Reality Checking
EVPs, Quantum Thinking, and Soul Fragments
By Brent Raynes
Back on February 13th, we again prowled through the abandoned hospital over in Fayetteville, Tennessee, and again the spirits seemed rather restless and again gave us good evidence of their presence. At one point, the K-2 meter really lit up in a big way and soon some pretty strong EVP audio was recorded. Bret Oldham sent me an audio file of it and I could make out the words “Shirley Fickett,” an old friend whose name/presence has come through on a number of “ghost box” audio sessions (but note, this was simply using a digital recorder). In addition, my old friend (now acting as something of a spirit guide perhaps), the late psychiatrist and paranormal investigator, Dr. Berthold Schwarz, also seemed to sound off several times from the “ghost box” that night at the hospital. I joked that he probably had a new caseload of ghost patients after this hospital visit.
In recent weeks I have also been actively seeking out the observations and opinions of fellow researchers and colleagues in the paranormal field to see what revealing insights and information they might be able to provide on the controversial and fascinating EVP issue.
“I was skeptical about EVP until I started hearing more of it and was convinced it was the product of one signal piggy backing over another,” noted New York author and paranormal investigator Philip Imbrogno in a personal email (05-01). “The second signal (EVP) has a broader bandwidth and this is why it can’t be heard on one isolated frequency.” In fact, in his book, Files from the Edge (2010), Phil describes how he actually observed these two signals taken from EVP recordings made with a ghost box by using an oscilloscope.
“To me, they represent a number of communicators,” Phil noted. “1. Dimensional beings (Djinn); 2. other people in parallel realities performing the same experiments; 3. perhaps other humans in different points of time; 4. some other cosmic source; 5. some EVP does originate from the magnetosphere of earth.”
In a recent email from acclaimed British writer and historian Andrew Collins, the author of Gods of Eden, Gateway to Atlantis, and Beneath the Pyramids, we touched upon an interesting EVP he got at the Caddo Indian Mound site in Texas, in the company of Doctors Greg and Lora Little earlier this year (Greg includes this report and video in his News section of this issue). Then Andrew made reference to me of what he called “quantum thinking” with regard to the EVP experience.
I asked if he’d explain, to which he replied: “Briefly, by quantum thinking I mean mentally assuming that EVP can and will be recorded on electronic devices. This being without any obvious scientific mechanism that can explain why the spirits of Native Americans – who lived hundreds of years ago, and would have no concept of our language, never mind electronic devices – might be able to record their voices in digital format.’
“Rational thinking would hold back anyone from even attempting such recordings in the first place, suggesting it was simply impossible. Even if a skeptic or rationalist tried doing so, their different way of thinking would preclude them from getting any good results.
“However, simply by assuming that it IS possible provides a much higher percentage factor for achieving a result. Why, because consciousness affects, updates and changes objective reality to ensure this is possible.
“Yet this is why one person’s objective reality is different to somebody else’s because everybody thinks differently. Thus the believer is correct in his or her assumptions, while the skeptic is correct in theirs. This is why the paranormal is often not possible in skeptical environments, because those instigating the experiments have quite different, but just as real, ideas of what can and can’t be objective reality, i.e., real in this world.
“Clearly there are overlaps, surprises, contradictions and disappointments. This has to be the case in order to allow the chaos factor into reality building, otherwise nothing would ever change or evolve. Yet in conclusion, it is much more likely that someone who believes that they will achieve EVP will do so, despite its contradictions to the consensus parameters of science.
“Yet more worryingly this same quantum thinking has more disturbing implications. The more people believe that lizard-headed aliens are enslaving the human race, the more they can make this a reality (even if it is not consensus reality today). That’s how powerful consciousness can be.
“How does all this work? The key is quantum entanglement, everything linked to everything else via entangled sub-atomic particles that communicate with each other instantaneously across both time and space, constantly updating, evolving and changing the world from both an individual and collective perspective. ‘Spooky action at a distance,’ as Einstein called it.”
I wrote Andrew back and tried to draw him out further regarding his thoughts on the EVP and “quantum thinking.” He replied: “I think it is difficult to know exactly what is going on with EVP, simply because we have no real idea of what happens after death, or whether the soul survives, and even if it does, whether it sticks around.”
“Plus if quantum entanglement is correct, then communication takes place across time and space anyways, so there is no today, tomorrow or yesterday in the spirit plane. Our communications through EVP can relate to any time frame ever, the soul being eternal because it exists across time.
“I think you have to use EVP simply as a means to an end, i.e. communication with other levels of existence. How it works should never detain us. Just assume that it does work and use it. Its mechanics are meaningless to our present understanding of science, so delving in the matter merely bogs us down.”
“I began publishing articles on the paranormal in 1956, and I became a full-time paranormal investigator/writer in 1967,” prolific author Brad Steiger explained to me (05/02). “I have always been open to the possibility of recording spirit voices, but my own attempts to record such phenomena have not been greatly successful. There have been times when every member of my investigative team clearly heard ethereal voices, and the needle on the recording set moved in a lively fashion, indicating that the sounds were being recorded – yet the tapes very often contained no sounds at all. In many instances, the spirits apparently did not wish to have their voices recorded for research purposes.
“When my friend Sarah Estep, a pioneer in the field of electronic spirit voice recording (author of Voices to Eternity and Roads to Eternity), informed me of the success that she and others had attained in their experiments to record spirit voices by permitting unattended tape recorders to pick up eerie impressions of what would appear to be snippets of ghostly sentences, greetings, and, on occasion, answers to direct questions, I was somewhat skeptical, but open-minded. In 1982, Sarah established the American Association of Electronic Voice Phenomena, and in 1983 she hosted an international conference of EVP researchers in Baltimore. Sarah asked me to be the keynote speaker, and I had the opportunity to examine the research and the theories of numerous EVP experimenters from the United States, Europe, and the U.K. I was impressed by the number of scientists and experts in electronics who took the phenomena very seriously. At the same time, I tried to be patient with those who insisted that I heard their tapes of what seemed to me to be natural sounds made by the rubbing of tape reels or a series of scratches and static that they interpreted to be the voices of spirits. What appeared to be a series of eardrum shattering electronic screeches to me were messages of spiritual transformation to individuals that I classified as true believers. Still, I remained open-minded.
“In recent years, I have been impressed by the EVPs (which I call Etheric Voice Phenomena) collected by Dave and Sharon Oester, who have recorded ostensible spirit voices everywhere from Southern mansions to deserted mine shafts. I feel an eerie chill when they approach a site and record an etheric voice greeting them by name. On other occasions, the unseen voices answer their questions in an almost conversational manner.
“I guess that I would have to state my position at this time as admitting that I have heard EVPs that definitely appear to be genuine ‘spirit’ voices. “Spirit’ is in itallics, because I think we can define the unseen speakers in a number of ways. On many occasions, they may be the result of psychic residue somehow impressed on the environment. On other occasions, they may be the voices of personalities communicating from another dimension. The great question for me in such multidimensional communication is whether or not we have made contact with the actual surviving personality whose identity is claimed or if we are interacting with a masquerading entity that may have motives beyond our present ability to comprehend. While I find the phenomena of EVP fascinating and worthy of further explorations, I issue just a few cautions in believing too strongly that these communicating entities are who they declare themselves to be. If one remains objective in his or her research, a cautious exploration of the phenomenon may yield many results not yet defined by even the most enthusiastic of EVP researchers.”
During the Sloss Furnaces investigation back in March, described in this column in the last issue, I met and chatted some with a fellow “ghost hunter” from Kansas named Sherrie Curry, a case manager and investigator with the Wichita Paranormal Research Society. We talked at some length about EVPs and spirit energy. To recap, I went on how it seemed possible that perhaps some “ghosts” or “spirits” encountered were actually like “soul fragments” (or what scientists might call holographic pieces of us) that were released from us during some trauma or death. Shamanic tradition has it that live people who have had trauma or stressful situations in their lives may lose “fragments” of themselves. A shaman/medicine man or woman might use ceremony or “astral travel” to try and recover such fragments and return them to the person who had lost them. This would presumably help to bring them back into a state of wholeness. Death, of course, is the ultimate trauma, and no shaman can retrieve your soul fragments and return them to you on this side of the veil, although there are some dark traditions where the practitioners accumulate such spirit energy/fragments to enhance or increase their own powers and abilities.
What if some “ghosts” that witnesses and paranormal investigators interact with are these “soul fragments” (soul holograms) still floating around “out there”? Such “fragments” might presumably possess diminished intelligence/awareness and might be similar to the haunting effects referred today by “ghost hunters” as “residual energy.” Perhaps a “ghost” is often an earthbound residual/fragment type energy and a full-blown “spirit” is a more evolved, more whole spirit being.
Sherry made it clear that her views were strictly her own and not those of the group she was with. “I personally believe if a spirit is attracted to the energy of a live person they could follow or attach some of the fragments of that spirit energy to the live person they are attracted to,” she noted. “Almost like feeding on you or your energy.”
I approached my Native American friend Tommy Lightning Bolt (www.lightningboltchichakos.com) with all of this, to which he replied: “There is no doubt that some electronic instrumentation can be more sensitive than the average person, and be capable of picking up these types of messages. However, the person who has experienced extreme trauma can also pick up ‘EVP’ type messages without any instrumentation other than themselves. It is my experience that trauma can be a catalyst to the awakening of the psychic potential of a human being. Through trauma, and in authentic cases spiritual type training, i.e., true native medicine/shamanic training can elevate the vibrational frequency of the person having undergone the spiritual training thus producing someone capable of interpreting EVP and other type messages. It is all about frequency! The EVP is at a higher frequency. If a person can elevate their frequency they will pick up on it without external instrumentation. One of the things that does this naturally to humans is rituals. These can be found in the indigenous ceremonies of each and every culture on this Earth.
“Myself, on a personal note, I can pick up on them without external instrumentation, and usually I’d rather not see them, or hear them. They are usually not very happy, and the images they project are frequently frightening.”
I had mentioned to Tommy that with regard to the EVP contacts that I had been involved with it seemed like they were regular people who may have crossed over to the other side in death but who seemed to be still dealing with the same human issues that they were dealing with over here. They seem to have the same strengths and weaknesses. I wrote, for example, “If they cross over an obnoxious fool then they’re still that. If they went over as a polite, caring person, then they still seem that way too.”
Tommy replied, “You are right. If they were an a--hole here, when they die, if they choose, they are still an a--hole over there too! However, they still have a choice.”
The EVP evidence mounts daily, while the questions and the interpretations struggle to more clearly define and explain this ongoing, puzzling and controversial mystery. Some colleagues and I recently met a gentleman who has an impressive background in electronics it seems and who feels he can help us with improving our EVP work with clearer channels of electronic communication.
Keep your fingers crossed!