Matthew Manning and EVP

 An account of Matthew Manning's experimentation with EVP ('Electronic Voice Phenomena') is included in The Link (1974).

 

 

Soon after my 1995 trip to Oklahoma to investigate "America's Talking Poltergeist" I discovered that unattributed sounds and 'spirit messages' were audible while listening to the microcassette recordings of my interviews with members of the Oklahoma family.  At that time, I wasn't aware that these manifestations had a history and had been given a categorical name in the annals of 'unexplained phenomena.'

I first learned about 'EVP' in brief Internet articles.  The first books to chronicle the phenomena are two books by Freidrich Jürgenson: Rösterna från Rymden (Swedish/Voices from Space 1964) and Sprechfunk mit Verstorbenen: Praktische Kontaktherstellung mit dem Jenseits (German 1981) with an English edition Voice Transmissions With The Deceased (2001) translated by Tom Wingert and George Wynne; and Breakthrough: An Amazing Experiment in Electronic Communication with the Dead (1971) by Konstantin Raudive, Ph.D.

Since the summer of 1995, while listening to audio and video recordings I have experienced diverse manifestations of EVP.  Among these experiences is an incident comparable to the ones described by Matthew Manning in The Link.  In his later autobiography One Foot in the Stars (1999), Matthew wrote that his visit to Douglas Johnson for a psychic reading had coincided with Matthew's father buying a copy of Raudive's book.  In 1973 at the age of eighteen, Matthew returned to Oakham School "determined to try one of the experiments outlined in Raudive's book."  What happened next was recalled by Matthew in The Link.

On two separate occasions, an interesting phenomenon manifested itself onto a tape recorder.  The first instance occurred at school and was witnessed by five people, and the second incident took place at home during holiday time.

One night I decided with four friends to carry out an experiment along the lines of the Electronic Voice Phenomenon and we all assembled in my study around a large tape recorder at about 11 p.m.

The machine was switched to the record position, and the recorder, although plugged in, was turned off after each of us announced our name and asked for a particular person to speak on the tape.  When we played back the tape there was nothing but three minutes of silence.  Next we asked someone else to talk; again there was  no response after three minutes.

An hour later, having still had no success, we decided to have one more attempt and then go to bed.  It seemed that we were not going to get any response.

"Why not try Hitler?" someone suggested.  "He is much more likely to work, as it is always easier to attract a power of evil than a power of good."

This, at the time, seemed a good idea, so we invited Hitler to speak, and then concentrated on his name while the tape recorder ran for a few minutes.  After we stopped the tape, we ran it back to the beginning for playback.

It began with distant rumbling gunfire, which soon gave way to regimented marching.  This continued for nearly a minute and sounded as though the microphone had been placed near soldiers as they marched past it.  Then behind this noise a sound like a brass band could be heard playing a marching tune, which was later identified as one of the German Nazi songs.  The marching feet began running as gunfire could be heard more clearly in the background.  Still the music kept playing over it all and incoherent shouting was audible.

It then began to sound as though the feet were running down a stone or concrete corridor which produced an echo.  At this point the tape ended.  Startled and amazed, we played the tape over and over again.  We all had checked the tape carefully beforehand and can swear that it was clean on all four tracks.  The microphone was not switched on, rendering it useless to record normal sounds.

Another incident happened at home when I was amusing myself with a cassette tape recorder late in the evening.

I was listening to the ten o'clock news on the radio; the newscaster talked about violence in Northern Ireland, bombing and shooting, and the deaths of some soldiers whose patrols had been ambushed.

After the news I went to my room and switched the tape recorder on with the microphone plugged in.  I allowed it to record silence for about two minutes and then played it back.

At first it ran silently.  I was suddenly shaken by two clearly audible gunshots.  There followed another short silence that was soon shattered by two rounds of machine-gun fire.  After a couple or seconds these gave way to single shots and much incoherent shooting.  The sequence of noises ran for nearly forty-five seconds, and the remainder of the tape was again quiet.  I played this back several times, and my parents listened to it as horrified as I was.

I went outside for a walk on my own, and returned home about twenty minutes later.

Again I went to the cassette recorder and switched it on to record, as I was wondering if I would receive some information or perhaps the same sounds again.

I played back the tape immediately; organ music was clearly audible.  It sounded as though I had recorded it inside a church while a pipe organ played.  With my parents I played this piece of music of about fifteen seconds' duration over and over again.  It was nothing we could recall having previously heard, and it really sounded like funeral music.

My reaction to the first recording of gunfire had been one of sadness and I had thought of the relatives of the dead soldiers.

I had only gone out for a walk because I felt so sad and miserable thinking about the young men, just a year older than myself.

Whether these two sequences were related, I don't know.  Nor do I profess to know the answer to questions that have been put to me by my parents; namely, whether I might have projected these sounds subconsciously onto the tape.