Originally published in the ITC Journal No. 24, December 2005, itcjournal.org

In the year 1974, Hans Otto König, now 66, a professional electroacoustics technician living in Mönchengladbach, by chance found himself listening to a discussion broadcast by ZdF (the second German TV Channel) in which Friedrich Jürgenson from Sweden, the pioneer of EVP, tried in vain to convince the well-known German parapsychologist Prof. Hans Bender and other critical scientists and journalists of the reality of extraordinary voices captured on his audio-tapes and apparently originating from the deceased.

König’s interest was aroused, and he resolved to start his own experiments in an attempt to demonstrate that the anomalous voices came from the unconscious of the experimenter rather than from the deceased. Instead, he received the singing voice of his late mother who addressed him and his father by name and asked whether or not they could hear her. During the following weeks, König was forced to the conclusion that the voices did indeed come from the so-called dead. He started his EVP experimentation using as background support noise a radio station transmitting in a foreign language, and although he obtained his positive results almost immediately, initially they were of very poor quality, consisting mostly of whispers and sighs rather than vocalizations.

Subsequently he changed his background noise from foreign language broadcasts to ultra-sounds, since this is an area of acoustics which he understands, and has used his professional expertise and psychic faculties to improve the quantity and quality of the contacts with the beyond—now known as Instrumental TransCommunication or ITC—by inventing and continuously modifying electronic devices specially developed for the purpose. Initially, he applied combined frequency-modulated mechanical ultrasonics transmitted and received by transducers in his laboratory. He then found that electromagnetic oscillations in the frequency range around 50 kHz produced the same results. Later he added a multifrequency infrared transmitter-receiver system, which demodulates infrared and modulates it again to a UHF vibration-oscillation from 10 m down to a 1 m wavelength, with a frequency of 30 MHz to 300 MHz. Currently he is working with a complex device based on quartz-crystals irradiated with ultraviolet light which he calls HRS (Hyper-Raum-System or Hyperspace System).

König tells us that he builds his various IC devices according to his own thoughts and the information he receives in dreams from the communicators. He further tells us that he goes into deep meditation for thirty minutes every day and while doing so can "see" (as a kind of psychic perception) his communicators as diffuse physical shapes, and that he has also been successful in photographing them using the Klaus Schreiber closed loop method. His explanation for the success of his experimentation is the key word "resonance," which he says includes electromagnetic resonance.

The voices that now come through his loudspeaker are of a different, often excellent, quality, and he is sometimes able to dialogue with them. The contents of communications and the nature of the communicators themselves vary dependent upon the context. Deceased humans may answer the requests of their bereaved relatives and friends for comfort, while at other times, technical advice is given to König, and nameless cosmic entities, apparently outside our space-time, provide philosophical observations. The outcome of an experiment is never predictable, and may produce no results at all depending on mental-spiritual and other (unknown) conditions. König feels that audio results seem to improve in the presence of a harmonious audience, and the same is true for his work on transimages, which in one instance have already been obtained accompanied by the voice of the deceased person, whose identity was later discovered "by chance."

The two experiments that are the subject of this Report were held respectively on September 10^th and 11th, 2005, in two afternoon sessions held in a room at the Hotel Kaiserhof, in the German town of Wesel. Dr. Anabela Cardoso attended, accompanied in the unavoidable absence of Professor David Fontana by Mr. Carlos Fernández, the Technical Editor of the ITC Journal and an electronics technician with long experience of ITC data. Also accompanying Dr. Cardoso was Professor Ernst Senkowski, one of the foremost experts on ITC, who has known König well for many years, and who was responsible for helping to arrange Dr. Cardoso’s visit. The others present included visitors from Finland and some sixty of the regular observers of König’s previous experiments, together with a few individuals who were attending for the first time. König completely eschews publicity and avoids working with journalists and the media because of the negative experiences he has had with such groups in the past. All the communications were in German, which is the native language of König and of Professor Senkowski and in which Dr. Cardoso has some facility.

König opened proceedings with an introductory talk that included recordings of voices received during earlier experiments. After a short meditation he then activated one of the older systems developed by him many years ago, which has misleadingly been called a "generator" but which in fact should be considered as a device open to the influx of information from hidden ranges of consciousness. This infrared/ultrasound device operates in a frequency range from 30 kHz to 70 kHz. The device, which looks like a rectangular metallic box, was built by König himself and the frequencies are mixed in its interior while an aerial placed on top of the generator transmits the signal to a receiver in the same band. An amplifier is connected to a mixing table and to the loudspeakers. König’s microphone and recording apparatus are also connected to the mixing table. When the voices started, silence was suddenly transformed into a beat, and the voices seemed to speak much above the beat. The communications that resulted lasted some two minutes and consisted of a nearly continuous dialogue between König and several voices.

The communications began with the habitual opening words. "Contact field closed" (i.e. closed to intruding entities), and finished with, "Contact end." In all, there were fifteen exchanges. In Exchange Number 2, the "answer" did not directly refer to the question asked by König. In Number 5, the voice asked for a technical modification of the equipment being used. In Numbers 9 and 14 respectively, two names of earlier acquaintances of König, "Hubert" and "Helmut," were given, the latter communicator spontaneously referring to König’s sick wife, Margaret.

Most of the voices were clear and could be heard above the permanent noise level from the equipment. In consequence the comprehensibility level was around eighty-five to ninety per cent for all those present during live listening, and one hundred per cent on replay. The voices were of excellent quality, but somehow did not possess the same degree of what Dr. Cardoso describes as the "inner clarity of an angelical prototype" that in her view was overpowering in the voices that came through during the experiment of the following day. Professor Senkowski expressed himself unable to always decide whether a voice sounded more male or more female.

An interesting observation concerns the varying speed of the utterances. For example, Exchange Number 12 was spoken very quickly, and here and in other cases, one had the impression that when the contact is nearing its end because of shortness of "energy," the speech is accelerated. Another observation concerns the time lapse between the questions of the experimenter and the responses from the communicators. These lapses were generally in the range of a few seconds, but in Number 12, the voice broke in before König had completed his question, so that the two voices momentarily overlapped.

To some extent, the speech of the communicators possessed its own character and style, both of which are difficult to describe. Often the speech sounded not "normal" or not "human-like." Grammar was not always correct. The contents sometimes were metaphorical and not easily interpreted, especially when the speaker seemed to be a "remote," non-human being. An example is Number 2, when subsequent to König asking who and where the "speaker" is, the answer, "Ultraschall ist das Bild" is given, (translated as, "Ultrasonics is the image"). This answer could be understood as meaning that the voice, as mediated by the electromagnetic oscillations in the range of 30 to 70 kHz, is an "image" of the speaker, who remains unnamed. Alternatively the speaker may be identifying his (mental) "position," as in or near the equipment being used. But these alternatives must remain more or less speculative.

This experiment was carried out with the HRS system that consists of a large quartz-crystal and ten smaller ones, all of them irradiated by ultraviolet light of different wavelengths. As in the first experiment, we started with a short meditation, after which the device was switched on. After some fifteen minutes, the first voice came through, and a dialogue developed with nineteen exchanges taking place lasting seven minutes and fifty-three seconds.

The background noise, according to König, actually produced from the "other side," was quite different from that heard from the so-called generator in Experiment One. It consisted of a nearly periodic bird-like high-pitched twittering or chirping, mixed with slow roaring like a storm and waves on a seashore. Most voices were absolutely clear and immediately understood, provided they were not too fast. König spoke his questions in a meditative state, speaking slowly, and the voices answered in their chosen manner.

Most responses were given immediately, although a few were delayed up to twelve seconds, Most of the voices seemed to come from one single entity, who sounded to be female, and they possessed a special modulation, similar to singing. Most of them sounded rather "neutral" or "detached" with the possible exception of Exchange Number 10, where the voice seemed to express some underlying contempt for the stupidity of Christian beliefs, describing them as "unreasonable superstition." In Number 8 were the words, "I stem from the realm of stars," delivered in an elevated poetic style. The German words used by the entity, "lch stamme," can be translated simply as, "I come," or more tellingly as, "I am descended."

The dialogue seemed to be presided over by a highly intelligent source that treated adult humans like children, with some compassion or even regret. For example Number 15, when we were told that, "But it is probably too difficult for you to comprehend this." ("This" being their magnificent, super-terrestrial world). However, one should take into consideration the difficulties pertaining to the adaptation process of the different structures of human and the entities’ consciousness in contact through these communications. In the rather long pause between Number 18 and the end of the contact, dull beats similar to drumming appeared as additional signals, although their meaning remained unclear. The live comprehensibility level was around one hundred per cent for all those present.

A diagram of the devices used by Hans-Otto König is appended. (Editor: Because of the extent of the transcript, the transcripts of the communications received during the above mentioned experiments and the respective translations provide by Dr. Ernst Senkowski are available at ATransC.org. Please send us a SASE if you require a hard copy.)

^{During the two days spent in Wesel, Dr. Cardoso had the opportunity to exchange views with Hans-Otto} König on a number of issues, namely on the content of the communications she receives from the group of communicators calling themselves Rio do Tempo (Timestream) and recorded by Dr. Cardoso, and of the communications received by Hans-Otto König. Among the many interesting similarities there is, for instance, the fact that König’s communicators very rarely speak in the singular and almost always in the plural, referring to themselves as "We," just as do the communicators from Rio do Tempo. They also speak of "meditating (in their world)," as do the voices from Rio do Tempo. Furthermore, König’s and Rio do Tempo communicators tell us that, in the third level of the next world, deceased animals and deceased humans are together again, and that at this level, communication with animals and plants is also possible. Another aspect of the similarities regards the interchange of energies between the communicators and the experimenters. Hans Otto König said on September 10, 2005, prior to the experiment of that day, that the entities who speak with him "can as well charge, or even overcharge, him before a contact, and at other times he feels devoid of energy after a contact." From her side on September 2, 2005, Dr. Cardoso wrote in her contacts log the following: "… when I am in the studio I seem to lose track of time. I wouldn’t know if I have been in for fifteen minutes or for over one hour. Also, those days when I feel particularly energetic, and upon request of the communicators, stay inside for a period of time, I feel emptied out and tired when I go out of the studio. On the other hand, the days when I feel very tired and go into the studio, upon going out I feel recovered and the tiredness has disappeared. It is as if there is an interchange of energies with the communicators." As with the communicators from Rio do Tempo, who refer to themselves as speaking from a "station," König’s communicators say the group who organizes their contacts is known as "ZentraIe."

Our conclusion is that we witnessed two fascinating experiments that are the outcome of thirty years of engaged and devoted work by Hans-Otto König, who works without support and who has often been fiercely attacked by what Professor Senkowski calls envious or even ill-intentioned people. Hopefully, at some point in the future, Hans Otto König will be considered one of the most prominent pioneers of ITC, and his wish to prove the reality of life after death will perhaps be fulfilled by a less materialistic science. Meanwhile, we remain thankful for the opportunity to observe the work of this man, and wish him the continuation of success in the laborious developmental path that he has chosen to follow.

An Email from Alexander MacRae

I have currently been writing something I titled, "Hearing with Templates" … For some years now I have tried to deal only with the best obtainable EVP samples, disposing of the rest. I am aware that funny things can happen and I have attributed these to the very important subject of cueing errors. Working on the Bial Foundation project has forced me to take account of ALL samples recorded, the good, the bad and the downright appalling.

I was rather concerned lately to find that some of the samples I had selected seem to have changed completely while I was working on them. Taking a few days to do something else and then coming back to them, I found I was reporting some of them as something other than the original. Was this a matter of a time effect or a processing effect or what?

Some weeks ago I had sent out two of my local group to a couple of sites to do some recording and then taught one of them a little bit about analysis using Cool Edit Pro (now known as Adobe Audition). The other, Helen, a very perceptive person, asked almost immediately how it was that you could hear one thing at one time but then you could hear something quite different at another time—convinced then that the second version was the correct one. I mentioned cueing and tried to make it all seem quite normal. Earlier than all that, Edgar Müller had remarked in an email that different noise reduction levels could alter the meaning of what one heard. I did some experiments to investigate this point using normal voice and good EVP, which I will later refer to as "A-type" EVP.

My article on hearing with templates makes the point that what we hear is not necessarily the same as what we are listening to. And then the point is made that templates are used in all recognition processes, whether recognizing phonemes (elements of words); or patterns of phonemes which are words; or patterns of words which are phrases.

What you actually "hear" is the template. You can also hear all the other noises that are part of what you are listening to, but what you actually "hear" is the template that best fits the sound pattern.

If you listen to a sequence of phonemes that you have never heard before, for instance, "Gelarumipalat," which is not a word in the languages that you understand, which does not have Latin, Greek or Germanic roots, what you will hear is a sequence of phonemes, pure and simple. If you listen to a recognized sequence of phonemes such as "angry," you hear a word. And if you listen to a sequence of known words in a recognised sequence such as, "I am so angry!" what you "hear" is a meaning.

What you listen to and what you hear can be different things.

There has to be a distinction, therefore, between EVP that is so good it is close to normal speech in good listening conditions, we will call that A-type EVP; and EVP that is not that good, we will call that B-type EVP. They are both EVP but they have different behavioral characteristics.

With B-type EVP,

• different people may hear different things;

• what is heard using headphones may be different from what is heard using a speaker;

• what is heard when one is told what it is, may be different from what one heard before being told what it is; and,

• what one hears at one time may be different from what one hears at another time.

To the general public this PROVES that EVP is NOT real. Therefore one should not expose the general public to B-type EVP.

Remember that normal hearing is also dependent on template-based pattern recognition.

The received wisdom over the years was that EVP is deficient in the relative energy level of consonants as compared with vowels, and as consonants are the main carriers of intelligibility, so EVP is less comprehensible. I went along with this explanation unexamined myself and even repeated it.

The world experts in this are in the Department of Phonetics and Linguistics at University College London (UCL). The UCL people have been looking into the speech of people suffering from deafness or some neural/motor deficiency. This speech has consonants that are low or missing, thus reducing its intelligibility. Just like EVP one would suppose.

Let us make up an example. Suppose we have a stroke victim saying, "How are you now?" They might say, "OOOAAOW ... AAARGH ... EEE-UUU .... NNN N ... ...AAAAOOOOW...." Almost entirely vowel sounds, and very slowly. Where muscular dexterity is required as in the rapid transition from "n" to "ow" in "now" then there is a delay. However, this is not what EVP sounds like. The problem may not be the consonant/vowel energy ratio.

The UCL people have looked into cueing as an important factor in intelligibility, and they developed a method of manual cue enhancement in a recording. They tried this and indeed it improved intelligibility. However, automatic cue enhancement did not work.

Cues are taken as the regions of transition; the region where one vowel changes into another or into a consonant or the impulse and blank period on which consonant sounds are based. The reason for this is that the significance of a set of consecutive sounds depends on the sequencing, on the timing and so relative position in time. Cue is very important.

Here we should also note that the term "phoneme" is not entirely accurate. For example, when each is isolated out, the "a" at the beginning of the word "attack" sounds quite different from the "a" in the middle of the word. To describe this feature the word "phoneme" is replaced by the word "allophone;" that is, a phoneme taking into account its phonetic environment.

Timing is crucially important, and just as you can have people who have trouble with the spatial sequencing of a written word, who are "dyslexic," so also there seems to be a tendency for some to be "dyslexic" in terms of time sequences. Remember that in an audible communication system, the listener is also part of that system.

For some time, my opinion was that EVP was perhaps cue-deficient. My thinking now is that Type-B EVP has an over-supply of cues, and that due to the relative uncertainty or randomness involved in the EVP process, fortuitous transitions appear which can be taken as false cues, enabling more than one interpretation to be found.

Where more than one interpretation is found this does not mean that a correct interpretation does not exist. Although if two interpretations exist then both must be wrong is normal thinking. But that is not necessarily the case.

All sequence-significant hearing is template-based but some patterns are so uncertain that more than one template can seem to fit.

[Note that this explanation is not providing a reason to think that "B-type" EVP change in any way. Editor]

ASPSI Conference, “What the Bleep Do We Know About Life After Death?”

The Academy of Spirituality and Paranormal Studies, Inc. (ASPSI) will be holding their conference with the above title June 1-4, 2007 at DeSales University in Center Valley near Allentown, PA. We are presenting and the keynote speaker is Dr. Raymond Moody, who will also lead a workshop. A few of the twenty-two presentations are:

• Children’s Near-Death Experiences: Startling New Findings by P.M.H. Atwater.

• Life After Death: Beliefs of ASPSI Members by Boyce Batey.

• Let There Be Light! The Scientific Bleep on the Afterlife by James E. Beichler.

• Tests for Ideal Communicators to Strengthen Survival Evidence by Arthur Berger.

• Electronic Voice Phenomena as Evidence for Life After Death by Tom and Lisa Butler.

• Love Lives On: Learning From the Extraordinary Encounters of the Bereaved by Louis LaGrand.

• Out-of-Body Experience: The Definitive After-Life Research Tool for the 21^st Century by David Lindsay

• Can Living a Long, Healthy, Moral and Spiritual Life Help Pave the Way to a Blissful Afterlife? By Donald Morse.

• A Century of Research on After-Death Communication by Sylvia Hart Wright.

According to a new study detailed in Neuroscience Letters, the human brain does not contain a single "God Spot" responsible for mystical and religious experiences. This is contrary to claims that have come from skeptics and atheists. Instead, the sense of union with God or something greater than the self often described by those who have undergone such experiences, involves the recruitment and activation of a variety of brain regions normally implicated in different functions such as self-consciousness, emotion and body representation.

From: LiveScience

Alexander MacRae used to have a couple of boarders; a young man and his single parent mom. In march of 2004, the young man, James, overdosed in Portsmouth, England and crossed over.

Alec conducted EVP sessions in an attempt to contact James and did record some blurred "druggy-type" speech. In one message, James said, "Say goodbye to St. Mary’s." Since James had talked about getting married to his partner, Alec wondered if that was the church that they had picked to be married in. He asked the partner and after a pause she said, "St. Mary’s … that is where we used to pick up the drugs."

In a further development on this story, Alec wrote, "Lady Helen, who has done some sessions and was mentioned by name in James’s last messages, was given a CD with her sessions on it, and I decided to throw in the James excerpts, unattributed as an afterthought. Late one night a year later, two of her kids were listening to her CD and were surprised to hear the voice on there of a former pal of theirs, James."

As Margaret Downey explains her experimental set-up, "I have a Canon PowerShot A75 Digital camera. It allows me to do thirty seconds of video at a time. I leave it on the highest resolution (640 x 480 pixels). For effects, I use the function button to set the camera to shoot in sepia (a brownish tone), tungsten (which makes it blue), and black and white. I also do a session using just normal settings.

"The experiments are done on my stove and the setup is very basic. The light in the stove hood is used as the light source. Then depending on my whim, I will use a black pot filled about half way with water or a translucent, amber colored Vision CorningWare pot half filled with water which I set either directly on the stove top or I suspend in the empty black pot. (editor: Margaret has joked that her Vision CorningWare pot really should be called Visionware!)

"I hold the video camera in my right hand and wiggle my left fingers in the water while I record the ripples. I get better results if I use my fingers rather than using a spoon or other object to stir the water. I first look through the viewfinder screen, to make sure I’m holding the camera at an angle where it catches the light reflection in the water. This position is not quite directly over it, but from above and at a slight angle. At the same time, I respectfully request for any people or animals in spirit who would like to show themselves, to please do so.

"Once in a while, I’ll place a crystal or a crystal ball in the water. And sometimes I ask my hubby to shine red and blue lights in the water.

"After filming, I remove the compact memory card from the camera and place it into my computer. The file is transferred into a software program on my Mac called iMovie, which allows me to look at the video one frame at a time. When I see something in a frame, I’m able to save that single frame as a jpg file. And from that jpg, I crop out the image(s) I wish to keep. I keep both the unedited full frame along with my edited/cropped version. Once in a while, I keep the entire video, but most of the time I dump it in order to help save hard drive space."

In one experiment, Margaret asked for her grandparents and received this ITC picture of a bearded man she feels is her Great Great Grandfather, Benjamin Franklin Main Sr. He was a physician and Baptist minister who crossed in 1913. Today, he and his grandson, Lewis (Margaret’s grandfather who crossed in 1993), help her in making connections to other people.

Steve is a friend of Margaret’s friend, Linda, who likes to "pop in" to Margaret’s EVP sessions to call Linda’s name. Linda had asked her to call on him and this is the image that showed up. Linda said that there is enough of a resemblance that she feels he was doing what he could to show himself to her.

Margaret also has captured a picture of a face that she feels is her Indian guide, Walking Sun, who she had asked to come through during an experiment. Margaret had a reading from a Shaman who told her, "Margaret’s heart hears the drum beat of Mother Earth and her spirit finds the stairway to Father Sky." She told Margaret that if she asked for her guide, Walking Sun, he would come. Margaret says, "One of the Shaman’s comments in my reading was that people with "dove medicine" can see between the worlds and the veil between earth and the spirit world is thin for them. She talked about being clairaudient and hearing spirit/sensing vibrations. It was so fun to be able to tell her after the reading about EVP/ITC!"

It cannot be said enough that how we see ourselves is not how we are seen by others. Most of you have probably seen the entry for EVP in Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia. The entry is in a state of change now, but it is still written with terms like "proponent," "alleged" and "skeptic" telling the reader in subtle ways that EVP and those who believe in it are on the outside of rational society looking in. See http://en.wikipedia.org

Since Wikipedia is a community project, the process for making a change is complex and must be negotiated with many potential gatekeepers. People register to be contributors and some of these have become part of the inner circle of trusted editors. Each Wikipedia entry has a page containing a discussion about the entry, and on the one for EVP, you will see that those who have been contributing are pretty conservative. One of the first comments says it all: "I really don’t know what to do with this article. It is about spirit voices in audio recordings and it takes itself very seriously. I’m not sure if it should be deleted, noted as factual malarkey, or rewritten to say how this ridiculous thing is believed by some people. I’m leaning toward deletion since I haven’t a clue how to make this a factual article."

Knowing that it would be a major battle to change the entry, I have ignored it for a long time, but a recent reminder from Margaret Downey spurred me to action. I registered, and then posted a request for help from someone who knows how to edit Wikipedia. One person agreed, and, silly me to think that my subject matter expertise mattered, I drafted a proposed change, being very careful to keep it as fact-based and neutral as I could. See my version at http://atransc.org/theory/white_paper-evp.htm.

My version has been completely ignored, so now we are in the process of negotiating how the new version will look. I have to give the Wikipedia editors credit in that they had already marked the entry for review because it was biased, but current negotiations show me that the new version may be just as bad. One comment that alerted me to this was to the effect that a single source of evidence is not sufficient reference. The same person also questioned my ability to be neutral because of my affiliation with Spiritualism and because "… a belief in EVP is inextricably tied to your approach, and so may influence any studies and conclusions." In effect, the gatekeeper is changing the rules of evidence to avoid having to admit that something is well supported by evidence. For instance, now I am told that Alexander MacRae’s article in the peer reviewed Journal of the Society for Psychical Research is not valid research because the JSPR is not a mainstream science journal. The reference can be used, but terms like "claims" must be included to show that it is only a claim and not valid science. At the same time both MacRae’s article in the JSPR and anything I say as a subject matter expert are given the same weight as an entry in the skeptical dictionary. Under such circumstances, nothing we can do to study EVP will be accepted as sufficiently scientific by the rules of Wikipedia.

We feel that Wikipedia is an important service to the community and we do not want to detract from that. However, an Internet search for EVP quickly turns up the Wikipedia page for EVP, and well intended or not, the resulting misinformation is harmful to our field of study. We will report again when there is some resolution, but it may be that it will be up to all of us to counter this form of misinformation about EVP and other phenomena.

One thing you can do is monitor yourself to make sure all you say about any of these etheric to physical phenomena in public forums is substantiated by fact. If you become a Wikipedia editor, use your real name, rather than hiding behind a screen name as the others do. Above all, keep an even mind. The example you set will be noticed by others.

[Update: please see the article: Concerns with Wikipedia here]

Tom

Question: I live alone and I find recording for EVP to be rather frightening. Do you have any suggestions?

Answer: Your concern is understandable. I think it would be a concern for me if I lived alone, and I have been around spirit communication for years. But here is the bottom line. Your fear is not really your fear. It is fear your body consciousness feels and the fear that you have been taught by our culture.

First, our body has an independent awareness. That awareness is where we get our instincts related to survival, such as fight or flight. As civilized folk, we are taught to keep those natural responses in check, but there are a few other responses our society does not bother to address. Our body is afraid of the unknown, probably because the unknown might kill it.

You are not your body. You are just along for the ride of this lifetime. One of the goals in seeking spiritual maturity is understanding this, and behaving accordingly. In things spiritual, self-awareness is not body-awareness. It is awareness of your etheric Self that is separate from your body consciousness. Still, you have to be good to your body because it is the vessel you have for this lifetime.

When you have a reflexive thought, learn to stop and consider where it has come from. You can easily recognize some of your body’s thoughts, such as, "I don't like that guy," or "Boy that smells good," but thoughts like, "What was that? It sounded scary" or "I feel terrible" are a little harder to spot as coming from your body. It is important that you pay attention when your physical body is telling you something, but it is also important that you are able to override your body's urges. So, recognize that one major source of the　fear response for you is probably your body. Talk to it and reassure it that you will take care of it and that it has nothing to fear. Talking helps.

The fear we are taught by our culture is much more difficult to deal with, probably because it goes into our worldview which determines how we respond to experiences, what we expect　and what we will believe. The good news is that your worldview is also a measure of your spiritual maturity, so it is worth knowing what is in it and how to keep it in line. If you do not meditate then at least learn mindful contemplation, and start thinking about where you have learned what to expect from the unknown. If you have religious training, you have probably learned a host of fears about things like death and their being nothing after we die to the fear of being judged and punished if you are still alive on the other side after all. Then there is the fear of having some guy with a chain saw run out of the closet to cut you into a bunch of painful little pieces without actually putting you out of your misery. You need to contemplate that one a lot because our media illustrates all of those really scary reasons for why we should be afraid of the dark.

I loved swimming in the rivers and lakes around my home when I was a kid. I did until I saw the move, Creature of the Black Lagoon. It was years after that before I was willing to swim in the wild. I allowed myself to buy into these fearful thoughts and even paid the movie industry to help me do it.

We enjoy being scared. The movie industry has learned this and the scarier a movie is the more money it makes. We just need to separate fantasy from our true everyday reality. Having a good imagination is good but it is something that we can’t let overtake us.

As it turns out, people are the means by which etheric influences are propagated into the physical. This is just a theory, but it is a good interpretation of the evidence. At least it works to behave as if it is true. Even more important is that people’s worldview has a lot to do with what is allowed into the physical. The effect is that if you expect a fearful experience, you will tend to have a fearful experience, so the right attitude is that you are in charge, and that you are not going to put up with any nonsense. We have no reliable reports of a researcher being harmed by a communicating entity. Not one.

Yes, the entities are often around us. In fact, Lisa and I are pretty convinced that everyone has a few people on the other side who come along for the lifetime and who help out as they can, so we probably should behave as if they are there, thank them and seek their counsel. And if you are worried about privacy we don’t think that you need to be. All the information that we have gotten from those on the other side is that they do respect our privacy and only come when asked or needed. Another thing to keep in mind is that most other people think they are alone and may not respond well to someone who thinks otherwise. Remember they tried to lock up that fellow in the movie who had an invisible rabbit as a friend!

Above all else, keep an even mind and know why you believe what you do. You are responsible for what is in your worldview and the things in your life, so as I always like to say, "Believe what you will, but know what you believe."             Tom

Feeling a touch, lights going off and on, seeing butterflies, hearing a voice, these are just a few of the kinds of signs the living talk about having received from the dead. These stories are often shared cautiously for fear of being called delusional with grief by a skeptical listener. Even in grief support groups, this type of story may be discouraged, say Phran and Bob Ginsberg, whose daughter, Bailey, died in 2002. Unable to discuss the ways that their children were contacting them, a "second meeting" was often held in the parking lot after the grief support meeting was over.

Phran stated, "The knowledge that our kids were still with us gave us the hope we so desperately needed just to survive each day." Phran and Bob began "Afterlife Discussion Groups" in their home state of New York in 2003. There are now groups in eight states and they hope to have one in every state within a couple of years. All that is needed is ten to twenty people in drivable distance of each other and a facilitator. In 2004, the Ginsbergs incorporated the nonprofit Forever Family Foundation to coordinate the groups and support research into survival of consciousness. For more information see foreverfamilyfoundation.org or write to Forever Family, 222 Atlantic Avenue, Oceanside, New York 11572.

We will be speaking at the International Spiritualist Federation Fraternal Week held at The Crowne Plaza Hotel in Rochester, New York September 8 through September 15, 2007. Attendees take classes in two different modalities during the week. They are able to pick from mental mediumship, physical mediumship, healing or trance and no prior training is necessary. The classes are taught by top notch instructors from around the world. The week is also filled with presentations from world renowned speakers on various metaphysical and religious topics. Cost for the week includes food and lodging and runs $855 double/twin room and $1085 single room. For more information go to theisf.com. A $50 deposit is required to secure attendance and space is limited and usually fills up six months prior to the event (could be even earlier). Our presentation on EVP is set for Tuesday, Sept. 11. We hope to meet a few of you there!

The 4Cell EVP Demonstration has made it clear that specific information can be requested from the etheric communicators. However, the question that often comes up is whether or not EVP can be used to request information that would help solve a crime or locate a missing person. Our response has always been designed to discourage people from trying to inject themselves into official investigations with EVP examples, not because we knew it could not be done, but because we wanted to be mindful that EVP is still not a very reliable information gathering tool and because we have nightmares about having a grossly inaccurate EVP complained about by the victim’s family on the six-o’clock news.

With that said, the Idea Exchange does offer a safe place for experimenters to seek ways to make EVP a useful tool. This was probably first explored by David Mierzwinski, who posted a request for help finding two missing Milwaukee boys. There were 133 replies to his initial post, many included EVP. The boys were finally found in a lagoon, and looking at a review of the EVP posted by the participants, I see many references to water. It seems clear that the entities were telling us that the boys were dead. The problem is that messages such as, "Look on the river" recorded by Margaret Downey or "Gravel at water level" recorded by David, might make sense in retrospect, but as leads, the messages are difficult to put to work. Of course, David was using the lost boys as a learning tool, and there was no danger of anyone offering such "evidence" to the grieving families or the authorities. Thanks David and those who participated. It was an important exercise.

A little after David began his thread, the family of a missing pregnant lady named Amanda Jones contacted us via the web site, and asked for help finding her. With their promise to give us feedback, we opened a new thread by first posting a protocol that would be followed. Debra Caruso, Chris Kennedy and Margaret Downey have been participating and have recorded a number of interesting messages. However, thus far, none have been confirmed as meaningful by the family.

Interestingly, some of the messages recorded for the missing boys seem more applicable to the Amanda case. For instance, the family asked if we have recorded anything to do with a well, because a couple of mediums think she is in a well. As it turns out, Margaret recorded "They’re in the well," for the lost boys thread. Since she was working on two cases, is it possible that the messages were being confused?

Another interesting twist to this is that after we agreed to ask AA-EVP members to help, we learned that one member had already been working on the case via the authorities. Her mode of information gathering appears to be primarily mediumistic, and the information is never in the form of an EVP that others can hear. We should make it very clear that we have a great deal of respect for effective mental mediums, and understand that information received via mediumship may ultimately be the best approach to information gathering. At the same time, EVP is objective evidence that others can hear. The protocol we established includes the requirement that at least two people, other than the one who recorded the EVP, must agree about what is said in the utterance before we would take the information to the authorities or family. Even then, the EVP must be sufficiently understandable for the family and/or the authorities to have a reasonable chance to understand the message.

Our observations thus far are that simply asking people to seek information that can be of use has not been effective. Participants have gathered a lot of information, but it has been bits and pieces that do not tell enough of a story to be useful. There is also the problem of messages that seem informative, but that do not tell us which case they are concerned with. It also seems that the entities are not overly concerned with revenge or justice and they think in conceptual rather than concrete terms.

Debbie, Chris and Margaret have experimented with a three person version of the 4Cell EVP Demonstration protocol to see if imposed discipline of a protocol will help. We hope to offer better results in a future NewsJournal. In the meantime, we remain confident that EVP can be developed into a useful tool for information gathering. The trick appears to be finding the right protocol.

A common question about the ability to communicate across the veil with loved ones is, "Why is it so hard to receive useful information from the communicators?"

Whether or not it is technically correct, a good model for explaining any form of mediumship is that it is mind-to-mind communication in the etheric, and then a transformation of the information into the physical via the physical person, and then "embodiment" of the information by that person as an EVP or a spoken message. So, if the physical person does not have a particular concept in his or her head, then there is no vocabulary for the etheric communicator to use to relay that information. There are two constraining problems. The etheric entity must have access to the concept and the medium must have the necessary vocabulary of language and images to embody the concept into the physical.

We are all latent mediums, and one possible explanation for the wide range of ability in recording EVP is the individual’s ability to manage comprehension, attention and intention. In other words, how much of that latent ability have we developed, either deliberately or spontaneously? Thus in EVP, our development and the limits of the technology we use are the dominant factors for our transcommunication. Then there is the same set of constraints posed by our etheric communicators. So in the end, what is communicated may be a subset of those two sets.

In the color diagram here, think of yourself as the blue circle (B), which represents the extent of your image/language vocabulary, and your etheric communicator as the green circle (G). If the above hypothesis is correct, the only information that can be conveyed in EVP that you record, would be represented by the overlapping area "C" and the white center.

If a person is bringing a message into the physical for another person, then the only information that the experimenter would be able to bring for the other person (R) would be represented by the white area in the diagram.

There are many variables in EVP that determine how well we are able to communicate. Consider this model, and think of other influences that might limit or enhance your ability. Once identified they are sometimes easily managed.

The Sci Fi channel series, Sci Fi Investigates, did a show on the Afterlife in early November in which we appeared for a few minutes. Sarah Estep’s EVP, "I was seeing the war," was played during many of the intros. We recorded several EVP while working with two of the investigative team. One EVP which gave the name, "Robinson" was played on the show. "Robinson" is the last name of Mary Jo Gran’s son, Jim. The EVP was not in Jim’s voice but we found this interesting as Jim is very active in the Big Circle and has appeared in one of our ITC experiments. We had also repeatedly asked the Big Circle for their assistance during the filming.

The Afterlife show featured an investigation done by a New York paranormal group, Dianne Arcangel, author and president of the Forever Family Foundation, working with investigators in the "Oracle," which is like Moody’s Psychomantium and Mark Macy taking pictures of investigators in the presence of the Luminator.

Karen Mossey was seen on a show by Comcast television called, American Builder. She was with the New England Ghost Project doing an investigation at the New London Ledge Lighthouse in Connecticut. Karen collected a clear EVP recording saying, "Help me … I’m cold." Karen wrote, "A couple and their young daughter drowned in a sailboat accident near the light house and some people say the young girl was pulled onto the lighthouse and vanished, others say the couple was pulled up and then vanished the next day." Another investigative team reported that they saw an apparition on the staircase leading to the lighthouse. Interestingly this is the exact spot where Karen recorded the EVP.

As shown in the last NewsJournal, Diana and Alan Bennett captured a picture in an ITC experiment that looks exactly like the being, Seth 3. Seth 3 sent pictures and communicated with deceased researcher Adolf Homes in the 1990s. We had asked members for any information they could find on Seth 3. Jutta Liebmann, of the German VTF, wrote to us to say, "The information from the book, Instrumental Transkommunikation by Prof. Senkowski, is as follows: Transcommunication contacts received by the deceased Adolf Homes in the 90s. Seth 3 had contacted Mr. Homes via direct radio voices … the so called electroacoustic voices, via telephone, radio, loudspeakers, etc. Seth 3 comments on the definition of metamorphosis as it applies to transformation as follows: ‘However, a new way of existence has been planned for mankind. Man will go through a metamorphosis. In the end of this transformation man will be able to remember their own reincarnations [former lives]. You will seek this process. The situation of mankind/man needs much new information about the other higher levels of alien realities.’"

• Martha Copeland and her daughter, Cathy, now on the other side are mentioned in Jeffrey Wands new book, Another Door Opens. Jeffrey also mentions Martha’s book, I’m Still Here and the AA-EVP. Thanks Martha.

• Margaret Downey found a Panasonic RR-DR60 for sale on eBay for around $500. The text for the item read: "This recorder was made famous by the American Association of Electronic Voice Phenomenon and by paranormal researcher Lou Gentile with the million dollar paranormal challenge. It was even featured in the book, There is No Death and There are No Dead." (We have seen DR60s on eBay for as much as $1000, making us feel a little guilty that we even mentioned them in our book.) Margaret went on to say that, "Last month, someone had a ‘Buy it now’ for $29 plus $10 shipping on a RR-DR60 and I nabbed it for a total of $39."

• Vicki Talbott appeared on the Montel Williams show with Sylvia Browne in September. She shared some of the communications from her son and Big Circle member Braden. The show was rerun again in December.

• James Waddingham wrote that he is attempting to duplicate Theodor Rudolph’s goniometer circuit described on pages 356-361 in Konstantin Raudive’s book, Breakthrough, and asked if there was anyone else who had constructed the goniometer circuit?

AA-EVP in Fate Magazine

Rosemary Ellen Guiley, author, speaker and consulting editor of Fate Magazine, attended the 2006 AA-EVP conference in Atlanta. Rosemary wrote an article on the conference and some of the speakers including Sonia Rinaldi and Mark Macy. It appeared in the December issue of Fate. Rosemary, thank you for the excellent article.

An article with the same title by Maureen Hutfless, which appeared in the Lincoln Journal Star, was an interesting look at how various religions view our spending an afterlife with our pets. The Roman Catholic Church was quoted as saying, "We don’t believe that animals have immortal souls and therefore they can’t share in eternal life. They won’t be in heaven." Both Judaism and Islamic belief had differing reasons but gave no hope of a reunion with our beloved pet friends in the after-life.

Lucky for us, the author interviewed a Lakota medicine person and spiritual leader, Joe Bad Moccasin. He told of an experience that he had when he nearly died. He saw in the next world not only his deceased relatives, but also all the dogs and a cat he had raised, as well as birds flying. "I came to the conclusion that anything that has life, like the animals … they too have a place to go in the spirit world. I believe Tunkasila (Grandfather/God) gave all these four-legged animals, the feathered fowl, the fish that swim … he gave us all a spirit."

Author unknown ... (thanks Martha and Rachel)

Researcher Reports

• Debbie Caruso attended a workshop at the Omega Institute given by James Van Praagh. James even agreed to record with her but when it was time, Debbie said the room was just too noisy. She did bring some people back to her room to try and reach loved ones through EVP. One woman had not seen her father since she was three years old. When they listened back to the recording they heard a man speaking Spanish right before Debbie spoke. This was exciting because the woman’s father only spoke Spanish. All the rest of the EVP were in English.

• Sandra Champlain wrote that she has gotten wonderful results. She says that she may have only gotten a few Class A examples but that she has recorded with many people and that they all hear messages 100% of the time.

• Martha Copeland recorded after the scheduled Big Circle recording session but said the group energy was still there. She wrote, "We have had some members lose loved ones and I was asking the Big Circle if the new arrivals were happy over there? The response was, "Yes, we’re happy."

• Dan Christianson disconnected the phone line and used the answering machine to record and captured, "John."

• Carolann Crowley wrote that she records mostly on her computer. She wrote, "I have had many successes; I keep a written journal of them also."

• John Debney tried recording with his Memorex IC recorder. John asked, "Can you tell your mom I love you? Can you Ashley?" He recorded Ashley saying, "I love you, Mom."

• Margaret Downey got some EVP for a member after her mother crossed. Margaret’s favorite was one where she heard both a male and female voice saying, "We love you, we’re together."

• Christine Jenkins recorded during the group Big Circle session and captured, "It’s Jim from the Big Circle … Chris."

• Cat Perks did a recording using her mobile phone and got, "It’s Cathy." Martha Copeland wrote that she felt it was her mother-in-law, Kathy Amis.

• Jutta Liebmann asked during a session, "What about my dogs? How are they?" When she played the tape back she heard several dogs barking and recorded a spirit saying, "This is the group of dogs." Jutta wrote, "However in the last weeks there were only a few messages of Class ‘B’ and Class ‘C.’" This reminds us all to not become discouraged when we don’t always get exceptional results as Jutta has been recording for over a decade.

• Rick Robertson asked, "How old are children’s spirits when they die?" and recorded the answer, "They’re old Rick."

• Vicki Talbott sometimes records the voice of Tara with her son Braden. Tara is the daughter of member, Denise Forrester. When Braden first met Tara and wanted to introduce her, Vicki was doing a recording, realized that she was late for class and abruptly shut off the recorder. On playback, Vicki heard at the very end of the recording Braden saying, "Mom, meet Tara…oops, never mind!"

• Leslie Taylor records near fluorescent lights and has captured her son’s voice saying, "Mom, I’m alive!"

• Julie Carter wrote that she recently had a telephone reading in which the medium gave her a message from her father that might have been a reference to EVP. "The medium said that my father jokingly called me a ‘witch’: ‘He says you have some device you use ... a scrying device ... he is aware of that ... you are pretty good at it’ or words to that effect. I cannot think of any other method or device I use, I do not use cards or a pendulum of any sort, mirrors or crystals."

• Jutta Liebmann wrote that she had found an interesting definition of the word, radar, in Instrumental Transkommunikation by Prof. Senkowski. "The word, radar, is often used by the entities in EVP. The definition for radar can also be interpreted as time-adjustment-device or alternatively as a so-called human antenna, i.e. people are open-minded towards spiritual matters and towards new ways of world view and thinking."

• Debra Ann noted that, "It seems to me that ‘they’ adapt to whatever my methods are (for EVP). I’m afraid that if I change the speed to listen they might change their speed of speaking. I try to make each recording the same length of time. I feel that if I make longer recordings they might just take longer to talk."

If you are looking for a specific item or know that you are going to purchase something through Amazon or eBay, please access them through the buttons on the home page of the ATransC website (ATransC.org). When you do this, a small portion of your purchase price goes to the AA-EVP. In the last six months, the money coming in through these affiliates has decreased. It’s simple and most of us do purchase items from these two vendors, so remember to go through the website. Thank You!