In parapsychology, psychophony refers to voices or paranormal sounds recorded on a tape recorder, although scientists agree that this phenomenon is broader and includes other forms of receiving information on other media (telephone, digital recording, etc.).
Since the discovery of this phenomenon, most of the researchers who dealt with it have argued that the psychophony recorded on a tape is the voices of the dead. However, this hypothesis is not the only one, various researchers and parapsychologists, including those who defended the transcendental, were engaged in it”; the origin of the phenomenon, and those who argued that we are talking about a phenomenon caused by the experimenter and his mind.
After the accidental discovery of this phenomenon by Friedrich Jür-genson in 1959, thousands of voices were recorded that belonged to the deceased, a rational explanation of the origin of which was never found.
Contact with the mother's voice
The story tells that one day in June 1959, Friedrich Jurgenson, a renowned artist and filmmaker who was born in Estonia, went into a forest to make some recordings of the trills of a bird about which he was filming a documentary.
In the stillness of the night, he heard and made an excellent recording of the trills that the night birds were hatching. Imagine his surprise when, after rewinding the tape of his small portable tape recorder, he perfectly heard that, in addition to birds, distant conversations were recorded, in which it was a question of their singing.
A little annoyed, the next day Jurgenson returned to the woods to repeat the tape and try to achieve his goal. After taking a good look around and making sure that no one was there and no one could interfere with him, he began to write. When he returned home and turned on the tape, he found that, in addition to the singing of birds, many voices of deceased people were recorded on it, which he later could recognize, and among which was the voice of his late mother, who said: “Yurgi, Yurgi, my little Yurgi …”Jurgenson repeated the experiment, and each time the voices of the deceased were recorded.
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Genuine harbingers?
Although Jurgenson is considered the discoverer of psychophony, there is evidence that the first voices recorded on tape were obtained on September 17, 1952 at the physics laboratory of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan by two priests Gemelli and Ernetti. Both priests recorded Gregorian songs on an old apparatus that used wire instead of tape. During one of the recordings, a strange voice appeared. It was followed by other recordings, and the priests' research on this phenomenon stretched for ten years: in the laboratory they tried various ways to get a voice.
Several years later, namely in 1956, North American researcher Raymond Bayless also recorded voices of paranormal origin. During his research work, which he conducted together with the psychic Attila von Slazay, they recorded voices on tape that were not heard during the session of the medium. Bayless decided to acquaint the parapsychological community with his discoveries, but was faced with the indifference of his colleagues, who did not attach importance to this phenomenon.
After Jurgenson's discovery, many scientists were fascinated by the strange phenomenon. Dr. Konstantin Raudive - a former professor of psychology at the universities of Uppsala and Riga - learned about Jurgenson's experiments in 1965. He, too, began recording strange voices and brought in Dr. Alex Schneider, a physician from St. Gallen, Switzerland, and Theodor Rudolph, a high-frequency electronics engineer. These scientists made over one hundred thousand records in 1965-1974 in strict laboratory conditions.
Many people started experimenting following the instructions of their predecessors. Colin Smith is the president of the famous English publishing house Colin Smith Ltd. - bought a new tape recorder and followed Dr. Raudive's instructions on how to "connect" with the voices. He recorded a certain rhythm, similar to a human voice, but it was impossible to make out. Peter Bander, who worked in the same publishing house, listened to the main fragment on the tape two or three times and suddenly understood the meaning of the spoken words. It was a woman's voice saying "Mach die Tur mal auf", which means "open the door" in German.
Mr. Bander immediately recognized his mother's voice; for years before her death, they kept in touch by exchanging tapes. The comment was pertinent: Bandera's colleagues often noticed that he was not very sociable, and therefore always closed the door of his office. Surprised, Mr. Bander asked two colleagues who did not speak German to listen to the recording and phonetically write down what was said on it. Their versions coincided, and Peter Bander made sure that his mother's voice was authentic.
Psychophotography: the other world on video
There are photographs of ghosts or spirits, psychophony. Now, with the help of modern technology, you can simultaneously record images and voices. Thanks to powerful television and video technology, images from the other world can be seen.
One of the most popular methods of obtaining paranormal images on video is used by German Klaus Schrieber. Schrieber worked as a fire safety technician in the city of Aachen. In the mid-1980s, Schrieber experimented with obtaining psychophony, wanting to catch the voices of his deceased loved ones.
In May 1984, Klaus Schrieber got psychophonic, where a voice asked him to turn on the TV. Schrieber pointed the video camera at the TV screen so that the image of the camera itself was reflected on the screen. With this simple system, Schrieber was able to obtain images of his deceased loved ones.
From that moment on, he began to conduct a series of experiments using a television and a video camera. He managed to get images of the faces of other people whom he could not recognize, and even some of the deceased figures known to the general public. Among his most common recordings are actress Romy Schneider and King Louis of Bavaria.
A message from the other world
At first, many researchers make recordings for the sole purpose of capturing psychophony. But there are many cases when the recording was carried out completely by accident. In fact, listening to old recordings, some of us may find in them "voices from the other world."
Something similar happened to a man named Alfonso Perez Huenchul, who had never been interested in paranormal phenomena. In August 2002, his wife decided to give her daughter a gift and recorded a video of the Brazilian band Ax Bahia, of which the girl was a fan. But they were in for a surprise: on the recording, they found not only the voices of the members of the group, but also other voices, which, according to Alfonso, belonged to his sister and mother, both of which had died thirty years ago.
During the sound of one of the songs, you can hear a message, which, among other things, says the following: "Be strong, try to keep peace in your house." Alfonso assures that these are the voices of his sister and mother and this unusual fact helped him to understand that dead people nevertheless remain with us. Parapsychologists who saw the recording called it psychophony, but Alfonso is only interested in the voices of his sister and mother, and not in the statements of specialists.
How are voices born?
Experts cannot agree on how psychophony occurs. Some hypothesize that when a person dies, his life energy turns into something that is still unknown to science and that researchers of the paranormal perceive as a spirit. Just as wind energy is converted into electricity and, when transferred to a light bulb, into heat and light energy, the life energy that moves a human being when it dies is likely to be converted into some other type of energy.
Perhaps the physical body turns to dust, but … what happens to the driving force that somehow allows life to develop with all its characteristics?
Experts believe that life energy must be transformed into something and this something can be captured on magnetic tape.