EVP - Electronic Voice Phenomena

One of the world's most respected scientists, Thomas Alva Edison, believed that it would one day be possible to build a machine that would help humans communicate with the dead. He once said: If our personality survives, then it is strictly logical or scientific to assume that it retains memory, intellect, other faculties, and knowledge that we acquire on this Earth. Therefore ... if we can evolve an instrument so delicate as to be affected by our personality as it survives in the next life, such an instrument, when made available, ought to record something. Unfortunately, Edison did not live to see his invention take shape.

In 1949, Marcello Bacci of Italy began recording voices with an old tube radio. People would come to Bacci's home to talk with their departed relatives. A few years later, two Italian priests named Father Ernetti and Father Gemelli were trying to record a Gregorian chant on their magnetophone, but the machine kept breaking. Exasperated, Father Gemelli looked up and asked his father for help. To his surprise, his dead father's voice answered from the magnetophone, "Of course I shall help you. I'm always with you."

One of the most well-known EVP researchers of the 20th century was a Swedish opera singer, painter and film producer named Friedrich Jurgenson. His interest in electronic voice phenomena was sparked one day in 1959, when he recorded the sounds of birds singing in a forest. When he played the tape back, he heard a female voice say, "Friedrich, you are being watched. Friedel, my little Friedel, can you hear me?" It was the voice of his dead mother. Jurgenson went on to record many other voices over the next four years, and he published two books: "Voices From the Universe" and "Radio Contact with the Dead."

Dr. Konstantin Raudive, a Latvian psychologist, heard of Jurgenson's experiments several years later. At first he was skeptical, but then he tried the technique himself and wound up recording many voices, including that of his deceased mother.

In the 1960s and 1970s, EVP became a legitimate, if controversial, arm of paranormal research. American researchers George and Jeanette Meek and psychic William O'Neil recorded hundreds of hours of EVP with radio oscillators. They claim to have worked closely with another scientist, Dr. George Jeffries Mueller. The only catch was that Mueller was deceased.

Sarah Estep, one of the most outspoken EVP researchers, started the American Association of Electronic Voice Phenomenon (AAEVP) in 1982. She claims to have communicated with thousands of ghosts, as well as with aliens.

The American Association of Electronic Voice Phenomenon (www.AAEVP.com) is currently directed by Tom and Lisa Butler and is now a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. The AA-EVP membership includes people living in over twenty countries who record paranormal voices, pictures and information from friends and loved ones on the other side through audio recorders, telephones, television, computers and video recorders.

Researchers around the world continue to investigate EVP. Their findings are documented on dozens of Web sites, as well as in books.