Chapter Five

Tesla and Electronic Voice Phenomena

No one can deny that computers and electronics have forever changed our way of life. There are electronic controls and computer chips in everything from the small appliances that toast our bread to the cars we drive, and make possible myriad forms of new entertainment, from VCRs and DVDs to video games and talking stuffed toys.

For a number of years some people have claimed that electronics can be useful in a quite unexpected way: to contact the dead, or at least allow the dead to contact us. Obviously, these claims are highly controversial. They make many assumptions: that there is life after death, that the dead are interested in contacting us, and that they have the means by which to do so.

The mysterious signals that Tesla received could be linked to what is now known as Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP). Tesla was one of the first men to experiment with the necessary electronic receiving equipment. The very same equipment, albeit more sophisticated than Tesla had access to, is being used today to receive EVP.

Many people experimenting with Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) and Instrumental Transcommunication (ITC) say they have received messages from “the other side” through radios, tape recorders, VCRs, televisions, telephones, and even computers.

These phenomena have manifest themselves since the appearance of the instruments themselves. EVP, for example, has been reported for well over 50 years or more: Strange voices being picked up with primitive radios during WWI and heard faintly on magnetic recording tape.

Tesla may have been the first to receive these electronic voices from another plane of reality. As with other modes of communications with alleged discarnate entities, care must be taken not to be swayed by the stories often told by beings from the other side. Tesla may have been duped, so-to-speak, by voices that only pretended to be creatures from other planets.

This is nothing new to those who are familiar with the tall tales told to them by spirits who claim to be ascended masters, Abraham Lincoln or Ashtar of the Interplanetary Space Command. Spirits love to tell lies to anyone who will listen.

Those such as Tesla and Marconi who experimented with radio early on were the first to report anomalous sounds and voices emanating from their radio receivers. These early reports were looked upon as mildly interesting curiosities and quickly forgotten.

Theosophist Alice Bailey in 1936, transcribed these words of her great teacher, the Tibetan Master DK:

“Within the next few years the fact of the eternity of existence will have advanced from the realm of questioning into the realm of certainty. Through the use of the radio by those who have passed over, will communication be set up and reduced to a true science.”

It has been widely written that Edison and his assistant, Dr. Miller Hutchinson, were seriously at work building a machine to achieve spirit communication. Tesla wrote in his journals that Thomas Edison had heard from other engineers that Tesla had been receiving mysterious voices and sounds over radio frequencies that were not conducive for the broadcasting of the human voice.

Edison, who publicly mocked Tesla and his experiments, privately believed that Tesla had managed to find the correct frequency to enable communication with spirits of the dead. Edison was determined to discover Tesla’s secret, and be the first to get the “Spirit Phone” on the market.

In his diary, Dr. Miller Hutchinson wrote:

“Edison and I are convinced that in the fields of psychic research will yet be discovered facts that will prove of greater significance to the thinking of the human race than all the inventions we have ever made in the field of electricity.”

Edison failed to live long enough to succeed with his ill-gotten idea to best Tesla. Tesla simply noted in his journal that Edison was trying to use his patents to talk with specters. Edison thought that Tesla could listen to spirits, Tesla considered that he was hearing people from other planets – the voices could have been the same, they may have just changed their stories to fit the belief system of the listener.

In 1967, Edison allegedly spoke through West German clairvoyant Sigrun Seuterman, in trance, about his earlier efforts to develop equipment for recording voices from the beyond. Edison also made suggestions as to how to modify TV sets and tune them to 740 megahertz to get paranormal effects. (Session recorded on tape by Paul Affolter, Liestal, Switzerland).

On September 15, 1952, two Catholic priests, Father Ernetti and Father Gemilli were collaborating on a musical research project; Ernetti as an internationally respected scientist, physicist, philosopher and music lover, and Gemilli as President of the Papal Academy.

The two men were trying to record a Gregorian chant, but a wire in their equipment kept breaking. Exasperated, Gemilli looked up and asked his dead father for help. To his amazement his fathers voice was heard saying: “Of course I shall help you. I’m always with you.” They repeated the experiment, and the voice, even clearer than before, said: “But Zucchini, it is clear, don’t you know it is I?.”

Gemilli was astonished. No one knew his childhood nickname but his father. The priest was suddenly afraid, for as a Catholic priest he had no right to speak with the dead. Troubled, the two men eventually sought an audience with Pope Pius XII in Rome.

Gemilli told the Pontiff of his experience, and to his surprise, was reassured. According to the 1990 translated text of his meeting, Pope Pius told Gemilli:

“You really need not worry about this. The existence of this voice is strictly a scientific fact and has nothing whatsoever to do with spiritism. The recorder is totally objective. It receives and records sound waves from wherever they come. This experiment may perhaps become the cornerstone for a building for scientific studies which will strengthen people’s faith in a hereafter.”

Electronic Voice Phenomena was next researched by two men from California, the medium Attila von Szalay and paranormal researcher Raymond Bayless. In 1956, they recorded, quite by chance, a series of paranormal voices on magnetic tape, voices that should not logically have been there.

Though Bayless reported their experiments in the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, like Tesla years before, not a single person contacted the society or the researchers to enquire about their work.

It was not until 1959 when Friedrich Juergenson, a film producer in Sweden, first made public his amazing voice recordings, did the world sit up and take notice of the Tesla voice phenomena.

Juergenson, while making a documentary, had decided to try and tape bird songs. When he played the tape back he was startled to hear, in among the tweeting and chirping, what sounded like his mother’s voice say in German:

“Friedrich, you are being watched. Friedel, my little Friedel, can you hear me?”

Years later, Juergenson said that when he heard his mother’s voice he was convinced he had made “an important discovery.”

Radio Contact With the Dead?

In 1967, Juergenson’s Radio Contact with the Dead was translated into German, and Latvian psychologist Dr. Konstantin Raudive read it skeptically. He visited Juergenson to learn his methodology, decided to experiment on his own, and soon began developing his own experimental techniques.

Like Juergenson, Raudive too heard the voice of his own deceased mother, who called him by his boyhood name:

“Kostulit, this is your mother.”

Eventually he catalogued tens of thousands of voices, many under strict laboratory conditions.

He published his book, Unhoerbares Wird Hoerbar (The Inaudible Becomes Audible), based on 72,000 voices he recorded.

In 1971, the chief engineers of Pye Records Ltd. decided to do a controlled experiment with Raudive. They invited him to their sound lab and installed special equipment to block out any radio and television signals. They would not allow Raudive to touch any of the equipment.

Raudive used one tape recorder which was monitored by a control tape recorder. All he could do was speak into a microphone. They taped Raudive’s voice for eighteen minutes and none of the experimenters heard any other sounds. But when the scientists played back the tape, to their amazement, they heard over two hundred voices recorded on tape.

In the same year, Colin Smythe, Ltd. England, published expanded English translations of Raudive’s book: Breakthrough, an Amazing Experiment in Electronic Communication with the Dead. Dr. Konstantin Raudive was a Latvian psychologist who had read Juergenson’s book, Radio Contact with the Dead, with a great deal of skepticism when it was translated into German in 1967. Nevertheless he was intrigued and over several years carried out hundreds of experiments under laboratory conditions.

In the years that followed, Juergenson and Raudive continued their research that inspired countless others to emulate their experiments. But constant criticism that the EVP was nothing more than ambient sounds processed by the mind into a semblance of speech, or snatches of shortwave radio, dampened enthusiasm for research in Europe.

However, during the 1970s and early 80s in the United States, EVP continued to evolve with much of the work spearheaded by a retired engineer, George Meek. In 1971, Meek opened a small laboratory Philadelphia after a lifetime’s interest in the paranormal. Meek soon became immersed in EVP -and realized its limitations. Meek was convinced that for electronic communication with the dead to really make its mark, apparatus more sophisticated than cassette recorders and AM radios would be necessary.

Meek decided that the best way to succeed was to attempt contact with someone who had passed on and work with him and his team in achieving two-way communication with the Other Side. The problem of course was gaining the initial contact.

Meek wrote to the now defunct American magazine The Psychic Observer, which put him in touch with Bill O’Neil, an electronics engineer who was also a gifted clairvoyant. Through O’Neil, Meek’s team, later to form themselves into the Metascience Foundation, made contact with a man who claimed to have been dead for five years and who was a medical doctor while on earth.

“Doc Nick,” as the discarnate became known, suggested to O’Neil that the team use certain audio frequencies instead of the white noise traditionally used by EVP researchers. This, he said, would serve as an energy source against which the sounds produced by his vocal cords could be played. The resulting experiments worked better than anyone had ever expected.

Soon after, a spirit being calling himself Dr. George Jeffries Mueller, was recruited to the team, or rather he announced he had come to join them after materializing one afternoon in O’Neil’s living room. Mueller claimed to be a deceased university professor and NASA scientist.

Mueller told Meek and O’Neil that he had died in 1967 and gave them numerous facts with which to verify his identity including his security number; the place where his death certificate could be found; and intimate details of his life and scholastic achievements. All of them checked out.

He began communicating regularly; helping to design a new piece of electromagnetic equipment that would convert spirit voices to audible voices. On October 27, 1977, his first words were recorded on the new system Meek called Spiricom.

Tapes of the Mueller conversations were subsequently released to the public. The voice of Mueller can be plainly heard joking with Meek and O’Neil and discussing topics from his favorite foods to the view of time from the spirit world.

He gave unlisted telephone numbers asking them to make calls to confirm the identity (which they did successfully) of the people at the other end (usually top-level government personnel); and he gives O’Neil precise directions with which to help build experimental video equipment to take spirit communication to the next level.

The clarity of the communications is astounding – and sometimes amusing: in one conversation, Mueller identifies a problem with a particular device and impatiently barks at O’Neil:

“The fault lies in an impedance mis-match which can be corrected by using a 150 ohm half-watt resistor in parallel with a 0.0047 microfad ceramic capacitor.”

Eventually, Mueller ceased contact after telling Meek and O’Neil that natural law meant he could “not be here forever.”

(He did in fact return once more to a group of ITC researchers working in Rivenick, Germany, led by Adolph Homes. In 1991 they received on a TV screen an image which was said to be that of Dr Mueller).

Meek concluded that Mueller had progressed to a higher state of being to such a point that Spiricom could no longer be used for communication. Apparently, only beings closest to the Earth plane of existence, could communicate through the relatively primitive electronics.

It had become clear that the most limiting aspect of the device was the fact that it depended almost entirely on the operator possessing mediumistic or psychic abilities. Obviously, gifted individuals like Bill O’Neil, Dr. Konstantin Raudive and Nikola Tesla were a necessary component in the reception of signals and voices from the Aether.

Much like batteries energize a portable CD player, the vibrant field of energy that surrounds special people activates electronic equipment tuned to receive other realities. Without these people, it is doubtful that enough energy can be provided by the discarnate entity to achieve communication.

George Meek fully accepted this and never patented Spiricom. His hope was that science would carry on his work and take it to the next level, going beyond what he and O’Neil were able and unable to accomplish.

In 1982 Meek held a press conference in Washington, DC and revealed Spiricom’s secrets. The conference made little impact on a largely skeptical world; in fact a large section of the media even refused to attend, so the device went largely unreported -except by the tabloids who naturally poked fun at the sensational story. Since that time, the focus of attention in terms of results has switched to Europe.

Nine months after Meek went public, on January 15, 1982, an electronics engineer named Hans-Otto Koenig, helped the now defunct Radio Luxembourg do a live broadcast on what was claimed to be a two-way conversation with a dead person.

Koenig had invented an ultrasound device after closely following Meek’s work which, he claimed, could replicate the Spiricom and Mueller/O’Neil dialogues. The equipment was set up under the watchful eye of the Radio Luxembourg engineers.

The device, nicknamed Koenig’s Generator by Rainer Holbe, the programs host, was connected to a set of speakers and switched on. An engineer asked over the air if any spirits cared to speak. Within seconds, a clear voice was heard. It said quite simply:

“Otto Koenig makes wireless with the dead.”

Understandably pandemonium broke out in the studio.

Another question was asked and seconds later a voice replied:

“We hear your voice.”

Rainer Holbe affirmed live on air there had been no trickery and later the station issued a statement stating that its engineers had found no natural explanation for what had happened.

Soon after, the device was demonstrated to members of the German EVP Association in Frankfurt where Konstantin Raudive, who had died in 1974, confirmed his presence. On the strength of this, one of Koenig’s associates Dr Ernst Senkowski, a physics lecturer, electronics expert and veteran EVP researcher, persuaded George Meek to fly to Germany.

After a demonstration of the Koenig’s Generator, Meek flew back convinced it was genuine and set about raising money to fund future work. Further research has been carried on by others in the field of electronics and radio who also have an interest in contacts with spirits.

Experiments held at a mansion in Newport Rhode Island have yielded some interesting results involving paranormal activity and the use of Shortwave Radio as a possible means of communication with other realities.

A research team led by Steve Cerilli has determined that tube based short-wave radios can provide a communication link with other planes of existence and their inhabitants. Recordings made on October 3, 1999 demonstrate that spirit entities can manipulate shortwave radios.

Curiously, the spirits present on that night learned how to better interact with the shortwave as the session progressed. By the end of the experiment, the entire room was awash with a form of static/electromagnetic energy. The tapes of this experiment are still undeveloped at this time.

Development of a paranormal recording involves re-dubbing the tape i.e. making multiple generations for reasons unknown. Research will be hopefully completed by the end of the decade.

A series of questions scripted by the research team were read by the owner of the location, which is known for its paranormal activity. The spirits were addressed and asked to participate in the experiment. The method of recording and equipment being used was then described. The questions asked were Socratic in nature, which means that they lead the listener to a revelation, each question building upon the former.

As a result of these experiments, all paranormal activity in the castle has stopped. It was the intention of the researchers to help these entities by achieving contact. The researchers felt that the spirits were somehow trapped or lost in between dimensions.

One possible scenario for disturbed spirit presences and haunting’s is that due to a tragic event in an individuals lifetime, the desire to remain on this plane of time creates a state of suspension. Spirits in this suspended state become prisoners of their own inability to let go.

It is believe that by establishing a communication link with the shortwave and asking relevant questions (Socratic method), lost spirits can be freed from their suspended state and made aware that there is nothing outside their own consciousness holding them back.

One of the participants, Jennipher Roos, described her experience that night.

“After spending the time it took to set up the equipment in the ballroom – about an hour, I walked outside to clear my thoughts and energy centers.

“Upon returning to the room, I could immediately feel changing vibrations with myself. I walked around the perimeter of the room in attempt to familiarize myself with my surroundings. I noticed a particularly strong feeling -highly sensational -in the corner of the room leading into the master bedroom.

“The only color of light I noticed before the experiments began, was a slight brightness in that corner of no particular color. The light surrounding the people participating in the study was nothing worth noting nothing out of the ordinary.

“During the first session, recording only, I was not aware of any overwhelming presence or energy disturbances. I was sitting on the floor -to the left of the Mayan sculpture. I felt centered and secure at all times; and although the room was highly charged, I cannot report any great shifts in the overall energy of the space and no specific concentrations of electromagnetism. The only notable change I observed was that the light in the corner of the room by the master bedroom had increased in intensity and now had a slightly bluish tinge.

“The next session, which involved the short wave radio was quite an experience for me personally. I had moved to the corner of the room which I previously described as highly active.

“Once I was centered on the floor and the questions began I could immediately sense a presence of some kind. A slight vibration moved from the floor, through my bottom and thighs, up my spine and into my head. This sensation was exceptionally strong and caused all of my hairs to stand on end.

“I placed my hands palm down on the floor in front of me and received the same sensation through my hands and arms, which heightened incredibly the overall effect. I could see luminous light all around me and when I moved my hand in front of me, the light attached itself to me and left a streak of light, like a tracer, in its path of movement.

“The short-wave radio was definitely receiving some sort of transmission amongst the white noise, but it was very faint deviations to me. However, about half-way through this session I began to hear other noises in the room.

“The best way I can describe them is like a low tone of church bells played very slowly…almost like a drone, but in a pattern that was repeatedly louder at the beginning of each “chime.” This sound was moving throughout the room in a circular fashion, like in stereo surround.

“As I focused all of my concentration and energy on the light and this sound, the short wave seemed to become more effected and I could definitely feel an increase of electromagnetic energy as the session progressed. At one point I was fairly overwhelmed with the feeling of it all…my body hair was on end for the entire session.

“I never observed any other colors at this time, nor did I feel that any of the participants, including myself were in any sort of danger. This part of the experiment was definitely the most powerful for me.

“I moved to the floor between the two aforementioned chairs and it was at this time that I started to notice huge changes in the short wave’s regularity as the speaker asked direct questions to specific pieces.

“The shortwave’s inflections were very quick after each question was asked, which indicates that perhaps the life forms are a bit more responsive when singled out individually.

“When the speaker addressed the Mayan statue, I observed it radiating a light that is best described as a dull-reddish magenta color. The light fully surrounded the Mayan and streamed off a bit in the direction of the microphone, but did not get close to it. this light remained until the session was over.”

Instrumental Transcommunication (ITC)

In 1985 Swiss electronics expert, Klaus Schreiber who, as a result of studying George Meek’s Spiricom designs, invented an apparatus he called “Vidicom.” The Vidicom consisted of a specially adapted TV, switched on but not attached to an aerial, with a video camera in front of it to capture images that appeared on the screen. One of the first pictures he received was a blurred, fleeting image of a human figure.

Occasionally just voices would come across, telling him how to tune his TV for better reception. A typical session would begin with a TV screen full of dots. Then small ovals would appear one after another, each growing quickly until they disappeared off the screen. Within minutes faces would start to appear along with voices, to the astonishment of Schreiber himself and his visitors.

It wasn’t long after Shreiber death in 1988 that his image started appearing on the TV screens of Europe’s ITC researchers. Schreiber’s friend Martin Wenzel continued his work with some success, but as with Spiricom the Schreiber method, to work effectively, needed to be used by someone with the sensitivity of a psychic and strong mediumistic links with other planes of existence.

In April 1990 George Meek’s wife Jeanette died after a long illness. Before she crossed over, however, Meek had asked her to get firmly in mind the names TimeStream (a spirit-side sending station linked to a young, leading-edge research laboratory in Luxembourg) and Swejen Salter (the system’s operator and research director on the spirit side). Hopefully these memories would act as a homing device once she crossed over, pulling Jeannette to the research station.

It apparently worked; three months after Jeannette’s funeral she reportedly had located the TimeStream station and sent the following letter to George via the Luxembourg computer:

“DEAR G.W. – WELL, IT SEEMS THERE ARE STILL PEOPLE WHO DO NOT BELIEVE IN THE CONTACTS YOUR FRIENDS HERE IN LUXEMBOURG ARE HAVING. HENCE I WILL GIVE YOU SOME PERSONAL DETAILS KNOWN ONLY TO YOU AND MOLLY.

“FIRST STORY. IN 1987, END OF APRIL, OUR TENANT DEBBIE CALLED TO SAY HER REFRIGERATOR WAS OFF. IT MUST HAVE BEEN ON A THURSDAY MORNING…

“SECOND STORY. ON APRIL 29, 1987, ANN VALENTIN WROTE A LETTER FORM CALIFORNIA SAYING SHE HAD NOT RECEIVED THE MAGIC OF LIVING FOREVER BOOKLETS SHE HAD ORDERED, BUT INSTEAD HAD RECEIVED A BOX OF HARLEQUIN NOVELS.

“THIRD STORY. JOHN LATHROP SHUTOFF THE ELECTRICITY AT OUR RENTAL HOUSE TO PUT IN THE NEW YARD LIGHT, HE WASN’T DOWN THERE VERY LONG BUT CHARGED $20 SERVICE IN ADDITION TO $40 FOR THE BULBS, PLUS TAX. THE CHARGE SEEMED HIGH.

“DON’T TRY TO EXPLAIN THIS, HONEY, MY NEVER-ENDING LOVE TO YOU. I MISS YOU SO MUCH, BUT I KNOW WE WILL BE TOGETHER. LOVE FOREVER, JEANNETTE DUNCAN MEEK.”

To support the validity of the ITC contact, Jeannette had selected three very private items known only to the Meeks and their secretary Molly Philo. The second item about romance novels, in fact, was a complete puzzle even to George.

Upon receiving Jeannette’s letter from the Luxembourg team and getting his excitement under control, Meek called Ann Valentinin California to verify item two. Sure enough, a carton of novels had arrived mysteriously in 1987, and to this day no one knows who sent them.

The most exciting and potentially fruitful development is that of communication via computer. Ken Webster of England published a book in which he reported on more than 200 computer contacts with local persons who had died more than three centuries ago.

One of Webster’s main contacts was 16th century Englishman Thomas Harden, who had lived in the same house that Webster now resided in, when the town was still named Bristol. From the astral planes, Harden could see Webster’s electronic equipment in the living room.

He referred to the computer as a box with a multitude of lights sitting near my chimney. Harden would communicate in old English grammar in a variety of ways -telepathic messages, scribbles on note paper, chalk-written messages on the floor and, most important, computer files written on the display screen and generated on hard disk.

Harden later was reported to have explained to his earth-side colleague Webster that the writing was formed according to his will or his visualization in the “Lightbox.” Another interesting feature was that Harden said that he wasn’t a discarnate entity, communicating from the beyond. Instead he claimed to be speaking from his own time in the 17th century. So rather then talking with the dead, this seems to be a case of time travel.

During the 1980’s psychic researchers became aware of claims that various people had received telephone calls from loved ones after they had died. The calls were usually only of short duration and when investigated did not register on normal telephone monitoring equipment. This subject was extensively covered by D. Scott Rogo in his book Telephone Calls From The Dead. (1979).

A husband and wife couple working in Luxembourg between 1985 and 1988 along with helpers from the afterlife, developed two electronic systems which became significantly more reliable and repeatable than the systems developed earlier.

Jules and Maggie Harsch-Fishbach in 1987 established computer contact which allows submission of technical questions with high speed print-out of the carefully considered replies. Also in 1987 they got TV picture sequences of good quality (Psychic News February 25th 1995).

By 1993 the research team in the afterlife was able to access the hard drives of computers and leave detailed, computer-scanned images as well as several pages of text. The computer-scanned images were far more detailed and less subject to distortion than the video images. Researchers on earth were able to direct questions to their counterparts on the other side and receive answers by telephone, radio, TV, computer, or fax (Kubris and Macy 1995: 14).

Dominic RMacquarie stated in the November 15, 1997 issue of Psychic News that communication between the earth plane and the afterlife is more successful when there is a mediumistic person, who has more than average ectoplasm present. This had earlier been confirmed by Konstantine, Raudive, German Professor E Senkowski and George Meek.

The need to have some form of electromagnetic energy present has always been recognized as an essential component of EVP. Macquarie claims that experimenters since 1963 have obtained better results if they turn on three twelve volt transformers (the kind which change household voltage to lower voltage for portable radios, CD players etc.) within 3 to 4 inches (8-12cms) of each other.

They produce a very quiet hum which provides a weak gentle field of electromagnetic energy which can be used by discarnate entities.

“One has always to keep in mind that whilst ectoplasm and electromagnetic energy must be present when communicating with the afterlife, an experimenter who is negative and uses the presumption of futility will be exuding negative energy and will dramatically reduce successful communication,” says Macquarie. “This ‘experimenter effect’ has been found in mediumship, laboratory testing and when using electronic equipment.

“So even though communication can occur through television, radio equipment and the telephone, the clarity of transmission depends on the contact field, the thoughts of those receiving the transmission. It has been discovered at large open meetings, that if a group of people had negative thoughts about ITC, their negative vibrations seriously affected the vibrations coming from the astral plane.”

Even though Nikola Tesla in his early years had little patience with those who believed in spirits and unknown psychic abilities, he may have had a change of heart later in his life and after leaving the physical plane. In 1998, a medium by the name of Alice Cromley alleged that she had made contact with the spirit of Tesla through electronic methods similar to what Tesla used.

In a series of communications, all conducted at a secure home in Montreal, Canada, Mrs. Cromley received information concerning Tesla’s continued existence after his death and the new discoveries that awaited him on the other side.

Tesla was apparently eager to tell those interested in his life and science, not to dismiss ideas that appear supernatural or not of science.

“Physics, extends beyond what is scientifically known today,” Tesla communicated. “The future will show that what we now call occult or the supernatural is based on a science not yet developed, but whose first infant steps are being taken as we speak!”

ABOVE

Tesla was probably the first to experience EVP.

BELOW

Bill O’Neil at the Spiricom device.