We are pleased to announce that those on the other side wanted the AA-EVP to have a conference in 2006! We hope that you have already seen the brochure on the conference that we have included in this mailing and are as excited as we are! Sometime in late July, I woke up and asked Tom how I had started to work on the AA-EVP conference. He did not know, nor did I. I literally don’t know what possessed me but when I starting thinking about who put the "bee in my bonnet," things had progressed to a point of no return!

It is a little disconcerting sometimes to feel that you are not in total control of things, but then there is an upside to working with Spirit: Things just fall into place. From what we hope will be a wonderful hotel, to contacting speakers who said, "Yes," it all just sailed along! We are thrilled with the speakers and we hope the members will be too!

You will see articles on four of the speakers in this NewsJournal. Diana and Alan Bennett will be coming from England to be with us at the conference. We have run articles and printed the pictures of Diana and Alan, the mediums of the Scole experiments, in past NewsJournals. You will remember that they are getting amazing images, such as the one shown here, by following their Spirit Team’s guidance and shining different colored lights over crystal clusters. In this NewsJournal, you will learn more about them and their work with the Scole Experiments, which was a five year investigation into life after death. Those who attended the sessions at Scole, came away convinced that discarnate intelligences were making direct contact with them. For more information on these truly amazing experiments read, The Scole Experiment, Scientific Evidence for Life After Death, by Grant and Jane Solomon, (ISBN 0744921056). You can also visit the International Survivalist Society website. Be sure to look at the bottom of the ISS article for related articles.

www.survivalafterdeath.org.uk/articles/foy/scole.htm.

You only have to look on page two of this NewsJournal to see the amazing work of Sonia Rinaldi. Her work has been featured in the NewsJournal many times. Sonia will be traveling from Brazil.

Alexander MacRae will be traveling from Scotland to be with us. Alec’s research was extensively mentioned in our book, There is No Death. Recently he received two grants strictly for EVP research.

We were fortunate to meet Paolo Presi at the 2003 ITC conference in Vigo Spain. Paolo has been researching ITC for over 30 years and has published many articles on the subject during this time. He is one of the Founding Members and on the Board of Directors of Il Laboratorio. With Daniele Gullá and Michele Dinicastro, he manages an international program for researching the possible electroacoustical anomalies of the paranormal voices. This investigation uses sophisticated forensic software like that used by the FBI. Paolo will travel from Italy and will also show and translate for us a documentary on the work of famous Italian researcher, Marcello Bacci.

Dr. Gary Schwartz, noted for his research on mediums using double-blind tests, has agreed to present his latest research which takes his work with mediums even further. In a recent interview with Michael Tymn for the ARPR Bulletin, he said, "We are now interested in studying the process. The whole idea of how you establish that the medium is actually receiving communications from a genuine, conscious, decision-making person (spirit) is a very important question and we’re now asking questions as to what the afterlife is like."

Dr. Allan Botkin will share his work on Induced After Death Communication (IADC). Dr. Botkin has discovered that a variation of the relatively new psychological treatment called Eye-Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) produced an ADC more elaborate than those induced by Dr. Raymond Moody’s psychomanteum procedure. Botkin says that, with this method, ADC is actually easy to produce and works for anyone who is willing and able to participate in the procedure.

Mark Macy will be bringing the Luminator for those who would like to have their picture taken near this subtle energy device. Pictures taken in the presence of the device sometimes include spirit faces.

Sarah Estep, EVP pioneer and founder of the AA-EVP will talk about her experiences with EVP and work with attendees on learning to record EVP. Martha Copeland, cofounder of "The Recording Circle – Bridge to the Afterlife", will discuss her communication with her daughter, Cathy, now on the other side. She will instruct participants on how to go about recording the paranormal voices. The Reverend Robert Egby, a clinical hypnotherapist, will also be there to lead us through some guided meditations to help us reach our loved ones on the other side. We also hope to have a couple of blocks of time set aside for members to help those who attend, learn how to download EVP recordings into a computer and then listen to them using some of the basic software tools.

Please mark your calendar and join us June 8 through 10, 2006 at the Westin Atlanta Airport. The conference will run into Saturday night so plan on staying at the hotel that evening and then sightseeing or traveling back home on Sunday. Save your pennies! We hope to meet you there!

Lisa and Tom Butler

The Work of Sonia Rinaldi

Sonia Rinaldi continues her exceptional work and has sent us two sets of extraordinary pictures from two different experimental sessions. Sonia’s Panasonic PV DV 400 camera has a “mirror” function that she uses.

The first picture shows an apparition of a spirit lady. Sonia was conducting a session for a man named Reginaldo who was hoping to see his deceased son, which did happen later, but was very surprised to find frames with this very solid lady in them. The man sitting down is the subject of the experiment. The woman that you see standing to the side was not a person in the room and was not seen when the picture was taken. The woman was recognized as Reginaldo’s sister-in-law. The woman seems very solid and real.

The next set of images is from a long video in which Sonia selected some frames to send us. Again using the “mirror” selection on her camera, Sonia taped herself with a television set slightly behind her. She wrote that her head was touching the set. She goes on to say, “What can be observed is that the images come from the TV and come to the front, beside my face. In some frames one can see the shadow of the image over my blouse.” In the first example, (top of column two) Sonia extended her arm over the screen and out of the scene. The impression that her arm vanished is due to the camera mirror, but what is impressive, is how the noise on the screen seemed to interact with her. Part of her hand shows at the top of the image and seems to be obscured by the noise on the screen—further giving the impression that the video feature is projecting from the screen’s surface.

In another sequence Sonia raised her hand and the image floats over her hand. “This shows that they are able to interact with me.” Sonia feels the most impressive was when she passed her hand over the TV screen and, “the image seems to be frightened with my fingers and makes faces, opens the eyes, etc…”

Sonia says that it is incredible that her Spirit Contacts are able to work with her in real time. “This possibly means that they are out of our space-time or they are able to work faster than light.”

Lorelie McMorrow first became aware of EVP in 1988 after discovering that a brand new sealed tape that she had bought only a few hours earlier had her grandfather’s voice on it. Her grandfather, Archibald McClellan, had crossed over in 1981.

Lorie wrote, “On my way home, I had stopped at the cemetery. It was a rather emotional time with family problems and I said to my grandfather, ‘At least I wish I knew if you and Grandma were okay.’

“My grandfather was one of the old time movie projectionists. He and my grandmother worked together in movie theaters. Grandpa showed the films and grandma sold popcorn and pop from the 1930s to the 1970s. They worked together every evening, seven days a week, leaving home around 4 PM so that Grandpa could get the films ready and Grandma could start the popcorn popping. They were married 52 years.

“Grandpa loved to record his grandchildren’s voices on cassette recorders. He also used one of the old movie cameras to record us and the town in Wisconsin where we lived. These tapes are now in the town’s library.

“When Grandma became ill with Parkinson’s disease, Grandpa was devastated and eventually they were forced to retire. Grandpa might have continued to work in the job that he loved, but his love for Grandma was stronger … It was Valentine’s Day in 1977 that they spent their last night together … He held her hand until he had to let go the next morning.

“Grandpa’s love for Grandma never diminished during the remainder of his life. He collected stories about life after death, and was comforted by the ‘pennies from heaven,’ that he felt Grandma left for him around the house to let him know that she was alright. He waited for five years to join her.

“I guess his knowledge of taping grew in the Spirit World! This is the only recording that I have of this kind; that is, I did nothing to facilitate it. He said three words ‘Hi, Sweetheart hi!’ His voice was easily recognizable by my mother and her sisters, his daughters.”

After finding her grandfather’s startling voice on the new sealed tape, Lorie began doing research to try to find anything she could on this type of phenomena. She found Sarah Estep and the AA-EVP.

“I think that after he passed in 1981, he must have gotten to work to find a way to let our family know that he was alive and well. He continued to do this in later messages that I taped.” Lorie told us that some of these included, “We’re here, Lorie,” “Quite near,” “So happy,” “We’re good now,” “We’re getting along,” “We knew you’d call on us” and “We love you.”

Lorie said that she had not been recording for awhile, but after seeing the bonus features on the White Noise DVD, she is ready to try an IC recorder. We are glad that she is back and shared this wonderful story of a man interested in life after death, and determined to let his family know that he and his wife are alive and that we all survive the change called death.

A few days after putting the story together and sending it back to Lorie for review, we heard from Sharon Schoenick, Lorie’s mother and also an AA-EVP member. Sharon wrote, “I was on my computer Saturday night … I thought I would again look at your article. I read it through and then looked at the picture of my mother and dad and said to myself, I miss you both so much and I love you both so much. I then clicked to go to my home page, the screen went white and on the right side of the screen were the words, “Always Near,” printed in red. It happened very fast, but I have no doubt that it was my father coming through.

Omega is the nation’s largest, most trusted holistic education provider. Omega’s lakeside campus is set on 195 acres of rolling hills and woodlands in the Hudson River Valley, just two hours north of New York City. Three-day EVP workshop: Friday, October 21, 7 PM to 10 PM, Saturday, October 22, 9 AM to 5 PM and Sunday, October 23, 9 AM to Noon. Tuition is $285 (Omega members $260). Room and board is $169 for three days and $70 for commuters. There are daily yoga, tai chi, meditation and movement classes, as well as evening entertainment. Call 800-944-1001, or see www.eomega.org.

Alan and Diana Bennett were the primary mediums involved in the famous and often researched Scole Experiment. Alan is a carpenter and Diana has a healing practice. They have experienced paranormal phenomena during their childhoods, including contact with discarnate entities. They became involved in the Scole Experiments after replying to an advertisement for sitters for a physical circle with Robin and Sandra Foy. Previously, the group had experienced limited phenomena, but soon after Alan and Diana joined the circle, the group experienced “energy swirls,” trance communications and apports began to appear.

The Scole Group is no longer meeting but Alan and Diana have continued experimenting and have produced impressive visual ITC which we have featured in past NewsJournals.

The Bennetts will speak at the June 2006 AA-EVP conference in Atlanta, Georgia.

by Alan and Diana Bennett

Our interest in Spiritual matters spans many years and goes back long before the Scole Experiment was conceived. For myself (Diana), as a child, I was aware of many things outside of the normal range of those around me. I would see or speak with forms of those that had passed on but this never happened to me in a frightening way, I hasten to add. It was more frightening to be having these experiences when others were not.

Alan also had unexplained experiences as a child. One occurred when he was in his cot, a young couple came and looked at him and smiled. He remembers seeing through them, as if they were formed from tiny specks of light. These images are as fresh today as the time they were experienced, like a sort of spiritual imprint on our minds.

Each house we occupied since we married has had interactive energies of various types. Lights would go on and off of their own accord, during the day and night. We were aware of other presences, which were no particular problem really, so we happily co-habited with them.

While our children were young, we moved into a particularly active house. We did all sorts of improvements, which may have triggered this off. Even then, Spirit took care not to scare the children and only played with the lights when they were not around. They would be turned on in another room and left on until we turned them off, only to find them on again later! Several occasions they turned the light off when we were in the room, which can be annoying not to mention unnerving. Eventually we found that by asking for the lights to be put back on, they were. One night, we were both levitated in our armchairs but it only happened to us once and was never repeated thankfully, as it was a bit unexpected!

Some years later, we decided to build a new house; a house with no associations. We were tired of active houses. During this phase of our lives, we were exploring mediumship, reading lots of books and going to demonstrations, etc. We decided to meditate regularly and sit together, each giving focus to the other in turn. Our development proceeded at a steady pace alongside our busy lives. On one occasion a light bulb blew and an initial was burnt onto the inside of the glass globe. This happened to be the initial of the communicator at that time. This really intrigued us and we discussed our thoughts regarding studying this kind of phenomena. Soon after this, a loud audible rap was heard coming from the table, as if in answer. This made us investigate physical psychic phenomena as tangible objective proof of the survival of the human spirit. However, the time was not right; our lives were too occupied with other matters.

So, we continued to focus on our development. The channeling and communication was getting better as we were now sitting together twice weekly on a regular basis. We found the energy was particularly good when we focused together for a common purpose. Again, the lights would flicker or go out during these sessions or at times bulbs would fly out from their bayonet fittings, and land across the other side of the room, unbroken! After this happened twice we tried hard to see if we could make this happen normally, but it never did.

The energies were becoming more apparent in the room in other ways too. Sometimes it was difficult to see one another, as the swirls of energy became so dense and colorful. One day a really funny apport arrived in our hallway. The previous day, the middle of our toilet roll holder had broken, just a minor inconvenience (pardon the pun) as our nearest hardware shop was over five miles away. The next morning, there in the middle of our hall floor, lay a brand new wooden one, better than the one we had! We were very grateful! It fit perfectly!

One day we saw an advertisement for sitters for a physical circle with Robin and Sandra. We telephoned them and arranged to meet later that week. Some members had left the group and we were invited to join the rest, now that the group was being reformed. At that time, we were happy to give energies to help to get some phenomena started and we continued like this for some time, but with only limited results.

What none of us knew was that Spirit had destined us for new and exciting work. They created a situation one night when only Alan, Robin and I were present. “Oh well,” said Robin, ever the positive enthusiast, “tonight, anything goes”! On that memorable night, Spirit opened the door to energy work.

I felt myself going deeper and deeper as if I was stepping back from myself and being engulfed in a soft loving energy. The atmosphere was electric and I remember seeing energy swirls in front of me. I felt physically big and my back and head were erect and aligned. I knew that I was going to be used, and tonight ‘anything goes,’ so I just surrendered to the wonderful feeling and let go. Manu (a spirit helper, I had previously been unaware of) came through and spoke to us. A coin was teleported and he said this was a token of greater things to come. I have no idea how long he was present and it took a while for me to gradually come back to a waking state.

Many patient weeks followed and Alan’s development began to flourish. Manu came when it was appropriate as the energy was being shared.

Alan had different experiences to mine when going into trance. He described the initial stage as similar to the sensation of falling backwards with eyes closed. He felt perfectly comfortable with this, as there was an overwhelming feeling of love that cocooned him from any anxieties. He can remember floating, flying and swimming all at the same time, and in what he describes as a sea of perfect bliss. Patrick was the first of Alan’s guides to speak and soon settled in, bringing us information (and humorous comments) on a regular basis. Patrick once described the sensation he experienced when coming through as, “Like swimming through warm custard!”

We both agree that these experiences gave us insights into other states of consciousness, where time and space ceases to exit as we know it. Each of us felt different. The whole group’s energy had changed. It seemed somehow lighter working with energy. A trust built up between the communicators and the group. Much of what was said was based on good evidence of survival and this gave a solid foundation, both for us and the other sitters in the group. We were being taught and guided to live our lives in a more spiritual way, and reminded to meditate and always link up at night with the Universal Harmony, which seemed to aid them to link with us in the sleep state.

As time went on, the phenomenon continued to develop and the spirit lights began. Glad as Alan and I were to be a part of all this wonderful work, our only disappointment was not seeing these things like the others. Then one day the communicators said that for the next session, we would not be used in deep trance so we could have a different experience. So, when this special time came, we were able to see a limited light display. We will never forget this and could well understand the oh’s and ah’s we heard when we listened to the recordings of the sessions.

We thank the International Survivalist Society for permission to reprint this article.

survivalafterdeath.org.uk/articles/bennett/reflections.htm

by Victor Zammit

The mind/brain debate has been going on for more than twenty centuries. Historically, it is one of the most important debates ever. Plato and Socrates in the classical age of Greece, and Descartes before the Age of Enlightenment in Europe, promoted and accepted the duality of mind and brain.

As a psychic investigator, I state in absolute terms that there is overwhelming objective evidence that the physical brain is not the mind. The physical brain dies when the physical body dies, but the mind survives physical death. Today, without any objective evidence, materialists claim that mind and brain are the same thing.

My objective evidence for a separate mind is to be found in the twenty-three different areas for the evidence of the afterlife in my book on the Internet. (The web site is at: www.victorzammit.com/book/index.htm l). The evidence for survival can be used to show the separate existence of the mind and brain before and after physical death. And equally the existence of mind separate from the brain is evidence for life after death.

Empirical research—admissible evidence—has shown that whereas the physical brain is destroyed at the moment of death the mind continues to survive. The mind is pure vibrating energy and:

The mind can be seen as the driver of a motor car and the brain as the car itself. The brain obeys the mind. The mind gives direction and continues to accumulate all the experiences. When the car rusts and “dies,” the driver’s mind lives on.

Not all minds are equal in development. Some minds are more powerful and more developed than others. A superior mind can influence and manipulate inferior, less evolved minds—even from great physical distance. However, even if it takes eons of time, each mind will continue to refine and become stronger and more powerful in the afterlife.

Scientists have conducted and are conducting critical research into psychic phenomena and the afterlife. Some of the most brilliant and important scientists who ever lived on this earth have used and are using their skills as scientists to show that the afterlife, and hence the mind, exists.

Whilst materialists and closed-minded skeptics try to attack or ignore the objective evidence for psychic phenomena and the afterlife, the fact of the matter is that no materialist, no closed-minded skeptic, no scientist, no negatively minded psychologist has ever rebutted the evidence for the afterlife, and for the existence of the mind.

Since psychic phenomena such as mediumship, out-of-body experiences, near-death experiences, remote viewing, materializations, proxy sittings, poltergeists, Electronic Voice Phenomena and Instrumental Transcommunication have been and are producing positive results, then it inevitably follows that the same evidence can be used for supporting the separation of the mind and the brain.

Those materialist psychologists who have been saying that the mind does not exist have not rebutted the objective and other evidence for psi and the afterlife. They claim that all psychic/spiritual experiences emanate from the “limbic system” within the brain. (See for example Chapter 18 of my book on near-death experiences).

When quality mediumship, such as John Edward’s, is being demonstrated on television, those from the other side sending messages are using their minds and not the brain. Currently, research is being done but initial results from just five shows demonstrate that the information John Edward is obtaining during his television shows, Crossing Over, cannot come by chance: conservatively, the mathematical probability is more than 2,000,000 to 1 and if all shows are considered during the one year the mathematical probability will be astronomical—significantly more than twenty times the odds stated. Translated, this means it is not possible the information is being obtained by chance. It is the mind which is providing the information.

Since the brains of those who crossed over no longer exist, having been destroyed when they physically died, it follows then, that it is the mind of these individuals which is sending messages to their loved ones on earth.

Similarly it is the mind which is operational when the person’s brain is unconscious or clinically dead and the person has vivid memories of an out-of-body experience or a near-death experience. As Dr. Peter Fenwick (an internationally renowned neuropsychiatrist and a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in the United Kingdom), Dr. Willem Van Lommel (cardiologist from Holland) and Dr. Kenneth Ring (empiricist in the study of near-death experiences in the United States), pointed out: how can the materialists explain a person whose brain is ‘flatlining’ on an EEG being able to describe in vivid detail what had been happening in the operating theatre after he was clinically dead? Clearly, Dr. Fenwick and others are stating that, when science is being used to show that the brain is technically dead, it is the mind which is observing and remembering what is going on in the operating theatre and in other nearby rooms. And this is only a fraction of the evidence available by cardiologists and psi researchers.

*Victor uses the term, “empirical” in the same way we us it when we suggest the term as the name of a new field of study: “Empirical Metaphysics.” The points he makes in this article echo our point that there is a need for a dedicated field to study ITC. We continue to explore the idea of a dedicated field of research and would like to hear your thoughts on the subject. The name, of course, is open for discussion, as well.

The latest explanation for EVP that we have been encountering is the idea that the experimenter is unknowingly creating EVP on the recording medium and accomplishes this feat through psychokinesis (PK). Rob Smith sent us an editorial on the movie White Noise that appeared in the Fortean Times. The author wrote: “One interesting category of EVP—messages which seem to emanate from people still incarnate (rather than discarnate)—is reminiscent of what used to be known as ‘crisis apparitions’: those apparently telepathic communications in which the experiencer remotely sees, hears or otherwise perceives, at a distance, a friend or relative undergoing a crisis or death issue.

“Such messages defy the widespread belief that EVP emanate from the ‘other side,’ suggesting that they may have more in common with ESP [Extra Sensory Perception] than discarnate entities. Some EVP [experimenters] have felt too, that some kind of ‘experimenter effect’ is at work during their sessions, an idea that might coincide with Jung’s notion of the unconscious itself as capable of creating nonphysical, but nonetheless ‘real’ entities.”

We asked longtime EVP researcher, Alexander MacRae, what he thought about this idea and he had some interesting things to say. He wrote, “Regarding PK and ESP, I would say that it is obvious that some sort of mental/psychic cause is behind the effect, whatever the mechanism. I do not think that it is under the control of the experimenter, however.”

Regarding the “experimenter effect,” Alec mentioned several instances which he feels show that the experimenter is not in control of the EVP phenomena. In Alec’s method the experimenter or operator is actually connected electrically to the system and in fact becomes part of the system. He notes, “I have seen completely new people get excellent results immediately. For example, one person who is not psychic, never heard of EVP and is a bit wary of things spooky, got, ‘That is my body, you are over,’ immediately, loud and spooky.”

“Again, I was demonstrating for two physicists in a hotel in Glasgow. One, who was also a medium, got good results without actually touching the hand plates, which you are supposed to do. His girlfriend also got good results. The third, Archie MacDonald, B.Sc., put his hands on the boards [hand plates] and immediately received wonderful results. His results were the best of all three people. Then he said, ‘Now what do I have to do to make this thing work?’ The device stopped producing EVP.

“Prior to this, I demonstrated to a Dr. Berger and his wife. His wife got splendid results. Dr. Berger, head of the Survival Research Foundation and a lawyer, got nothing. If anyone ought to have been motivated to get results it would have been him.”

Another time that Alec had a person not get results was when he was demonstrating to a group at the Palace Hotel in Inverness. “One, a Canadian engineer, decided it was a scam. He later told me that he thought I made it talk by tapping the hand plates with my fingers in speech rhythms. So that’s what he did when it came to his turn. Out of twenty people, he was the only one who didn’t get anything.”

Concerning whether or not discarnate entities are involved, Alec told us this story: The young son of a friend of his got into drugs and died tragically in March. The day of the funeral, in the evening, Alec did a recording for the man’s mother, G, and his wife to be, S. Both were too distressed to be there.

At one point in the recording, Alec asked, “Did you like the flowers?” and received a voice saying, “Yes.” There was a pause and then the word “Helen.” Helen had been at the funeral, and if it had not been for her, the flowers would not have gotten to the gravesite. The next utterance was spoken by two voices simultaneously. Fortunately one was high and one was low so Alec was able to separate them. One was a private message for the young man’s mother and the other said, “Stress … couldn’t handle it” … silence and then, “Say goodbye to St. Mary’s.” Alec found the message touching and wondered if St. Mary’s was the church that he was supposed to be married in.

Alec did not share these messages for a while as he wrote, “It was all too tragic.” He visited the mother and wife-to-be weeks later to tell them what he had recorded. He asked if St. Mary’s meant anything to S. “Yes,” she said, “that is where we used to pick up the drugs.”

What do you think about the idea that discarnate entities are not involved and it is the experimenter that somehow places EVP on the recording media? We would like to hear from you. Do you have examples that support either view?

People keep trying to come up with an explanation for EVP that excludes the possibility of life after death. As noted in the previous article, one of the latest explanations for EVP is that the messages are somehow coming from the experimenter’s mind. We have had report after report from members who have gotten EVP regarding things that they did not know about. Many have received messages from people whom they thought were alive; only later to learn that they had transitioned to the other side. Experiments conducted in the 1950s by parapsychologist, Raymond Bayless and psychic, Atilla von Szalay, were designed specifically to address this question.

Bayless had wanted to find out if the paranormal messages were coming from von Szalay’s mind. In one experiment, an EVP gave the location of Bayless’ brother who had left town without telling anyone where he was moving. When Bayless asked the name of his grandmother, a name unknown to von Szalay, a voice answered, “Emma,” and was correct. In another recording, von Szalay recognized the voice of a woman he had known years earlier. They later learned that she had committed suicide only days before her voice was recorded. The two felt that the single most important thing that they had been able to conclude from their research was the fact that the voices were somehow independent of Attila von Szalay’s mind.

As a side note, these two researchers should be better known in the history of EVP, as they published their initial findings in a letter of the January 1959 issue of The Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research a few months before Friedrich Jürgenson announced the discovery of the voices in Sweden. As most of you know, Jürgenson is credited with the discovery of the voices.

From EVP/ITC research, we know that a physical person has an etheric self existing in close relationship to the physical body. People are spirit first, and when people are less engaged with their physical body, as in sleep or meditation, they are very much like the etheric communicators we receive messages from via EVP. So we know that some EVP may come from our thoughts or minds but this is certainly not where all EVP comes from.

Have you recorded something that you did not know about until later? Share your story with us by contacting us

Correspondence from J. E., New York

I have had a life-long interest in the paranormal. I read A Gift of Prophecy at age 12 and was fascinated and transfixed. I have always had a strong intuitive sense with some precognitive overtones. In the 1970s, following the news of the suicide of an adolescent buddy, I purchased a cassette recorder and began experimenting with the collection of discarnate voices. I had no success and soon gave up the pursuit. The interest in the possibility of an afterlife lingered, however, and many experiences as a youth convinced me that there was a conduit to realities that were otherwise invisible. I maintain that belief to this day.

In December of 2004, I casually scanned a copy of my high school alumnus and noted the name and address of a woman in my graduating class whom I knew only marginally. I recalled the last time my first wife and I had seen her in a tavern watching her husband play in a band. Within a few days, I awoke one morning with her on my mind for no discernable reason. I regularly check my hometown newspaper online. That morning there was an article about an unidentified middle-aged woman who'd been struck down and killed instantly by a hit and run driver on a downtown street. Somehow I knew it was HER and the next day's obituaries confirmed it. Like many people in that community, I felt a great sense of gloom and loss. But what did that loss represent to me, personally? I barely knew the woman and could not understand my melancholy obsession. My wife brought home the DVD version of The Mothman Prophecies, which resonated very close to the feelings I had. At some point in early summer, I purchased White Noise on a whim. Again, the subjective feel was similar. It was in the special features section that I discovered the research you and your wife were undertaking. I explored and bookmarked your website, followed some links and slowly set about the task of doing a bit of research myself.

My father-in-law passed on this spring, and my wife has been preoccupied with cleaning out his house in preparation to sell it. I bought an RCA RP 5011 digital voice recorder and brought it with me to the house. I noticed a bit of whirring interference in spots on playback but no voices. I set it aside and over the summer began recording the sounds of my brewing coffee pot (coffeepotghost.com) on a Panasonic RQ 8000 cassette recorder I’d found in mint condition at a yard sale, with a microphone I obtained at Radio Shack. I replayed the cassettes on my Panasonic SA-AK410 stereo system. Brewing coffee pots make some interesting noises, but once again; no voices were obtained. Last night I picked up the digital note taker and began talking. I asked rather sarcastically: “Hello, dead people. Is there anything you want to say to me?” Immediately on playback came a clipped Class A-B response: “Yes, we do. We’re not dead ... NOT dead people.”” I realized I’d spoken rather disrespectfully and apologized. I explained that I’d been trying to make contact for awhile and that tonight was my first success. I’d spoken out of frustration. Again, the playback response was immediate with 2 or 3 sentences that were not understandable, but nonetheless valid communication. Subsequent attempts have not been fruitful, but I intend to keep trying. I hope that you find my story interesting and that it adds validation to research that is more valuable (in my opinion) than most people realize.

by Martha Copeland

Monday I learned that my Aunt Doris, who, besides my mother, was the only living family member on my mother’s side, had passed at the age of eighty-eight. I had just talked to Doris and she was telling me of plans to go to Bingo and Atlantic City, so the news of her death was a shock. I cannot say that Aunt Doris was one of my favorite aunt’s as she was a bit mean to us when we were growing up. She had this irritating voice that had the same annoying effect as someone scratching chalk on a blackboard.

Aunt Doris had called me after seeing the feature about EVP on the Maury Show that our AA-EVP group was a part of to promote the movie, White Noise. She had never believed in the afterlife (maybe this is one reason she was so mean), but she wanted to questioning me about the segment on the Maury Show during which I talked about Cathy. I sent her a copy of my book, and even though she was almost blind, she read it by using a magnifying glass. She telephoned me and my mother to tell us how much she enjoyed reading the book. [Martha’s daughter, Cathy, is now on the other side, and Martha’s book, I’m Still Here, is about her continuing relationship with Cathy via EVP.]

Aunt Doris had such a terrible fear of death, but after reading my book, she was at peace with this life transition. She promised that, when her time came, she was going to come through my recorder.

My mother has already heard from Aunt Doris. She was walking around her yard looking at all her beloved animals’ graves and reminiscing about the old days when she heard Doris call her name twice. Mother was not shocked because this has happened each time a family member has crossed over. What surprised her is that Aunt Doris’s voice was not raspy and sounded young again. I had hoped that when Doris decided to contact me through my recorder, she would use that younger voice.

And, yes, I did hear from Aunt Doris a couple times after her crossing, but the EVP were not clear enough. Aunt Doris’s voice seemed to be coming through as what would be categorized as between a Class B and Class C EVP. I could make out what she was saying, but I needed something that my parents’ could understand and know it was Doris. In the first EVP from Doris, I heard her squeak my name sort of like this: “Mar-tthhhaaaa!” The second time was better, “Mar-thhhaa- I’m A-L-I-V-E … with Cat- zzzzz!”

I spoke out loud to Aunt Doris (and into my recorder) and asked her if she remembered our conversation before her death. I had explained to Doris how the voices from beyond come through our recorders in different classifications. Class A was the best, Class B is okay and a Class C usually requires a trained ear. I told Doris that she needed to come through loud and clear if she wanted me to share her EVP with my mother.

Upon finishing a conversation on the phone with my sister, Donna, I realized that my recorder was on in my bedroom. I do not remember turning this recorder on but this happens to me a lot and I am used to it. Playing back the recorder, I could hear my voice from my office saying, “Good-bye” to my sister and than there it was: Doris’s voice. Aunt Doris came through with a pretty clear EVP saying, “I’ve Survived!”

I played this EVP for my sister, Ginny. Ginny was shocked and said, “Aunt Doris!” Ginny was disappointed that, when we cross over, we might keep our old voices instead of being more youthful sounding. Aunt Doris came through with her old voice so I would recognize her.

After my conversation with Ginny I called my mother and asked her to listen to this EVP and tell me what she heard. My mother immediately said, “Play again!” and after I did, “That’s Doris’s voice!” Mother called my father to the phone and even with his poor hearing abilities he recognized Doris’s voice. Recording her voice has helped my parents’ so much with facing their own aging process.

We receive numerous letters from people asking if working with EVP somehow conflicts with the religious teachings. The short answer is usually not, but a good way to answer this question is from a past NewsJournal.

In 1997 Sarah Estep quoted Father Gino Concetti from an interview printed in the Vatican newspaper, The Osservatore Romano, saying, “According to the modern catechism, God allows our dear departed persons who live in an ultra-terrestrial dimension, to send messages to guide us in certain difficult moments of our lives. The Church has decided not to forbid any more the dialogue with the deceased with the condition that these contacts are carried out with a serious religious and scientific purpose.” (Printed in the AA-EVP NewsJournal, Volume 16 Number 2, 1997)

Alexander MacRae has received a grant from Bial Foundation to see if there are any time and content links between what the person conducting an EVP session says or asks and the utterances recorded. The project requires four sessions a month over a period of two years and Alec says that it is taking up almost all of his time.

Each session is precisely three minutes long with a set of six questions being asked at 30-second intervals. The six questions are predetermined and are the same in each session. They are all different and include, for example, “What is your name?” and “What is the time?”

Alec wrote, “I extract the utterances from the recording, then put them in random order and send them to Professor Vorster who determines if each one could be a response to any of the questions, and if so he marks on a chart the number of the question concerned. For example, if the utterance was “late afternoon,” that would be category 2, and so he would put 2 on the chart.

“I know when that response was recorded and so I can plot it on a chart as to when it occurred and what type of response it was.”

Alec also has a listening panel review the responses and assign categories independent from Professor Vorster. Alec continues, “So, for example Vorster had considered a response to be category 5, but only two people agreed with him, then his categorization would only have a value of 2. It’s all a bit statistical, and we already know there are responses, but to prove it to the scientific community we have to go through this sort of thing. If there are links between the questions and the answers then these will show up on the three-dimensional chart in the end as mountains and hills.

Alec tells us that the entities are starting to learn the procedure and are giving answers just before or at the same time as the question is asked. On a couple of occasions Alec wrote that they “reversed the situation and asked me the question instead!”

From his reports, we believe that some of the lessons we are learning in the 4Cell experiments are being confirmed with Alec’s work. Alec is also encountering some interesting problems that might best be described as “bored entity syndrome.” We will try to report in some detail about this in the next NewsJournal.

This came after the writer watched the White Noise DVD:

My mother died of lymphoma when I was nineteen. I was a long ways away from the home I had lived in all my life, attending college in another state. It was a very difficult experience, though not unique, you know. Her mother, my grandmother, survived her, and for as awful as it was for my father, sister and I, I know that no parent expects or wants to outlive their child. But she did, for nearly ten years. My grandmother was ninety when my mother, her youngest child, died. I was to attend her 100^th birthday party in September 2001. Her health wasn’t great, but her mind was clear as a bell. I know this because I spoke with her on the phone biweekly. She was a very independent woman. Her husband, my grandfather, died when they were in their seventies. She lived in an apartment for seniors, alone for most of my life. Her gift from the family on her ninetieth birthday was a new car. I understand it may seem irresponsible to encourage someone that age to drive, but, honestly, that’s how well and present she was.

After my mother died, she became afraid to live on her own, and gave up her apartment and moved in with my aunt and her husband. They were old themselves, and found it difficult to take care of her as parts of her body failed (but never her mind—how strong she must have been to deal with her deteriorating health). About six months before she died, they had to put her in a home.

She passed away five days before her hundredth birthday. I honestly believe this was not because her health had failed completely, but because she had asked not to have a party for the occasion and knew her wishes weren’t going to be granted. I also think that, because she knew I was coming (and 9-11 had just happened), she didn’t want the youngest daughter of her youngest (deceased) daughter to fly home for the party.

I flew home for the funeral instead. It was the least tragic funeral I have ever been to in my life. She was the matriarch of our family, and everyone missed her terribly, but we knew she had lived a full life and had (secretly) simply let herself go to spare herself the indignity of being propped up in front of a bonfire cake in a wheelchair with a silly hat on her head.

I was not able to visit the home frequently, and I know her choice (and I do believe, even at her great age, she willed herself to death) to die was hard because she knew it would mean she wouldn’t see me again. But over the years, we had come to have very meaningful phone calls, especially on holidays, and I received one on Thanksgiving of 2001, two months after her death. That is why I’m writing.

I was asleep in the early morning when my phone rang. I answered. It was Nanny. I spoke with her for a few moments before I realized and remarked to her that she was dead and how could I be talking to her. (Perhaps I should mention that the phone I spoke to her on was a very unreliable one? It was cheap and didn’t often work—but it did this day). She told me that she was with my mother and that everything was fine. I should mention that though I missed her, her life was so long that my grief at her death was not overwhelming, not so much that I might have imagined this conversation. We spoke for a while and said our goodbyes. I was half asleep when she called, and when I have related this story to others, they have told me it was a dream.

But here’s the thing, I remember the sound of the phone ringing. I remember opening my eyes and looking about the room as I spoke on the phone. I remember all of the specific sensations at the time, and they weren’t dreamlike. I have had many dreamlike sensations and communications with my mother after she died but I chalked it up to grief renderings. This experience was nothing like those. My waking sensations during the conversation were far too specific.

I remember hanging up the phone, but after that I’m blank. Perhaps I passed out or perhaps it was a dream. I should mention that I’m not on any drugs now nor was I then. But if it was a dream, it was the most real, tactile dream of my life. I’ve had a lot of vivid dreams in my life, and know them for what they were, but this one has me mystified and doubting. So my question is, have you heard of anything like this before? Have you heard of anyone getting phone calls from “beyond the grave?” This one I received was the only one, and it was such that I think it was just to make sure that I was OK. I think that my mother was not able to speak to me at the time because she had been dead too long, and had transformed too much to communicate with the living.

There was no searching through static in the conversation, though there was a faraway feeling. Even though we were able to talk just as we had for many holidays before, there was a knowing that my grandmother would now be moving far away, to a place I couldn’t reach her anymore. Real or imagined, the call gave me peace.

Comment: We responded, as we try to for all such emails. In this case, we explained that such phone calls are one way that our loved ones are sometimes able to say a last good-by.

We also recommended Phone Calls From The Dead, D. Scott Rogo and Raymond Bayless, Prentice-Hall, Inc., New Jersey, 1979. ISBN 0-13-664334-5. We include the book at http://aaevp.com/evp_books.htm 

The Prince of Wales Inn at Kenfig in Wales has an interesting past. It was the Guild Hall for the Borough of Kenfig in the 16^th century. People began leaving Kenfig when sand from the sea started to cover the town and its fields. By the middle of the 17th century the town was abandoned. The Inn survived because it was on higher ground. In 1940 the charter for the town dated in 1369 was found in a metal box in the wall of the Inn.

In the 1980s, an interesting experiment took place at this historic inn. The owner at that time complained that his sleep was being disturbed by the sound of organ music and voices. An electrical engineer, John Marke, and an industrial chemist, Allan Jenkins, got permission to electrify a wall of the Inn while making a recording. “Why would anyone do this?” you ask. Well, in 1972 a theory regarding ghosts, known as “The Stone Tape” theory, was made popular by a BBC TV drama written by Nigel Kneale. The theory was that information of the past could be stored in the fabric of a building. It was said that a ghost could be recorded in the building material of a room or building and would follow a predetermined course of action, such as working at a bench no longer there or crossing the room in a certain location. We have all heard reports of “recorder ghosts.” Such ghosts are always seen performing the same task, such as walking up the stairs, they show no awareness of the living and seem more like some kind of recording.

In “The Nature of Ghosts: A Review of the Evidence”,* author Paul Lee remarks that, “This explanation [The Stone Tape theory] does have many parallels with ‘real’ ghost-stories … The Treasurer’s House in York (where a worker in the basement saw a legion of Roman soldiers, whose legs were cut off at the ankles–the current level of the ground is higher), Westminster Abbey (where a priest is seen walking an inch or two above the ground, marking the settling of the ground since he ‘died’) and Bell Lane in Enfield, London (where a phantom stagecoach allegedly rushes along six feet above the ground).”

At the Prince of Wales Pub, Jenkins and Marke connected electrodes to a wall of the pub after closing. They fed 20,000 volts across the electrodes, turned on their tape recorders and locked up. The experiment lasted some four hours and the two men reported that they recorded organ music, footsteps, people speaking in old Welsh and a clock ticking when no clock was in the room. They did state that they had recorded a very small amount of sound over their many hours of recording. They theorized that the mysterious sounds that they had recorded were encapsulated within the fabric of the building and that they had disturbed or energized the sites within the structure with the electrical current. Examples of the recordings, along with an explanation, can be heard at www.hauntednewjersey.com/evp/index.html. You’ll see a link that says, “Talking Walls,” about halfway down the page. Marke mentions another theory and that is that the walls contained silica and another material; similar substances to those found in recording tape.

On the above mentioned recording, Marke states that they had received funding for better equipment and further research. According to Paul Lee’s article, shortly after the 1982 Prince of Wales experiments, Marke said that BBC “Newsnight” and TV crews from Canada and Japan had filmed the experiments under controlled conditions and gotten surprising results. We can find no evidence of these tests being written up and this chain of research along with Marke and Jenkins simply disappears from sight.

Lee also reported that technicians at the BBC described the Prince of Wales Pub sounds as being akin to distortion and feedback, perhaps caused by a large transformer that was required to create the massive voltage that was used in the experiments. Voices are heard in parts of the recording and they go on for quite a while. The electrified wall also had the potential of functioning as an antenna that could, in effect, rebroadcast radio signals to the recorder. We did note that one segment of the examples did have a radio-like quality to the voice. Are these voices EVP or were they radio signals?

If you have time to listen to the recording let us know what your opinion of them is. We thank Garrett Husveth for bringing the tapes and this interesting experiment to our attention. Although we would discourage anyone who is not an electrician from doing this, Garrett has said that he is going to attempt doing a recording in a similar fashion. We hope to report his results.

Comment: David Vee of the UK has recorded men speaking (thought to be an old Latin dialect) while lowering a draw bridge that had been removed around 1550. In the same building, he also recorded sounds like a very heavy object being slid into place, even though the building was unoccupied and nothing present could have caused such a sound. Perhaps electrification is unnecessary.

*Strange Nation “The Nature of Ghosts: A Review of the Evidence,” Paul Lee www.strangenation.com.au

We have added some new Regional Coordinators to our list as well as a Technical Advisor. Technical Advisors are very computer and recorder savvy. Our two new Regional Coordinators are (dated material). Members now have several different types of resources for help. They can get assistance from members on the Idea Exchange or contact the nearest Regional Coordinator.

These members all record EVP and have agreed to help other members in their area with the basics of recording. If you need their physical addresses see the Cross-country list.

There are still areas of the country that would be helped by having coordinators. If you record EVP and use the computer to listen to your EVP and would like to help new members learn how to record, please contact us.

Regional Coordinators: Are listed in bold on the Cross-country. Members needing help or having questions can find a coordinator nearest them and make contact by mail or email. (Contact us if a street address is not listed and we will have them contact you.) The coordinators will attempt to help as they can, and if necessary, they will assist members in finding the answer elsewhere. Coordinators can do more, but members should not expect local activities arranged by the coordinators.

Technical Advisors: Have experience with the equipment side of recording EVP and working with related software.

In June, Scott Corrales, of the Institute of Hispanic Ufology, translated an article from Spain. The article concerned a requested exhumation because a deceased woman’s voice was being heard on a cell phone, requesting the removal of a cross that she had been buried with. Scott wrote, “A family has requested district judge number six of Grenada to issue a court order authorizing the exhumation of their mother, claiming that an Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP) recorded on a cell phone indicates that the deceased is requesting the removal of a cross placed over her chest during burial. The judge asked them to consult with a priest.

“According to the deceased woman’s daughter, the woman has been contacting them from beyond the grave via cell phone. She explained that she has no idea where her mother’s messages are coming from, adding that when any member of the family records anything on her cell phone, ‘what is played back is my mother’s voice saying come, come, the cross.’ Furthermore, her grandfather and uncle, buried in the same tomb as her mother, are also sending audible messages through family cell phones.

“The judge, who met the family members for three minutes and managed to hear the spirit voice recordings, explained that he lacked the competence to rule on such a matter and explained that they should take their claim to either a priest or to the Higher Council on Scientific Research (CSIC). The mother, Filomena Gómez died two years ago at 55 from liver cancer.”

• Richard Shenk sent us a few photographs that had pretty good likenesses of people’s faces. The pictures are of roadside trees taken by his granddaughter as his car was traveling at highway speeds. The resulting smear of color and brightness produced the sort of optical noise that we have learned produces phenomenal features. The features in the photographs are not sufficiently distinct to show here, but we did agree that there were convincing faces in the examples Richard sent. We even found an additional feature for ourselves.

• A web site visitor sent us an email with a face that looked a lot like one of the characters out of the Broadway play, “Cats.” It was in the optical pattern formed by the “temporal frequency analysis” display in WavePad. Again, the face is not sufficiently distinct to allow printing, but it is definitely there.

• Michaela Steiner posted a good example of a face on a turned off television screen. This is a relatively common, but little understood form of visual phenomena in which the face is clearly on the surface of the television screen. As with Michaela’s example, there is almost always a child in the scene.

  On the left side of the picture below, you can see the television set, and if you look closely, an indistinct feature on the right side of the screen. That feature is shown enlarged and enhanced below.

• Jonathan Miller posted a video ITC frame collected using a Sony Digital Handycam, containing an obvious human face formed in the noise. It was not clear enough to show here, but as with one shown in a past issue of the NewsJournal that was collected by Shell Hawkins, it is distinctive because it was taken with a digital camera.

  Most Video ITC is collected with analog cameras, but since they are gradually disappearing from the market, we think it is important that techniques be developed for using digital cameras. An ideal arrangement would be finding well-formed Video ITC features using a digital camera facing a laptop flat screen display in a video loop. Let us know if any of you succeed in this to the point that the arrangement can be dependable enough for field research.

• Nancy Thomas posted photographs that have interesting light features. We often see orbs, vapors, string of pear orbs and other light features, but it is not common at all to see light constrained as a sharp-edged pattern accompanied by areas of darkness.

  In the “A Study of Feet” photograph, you can see what appears to be stacked triangles of light with a cotton-ball splotch of darkness just above it. The orb found in the White Noise DVD companion video was also a cotton-ball splotch of darkness.

• Dawn Wise has reported finding unexpected faces in the optical noise in many of her photographs. We have been able to make out a few of them. Dawn’s work reinforces the idea that the phenomenal features are often present, if we pay attention.

• Shellie Hawkins posted this photograph of an unknown something in the front seat of her car some time ago, but it was not until she posted a picture of her dog, while in the flesh, that her excitement made sense to us. As you can see by comparing the insert with the object in the seat, it does appear that Shell’s dog came back for a visit. The back of the “extra” seems to extend past the surface of the car seat.

aaevp.com web site visitor, Paul Franklin, sent us a few pictures he took of his new apartment. He sent them because in one he saw two orbs which he thought might be phenomenal. We generally decline to look at orb pictures from the public, but his description of the photographs was intriguing so we asked him to send them to us. The picture in question is above, and with close inspection, you can see a pair of orbs to match the pair of high windows situated on either side of the fireplace. Paul later agreed that he believed the orbs to be camera flash reflected from the windows.

We asked him who that was peeking around the corner. His response was, “I have not figured this out yet. There’s got to be a logical explanation. As I did tell you, I was alone in the room when this was taken, so I don’t think it is a physical person.”

The AA-EVP is getting web hits from the web page of the new Warner Brothers series, Supernatural. The AA-EVP is listed as the first Supernatural research link. The series is shown on WB Tuesdays at 9pm.

Until recent developments in the quality and quantity of EVP, we have felt that EVP was not reliable enough to be used for fact finding. There has also been the problem of clarity. We have had many long EVP brought to us for evaluation, but few have been sufficiently clear for us to agree on the content. If we want the authorities to act on a predictive EVP, the message must be clearly heard by untrained people and it must make sense.

With the success the 4Cell groups have been having, we now see that it is reasonable to use such protocols for fact finding. The key here is reliable communicators. Also, Alexander MacRae has been experiencing a series of volunteer predictive messages, which in retrospect, have proven to be tantalizingly accurate.

We have opened a new forum on the Idea Exchange, which Shellie Hawkins and Dawn Wise have agreed to moderate. A procedure is posted in a topic on that forum. We will hold a high standard of evidence, but we are confident that many of you will easily exceed that standard.

The 4Cell protocol is our best recommendation for fact finding, but you may do well working as individuals by cultivating an etheric team. Alec also shows the way by conducting regularly scheduled recording sessions dedicated to collecting predictive EVP.

We look forward to your contributions to this new AA-EVP feature. We know it will take time to develop, but we are confident that it will become a valuable tool for research.

The 4Cell EVP Demonstration is still alive and well. There are two active Cells: Infinite, with Vicki Talbott, Mary Jo Gran, Rheta Conley and Shellie Hawkins. They have conducted ten experimental rounds, each with very good results. Through The Veil is the second group with Joseph Arcara, Terry Dulin, Georgina Dang, Dawn Wise. This Cell is the newest with three experimental rounds under their belt, with results that are extremely promising.

Based on the results shown in the 4Cell experiments, we are now recommending the protocol to people around the world as a possibly reliable tool for etheric reality research. EVP and ITC research is way past the question of survival. At issue now is how we can further our understanding of the reality in which we exist after the change called death. The 4Cell EVP Demonstration promises to be an important source of those answers.

Several Cells have been organized but are currently inactive. Please contact us or Shellie Hawkins and Vicki Talbott if there is something we can do to help you get back to the experiments. Also contact Shell and Vicki if you wish to participate. We expect to begin suggesting specific questions aimed at data collection as a way to make our point about EVP to specific people.

And remember, We will be happy to help if you want to set a Cell up as a private Cell.

Hi, my name is Megan and I’m 21 years old. I would just like to say that I am really a believer in EVP. It’s really neat and every time we listen to our findings I get the goosebumps!!! My grandfather passed away almost ten years ago. After seeing the movie, White Noise, my aunt got the idea to try it. I had no idea what we were doing at the time because I never even heard of the movie till after we did the recordings.

My grandmother, aunt, mother and I sat down in the very house where my grandpa died and tried it. I was kinda spooked because we lit a candle and sat in a circle in the kitchen. Then my aunt turned on the voice-activated recorder and began asking questions. The first question she asked was, “Grandpa, give us some sign, a noise or something to let us know that you are okay??” He responded by saying, “How about this,” when we rewound the tape.

We could not believe it! It was his voice! Just like you say in the documentary, his voice was most strong in the beginning, and towards the end, it was like a whisper. [name changed]

Parapsychologist, Professor Charles Tart, was interviewed by The Psychic Times, a new British publication that is already proving itself antagonistic to EVP. In the article, Tart was quoted to argue that EVP is stray radio, and that we who study in this field have not demonstrated the necessary research discipline to produce the kind of credible evidence that he can take to other scientists. www.thepsychictimes.com/articles/tart.htm.

The diagram is of a shielded recording compartment, EVP from which would answer Tart’s objections. It provides more shielding than a metal can or microwave, but it is not as readily available. We would like to talk to someone who might be able to make one, or who might have one. If possible, we would like to send one to a number of different experimenters in serial fashion, so that many examples can be collected in the compartment. Please let us know if you can help.

Currently posted at: http://aaevp.com/techniques.htm

These instructions apply to a Windows computer.

Most EVP experimenters use the computer as a tool for listening to sound tracks and reviewing the EVP session that they have recorded on an audio recorder. Placing your recordings into the computer also allows them to be sent to others for review via email. This article provides instructions for recording from an audio recorder to a computer using an audio patch cord. If your recorder came with a USB interface or memory stick, follow the instructions that came with your recorder.

The computer should have a Line In jack somewhere. It may be on a speaker, but it is probably on the back of your computer.

You want to connect your audio recorder to the Line In jack of the computer. Ideally you would do this by connecting the Line Out jack of the recorder to Line In jack of the computer. Connecting the recorder Headphone or Speaker Out jack to the Microphone In jack of the computer will usually work. If there is any problem, it will show up as a recording level problem or noise and this will let you know that you need to take your recorder to Radio Shack and ask for help.

To complete the circuit from your input jack to the audio recorder program in the computer, go to Start> Settings> Control Panel and open something like Sounds and Media. You will see a Sound Playback and a Sound Recording Volume button. Click on the Recording button and you will see that you can select Line In or Microphone In volume controls. This selection needs to agree with the input jack you use.

In a Windows computer, look under Start> Programs> Accessories> Entertainment and look for a sound recorder program. Most audio editing software can be used as an audio recorder.

Open the audio management program, and with the audio recorder connected to your computer and the computer configured to connect the correct jack to the audio circuit, you should be able to start the audio recorder to play the sound track, and record the sound into the computer.

In the Audacity screen print shown above, you can just make out the recording control buttons on the upper-left corner of the screen. In whatever program you are using, create a new file, and as you press Play in the recorder, click on Record in the audio program. When the sound file has been played, click on Stop in the audio program. You should see a trace on the screen indicating your sound file. As you can see in the screen print, there should be variations in the trace to agree with your voice and possibly with EVP.

There are considerations about the best type of file to use for saving sound tracks. We recommend that you store a master copy of your audio files in the standard “Wave” format [In Windows, it is Windows PCM (*.wav)]. The mp3 format produces a much smaller file but is of slightly poorer quality. It is good to use mp3 formatted examples when you send samples via email or to discussion boards to save space.

When opening a new file, you will be asked to select sample rate, mono or stereo and size of the sample word. The higher sample rate you use, the more memory the sound track will take. We recommend that you use 11,025 KHz. Mono files are half as large as stereo for the same sound track and 16 Bit words are sufficient for EVP.

This information is in the Techniques section of aaevp.com.

We are going to need volunteers to help with running the June 2006 Conference in Atlanta. If you have had experience chairing a conference and coordinating volunteers, please contact us. We will need volunteers to work the registration table and the AA-EVP book/T-shirt table. Please let us know if you plan to attend and can donate a little of your time to help make the conference a well run event.

We are also looking for volunteers to be available during a couple hour long clinics to help attendees learn how to download recordings onto a computer and to listen to the recording using sound editing software. These sessions most likely will take place in the conference room Thursday and Friday night, after the evening presentation. Volunteers need to be familiar with using a computer for EVP and would also need to have a laptop that they could bring to the conference to work with attendees. We are using the free audio program, Audacity, for workshops. It is a good “common ground” for teaching, but you are welcome to use what you are accustomed to, since one program is usually similar to other programs.

• Members often work together to figure out EVP on the “Idea Exchange.” Danise (Neesey) Koppenhaver wrote, “Ok, maybe I just need a beer after taping almost non-stop for five days But, I swear I hear something about not having Bud Light?? I can't make out the first part of this clip. I asked for anyone from the Big Circle or my family to try to come through for my question. I then asked if they ate where they are, and if so, what is their favorite? I hear, ‘__ __ __ __ ___ __, there’s no Bud Lite here.’ The first part sounds like six syllables. It may not be anything about Bud Lite but it sure brought a good laugh to the beginning of my day!”

• Margaret Downey, a new member using the AA-EVP “Idea Exchange” replied to another new member about how she goes about listening to EVP. “I think as you continue to record, the messages will get louder and clearer. Also, your ears will become trained at picking up (EVP) more easily…. what I receive isn’t visible to the eye on the computer screen. It is extremely faint. I go through my recordings 2-3 seconds at a time with the headset volume at the highest setting. Using a headset is super important. I relax my ears around the sound (if that makes sense) and play the same few seconds several times in a row to see if anything becomes clearer. When it does, I use “amplify” and then “noise reduction” on that segment, and then turn my volume control down to around the mid-range. This seems to help reduce the hissing sound and bring out the voice. Before making any more changes, I try adjusting the volume a little higher or lower. It is interesting how different things can be heard by changing the volume.

• Steve Sens wrote, “I feel compelled to comment on the earthbound/negative entity thing. It has been my own personal experience that if one is unaware and therefore not knowingly feeding an entity energy, the entity can still have a profound influence on one’s feelings, emotions and actions. Unless one can accurately communicate with an entity, how can one tell its motivations? This is a place where EVP can help.

“I agree wholeheartedly that by ignoring the entity, it has less energy to work with, but from my own experience, one doesn’t always know that one is feeding it by emotions, actions, thoughts or whatever. I think one needs a thick skin when you know you have a ghost around, especially when physical phenomena like moving objects occurs. Though, this type of pestering seems more the exception than the rule.

“Also another thought karma can play an interesting role. One can pray for protection but if one’s path is that of actually having to learn the lessons of dealing with negative spirits, just as dealing with negative people, then wishing them away would not help much and neither would ignoring them. When was the last time somebody ignored a criminal and came away unscathed? Their personalities are the same as before death. The average entity may not be able to beat you up but many can take a very draining and emotional toll.

“I don’t write this to create drama; one absolutely needs a good positive and upbeat attitude! I feel that fear can be their most effective weapon and our own fear CAN be taken from them, giving us more control. And our supporting spirit team is always with us.”

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• Anabela Cardoso and David Fontana are once again sponsoring a conference in behalf of the ITC Journal. The name of the conference is: Current Research into Survival of Physical Death with Special Reference to ITC. It is in Vigo, Spain, April 28-30, 2006. See http://eureka.ya.com/cadernostci/congresotci  for details.

• Alexander MacRae had an article on EVP published in the July 2005 issue of the MENSA Journal.

• Garrett Husveth and Al Rauber are doing a weekly podcast available at http://hauntednj.libsyn.com. A podcast is an Internet radio show. Theirs will cover the history and protocols of parapsychology, current events in the field of ghost and EVP research and their current and past investigations.

• Karen Mossey spoke about EVP at The Berkshire Paranormal Conference in July. She said it was one of the best that she has been to.

• Rob Smith did a guest spot on the radio show, The Big Aussie Breakfast. Rob talked about the EVP segments on the White Noise DVD.

• Darren Thompson’s group, WSPIR, held an EVP workshop where they explained the mechanics of extracting EVP from recording devices.

• Linda Williamson was contacted by an independent group for a program called, 10 Ways to Contact the Dead. Linda completed filming with them and has been told that the program will be shown all over the world. Linda spent a week working on EVP for them and was disappointed with how she was treated by the group called WAG TV.

Comment: Many production companies treat their talent terribly. We would like to list companies and programs that treat talent poorly so that members can think carefully before working with them. When you work with a production company let us know about your experience. We would like to hear about the good as well as the bad!

In August, Karen Mossey was contacted by two people who have recently had loved ones pass over. One was a friend of a woman whose son died in January in a skimobile accident. He was sixteen. The other was a young girl who died very recently in an automobile accident. She was eighteen. Karen wrote, “I did a meditation and visualization to see these children in my mind’s eye and reach out to them and then I did a recording to try to ask those in the Big Circle to try and help them.”

Karen said the names of the two children and asked those in the Big Circle to see if they could help them. She says, “When I open up to the Big Circle, I allow them to also use my energy to help bring forth messages.” In the recording after Karen speaks, you hear, “The Big Circle,” and then they say, “We will start searching.” Karen went on to say, “Several members, as well as myself, have received EVP from them identifying themselves as the Big Circle. They are, without a doubt, as validated in messages such as this one, willing to help us. I hope this will encourage those of you participating in the Big Circle recording sessions to continue to reach out to them and know that they can and do help and are very much aware of our circumstances and requests.”

We can vouch for the above. In one session, we asked the Big Circle if they had met the EVP pioneers, Konstantin Raudive and Friedrich Jürgenson, and received a resounding, “Yes, we have!” They also made it clear who they were by saying, “The Big Circle.” They are very much interested in helping people through EVP.

Martha Copeland notes that joining the recording group every other Thursday at 8:00 pm EST can be very difficult for members who reside in different time zones. She has received emails from people who have said that they snored through the designated recording time. Martha writes, “The group energy will be there and if you miss a recording session try to do one when you can. If you receive EVP please share them with the AA-EVP group. You may pick up a voice that belongs to another member’s loved one. Spirit may use someone else in the group as a channel to get their message across to their loved one in the physical world.”

• Gary Andary, using an Olympus VN-240, recorded at a cemetery near a brand new gravesite and received some messages in the first thirty seconds of his recording. He asked, “What is your name?” and got “Jake.” And to the question, “How are you?” He received the answer “Good.” He later went back to the grave hoping that the name on the grave would be Jake but the new marker said Fernanado!

• Joseph Arcara’s girlfriend died unexpectedly and he had been recording every day with a Sony P210. While recording he stated out loud that he was taking care of her cat and got a very soft EVP saying, “Thank you.”

• Anne Beck heard her grandson talking in his room after he had gone to bed. She slid her IC recorder under the door and recorded several things. Anne got a kick out of the message, “Mouses,” and felt it was in reference to her trying to be sneaky.

• Melissa Brage was recording and told her grandparents, now on the other side, that she loved and missed them. Melissa wrote, “Right afterwards my Grandma Brage, who passed when I was ten, came on and told me, ‘I love you Missy.’”

• Domenic Capaldi taped after the London bombings and received a higher then normal amount of voices calling for help. Domenic shared one of the messages with the group that said, “Pray for peace.”

• Terry Dulin told her son David that she felt that she had been hearing his voice on her recordings. She asked him if it was in fact his voice and received the EVP, “Yes.”

• Linda Genutis has been experimenting, asking questions from the 1^st edition of Trivial Pursuit, and has found that more than a few have been answered. She shared a recording where she asked who the first president of the United States was (not a Trivial Pursuit question) and recorded, “George Washington.”

• Alexander Grimal shared a recording he had made in front of the Vietnam Memorial. It was the traditional military slang word, “Whoowa!”

• Michael Hester shared an EVP received during a South Florida Ghost Team investigation. The voice was actually talking over the investigator and he felt that it says, “We can hear you.”

• Eddie Hill posted EVP that had been picked up inside the Gonzales County Court House. As his group was entering the Court Room, they recorded a voice saying, “All Rise.”

• Kelly Ismail was recording at the Lynnhaven cemetery. She read the name of a young girl and when she listened back she heard a female voice repeat the last name: “Taylor.”

• Phyllis Jacquett wrote to say that after a year of trying, she had finally received a message from companion of many years who had crossed very unexpectedly. The message said, “Help,” followed by a brief pause, and then: “Phyllis.” He pronounced Phyllis’s name in his special way and his daughter, sister, and others all recognize the voice as his.

• Jeffrey Judd received his Sony ICD-MX20 in August and immediately tried it out by speaking to his dad and asking him if he could hear him and if he had Jeff’s dog, Duchess, with him. On playback, he heard, “Hi, Jeff” in the EVP a bark is also heard at the last part of his name.

• Joan Kachurik was using an Olympus PC480 and recording in Memorial Park near Pittsburgh. She felt like she heard, “Tom’s … (something) … is there for you,” and asked the group for help with her recording. She said that her husband’s name is Tom and that he had been trying to contact his dad for four months.

• Joan’s husband was so excited, he worked on the recording, bringing in the message more clearly. It said, “Hey Tom … proof … your Dad is here for you.”

• Danise Koppenhaver shared a recording that she felt was her dad saying, “Neesey, I’ll always be here…” Danise said that only her dad called her Neesey.

• Casie Mejia asked her mom, now on the other side, if she could see Casie’s baby boy. She recorded the answer, “I see him” and “Casie, I see him.”

• David Mierzwinski has been actively experimenting with a variety of exotic technologies. One of these was modulating an arc light with the thirteen Spiricom tones. If you are interested in talking to David about his experiments log on to the private AA-EVP “Idea Exchange” discussion board and look under “EVP Messages.”

• Karen Mossey was all alone in her house. She wrote, “All the kids had left and gone to Old Homes Days, in Hudson. My son, Sean, had been away at Scout camp for a week and I had brought him home in the morning, Jess and Connor (daughter and grandson) were over and my son Alex and his friend. When they all left, I turned on some Celtic music, lit a candle and brought out my recorder. I said, “Hello Dad, hello Rob, all the kids are home today … Just missing you Rob.” Karen received the clear message, “I miss you.” She said that she could hear it right off the recorder and that “It always gives my heart a lift to hear from him.”

• Carol Peterson was recording at a cemetery in southern Maine using a Sony ICD-B17 recorder. She ran two other recorders at the same time and they did not pick up anything. It said, “I love you.”

• Tom Rawlings asked if they create their world by thinking and received the answer, “Yes.”

• Mike Sullivan was at his father’s gravesite and said into his recorder, “Someone left you a penny.” (Karen Mossey had left the penny). He received a whispered response that he felt could be his dad saying, “Thank you.”

• Heidi Spencer was trying to contact her friend Tom and was sitting at his rosebush (cremation). Heidi asked if he was happy and received a whispered response saying, “Happy.”

• Vicki Talbott was messing around with the hookups on her computer trying to get Adobe Audition to work. She sat down to see if they had any suggestions for her and recorded, “Stop fiddling.”