Intermezzo

A disregarded parameter - the experimentator.

As allready mentioned ( England 1971 ) in Germany the "Verein fur Tonbandstimmen Forschung" (Society for Tapevoice Research) - when at its height in the late eighties had more then 1800 mostly active members.

Most of them had joined the society without any preceding knowledge of the Voice Phenomenon or of any kind of sound recording. They just had heard or read about the subject and became interested, mainly by the spiritualistic aspect alone. But what happened to all those peoples, what problems and difficulties did they meet with at the very beginning of their experiments? What were their experiences, their difficulties?
I think the experiences of several hundreds of experimentators working years with such an extraordinary problem, their results, difficulties and often also disappointments must have some psychological interest. But unfortunately the German "research" society, in spite of its name, never undertook any kind of a really thorough investigation concerning the different sides of this strange phenomenon. It just was and still is occupied with a spiritualistic motivated playing around with Jurgenson's and Raudive's old methods.

But the same interesting problems still exists, the same problems still crop up - a fact I am acquainted with through several years as a member in the German society and also through my e-mail correspondence - and therefore I decided to devote a particular section to this subject.
I must admit it was with some hesitation - so please take it just as a partly subjective, "unscientific" personal comment and also some information to new experimentators.
But it also make out a seldom mentioned and elsewhere difficult available information of the psychological background behind the ``Electronic Voice Phenomenon´´

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An often overlooked but nevertheless important problem - apparently never really discussed before - is the situation of man opposite the computer, radio or other, maybe more primitive, apparatus:
The situation of the inexperienced and often also lonely experimentator.
The apparatus and experimentator constitute, if not an interaction then at least some kind of a one way psycho-physical communication unit. But a very special unit which follows its own laws and makes its own conditions where the experimentator is the active part.
I know this is just a hypothesis or if you prefer a postulate only. Nevertheless is it based on several years of own experiments and also several discussions with others who had successfully worked with the EVP phenomenon.
Looking back at my own start I remember it took about three weeks before I had got some just fairly acceptable results. But why did I continue my efforts so long a time without any result?
There are two main difficulties and I think they are common for nearly all new experimentators.

The first is simply a question of having patience enough. I had been told in advance that it could take "some time". The second difficulty is closely attached to the experimentators person and for that reason somewhat more difficult to describe exactly. It is the question of personal motivation.

The motives which made me start my own experiments was a medley of curiosity (if the phenomenon existed at all ?), an interest in electronics, an interest in parapsychology and last but not least Friedrich Jurgenson's book.
From many personal experiences, mainly in the German VTF- society, I also know that a stronger, perhaps spiritualistik inspired motivation e.g. a strong desire to establish a contact with a deceased person may have given both quicker and better results - total independent of any reality at all behind the experimentators art of wishes and belief. On the other side - also human inquisitiveness alone has always been a strong motivation.
So we have the two conditions which must be fulfilled: Time and motivation.

The process may be called a subconscious creation of an ability, a kind of conditioning of the mind and vary from individual to individual. I regret that I have no better name, no better explanation .... The obtained voices are not a result of a pure physical process alone but the results of a strange influence of the human mind on electronic apparatus - an inexplicable combined physical and psychological phenomenon.

If this conditioning is not taken into consideration, if you just give the EVP phenomenon a short formal try - perhaps furthermore without any real personal interest - then the result invariable will be a disappointment. So please let me repeat a short earlier passage from this homepage:

Regardless of all technology, all electronics including the computer, the EVP phenomenon never is and never can be reduced to a pure physical problem. In high grade it also is a psychological problem - an unique combination of man and machine. If this viewpoint is not taken in account during all experiments, any further work will remain fruitless.

Strangely an experiment can be found which (perhaps unintentionally) confirm the above statements.
It was in truth a very strange experiment. 81 sessions of an average duration of approximately 45 minutes resulted in about sixty hours recording time, sixty hours in an attempt to reproduce some more than 30 years old experiments - furthermore carried out with apparatus totally different from the original used AM-receivers (AM: amplitude modulation). As mentioned explicitly in the article the used apparatus were FM-receivers, which are almost completely insensitive to outer noise influence. But all Jurgenson's and Raudive's experiments were carried out with the old fashioned AM radio receivers .... Also the (very few) technical experiments mentioned in Raudive's books (Schneider, Seidl, Rudolph) were carried out with AM sensitive apparatus only. So the sixty hours of experimental work only demonstrated that you can not get paranormal voices with a FM receiver - a fact not very surprising for any electronic technician.
Some important but unanswered questions still remain. Futher information concerning the psychological background of the experiment. the participants experience with earlier EVP experiments, their knowledge of the basic literature, of existing voice material recorded by others etc.
But most of all : Based on my own agelong laboratory experiments I venture to assert: It is simply impossible to prove or just render the existence of the Voice Phenomenon with the use of unqualified apparatus (microphone, radioreceiver) originaly construkted for totally different purposes. Furthermore all the original, basic material is lost and any later comparisonis impossible.
( Nevertheless it is an interesting article which furthermore contains an extensive survey of the EVP history and literature based on the English language.) (Bibliography 13)

All the above problems also make up the reasons behind the difficulty of immediately proving the existence of The Voice Phenomenon. But with computer aided methods at least you can demonstrate its existence in single, personal demostrations. The absence of sound material normally used for EVP recordings, first and foremost the absence of a microphone and radio receiver, the possibility to store and analyse all the different steps during the whole process, makes such a demonstrations very convincing. Furthermore a systematic collecting of the obtained material, followed by a statistical analysis could later give us some closer information of the mechanism behind The Voice Phenmenon. But with computer aided methods and suitable programmes at least you can demonstrate its existence in single, personal demonstrations.. The absence of unqualified apparatus normally used for EVP recordings, the possibility to store and analyse the different steps during the whole recording process, makes such demonstration very convincing.
Furthermore a systematic collection of the obtained material, derived from different experimenters and followed by a statistical analysis, could give us some more definite information of the mchanism behind the Electronic Voice Phenomenon.

But of course I also know, that the possibility of a real realisation of such an investigation is extremely small. To day a convincing result will be anything than but welcome ......

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P.S. If you look on the net for an EVP recording method to start with, try:

www.StefanBion.de/evpmaker/

There is both a German and an English version available - perhaps you may succeed.

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