Electronic Voice Phenomenon
“We stand at the threshold of new discoveries. And a breakthrough may occur at any time. Some say we are not yet ready for the contact." - Raymond Cass
Welcome back, everyone.
A little while ago, I was introduced to one of the most captivating albums I could ever conceive—an album entirely dedicated to the sounds and voices of a life beyond what we know—a life that seems so close yet so far—a life beyond this exact dimension.
Today’s newsletter is about THE GHOST ORCHID: An Introduction to EVP, an album that is an exact recounting of EVP recordings (Electronic Voice Phenomenon, or recordings of mysterious alleged voices).
To put a small personal spin on this week’s newsletter, I must say, ghosts have fascinated me to my core since I was in elementary school. I remember sitting in the cafeteria at lunch with my friends in the 4th and 5th grade: we would tell “real” ghost stories, trying to spook one another. Of course, none of them were real (or were they?) but it fueled a fire within me that I could not yet understand. How beautiful it is to be sitting here, relaying those past feelings from over 16 years ago, in a newsletter entirely dedicated to what I always thought was a silly affinity.
Allow me to quote a favorable moment from the liner notes of THE GHOST ORCHID:
“Man’s known fascination with what happens after death is made evident by the earliest archaeologists. Tribal society and its members ritualized contact with their ancestors and life without this contact would have been unthinkable to all human beings for many tens of thousands of years. The dead were part of the living, and the living part of the dead. They were inextricably joined and the fate of one fundamentally influenced the fate of the other.”
This album is an exploration of that breakdown, that “proof” of what happens after death.
For some background, this album has a total of 77 tracks and runs about fifty minutes. It was first released in 1999 and a revised edition, the one from which I am extracting information, was released in 2005.
Each section of EVP recordings has a short commentary given by Swedish artist, Leif Elggren. He briefly speaks of the nature of the recordings, i.e., unusual sentence structures, language combinations, potential origins of the recording extracts, the way voices interfere with radio frequencies, voices breaking into public service broadcasts, and so on. The recordings themselves are all from EVP specialist, Raymond Cass. Some of the recordings include Cass’ own interaction with the voices, or at the very least, attempts at provoking them to speak.
For some historical background:
In the beginning of this album, Cass provides the history of voices of unknown origin, explaining that such a phenomenon emerged in the late 1930s. Voices were heard over early radio technology, and were thought to be secret Nazi transmitters.
Upon the cessation of the war, the voices did not stop, but with the transient nature of them, the research and investigation on them precluded…that is, until the 1950s when the use of the tape recorder became more prevalent.
It was Swedish painter, Friedrich Jürgenson, who catalyzed the use of electronic voice phenomenon. He carried his tape recorder everywhere to record voices of unknown origin—these voices claimed (directly to him) to be deceased friends, family, and acquaintances and not only that, but would respond to his own thoughts and actions. Jürgenson was obsessed. He eventually temporarily abandoned his life as a full-time painter and took up EVP as a primary hobby. He wrote about EVP, presented at several press conferences, and impressed scientists, allowing him to become a critical voice in International Paranormal Societies, the Parapsychological Association in the United States, the Max Planck Institute (a society for the advancement of science), and the University of Freiburg in Germany.
Jürgenson’s pious study of EVP was the impetus for the work of Raymond Cass, the work we hear in THE GHOST ORCHID, as well as the Latvian parapsychologist, Konstantin Raudive, whose work we also hear in this album.
We hear radio broadcast interruptions, lyrical inflections in the voices, phone conversations between Cass and his wife that were interrupted by voices, and more. Some of the tracks are truly unsettling and inexplicable…
Other tracks? Well, let’s see what some of the reviewers say:
“Why?” Why what? Let’s consider a couple of ideas.
Joe Banks, in his article “Rorschach Audio: Ghost Voices and Perceptual Creativity,” promotes his skepticism in a scholarly manner and the “major, salient issues” with EVP (specifically referring to THE GHOST ORCHID): he hypothesizes that there are always “perfectly rational explanations” for this strange phenomenon, and “the most primitive tape-recording and overdubbing techniques could easily produce phenomena of this nature,” and “if the voices recorded had been of a quality comparable to conventional studio recordings of speech, then nobody would have believed such rubbish for a minute,” and finally (my personal favorite), “it seemed amazing that […] the disc’s publishers had the confidence to expect such a degree of gullibility on behalf of their audience.”
on the other hand…
“Ghost hunters” and those who believe and study EVP take their work very seriously. The American Association for Paranormal Investigation (AAPI), for instance places scientific information and evidence in the forefront of their investigations. Moreover, the study of proving if ghosts are real or not has existed from the early 20th century. Early moments of ghost studies can even trace to early folklore and tribal studies—as we read in the quote from the liner notes. All in all, ghosts are a huge part of history and culture.
Let’s consider a few questions:
How do we make sense of an album, whether it’s fabricated or not, that demands its listeners to take it seriously? Are we hearing the work correctly if we don’t believe in its seriousness? What makes this work so intriguing, even if the listeners understand that it may not be real? What may lead people to believe (or not believe) in this?
Perhaps this album provides a similar reaction of excitement that my friends and I experienced when we would relay ghost stories to one another. Or, thinking back to the liner notes quote again: the living is part of the dead, and the dead is part of the living—therefore, this makes the album more meaningful on a spiritual level. Or, better yet, maybe it’s just because ghosts are pretty freaking cool!
Here is the link to THE GHOST ORCHID: An Introduction to EVP.
~~~
-S