EVP History

A brief look into the history of EVPs is outlined here as some background information to help explain how paranormal research on EVPs got to where it is today.

The great inventory Thomas Edison is generally credited with being the first to conceive that a device could be created to hear and speak with spirits. In a 1920's newspaper interview he said someday it may be possible to have such a device. This is considered a remarkable comment since Edison himself never really showed any interest in the paranormal or supernatural, nor express any deep spiritual beliefs, or so it was believed. We have found some information that may be contrary to that last statement.

At the same time other great inventors such as Gueglielmo Marconi (wireless radio) and Nikola Tesla (famous for his work with electricity), perhaps in cooperation with each other, also began work on devices that they believed could communicate with the dead.

In the late 1920's through 1930's several psychic researchers claim to have heard voices on recorded radio broadcasts that were not part of the broadcast not could be accounted for by anything in the surrounding area. During World War II, Swedish and Norwegian radio operators reported hear unfamiliar voices. They assumed it was the Germans. But after WW2 when capture German records were searched no evidence of Nazi activity on those frequencies at that time could be found.

The actual credit for having first recorded an EVP goes to Fredrich Jurgenson. In 1959 Fredrich Jurgenson, a Swedish film producer, was supposedly recording bird songs in the Swedish Alps (he would later admit he was out trying to record the voices of the dead). He claims not to have heard anything unusual during the recording but heard many voices upon playback. He claims to have heard his own mother's voice calling his name (some accounts say he heard his mother's voice telling him he is being watched!). Jurgenson recorded hundreds of voices over his life time and played them at many symposiums and conferences. His recording still remain unexplained to this day.

Through the 1960's and 1970's researchers, especially in England, claim to have recorded thousands of voices. In 1982 engineer George Meek and psychic William O'Niell built a device call the "Spiricom". They claim it allows two-way real-time communication with spirits. This claim is still under heavy dispute.

Today, with the advent of digital recorders and reliable, professional grade sound editing software, paranormal investigators around the world continue to record and analyze unexplainable voices.