This Paranormal Life - #225 EVP - Talking to The DEAD Through a Radio

Episode Date: August 10, 2021

As a doctor, Konstantin Raudive pledged to dedicate his life to saving lives. Little did he know he would spend the rest of HIS life trying to help the DEAD. As he descended down the rabbit hole of EVP, he had no idea just how many others had also dedicated their lives to this field. On this episode we listen to real recordings of the dead made by Konstantin.TPL Summer Meetup 2021 Event Pagehttps://www.facebook.com/events/4235146743207138BUY OFFICIAL TPL MERCHwww.thisparanormallife.com/storePatreonpatreon.com/ThisParanormalLifeYouTubeyoutube.com/thisparanormallifeTwittertwitter.com/ThisParaLifeInstagraminstagram.com/thisparanormallifeSecret Society Facebook Pagewww.facebook.com/groups/thisparanormallife/Research by Amy GrisdaleIntro music: www.purple-planet.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How much does a human soul weigh? Which cryptid would be most deadly wielding a firearm? Answers to these questions and more on this episode of This Paranormal Life! Left me hanging for just a millisecond there, bud. Just keeping you on your toes. Welcome back to This Paranormal Life! This is the weekly comedy podcast where every Tuesday we investigate a different tale and try and get to the bottom of whether it's truly paranormal or not.

You are, as always, joined by the most decorated paranormal researchers this side of Tibet. My name's Kit Gurumulvana. The guy across from me is Rory Powers. How are you doing today, Rory? I'm doing great. Thank you for the generous introduction to the podcast. You know, for those of you who are tuning in possibly for the first time, what do you think that we want these people to know about us? What's the bullet points? Aside from being jacked, handsome, and cool. Yeah.

That's it. That was it? Okay. I summed it up. It was actually way easier than I thought to think of that. All right. And me? And my bullet points? Because you I summed it up. It was actually way easier than I thought to think of that. All right. And me? And my bullet points?

Because you thought of yours really fast. So what are... That might take a second. We could just do jacked, handsome, and cool to say it. Because we're similar physique and similar bone structure and face and shit. Well, to you. To you. And maybe the uninitiated listener.

So they can hear in my voice that I'm more jacked. What do you think? Well, I would just say jacked, handsome and cool. Would you not? You sound hesitant to agree with that point. Yeah, let's roll with that. I don't sound that convincing. Like cool and nice.

Yeah, sure. What do you said? Don't blast me at the start of the podcast. I'm being blasted now. Just tell me what you think. I've told you what I think, which is that you're cool and nice. All right. Might be a little too crass for a podcast because I know kids listen to this as well,

but big c***. Of course that's too crass. But if we're saying it, then fine. Of course I have a bigger c*** than you do. Oh, Jesus. I get that you have the reputation of being like the jacked guy but that's only because you've lifted more weights if i had lifted as many weights as you had i would be more jacked so currently not as jacked as i am

and you got nothing on this dump truck of an ass either that's's quite enough. Wow, normally we don't get off-piste at the beginning of the episode. I apologize. Let's get into today's investigation. Let me set the scene, Rory. It was 1969 in the UK. It was the summer of love everywhere but in Colin Smythe's office, a book publisher based in George's Cross, Buckinghamshire. This publisher had only been in business for a few years and was looking for the next big thing. Colin specialised in science fiction, fantasy, and Irish literature, aka the big three. But one fateful morning, a prospective client walked into his office with the strangest book pitch he would ever hear as long as he would live.

strangest book pitch he would ever hear as long as he would live. In came a neatly dressed middle aged man. He was nondescript and carried a heavy looking briefcase. When he spoke, it was obvious he was from somewhere in Eastern Europe. Hi there. I'm looking for someone to help me publish a book. Then you're in the right place. What are we talking here? What's the story? It's that easy? I thought it was notoriously hard to publish a book not in 1969 all right a very small percentage of the population could speak let alone read let alone write right so basically uh they were given books away book deals yeah like you could just be in a pub somewhere and be like yeah i was i was um i was walking down the street the other day and i saw just a dog shitting on the curb and someone

be like hold that foot get grabs a pen and paper then what happened this is a new york times best seller in the making yeah not like today where uh everyone and their dogs got a bloody book idea. Oh, read my book. Oh, read my book. F*** off. That's really aggressive. F*** off, mom. F*** off, dad. I don't want to hear historical erotic fiction,

not least from my parents. The gentleman explained he wanted to print transcripts of his tape recordings. He had 72,000 of them right there in his briefcase. Whoa! Wow. Have you been conducting interviews? Oh, yes. I talked to Stalin, Mussolini, and Hitler, all from beyond the grave. Colin Smythe now felt an overwhelming urge to call for security and say,

Wilson, get up here. It happened again. But he didn't. Instead, his curiosity was piqued. Because the man in question here was a Latvian doctor called Konstantin Raudiva, an early pioneer of EVP, electronic voice projection, the science and art of capturing the voices of the dead on tape.

Whoa, because this is where you you know you're usually faced with a problem a lot of people claim that they're able to talk to the dead um using magic using telepathy using i don't know some form of fortune telling i guess past telling at that point but uh the problem is the evidence that you usually don't have any evidence to prove it. But this person you're saying has thousands of tapes in his briefcase brought to the meeting. Even the most disinterested book publisher really has to at that point say, okay, fine, let me hear it. Yeah. This is like if J.K. Rowling showed up to a publisher's and they were like,

she's like, I got this idea for a book um it's gonna be about all these kids and they go to they go to magic school and they learn spells and they ride on broomsticks and the person's like i don't know i i don't really i don't think it's that believable i don't think people are gonna and she goes avada kadabra And takes out a wand and zaps him right in the meeting. And then takes off on a Nimbus 2000. How did she win from this? How did she win from this? Yeah.

She isn't getting a book. She just, I seem to remember that's the murder spell. I got a little, no, no, that's Expelliarmus, I think. It's definitely not. I think it's the first one. Is it? Oh, Jesus Christ. I've been using that spell wrong, man. Imagine that.

Even she gets the spells mixed up. I think Expelliarmus disarms your opponent. I think Avada Kedavra just instantly kills them. Oh, f*** me. It's one of the three forbidden spells that you go to wizard jail for the rest of your life for doing. Because I've been teaching defense against the dark arts. I'm like a sub at Hogwarts.

And I've been using that one a lot. And I thought it was like a paralysis spell because they're not getting back up after I use it. And I just figured after the bell went and I peace out to the Wendy's just outside of Hogwarts that the kids are getting up. You're saying that's a murder spell. Avada Kedavra. The police are searching everywhere for you. And they're like. The only place we haven't looked.

Is the Wendy's outside Hogwarts. But there's no f***ing way. He would go to Wendy's. After a murder spree. You just hear from inside the Wendy's. Give me the Baconator. Or I'll zap your ass. Alright it's him.

It's him. He's in there. I spot the cops. Oh shit. zap myself i turn into a rat i don't know what anything does didn't you learn anything from studying all those books i sped red atronis them they're like that's not a real spell that's not a real spell wait what's wizard prison wizard prison again? Azkaban. Azkaban. I was like, it can't be Alcatraz. I knew it was lazily close to Alcatraz. Alcatraz, yeah.

Just change enough. Gee, some bits of that universe were lazy, huh? It is amazing that Dr. Constantine wasn't immediately kicked out. I mean, mad enough to claim that you've spoken to the dead and you've recorded all these conversations and you want a book deal for it um but it's a bit worrying the three people he mentioned were um legendary war criminals right and dictators yeah because I mean it's one thing to have this ability but it's a little worrying that those are the first people you would go to like didn't you

I don't know go back and talk to like Plato and Aristotle or something? Yeah, Socrates, Socrates, Jesus. Turns out that Dr. Radeva was far from the first person to do this. He'd picked up these ideas back in 1964 when he read a book named Voices from Space, written by a fascinating Swedish man called Fredrik Jørgensen. To understand him, let's wind the clock back to 1957. Oh! Fredrik is at home, having bought some basic recording equipment,

allowing him to record himself singing. He's testing his recorder by recording things and playing it back to hear them. Testing, testing. One, two, one, two, them. Testing, testing. One, two. One, two, three. Testing, testing. One, two. One, two, three.

After trying the recorder on himself, he went outside to record some birdsong. But when he played it back, he heard something unusual. usual. Listening back to his tape, he could just make out a man's voice. It seemed to be talking about bird biology or something. Some scientific terms thrown in there. Friedrich decided his equipment must have received some radio interference from a nearby radio station.

It must be a coincidence that they were just talking about birds too. But as he listened, there was another voice layered in there too. He strained to make it out. Friedrich dropped the recorder in shock, ending the playback. It was my dead mother's voice. Oh, Jesus! Friedrich wrote in his book. Friedl was her special nickname for me. He's recorded the weirdest podcast ever. 20 minutes of bird song and then his dead mother trying to interfere.

His dead mother does a plug for Squarespace. Years later, the hairs on Constantine's neck would stand on end as he read those words. Friedrich's mother had passed away four years previously, and yet here she was, speaking as clear as day. Wow. Friedrich knew the course of his life had changed. Now that communication with

the spirit world was possible, he needed to perfect his new techniques. I mean, that's pretty life-changing. Yeah. It must be kind of a weird situation to have something like this happen in your life, but it's not necessarily through any gift of yours. You know, usually we talk about people on this podcast

who have some sort of special abilities that they were either born with or they've grown over their lives. But he's just kind of come across this piece of technology that can communicate with the dead. Yeah, I think that's what's kind of interesting to me. Like, I think a lot of people in different situations would behave differently here. I think a lot of people would smash the recorder and forget that this ever happened. Sure. Whereas other people would try and turn it into a billion dollar industry. I can definitely see how he would become completely

preoccupied with it and desperate to kind of chase that dragon and try and contact his dead relatives again. This kind of reminds me of when I was growing up, I had a set of action man walkie talkies that are very old school. You you know you had the dials at the top twist to change the channels um and they used to pick up police radios right nearby this is back in northern ireland yeah um so you know i just be like in the bushes just being like talking to my brother being like call in call and come in uh i'm approaching. I'm approaching the back. And then you're like, this is Carly 45, some saying, not in a southern

accent, of course, but you know, John Sonson. And I'd be like, Colin? We got about three dead bodies piled up here. Jesus Christ, this is a terrible scene. Lucky there are no children to witness this brutal, brutal murder. Because the sounds alone would scar them for a lifetime.

Even when distorted through an action man walkie-talkie. Suspect is escaping on foot. It's the most horrific sounds you've ever heard. Yeah, so you have a little bit of first-hand experience of what it's like to use this kind of retro technology to try and piece together what someone's saying. It's true. I mean, hell, they could have been ghost cops i was listening to i have no idea

they did sound weirdly old-timey and they kept talking about a heist on at the old bank vault uh i will say though when uh faced with a similar situation as our as our protagonist in today's story, I turned off my Action Man walkie-talkie and I put it in the attic and I didn't use it anymore. Afraid I'd be implemented in some sort of triple homicide. So Friedrich got to work trying to hone his methods of communicating with the dead. His initial method was to simply leave the microphone running, leave the room, and listen back to it later and see who in the afterlife had popped in for a visit.

Wow. But before long, one of these disembodied voices made a suggestion that revolutionized his whole process. Use the radio. Friedrich realized he could connect a microphone and radio receiver to the tape recorder to have a real-time conversation with the spirits coming through his tapes. Before long, he claimed to have captured the voices of famous people throughout history, all the way from Vincent van Gogh to the masseuse of the Nazi police chief Heinrich Himmler. Lots of Nazis getting involved.

It kind of was that era of time to be fair i guess so but i agree there's a lot more people in the world than the nazis it's like uh the joe rogan thing when you have a certain number of bad guests on your podcast maybe the problem is not the guests yeah you ever heard of deplatforming if hitler himself drops in on your up 1960s uh podcast delete the tape don't don't try and sell it to a publisher just delete the tape and wait till vincent van gogh drops in again this guy's like what cancel culture has gone way too far i brought in hitler because i think it's actually valuable to have opposing opinions on platforms. He's already dead. His opinion isn't valid.

He was going to be executed for the things that he said and did. Absolutely ridiculous. Whatever happened to free speech, am I right? Our next guest tonight is the devil. All right, you've gone too far. Shut it down. Who would you want to guest on your podcast if you could have anyone that had died? That's a good question, you know?

Because it seems like location isn't an issue here. I'm assuming he's not traveling the world, going to Bethlehem to talk to Jesus, going to Germany to talk to Hitler. Seems to be. Presumably they're just floating around, swirling in the sky like a celestial toilet. So is there anyone that in particular you would want? toilet. So is there anyone that in particular you would want? I would like the man or woman that invented fire to just talk me through their daily routine. Right, right. For any particular reason or just to deconstruct the habits of great people in history. What are they? I'm guessing they were a cave person. What kind of berries did they eat for breakfast that morning? How much sleep do they get at night?

How do they perform at that highest level of making crazy inventions? Okay, that's going to be a short podcast, I reckon. It's just a cave woman going, I'm like, fascinating. Truly the mind of a giant. She speaks the universal language. What about you? Probably probably person who made the wheel so you know same woman she had a busy morning she she set fire to some shit and rolled

it down a hill killing dozens of her friends but making history and that's all that matters uh yeah i don't know jesus christ maybe for this jesus christ maybe for this podcast we need to get on um j alan hynek i mean we owe it to the listeners at this point yeah that would be pretty good some of the people who are there roswell stuff like that yeah that would be smart that would be smart. That would be smart. To be fair, we have the opportunity right now to get on people who've been in part of massive paranormal cases, and we still don't do it. Yeah, we get emailed about it all the time. They're like, I have the skin cells of an alien that crashed. And we're like, are you funny though? Because that's kind of a big part of the show. Zooming forward to 1964 again, Constantine's mind boggled reading Friedrich's book. Could it be true? And if so, could Constantine try these methods for himself? He was a man of

science after all. A decent scientific experiment can be replicated if it's legit. So he decided to give it a go. He was surprised to find the recordings were less ambiguous than he thought they might be. He could even make out full words and sentences. At the end of a recording session, the experimenter says that he is tired. A voice comes in with, Bonne natt. French and Swedish. Good night. What do you think?

If you were conducting this experiment and you were trying to start a little conversation and you said you were tired and that came through? You kind of teed up that clip in a weird way because you were kind of highlighting how remarkably crystal clear the recording was. No one said that. I think you did.

I think you said he was blown away with how audible that this was. It sounded like someone was firing a civil war musket. What would you do in this situation? You're going to tell me that that's nothing? That in a silent-ass room, that that's nothing? It's not nothing. No, I've had quite enough of this attitude.

Because you've been smirking throughout the recording and giving away, letting on that you're not that invested in this case. And I'm sick of it. I am invested. I just, you played the clip and I... I played you gold. I thought it was going to be a little easier to interpret what they were saying. Okay, I might have slightly overreacted.

That's fair. It's dog shit recording standards. But being honest, do you think what they've said, that it's a bon act or something? Do you think that checks out? It's close. I can hear it for sure in the recording. I'll take that. I'll take that and run with it. In between cannonball fires. Back in the publishing office, Colin Smythe was deeply impressed by Constantine's spooky

soundscapes and was ready to snatch his hand off. But he needed the approval of his boss, the chairman of the publishing house, Sir Robert Mayer. Luckily, he'd been dead for 60 years, so that meeting was easy to arrange. Luckily, Constantine was able to play him a tape of Sir Robert saying, Yup. He plays the tape. This is Sir Robert. I authorize the publishing 20 book deal. He didn't sound like that when he was alive. Yes, I did. Give him a book deal. A big one,

too. Millions of dollars. He sounded absolutely nothing like that. In order to convince the chief, Constantine invited him to a series of electronic seances, and on one occasion, Sir Robert gave in and attended with his wife. As luck would have it, the night Sir Mayor showed up, so did the spirit of somebody his wife, Lady Mayor, had known in real life. As the group eagerly listened back to the tape, a familiar voice drifted out of the speaker. She was gobsmacked. I don't believe it! That's Arthur! Arthur Schnabel! You know, the pianist, my dear friend. I never thought I'd hear his voice again. Jackpot. So he needed to win these people over and convince them to do the book deal.

And when he showed up to try and show that his technology worked, the ghost of their old pianist started chatting away to them. Pretty cool. You couldn't have asked for a better outcome. Or the pianist still being alive to this day would be pretty good but not bad as far as the pianist concerned this is a failure but he's like if you like that you're gonna love hitler no no no he's actually a pretty chatty guy trusting his wife sir robert mayer gave the book the green light and it went to press in 1971 with the title Breakthrough. It included a vinyl record of the original recordings.

That's smart because I was going to say I don't necessarily know how a book is maybe the best medium to get this information out into the world. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Even if it was back in the day and you're a bit limited you know you can't maybe make a documentary film that easily but the vinyl yeah that's a good idea vinyl but combo solid combo oh cool so we can listen to the vinyl to help the air adapt itself to the tea and softness

of the voice entity's speech each utterance is repeated several times I think his balls dropped just halfway through that recording. The voices here selected are grouped according to the person's address and their respective answers

followed by a translation and explanation. He keeps going into slow-mo. The vinyls are a little warped. Okay. I do really like that aesthetic, though, of a paranormal podcast being like really f***ed up and you can't really tell if it's your ears. Oh, it's great.

I love it. So it started off with a little disclaimer, but then it got into their celebrity recordings. Full disclosure, the first celebrity, I have absolutely no idea who that was, nor does Google. So that one's a bit lost to history. But then we get into a couple more well-known names the first voice is that of margareta petrowski who had told the experimenter during her lifetime that she did not believe in an existence after death after her passing the experimenter asked her how she felt in the beyond and a voice

identified as coming from Margarete answered, Bedenke, ich bin. German, imagine, I am. Again we hear Margarita Petrowski's voice, this time calling her former employer, Dr. Zenta Maurina. Zenta! Zenta! now the experimenter asks if margareta can hear him and the voice replies costa yeah i'm sorry you're laughing the sentences are getting shorter and shorter every time pretty much one word at this point I think that second one was like a

fax machine the second one Margarita went full f***ing bumblebee from Transformers and started using just like popular music to speak German? and started using just like popular music to speak.

German? Kostja, yes. The voice then calls the experimenter's family name, Raudive. But Schoten said to Raudiv. That's a gunshot. That's a gunshot from beyond the grave there's no correlation between what she's teeing up and the audio that's playing she's like then she said how do you do no she didn't but she shortened it to blue i do love the idea of trying to interpret what they're saying and explaining it as like oh they shortened it yeah she said how do you do

and shortened it to it's like why would they shorten it that's not how that works you don't if you shorten hello you don't don't go, it's a little tricky. A little tricky. That's fair. But I'm not, I'm not tarring them all with the same brush. The first one I think was maybe the best. Yeah, then we should have kept that one to the end. And now we hear in Latvian and German,

Koste, two tick nah. Now the experimenter calls the Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky and the voice answers, Come on. Mayakovsky. The experimenter tells the poet how difficult it is to convince people of the reality of the voice phenomenon. And in reply comes a statement which is typical for Mayakovsky's personality. Konstantin, pluy! In Russian, Konstantin, spit on it! Now a voice, which may be Winston Churchill's, says,

Mark you make believe, my dear, yes. Followed by Winston Churchill. Churchill himself came on this ancient podcast. What do you think of those? You know, there's some that are a little clearer than others. Thank you for sticking with us, podcast listeners. I can't imagine any of that was very pleasurable to listen to through headphones. I will say, I think you almost have the worst listening experience because I'm playing this to you in a room with speakers.

Sure. Sounded a lot better to me on my headphones earlier. So hopefully it sounds a tiny bit more interesting to our listeners because they will hopefully also be listening on headphones, but there's not a lot in it. It does sound pretty much like what you heard. Is there any reason for them to believe that? Why do they, how do they know who's saying these things? Because it seems like there was just an english line and they were like churchill and there was a german line and they were like hitler it's a good like it's not just any english man in the history of the world it's a

good question i did wonder this i believe their method is they call out to the room or to the radio or whatever you know churchill are you out there i want to talk to you about the war i see etc etc and then if then they hear through the radio the words churchill that's kind of a cool little coincidence at the very least that's very true yeah and he kind of said something that sounded like that in the last clip yeah he says something something my dear which is pretty churchilly he said my dear yes my dear yes yeah it got a little bit scrambled what is the uh maybe i maybe i missed this but what is up with this piece of equipment what's unique about it that they think that they're capturing the sounds of the dead pretty

much nothing if you think about it this is really more a story of recording technology that we take completely for granted today. It was brand new to them at the time. Right. So they were very excited about its possibilities for using microphones to pick up sounds that the human ear can't hear. If you think about it, it's a pretty phenomenal technology. Yeah. To hear things that maybe we can't hear and make them listenable. It's a bit like the way we can record, let's say, sounds underneath the ocean and then speed them up so that we can hear

whales singing and things like that. Yeah. Or plants. I'm pretty sure plants make noises. Yeah. And they manipulate the audio to make it listenable. So people at the time got very excited and wanted to see what they could do with investigating the paranormal. But their technology for recording, these are just normal tape recorders. Wow. It seems like they're just whacking up the gain. Yeah. Like really wamping it up so they can pick up on all these little imperceptible lines. Yeah. For anyone who doesn't maybe have a basic knowledge of how these recorders work, whenever you're recording audio, you're fighting gain. There's just all recording technology, especially back then, it was very noisy. And the more you raise the volume to try and hear quieter and quieter things,

you crank up that noise. And that's why these, as you say, it gets to to the point it sounds like a gunshot yeah some of those sound like they died mid-war and that war has continued in the afterlife and yet that's actually the sound of a silent room which is nuts absolutely nuts i will say although some of those clips were pretty convincing they all also sounded like something that could have come out of my Action Man walkie-talkie. It's true. I mean, that's a good point in itself. Maybe to the uninitiated person

living in the 50s or 60s, this sounded kind of cool and new. But to you, even a child born in the 90s has grown up owning recorders and walkie-talkies and things like that, so we're kind of used to these songs. Oh, yeah. Now, clearly these recordings split opinion pretty strongly.

Some people hear the voices and are immediately convinced, and others are skeptical. Some have even changed their minds over time. Giles Brandreth, off of Dictionary Corner, the TV show, he was convinced at the time these recordings became public that that was the true voice of Winston Churchill. But he's still alive today and these days he says he's not so sure anymore. Frustratingly, I couldn't find audio of Hitler, Nietzsche or Jesus of Nazareth, all of which Constantine claimed to have captured.

But reading about those recordings, many people were skeptical because apparently Jesus spoke Latvian. Oh, okay. Which is pretty convenient. Well, he probably could. Because Constantine is Latvian. I mean, what do you think?

Could ghosts speak any language? I mean, taking even Jesus aside, could ghosts speak any language? Or are they stuck with the language they spoke while alive? Ah, wow. That's a really good point, you know, because, you know, in some of our stories, even ghosts even appear in the clothes they died in. You know, they're locked into their outfits. So I guess it would make sense for them to also be locked into the amount of knowledge they had at the time that they died yeah it seems as if if you shit yourself and then die

you're stuck wearing those shitty boxers uh for the rest of eternity you're wiping till the end of the earth so it seems like uh yeah it might be a stretch to say that you can just transcend all human knowledge. And we have some ghosts, you know, that will, I don't know, lose their family in a fire. And then the stories will be like, and you can still see the father walking, looking for his kids. He doesn't even know he's dead. So it'd be a little weird. But if it's like, but he can also speak latvia now he's actually pretty multicultural after he died i mean that's true they've been i mean jesus has been dead for over

2 000 years so maybe he's had some time to learn all the languages yeah i mean he could do a lot of shit i'd be pretty blown away if he couldn't speak japanese you know he's out there walking on water and he's like multiplying fish and bread and stuff. You're telling me he never just said konnichiwa when he walked in a room? When he went to the temple? He never said ohayou gozaimasu? If he's trying to, you know, do the Lord's work, he probably would focus on Japan. There's not a lot of Christians there.

This may be blasphemous, but I'm going to go on record and say I think Jesus was a weeb. I think he watched anime. Christ. I think he did. I think he has maybe a Naruto headband. That's enough. That's quite enough. That's senpai you're talking about.

That's my goddamn senpai. How dare you, you baka. The father, the senpai, and the Holy Spirit. This whole project of Konstantin's got the world talking. But EVP, electronic voice projection, was much bigger than just his work. Sure, he popularized the idea and published the first English language book on the phenomenon. But he's just the tip of the iceberg. Even Friedrich Jürgensen was far from

the first person to bring this to the public's attention. The rabbit hole goes much deeper than that. The Thomas Edison, born in 1847, was vocal about his belief that future recording devices would help us contact people on the other side. Very cool, very cool. He said, if we can evolve an instrument so delicate as to be affected or moved or manipulated by our personality as it survives in the next life, such an instrument when made available ought to record something. I like this idea. You know, it's like as we evolve as a species and we learn more about the universe and how it works, the technology adapts as well. Probably in the olden days, people had microphones pointed up at space trying to listen out to the sounds of the universe.

But as we know, am I correct in saying sound doesn't travel through a vacuum? Right. So the signals that you'd be receiving from space wouldn't be audible. They come in different forms. receiving from space wouldn't be audible. They come in different forms. Maybe we just haven't found the form that will enable us to communicate with the afterlife. You know, it's some sort of spiritual wave. We don't have the technology for yet. That's why we've got to start getting weirder with, with our technology. Just start combining shit together and see if it works. We're going to start putting rats in microwaves and seeing what happens.

Yeah, duct tape a dildo to a skateboard. What does that have to do with science? You don't know what'll happen if you combine these things. I skate down a hill, turn on the dildo. Varney, it's Hitler. Oh, it works. I was a bad guy, so I got reincarnated as a dildo. Finally, Samphan has cracked the code to communicate with the dead.

You had the technology! A ghost army applauds me as I bomb it down a hill on my dildo skateboard. You set fire to the board? No, Rory! No one must know. There are suggestions that Edison himself worked on a contraption to make this dream a reality. But if it's true, he kept the design to himself as no plans have been uncovered. Supposedly Italian inventor Guilherme Marconi and Nikola Tesla

were also interested in using technology to talk to the dead. No surprise there. But interestingly, some of the earliest examples of EVP come from Scandinavian military pilots. In the years leading up to World War II, there were countless reports of unidentified voices crackling over the radio receivers. Around the same time, in the 1930s,

there was a psychic show at Wigmore Hall in London. 600 people in the audience watched as the medium on stage wired a microphone into a speaker and stepped away. Over the course of the evening, somewhere between 40 and 50 different voices boomed through the auditorium, even though nobody was anywhere near the mic at any point. Whoa, paranormal stand-up! What's the deal with food at funerals, normal stand-up. What's the deal with food at funerals, am I right? Boo! F*** you! Boo's what we say! F*** you! Even two members of the technical crew for the show couldn't fathom what was happening. Both of them became spiritualists after witnessing this event, and even went on to have signed statements published in Psychic News stating that the phenomenon they saw appeared to be completely genuine. Wow. One fascinating thing about this moment in history is how these amateur

researchers tried to harness the new technology of electricity into making machines to investigate the paranormal. You end up with stuff a lot like in the movie The Prestige. Of course. For example, 10 years before Friedrich Jürgensen did his first experiments with EVP, a Dutch spiritualist named Ainsvan designed a device which, quote, produced a field of energy capable of stimulating the psychic senses into activity. I'm pretty much picturing an electric chair at this point. Problem is, we have no idea what that means today. Was it a machine that made people psychic

or heightened their pre-existing psychic abilities? Yeah, this was probably around the time where, you know, electricity and technology were booming, really. And people didn't really know the limits to the possibilities. It was like f***ing Bitcoin today. Everyone's trying to get into electricity. Someone invented the blockchain and now people are trying to f***ing apply the blockchain

to ordering coffee or something. It doesn't all work together. It doesn't have an application everywhere. He called it the super ray and one of its functions was to communicate with the spirit world. Sadly, the Super Ray never really caught on, and we have next to no information about what it did or how it worked. Damn, that would have been a good episode on the Super Ray.

But thankfully, it was just one of this guy's many inventions. So Rory, we'll do a quick round of Paranormal Dragon's Den. That's Paranormal Shark Tank for our American listeners. I'm going to pitch you two old-timey paranormal machines, and you have to decide which one you would pass on and which one you would invest in. I like this. I like this a lot. Are they both to do with communicating with the dead,

or is this... Absolutely. Okay, okay. I mean, if I can think of something on the fly that's not to do with that, but also paranormal. You throw it in the mix. I'll just pitch it right here and now. Dildo skateboard.

I'm in. What do you need? How much money? As an investor, I have the assets ready and waiting. What are you looking for in terms of investment? Honestly, just the skateboard. My company can provide the rest. And this piece of equipment will help

me communicate with the dead? Huh? No. It's just a rad time. Just a more extreme and sexy version of the sport we've all come to know and love. Gay sex. That's quite enough.

That's quite enough.'s quite enough introducing the dick flip like trick all your kids are talking about broken every rule of shark tank i've seen worse products on instagram advertised than the skateboard dildo that's true yeah the bar is low some might be something there coming to the tpl merch shop. At the very least, a vibrating skateboard. Or just a skateboard shaped like a dick. All right, I digress. Yeah, we're getting distracted here. First up on Shark Tank. Hi, Rory.

My name's Greg, and I'm coming to you today with the Vandermoolian Spirit Indicator. Strong name. What we have here is two glass prisms that are set face to face on a wooden board connected by a very delicate wire triangle connected to a battery. Now the spirits can affect

this little wire triangle by moving it back and forth. If it touches the wire, it completes the circuit and rings a bell. When the bell sounds, our paranormal investigators run to the nearest Ouija board and receive the message. Okay, okay. I am looking for 500 bucks to get the wire, and I'm offering a 20% stake in the company. All right, interesting.

Of course, this is olden days so 500 is presumably thousands millions and millions of dollars okay uh do i do i have to decide now or can i hear uh pitch number two that's a great point i will also let kyle speak okay he goes behind a sheet and comes back here the mustache hi my name is kyle and i'm coming at you today, Rory, with the diamondistograph. I think I said that wrong. The dynamistograph. I had a couple of buds to take the edge off this pitch a minute ago, and now I'm coming to regret it because the words on the page are getting squiggly.

This device consists of a cylinder into which the ghost goes in. There's a table isolated by a sheet of glass and charged with an electric current on a pair of scales for some reason. And then on top, there's a bit of writing apparatus so that the spirit can

write words using Morse code. Okay. The device is enclosed in a room and investigators watch the action of the device through a small glass window. You can watch the spiritual intelligences enter the device and use the letter dial at the top of the machine

to spell out messages. Hmm. Okay. I am looking for a ride home. A ride? In exchange for 95% of the Dynamistograph company. Dynamistograph is a great name. Fantastic name.

It's a tough choice. It's a tough choice. But I think I'm going to have to go with pitch number two, the Dynamistograph. Well, yeah, brother. with pitch number two, the dynamistograph. Well, yeah, brother. Now that you're on board and you can't turn back and you have to give me the ride home to Tucson, I will say the dynamistograph doesn't work when the weather is bad.

Okay. You see... I thought we were inside a room. You mentioned that we were like, you did it all indoors. I think the ghost is in a glass jar. It turns out that this thing is extremely sensitive like you did it all indoors. I think the ghost is in a glass jar. It turns out that this thing is extremely sensitive and natural tremors are happening around the earth at all times.

But if the conditions are right and there's not too much interference, this thing can work. And we have had a couple of compelling communications from members of even my own family through this device. I'm in. You know, we could work with the Tremors through some sort of suspended platform. We can make it work.

There you have it, folks. The Dynamistograph, Rory's new investment. Hopefully it has better ROI than Scamcoin, which is a recent investment. I liked the first one, but it was a was a there was kind of a lot going on it was like spirits would move a wire to ring a bell to direct someone to the nearest ouija board you know it was already like three things going on uh yeah as researcher amy pointed out they kind of just invented a bell yeah you could have just said the ghost could just ring a bell and then we'll listen to them or or do like a yes and no thing yeah like is there an afterlife ring the bell if there's an

afterlife ding ding you don't have to direct them to a bell that goes through a wire to a scrabble board a paranormal scrabble board that spells out the password to an iphone you don't need to do it it's too many steps whereas we like the dynamistograph. It essentially says to spirits, we're giving you the lowest barrier to entry here. You just got to f***ing do Morse code. It's very simple. Yeah.

On, off, on, off, on, on, off, et cetera, et cetera. Easy. Great. Love it. This all kind of reminds me when we tried some of those ghost hunting apps on iPhone. Oh, yeah about that wow that's some real old school tpl that was back when we were in your first apartment in london yeah was that yeah jesus christ that's like 2017 2018 stuff um it's an old that's a real old one i seem to remember there were ghosts everywhere yeah coincidentally there was always one. Which, I mean, is a possibility.

I remember we didn't pay for any of them either. So there was a lot of ads popping up. The ghosts were pitching f***ing Manscaped pretty hard. I have just one more cool example of contacting the dead using technology. Back in 1952, a couple of Catholic priests were trying to record themselves at the University of Milan. Don't know why, maybe it was a mixtape. Absolutely no idea. They were struggling to make this device work, and one of the priests cried out to his deceased father for help in frustration. And playing the tape back just

seconds after this utterance, they were stunned to hear an elderly man speaking. The priest was convinced it was his father. It caused such a stir that the news made all its way up the chain to Pope Pius VII. Who's his dad, Mufasa? He said the voice in the tape was an undeniable fact. The Pope did? Quote, The recorder is totally objective.

It receives and records only sound waves from wherever they come. This experiment may perhaps become the cornerstone for the building of scientific studies, which will strengthen people's face in a hereafter. Which I thought was actually a pretty sensible reaction to it. The guy's just going, Look, the recorders don't lie, really. He wasn't like, look, this is proof of f***ing heaven or hell. Yeah. And he's like, cool.

Yeah. If this helps people believe in the afterlife, I'm all for it. Yeah. We're all on the same kind of team. Yeah. I mean, that's the approach that i wish more governments around the world had have taken from the start which they're kind of taking now which is like yeah we we didn't know what that was you know we're not saying it's an alien but yeah we don't know yeah instead of trying to just

cover it up and black tape and everything uh i appreciate the honesty and the the optimism that this could be something otherworldly so rory we've beaten around the bush a lot here. We've gone through countless examples throughout history of trying to record people in the afterlife and listen back. But I'm not going to sit here and try and claim that these recordings are perfect and that the evidence is absolutely bulletproof. We have a pretty murky picture here to try and decide whether this is true or false. What are your kind of instincts on what you've heard?

First off, I love this. Congratulations. What a fantastic case. It's so interesting. This whole world of people using technology to try and contact the dead, because it was inevitable, wasn't it? I mean, if you think back to early humans, medieval times, whenever the olden days, you know, people were always trying to contact the dead, but the way that they were doing it back then was through rituals, through spells, through magic, or however they thought they could do it. Then, you know, as it moved up, people were a little more developed. People brought in Ouija boards and other ways of trying to contact the dead. It only makes sense that when technology becomes a bigger part of our lives, people are going to use that in every aspect of their life, including trying to talk to the dead. That's right. So, I mean, it's crazy to

think that, who knows, in five years from now, 10 years from now, people are putting on VR headsets and walking around in graveyards trying to locate the dead. Yeah. It's a bit like that movie Paranormal Activity, didn't they hint on that? The Xbox room detector was able to see the ghost that you couldn't see with the naked eye. You never know what's going to be that next piece of technology. As we said before, the dildo skateboard. No one's ever tried it.

We just don't know yet. Yeah, which is amazing because dildos and skateboards have been around for decades. But, you know, we were too busy with other shit to really put two and two together. I was, this reminds me of when I was a kid, a very young kid, I should say. was this reminds me of uh when i was a kid a very young kid i should say i was like i wonder if humans can fly but no one's ever done the thing that enables you to fly what do you mean you know maybe it's a it's a pretty easy thing to do but just no one's ever done it maybe you have to like you know and then like twist a weird way and you then you've activated flight but just no one's ever done the thing yeah exactly up up down down left right b a select start you know we never done the

thing and maybe you know this this ability to talk to ghosts or the deceased has always been there but we just haven't been doing the right thing yet. You know, it's all possible. I often think that, you know, listening to that Wim Hof guy, you know that guy? No. The Dutch guy, absolute legend, holds like dozens of world records and stuff. I've talked about in the podcast before. He has like ascended f***ing Mount Everest in his pants. That guy. But what he's claiming isn't that he is special. He's claiming that as a species, we've lost touch with our innate ability to breathe and to survive in extreme circumstances. That if we need to climb a mountain, we can just go beast mode and breathe and survive in Arctic temperatures. Right. And that's an amazing thing to think that if that's possible,

if one guy in 7 billion people can just work that out and do it, what else are we capable of? Yeah. You know, it's like you see those monks who have completely perfected their physical capabilities and they can like flick a pin

through a car windshield or something insane. Yeah. Whenever they like scan their brains using an MRI scanner, they're clinically dead because they're so chilled out. Masters of meditation. I mean, when I was a kid, I also thought that if you really tried hard enough and believed, you could become a super saiyan. I think we've talked about that on the podcast before.

And hell, maybe you can. But we just haven't found the person to be able to tap into that mentality. Let's focus in on these recordings. Let's even focus in on Constantine's recordings. Are they truly paranormal? The two problems that I have with Constantine's case in particular is one, there's no real scientific reason as to why his recorder in particular was detecting these signals. You know, you talked about those products a little bit later on that I was pitched on the shark tank. They're designed to talk to the dead. They're designed to communicate with the dead. His recorder just happened to pick up the voices of people who had passed on, which seems a little coincidental and doesn't even give

it a lot of scientific merit. And then the other disappointing part of it is the actual clips themselves. Maybe not as hefty as I was hoping that they would be. We've had recordings on this podcast before where people who are possessed have been speaking and it's the sound of a demon talking the demon doesn't shut up the demon goes on for quite a while so it's a little frustrating when all we're getting from these people is yeah saying that that was yes in another language and not only that let's be real if they didn't have an assistant teeing up what the person was about to say, you wouldn't have had a damn clue what they were saying.

No. Some of the time she would say what they're about to say and I couldn't even hear it in the clip. So I think we're going to have to chalk Constantine's experiments into EVP up to a double no. But hey, this might not be the last time we touch on this subject. Very interesting. And as we have talked about, there's a lot of different people trying a lot of different things. You're damn right.

It's something we could actually give a go sometime. That could be interesting. But hell yeah. That was a really fun one to investigate. And thank you so much to Amy for doing some fantastic research on that. Cammie Toman, of course, for editing spectacularly as always.

It's an exciting time to be a listener of TPL because we do have a number of cool things happening in the pipeline pretty damn imminently. I think the thing we're most conscious of is the fact that it's not been, thanks to this f***ing pandemic, a couple of years since we've seen you guys in the flesh and been able to have live shows and meetups. Yeah. Because it's such an amazing part of doing what we do. And I know that when we have done them, the community getting to meet each other, it's just a beautiful thing. So rest assured, we are putting plans in place to try and do that

as soon as it is possible, as soon as it is safely possible to do live shows as close to where you guys are listening as possible. In the meantime, we wanted to do something special and last minute for those of you who are a lot closer to where we are before summer's over. That's why we're excited to announce today that on Saturday, the 21st of August, we're going to be having a little meetup here in London. We're going to be calling it the paranormal picnic. We're going to be having it in Hyde Park around 4 p.m. So if you live in London or around London and you listen to the show, you want to, you know, come together, meet some fans of the show, hang out with us in a nice, open public place. Come along.

It's going to be great fun. We'll be providing some food and drinks, but by all means, bring some snacks, bring your own drinks, and come have a good time in the sun. We have an event page for the day where you can get all the information you would need, including the actual specific location

because Hyde Park is pretty big. So make sure and swipe up in your podcast app, check the description of this podcast to get the link to that. If for any reason you can't, check out our socials on Twitter or Instagram and you'll see the links to that event page. Now, obviously, as we said,

we will be doing full on proper live shows in the future, hopefully very close to where you are. Um, but yeah, this was just something that we wanted to do in the meantime as a, as a way to do something, uh, in person and meet, meet a few of you. So hell yeah. At the time that you're hearing this, it's a week and a half away. So that's, Whoa, is that, Oh my God. Crazy to think god crazy to think yeah really looking forward to seeing some of you there so I hope you've enjoyed this episode

into all things EVP as always if you can't wait until Tuesday to get your fix of This Paranormal Life make sure and head over

to patreon.com forward slash this paranormal life where you can get bonus episodes 44 of them in fact for just 5 bucks unlocks the lot you can also get

merchandise over at this paranormal life.com we will be back on tuesday with a brand new paranormal tale we'll be in hyde park next saturday with some paranormal beers and our skateboard dildos no there will be none they're banned and until then remember to live fast investigate and die young you