinci advised young painters to practise their imagination by looking at cracked walls and reading fantastic scenes into strange patches. Their observations are particularly pertinent since their book describes the 'ether war1 as fought by BBC foreign-language radio monitors at Wood Norton Halli Evesham; during WW2. The Evesham operators transferred Primo Levi's 'radiophonic babel of war' onto primitive Ediphone wax cylinder 'tran¬ scribers'. Their practice of re-analyzing recordings of noise impulses (interference) combined with foreign-language voice of intelligible meaning is virtually identical to some EVP research techniques. It goes without saying that, despite the volume of traffic inter¬ cepted by this important contribution to the wartime intelligence effort; they make no mention of any operator ever ascribing any signal to ghosts. They go into some detail about the ambiguities of interpreta¬ tion, while stressing that 'the crucial fact of gestalt psychology is not easy to explain in words'. They assert that 'perception is there so that we should know when to stop projecting. A configuration of sounds evokes some vague association of words and we •start projecting them into the medley. Then we shall either find that there are other sounds which stand in the way of this pro¬ jection or we shall be happy until we pass to larger contexts- If then the sense does not fit we start introducing some auxiliary hypothesis to save our projection from being confuted'. Interpreting these obser¬ vations in the light of Wright's descrip-tions. the implication seems to be that rather than their being anomalous events, we are unconscious of the fact that acoustic projections take place continu¬ ously [11]. Just as only novice readers spell-out individual letters before inter- preting a written word. we interpret visual and auditory stimuli as conglomerate chunks of meaning according to complex pattern-recognition reflexes- Under normal circumstances these projections generate interpretations which concur with information derived from vision; taste, touch; smell and memory- Therefore we are only aware of the process and especially its imaginary, subjective aspect. when it occasionally generates inappro¬ priate cognitive images which fail to concur with the broader context.

Signals from across the entire electro¬ magnetic spectrum have a tendency to drift away from their broadcast frequencieSi and also to spontaneously demodulate onto amplifying circuits? as all audio amplifiers and radio gain-stages can function as broadband Very Low Fre¬ quency receivers. Microphone cables. especially when used out-doorSi often function as VLF antennae. Taxi-cab trans¬ missions, emergency services, airband, maritime, military, short, medium and long-wave commercial broadcasts; TV voice channels, radio ham experiments, CB. baby alarmSi mobile phones and many other sources all share a tendency to emerge in the same VLF waveband. Often these sig¬ nals are eliminated by the battery of electromagnetic shielding devices available (Faraday cages, electrically- konductive tents, paints, co-axial cables, earth lines etcl, and the radio frequency 'chokes' or line-filters which are typically installed in PA systems, car- stereos and VLF natural-phenomena receivers specifically to exclude these events. Wany stray signals are masked by the recep¬ tion of mains hum; the ubiquitous radio emission from the National Grid. When stray signals do periodically emerge they are often very garbled indeed, and therefore ideal raw material for acoustic projection. Some EVP researchers have attempted to control for these factors using metal Faraday cages, which surround the experimental apparatus. absorbing the external electromagnetic (radio) field, draining it into the earth and minimizing its influence; However most EVP techniques require not the removal, but the addition of extraneous noise to the basic input in order to improve both the success rate and clarity of recordings II]. Radio static, deliberately mistuned voice transmissions especially in languages not understood by the researcher [Arabic, Hungarian, Russian and Turkish have been recommended by and for German EVP researchersl. or even foreign-language courses oh tape are all used. as well as multiple audio-frequency oscillators, feedback, and recordings of bird song, fountains, hissing taps. rain, surf. and wind [121. This may seem counterintuitive, 'rather mysterious' and 'illogical in tieinz- erlings words, but it makes perfect sense in the light of Renier and Rubinstein's observations. EVP investigator Raymond Cass agrees that, amongst other hypotheses 'the voices may be a mutant development of some remote comer of the subconscious mind. or a transient byproduct of the electromagnetic pollution which now rings our planet', believing. however these explanations to be mutually exclusive [13]. But they are not.

A typical EVP process often seems to involve prompting the imagination by asking questions of the 'entities out loud - in the manner of a Spiritualist seance» taping, and then repeatedly analyzing any signals that emerge. Researchers allege the presence of polyglot voices (which switch languages from one word to the next] and evidently scour foreign dictionaries for meanings that concur with the rhythms of particular sequences, EVP 'take liberties with the grammar [13]. and use neologisms [invented words). In other words we are asked to accept that the entities have the intellect to acquire a grasp of many languages, while having lost the ability to speak grammatically or confine themselves to proper words. The fact is that these interpretive techniques set the widest possible parameters for the subjective attribution of meaning, thereby accumulating 'data~ which would other¬ wise be invalidated by virtue of its mean- inglessness. The widespread use of conventional pre-recorded audio firmly establishes the subjective origin of the imputed meanings. This argument could be countered by pointing to the observa» tion of shared meanings attributed to specific EVP, however Renier and Rubin¬ stein observed that 'projections have a way of sticking to sound..- it isn't easy once you hear your train rattling Carmen to make it change to the Blue Danube' [10]. By researchers--tell-themselves. at least, in general terms, how to interpret sounds before they manifest, heavily influencing subsequent analyses. When compiling EVP demonstration tapes the convention is to reinforce this process by having a narrator examples; Preemptively impressing renders the material useless for the purpose of objective analysis;

The use of prerecorded foreign language tapes brought to mind an article by Shawn Carlson in The Scientific American describing a psychoacoustics experiment designed by Diana Deutsch, a professor at .the University of California, San Diego [U] which clearly demonstrates how such acoustic projections can be induced and explored in laboratory conditions; Deutsch sampled the words 'high' and 'low'; and created a sequence in which the two samples are reproduced in alternating stereo channels; Played-back at 'dizzying' speeds; fast enough that the sounds remain recognizable as voices; while nullifying all semantic content, the sequence produces 'a pattern that sounds like language; but the words are not quite recognizable'; Carlson continues, "within a few seconds of listening to this strange \ cacophony, my brain started imposing a shifting order over the chaos as I began hearing distinct words and phrases- First came 'blank; blank; blank'. Then 'time» time time'- Then 'no time', 'long pine' and 'any time\ I was then astonished to hear a man's voice spilling out of the right speaker only- In a distinct Australian accent it said 'take me, take me, take me'". The analytical technique invented by Swiss psychiatrist ^——n ignanhach springs to mind [15]: this capacity reaches its ultimate aesthetic realization in the reper¬ toire of Salvador Dali, notably 'Paranoic Visage-the Postcard Transformed' I1935], the 'Head of a Woman in the Form of a Battle' (193^. the eerie 'Metamorphose du Visage d'Hitler en Paysage du Lune...' (19581 and 'Portrait of my Dead Brother [19631- The similarities between two of these paintings and themes in some EVP tapes [16] are not in my opinion accidental, since they are all representations of the personalities that typically haunt the unconscious mind.

The High-Low illusion is commercially available [17]- Purchasers are invited to share data they collect with Carlson and the Society for Amateur Scientists; however readers who subscribe to the conceptual basis of EVP should note that in their own words the Society is a 'conserva- tive^ organization, not sympathetic to pseudo-scientific belief systems- Carlson suggests experimenters 'see if your subjects responses correlate with their beliefs or state of mind1- To my amazement it recently transpired that virtually identical techniques are established methods for eliciting EVP; known to researchers as 'Speech Synthesis', 'a phenomenon which', it is erroneously claimed, 'at the present time completely evades physical explanation' [12]- While it seems clear that many EVP researchers are inadvertently reproducing acoustic projection, it cannot conversely be argued that the High-Low illusion inadvertently reproduces EVP- The diverse and evolving meanings projected into the unvarying source material of High-Low by even single subjects demonstrates that this phenomenon is endogenous and subjec¬ tive. If High-Low was an example of EVP. once recorded it would say the same thing to all subjects all the time; Conversely the preemptive narration characteristic of EVP demonstration recordings creates a shared illusion of entirely false exogeny and objectivity. The High-Low illusion does not involve strongly-held belief systems, or otherwise influencing one's own imagina¬ tion or that of any other experimental subject, except insofar as such influences may be used as controlled experimental variables used to determine EVP origins.

I would like to stress that while this a'rticle is obviously written from a point of view of deep rooted scepticism about the phenomenological claims of EVP, one thing I am not cynical about is people's generalized desire to experience some contact with their own deceased relatives and friends. I share this desire as keenly as anyone else. This is something I thought about constantly while making radio recordings of my own [18]. In admit¬ ting my own sentimentality 1 aspire to a greater degree of objectivity when criticizing the motives of other people- apparently Raudive was very religious and held strong beliefs about the afterlife. I would like the afterlife to exist as much as anyone else. but sincerely doubt EVP recordings offer any evidence of its reality, At the risk of being rude to EVP enthusi¬ asts whose motives are genuine; it nonetheless has to be said that a desire to capitalize on this; the most deep-rooted of all psychological needs, may be an a conscious motive on the part of some EVP proponents. Either way the fact remains that all EVP researchers must acquaint themselves with the processes of acoustic projection if they ever hope have their work taken seriously. The perfectly valid argument that we should respect beliefs which people adopt in order to dramatize and enliven their own lives. irrespective of whether or not they are true [19], needs to be tempered by noting a disturbing fact; My own general interpre¬ tation of the overlapping worlds of fringe- science and conspiracy theories is coloured by the observations of a close friend who has worked for years in psychi¬ atric social serviceSi and his contention that whether we like it or not some individ¬ uals, irrespective of intellect simply do not have adequate psychological resources to withstand their sense of reality being undermined by the wilful promulgstion of flaky belief-systems; In the arenas of 'alternative' culture and fringe-science dubious belief-systems are routinely used as simple marketing devices often without any apparent awareness ofi or sense of responsibility for? the potential social costs; My friend maintains that such belief-systems are directly implicated in a significant number of the cases he has had to deal with. Before anyone accuses me of implying guilt-by-association. Jurgen Heinzerling describes one promi¬ nent researcher, • Ernst Senkowski who. after extensive experimentation with EVP started hearing 'inner voices' before abandoning these activities 'for the sake of his own sanity1 [1].0na more positive note. as Shawn Carlson states, acoustic projec¬ tion offers interesting possibilities for future psychological research - as well as a context and new techniques for the development of increasingly sophisticated sound art; EVP recordings can be inter¬ esting artefacts in their own right, and it is tempting to suggest that they not only constitute an involuntary manifestation of some dark artistic impulse ~ after the manner of Dali's illusions or Commander Tuckers sound mirrors [20] - but also a potential source of real. useful insights into the workings of the human mind. If any reader can supply reprints and/or verifiable references to either reliable anecdotal reports of acoustic anthropo¬ morphism and projection phenomena, or relevant academic research, please send information addressed to myself c/o the record company - all sensible contri¬ butions would be much appreciated and will be fully acknowledged,

Many thanks to Caroline Grigson and MSCHarding for supplying source material used in this article-

* Tracks 77 and 78 of the CD

References

[1] Jurgen Heinzerling All about EVP' in Fortean Times tf 104
[2] John Fuller 'The Ghost from 29 Megacycles'. Grafton Books 1987
[3] Ash 2.7 'Ghost Shells, Ash 2.9 'R&D Track 1 and Ash 9.2 •R£iD Track 15^
[41 Ash 2.9'R&D Track 8'
[51 For even more self-contradictory thinking about whistlers see Stonehenge Viewpoint magazine
[6] Ash 3.4 'Antiphony' artwork, also Collins English Dictionary, 3rd edition 1991
[7] •Theophany on Ash 2.6 'A Fault in the Nothing' and Ash 3.2 'Stargate', also Ash 9,2'RSiDTrack14'
[8] Oliver Sacks 'Seeing Voices', University of California Press 1989, and Picador 1991
[9] David Wright 'Deafness, Stein and Day 1969, and Faber and Faber 1990, quoted in Oliver Sacks, op. cit
[10] Olive Renier and Vladimir Rubinstein 'Assigned to Listed, BBC 1986
[11] See also Henry Gleitman 'Psychology'i Norton/University of Pennsylvania 1986, pp. 203 204 'Perceptual Hypotheses'
[12] Information downloaded from http://www.vtf.de
[13] Quoting from tape demonstrations supplied to Ash International by Raymond Cass
[14] Shawn Carlson 'Dissecting the Brain with Sound' in Scientific American December 1996
[15] The 'single Rorschach projection described by Cleitman, op.cit. pp. 617-8, involves 'a head blowing smoke1, and also a 'ghost' and an 'angel' -• the last two being themes that by now will seem rather familiar
[16] Raudive 'recorded' his own deceased relatives and. very curiously. Adolf Hitler -• see this CD for the former. Jurgen Heinz- erling op. cit. for the latter; similarly Raymond Cass, op.cit. recorded Heinrich Himmler
[17] Diana Deutsch 'Musical Illusions and Paradoxes' CD. Philomel Records Inc. 1995
[18] Ash 3.2 op.cit.. hence the dedications in the insert notes, reissued on CD as Ash 9.2 'R£iD Track 131: this was expressed most directly in the track Ash 3.4 'Antiphony' disk 2 'Headlights'
[19] A conversation with editor Bob Rickard when I briefly worked as a layout artist for Fortean Times
[20] See also Barry Hales Antiphony Video Supplement and Sound Projector magazine ff5

J Banks


PARC | the ghost orchid | An introduction to EVP