What ITC Tells us About Consciousness

by

Opinion 17

Brief

An important talking point in my comments about things paranormal is that parapsychological research is incomplete if it does not at least consider lessons learned from ITC. This paper is written to explain how I understand those lessons.

The focus here is on lessons learned via the work of the directors and members of ATransC. The Association has published several important studies conducted by other groups and individuals and they are also considered here. The reason for each study, the apparent results, and most importantly, the implications of the results are addressed here.

As a general statement, our conclusion is that the study of ITC offers an important tool for consciousness research. We sometimes think of EVP as a new “lab rat” for research because of its repeatability and obvious ether-physical characteristics.

Content

Brief
The Organization
The Directors
The Study
Audio Recording Equipment
Many Early Ideas
Crystals
Mirrors
Reverse Voice
Microphones
Transcommunication Devices
Technology Artifacts
EVPmaker
Radio-sweep
Environmental Energy
Foreign Language, Transform or Obscuring?
Visual ITC
Streaming Media
Orbs
Obscuring
Video Loop ITC
Light Reflected from Moving Water ITC
Studies
EVP Online Listening Trials
Analysis of Supposed Paranormal Voice
The Work at Il Laboratorio
EVP Online Phantom Voices
Binaural Synchronization for EVP Preparation
EVP and Geomagnetic Fields: Is There a Correlation?
Information Gathering Using EVPmaker With Allophone: A Yearlong Trial
EVPmaker with Allophones: Where are We Now?
Using Live Voice Input Files for EVP
Radio-Sweep: A Case Study
Perception of Visual ITC Images
Big Circle
4Cell EVP Demonstration
Recording Thoughts of the Living.
Unrealized Studies]
Research Project: Energy Profile of Transform EVP
Sidereal Time EVP Study — call for participation
ET Visual ITC Study
Implications of the Lessons
Our Hope
References

The Organization

Instrumental TransCommunication (ITC) refers to a class of paranormal phenomena that appears to be enabled by the expression of intentionality on physical processes. Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) is an older term for just the audible form of ITC.

The Association TransCommunication (ATransC) is an organization founded by Sarah Estep in 1982 as the American Association of Electronic Voice Phenomena (AA-EVP). We (Lisa and Tom Butler) assumed leadership of the AA-EVP in 2000 at Sarah’s invitation. The Association’s name was later change to Association TransCommunication (ATransC) to acknowledge that the organization had international membership and studied many forms of trans-etheric phenomena.

The ATransC has been changed from a member supported organization to one funded by website advertising and book sales. The NewsJournal was discontinued in the Spring of 2014. The website at atransc.org remains and has been mostly archived as eBooks and paperback books on Amazon. I publish a free Occasional Update letter intended to update people about ITC and related phenomena. A consciousness cosmology inspired by what we have learned about ITC is explained at ethericstudies.org. Otherwise, the organization is pretty much retired.

The 129 quarterly newsletters published from 1982 to 2014 are available as PDF documents at atransc.org/atransc-newsjournals/. They provide an important view of the community’s evolution.

The Directors

Lisa Butler holds a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Psychology. I hold a Bachelor of Science in Electrical and Electronics Engineering (BSEEE).

For some of my carrier in the communications industry, I worked as a long-range planner which is sometimes referred to as being a futurist. Combined with Lisa’s training in psychology, my engineering temperament and training as a futurist have guided our study of paranormal phenomena in general and ITC in particular.

Lisa and I have taken many deep-emersion courses in psychic functioning and healing intention. In the 1960s, I even helped start a “Personal Improvement Center” for Jose Silva Mind Control graduates (aka the Silva Method. (1)) We are both ordained with the National Spiritualist Association of Churches (NSAC) (2) and are NSAC certified mediums, healers and teachers.

Together, Lisa and I represent considerable background in the study and practice of many aspects of the paranormal. I think as AA-EVP Founder Sarah Estep recognized when she asked us to lead the Association, our years of involvement with paranormal phenomena has given us a unique ability to represent her organization.

As I will discuss later in this paper, it is necessary to have a competent practitioner for the study of ITC. We are fortunate that Lisa has been an outstanding Psi and ITC practitioner. This is to say that we had a unique opportunity to study ITC from the perspective of competent practitioners and years of hands-on background study of related phenomena. Important to our study has been our access to several hundred practitioners and informed supporting witnesses. Together, we have responded to hundreds of requests for help and reports of personal experiences.

Sarah Estep at her EVP workstation.

The Study

Knowing how EVP are formed might indicate ways to improve the Quality and Quantity (QQ) of EVP. When Lisa and I assumed leadership of the ATransC, discussions about how EVP are formed were focused on mirrors, magnetism and crystals. Back then, we referred to people working with EVP as experimenters because virtually every session was more experimental than they were conducted following an established procedure.

The basic Transform EVP technique involved a noise source (not speech) and a simple audio recorder. Lacking guidance from scientists, popular wisdom based on the techniques used by the early pioneers dominated experimenter’s understanding.

Audio Recording Equipment

The pioneers felt that some kind of noise was important for EVP. Most households had a radio in the early days of EVP, so it was natural for them to use noise from an unused radio frequency. Off-station radio noise was the most common noise source in 2000. You can see at least two radios in the photograph of Sarah Estep’s recording area. She preferred air-to-ground shortwave.

Not knowing how EVP were formed, the guidance of popular wisdom was to use the highest quality available recorder and microphone. We can see two high-quality reel-to-reel recorders at Sahra Estep’s recording station.

Many Early Ideas

After questions like “Who are you,” probably the most often asked of the invisible communicators is how to improve the recorder and recording process. Most suggestions people recorded in their EVP seemed to sound right but when tried, did not improve QQ; however, there have been exceptions.

Crystals

Soon after she began experimenting with EVP, Lisa recorded comments in some of her EVP about crystals. We had quite a few quartz crystals around the house, so Lisa arranged a few around her recorder. Soon after, she recorded “Crystals help.” Of course she reported this to the membership, after which crystals became a popular accessory for experimenter’s recording area.

What we learned

We know now that phenomena tend to be more often experienced when witnesses think something might happen. The triggering effect need not have a direct causative influence on the phenomena. ITC researchers have noted a sort of “newness effect” in which a new device will seem to work better than the old, but then over time, be seen to work about as well as the old.

Mirrors

Several Association members recorded comments indicating that mirrors might help. Naturally, mirrors thereafter became a popular fixture in recording areas. You can see a round, vanity mirror in the picture of Sarah’s station.

The idea was that the communicators could see us through the mirror as if the mirror was a one-way window between dimensions. Some members even reported writing questions to the entities and holding them up to a mirror with the writing facing the silvered surface.

What we learned

The Implicit Cosmology (3) which is our current working model of reality and consciousness predicts that we create our physical reality according to our worldview. The physical represents a consensus reality which guides our collective physical experience. For others to psychically see my physical self and the space I occupy, it is necessary for them to psychically sense the output of my worldview which is my mental expression. Thus, we think the mirror is for us to see ourselves. That is, they enable us to see the personal reality we are creating … our expression. They see us as we see ourselves, but they cannot directly see our body, as if in a movie.

The mirror effect may help us understand remote viewing. The Implicit Cosmology does not support a nonphysical mind directly perceive a physical space that it has not helped express. For instance, if you cannot directly psychically sense the room I am in but must sense it by sensing what I think my room is like, there is no reason to argue that you can directly sense the town I live in. It makes more sense to expect that a remote viewer is accessing information from minds that have a degree of rapport with the target.

Reverse Voice

A popular technique in 2000 was looking for EVP by playing the original recording backwards. The topic Sarah Estep covered in the first issue of the AA-EVP Newsletter she published was “Reverse Voices.” See Page 1 of the Spring 1982 AA-EVP Newsletter (4) under the ATransC.org Journal Tab.

The idea was that EVP can be found by reading the “forward side” of the recording while playing the audio tape backwards. We even had a cassette player we modified so that when we played the tape forward (Side A), the read head would “listen” to the reverse side (Side B). A few examples of reverse voice recorded by Sarah are on the “Sarah Estep EVP.” Page of the ATransC website under the ITC Tab.

Reverse voice is not the same as playing a sound file backwards so that the last word in the file is played first and backward. The idea is to listen to each word, beginning with the first one, while hearing the second bit before the first and the third bit before the second.

What we learned

Looking for the apparently paranormal speech on the reverse side of the recording became more difficult as people changed to digital recorders. One solution was to record the normal sound file into a computer and then use an audio management program to reverse the file; however, that usually puts the first word last rather than “inside out” so to speak. Use of the technique has faded.

Apparently paranormal utterances found in the normal sound stream are thought to be formed via the influence of intended order on available audio-frequency, incoherent sound. Any intelligible utterance found using reverse voice would be considered Opportunistic in that the apparent speech appears to be a fortuitous arrangement of sounds that appear to have meaning. However, that meaning is not thought to have been intended by a communicating intelligence.

Microphones

There was a lot of confusion in 2000 about the best type and use of microphones. An ITC group in Germany was focused on hardware solutions to improve EVP recording. Based on some of their advice, many experimenters used a microphone in a parabolic reflector. Electret condenser microphones were favored over dynamic microphones. It was assumed that higher quality microphones and recorders were best.

Some experimenters insisted the only real EVP were those recorded in the sub-audio range. Others insisted that the source of the paranormal speech was in the ultrasonic range. However, it is necessary to convert whatever is recorded outside of human hearing to a frequency range that people can hear. This conversion is an analog process that presents more likely conditions for EVP formation.

In a contradictory development, some experimenters reported recording EVP without the use of a microphone.

What we learned

Our current view is that EVP is communication, and the communicators will attempt to speak where they think we are listening. Given what we think we know about EVP, non-audible techniques look more like novel ways of conditioning sound for audible-frequency conversion into speech.

Here are the considerations:

      1. We know that a recorder and simple microphone has proven the most effective for EVP.
      2. The dominant variable for success appears to be the practitioner’s ability. New practitioners will likely follow a learning curve.
      3. During playback of analog media, EVP examples might change, and new ones might be injected. It has become appears that once an EVP example is digitized, it will remain unchanged.
      4. EVP are reported to form in only one recorder during group recording sessions where multiple recorders are being used.
      5. EVP are known to occur on only one channel when a multi-channel recorder is used.
      6. EVP have been recorded in rooms that shield from sound, light and electromagnetic (EM) signals. This implies that EVP are not transmitted to the recorder as sound, light or EM signals such as radio signals.
      7. Considering the need for background sound during formation of Transform EVP, the involvement of audio recorders and the apparent need for an analog process, it appears that stochastic amplification is involved. In that, a small signal is amplified when mixed with a larger signal. Stochastic amplification requires an analog, nonlinear process. Nonlinear electronic processes are not usually used in digital circuitry, but they are commonly used in analog audio amplifiers.
      8. The Panasonic RR DR60 Digital Note Taker is popular for collecting EVP. As poor-quality recorders, they have a noisy audio circuit that is best described as chaotic with frequent internally generated noise spikes. Experiments using recorders that produce a more steady-state, white noise-like background noise in the audio circuit tend to produce fewer EVP. More expensive, well-engineered electronic circuitry tends to produce much less internal noise and is typically less useful for recording EVP. See the Using a Control Recorder for EVP Best Practice.(5)
      9. As will be explained later in this paper, EVP seems to be more easily formed in relatively indeterminant audio-frequency noise (more chaotic). White noise is very determinant in that each next sample is intended to be identical to the previous sample. White noise has proven to be less desirable for recording EVP than relatively chaotic noise. It appears that the noise spikes perturb the process to help begin an utterance.

EVP Recording Technique

Our current view of how EVP are formed is that they are injected into a single transistor of the recorder’s analog stage. Microphones are useful to make background noise available and to allow the practitioner to record questions and comments about where the recording is made. Otherwise, microphone quality is not important.

It has been our experience that when using a relatively inexpensive recorder as primary Recorder A (more chaotic internal noise) alongside a higher quality recorder for Recorder B such as in a good video camera, EVP is more often recorded in Recorder A. See the Using a Control Recorder for EVP Best Practice. (5)

For field recording, there is generally sufficient ambient noise for EVP formation. It is good to experiment with different sound sources when recording in a workspace like the one used by Sarah Estep. We often began with a simple household fan for background sound.

During analysis of EVP examples, we recommend that single syllable bits of sound be discarded unless they specifically apply and are known to be true. Possible utterances should be verified by alternative means such as historical records or witness testimonials. Always use an uncoached listening panel. See the Witness Panel Best Practice. (6)

A comprehensive discussion of ITC and instructions for collecting them are included in the ATransC White Paper on Transcommunication. (7)

Transcommunication Devices

The use of technology to record direct voice phenomena is not considered ITC. The difference is that direct voice is heard in the room without instruments. The recorder is just to passively make a record. With ITC, the recorder is typically an active part of the EVP formation process.

As we see it, most early attempts to develop technology for EVP focused on “special” radio designs or “special” detectors such as crystals or unusual microphone designs. An example of a contemporary attempt is David Mierzwinski’s Simple Optical Microphone. (8) Many of the device designs were given to the practitioner by a communicating personality. To my knowledge, none worked better than a simple audio recorder and chaotic background noise.

What we learned

After examining numerous early and contemporary devices from an engineering perspective and considering our accumulating understanding about ITC, our speculation is that:

    1. Almost all the devices designed for EVP were just novel ways to condition sound but were ultimately no better than a simple recorder and a fan. There is sometimes an apparent “Newness Effect” in which the practitioner will record more EVP of higher quality, but in the end, the device proves no more effective than a simple recorder and background sound like a fan.

An example is Spiricom. Sarah Estep reported on Page 2 of her Spring 1999 Newsletter, “The next day George [Meek] installed Spiricom in my office. I worked with it for a month, and although I received voices they were not at all like O’Neil’s, but remained basically the same as I had been getting through my reel to reel tape recorder.”

    1. A few designs depended on some form of manual manipulation. In one case, a touch pad was used to induce noise and variability. Another depended on scratching the microphone. There is nothing wrong with manual manipulation if the person does not hear feedback from the manipulation. With feedback, it is too easy for the person to unconsciously manipulate the sound in the manner of Jimi Hendrex and his talking guitar.
    2. Some depended on audio manipulation. A major problem for practitioners is the tendency to think any disturbance in a sound stream might be EVP, and then to over process the example trying to make the possible EVP understandable. See the comments about EMF contamination in the EVP Online Phantom Voices Study Report below.

Technology Artifacts

A technology artifact is something produced by a device that is not part of the device’s expected output. This is other than the misattribution we sometimes see when a normal output of the device is said to be paranormal.

Think how a low hanging tree limb might look like antlers on a cow to a deer hunter.

Technology artifacts are becoming more common as new, more complex technology is used to collect ITC. Practitioners who are not well informed about the science and metaphysics may not recognize artifacts as normal, perhaps unexpected characteristics of the device. This makes it necessary for device makers to identify the artifacts produced by their devices and warn their customers. Such product testing by makers does not appear to be common practice. This makes the purchase of devices for the study of things paranormal a “buyer beware” problem.

Here are a few examples of artifacts:

  1. Visual ITC is especially complicated by unexpected artifacts. For instance, many “orb” pictures thought to be evidence of spirit are demonstrably caused by light reflecting from particulates in the air or shiny objects in the room.
  2. Moving objects in lowlight photographs will tend to disappear. For instance, a person in the scene who is waving his or her arms may look like an armless person.
  3. If the camera is slightly moved during a lowlight photograph of a person, the person’s face may look transfigured into another face, when in actuality, it is just obscured by the camera-caused blur.

Paradoxically, the resulting optical noise in the blur can be a pretty good noise source for the impression of intended order to produce a visual ITC feature. That is why we sometimes see convincing faces in otherwise normal reflected light orbs and blurred scenery.

  1. Camera latency is a natural artifact of the way an image is transformed from optical to electrical. The camera image detector cells absorb photons based on how bright the scene is and how long the cells are allowed to collect light (exposed). If the camera is even slightly moved during a lowlight photograph, a dimly illuminated object such as a house will appear to not move, but a streetlight in the scene might produce a streak of light defined by the way the camera is moved. Such light streaks are often presented as proof of a local spirit or energy healing.
  2. Radio broadcast contamination can be made audible when presumably zero-level signals are amplified. The RF contamination is due to the antenna effect of an electronic device.

There are those in our community who have decided amplification artifacts are paranormal. Our studies have indicated that the typically resulting variable sounds of the artifacts are too often heard as speech. We think this is because our mind is hardwired to find meaning. See the Analysis of Supposed Paranormal Voice (9) study below.

  1. An electronic device can only output information it is designed to output. For instance, a magnetic field detector can only tell us if it is exposed to a magnetic field. EVP are thought to be caused by the expression of intended order on available audio-frequency energy. This is thought to occur in a nonlinear transistor component of the kinds found in audio recorders … and magnetic field detectors. Considering how we think Transform EVP works, it is reasonable to speculate that magnetic field detectors might sometimes be trying to output paranormal speech rather than reporting changes in magnetism.

All researchers using electronic instrumentation should consider the possibility that their instruments are responding to possible interference of intended order brought by the practitioner or interested observers.

  1. We define “live voice” as the use of prerecorded speech as raw material for the formation of the message in EVP. For instance, a foreign language is sometimes streamed through a speaker and recorded to see if any of the words have been transformed into a paranormal message. It has been noted that too often, the supposed paranormally transformed word is actually the correct use of the word in the foreign language. See the Foreign Language study below.

It should also be noted that it is the practice of some ghost box makers to load prerecorded words into memory addresses and then use detected changes in environmental energy to select those addresses depending. In principle, the design may be a good idea because of the chaotic nature of environmental energy. However, our study has shown that selection of the memory locations tends to favor certain addresses. The result is that those words are more often included in the output. If so, the devise design would need to be revisited before it is used for EVP.

One of the first red flags we noticed in the way people understand Opportunistic EVP is how often the output is reported to be saying the practitioner’s name. The practitioner’s name is seldom spoken in Transform EVP, even though the etheric communicator sometimes begins a message with their name. For instance, the “George Wynne. I can help” recorded by Martha Copland. The speaker’s voice was clearly recognized as George Wynne. See Martha’s Message from George Wynne. (10)

What we learned

There is reason to argue that people studying these phenomena should have training in technology as well as in consciousness studies. Alternatively, practitioners would do well to be more open to guidance from trusted, experienced practitioner who are known to be well informed in science and open to new ideas.

As a general statement, Opportunistic EVP are more likely to be the product of mundane artifact. Radio-sweep, for instance, typically produces fragments of normal words that are mistaken as paranormal utterances.

EVPmaker

Stephan Bion, of the German VTF developed a computer program named EVPmaker (11) which uses a random process to select and combine segments of a pre-recorded sound file to produce a new output file. EVP are thought to be produced by the psychic manipulation of the random process. To make the program more controllable for research, Bion provided a sound file containing seventy-two allophones.

Allophones are small segments of speech, which when combined, can produce “spoken” words. The output from EVPmaker is a steady stream of bits of speech. The idea is that the communicating entity will use intentionality to cause the random process to select the necessary memory locations to produce the EVP messages.

Precedence for the Psi influence of random processes has been established by the parapsychological community. For instance, the Global Consciousness Project (12) has shown that Psi functioning can influence the randomness of random event generators.

Audio output for EVPmaker is a staccato sound as if the system has developed a severe stutter. Recorded speech is considered “live voice” and is inherently suspect as a sound source for EVP formation; however, when using synthesized voice fragments, the input file can be controlled to minimize pre-existing recognizable words. As such, assuming a truly random selection of memory addresses, words in the output should be clearly random. If meaningful words are found in the output, they may be considered phenomenal.

What we learned

Staccato sound streams such as those produced with EVPmaker and radio-sweep, tend to befuddle witnesses’ senses making it difficult for them to correctly understand examples. We think this is the main reason EVPmaker produces so many false positive reports of phenomena.

While EVPmaker should in principle produce EVP, it is because of the many reported EVP that do not pass the Witness Panel test that we suggest that people do not use the software. See the EVPmaker studies below.

Radio-sweep

Radio-sweep describes a technique in which a radio is tuned from station-to-station in a repeated sweep. Typical rates of sweep of local radio stations are around 2.5 to 3 seconds. Makers who sell radio-sweep devices to the public have learned to make the sweep automatic, variable and bidirectional. Versions of radio-sweep were sold under such names as Frank Box, RadioShack Hack. Today, they are more commonly described as a Spirit Box or Ghost Box.

Frank Sumpton is credited with introducing the technique. He was a collector of radios when he joined the ATransC. We encouraged him when he explained that he was trying to find a way to further the historical use of radio for EVP. We even gave him a year of free membership. Two early red flags were that ATransC members seldom heard Frank’s examples as he reported, and he reported that the etheric communicators often spoke his name. Sumpton eventually left the Association to find a more agreeable community.

What we learned

After conducting several studies intended to help us understand if radio-sweep was a viable technique for EVP, we finally made it ATransC policy to discourage the use of radio-sweep because it produced too many false positive claims of EVP and might not actually produce EVP.

See below:

Radio-Sweep: A Case Study
A Research Study into the Interpretation of EVP

Environmental Energy

The box maker, Digital Dowsing, gave us our first introduction to collecting meaningful utterances by detecting changes in the environment to control selection of memory locations containing pre-recorded speech. The working assumption is that the communicating entity will change the environmental energy to cause selection of the intended words. The idea is that the communicating personality can easily influence chaotic processes such as ambient electrical charge or magnetism to initiate EVP formation.

We worked for some time with an early version of Digital Dowsing’s Paranormal Puck. It is programmed with words (speech mode), and a library of English-language phonemes (phoneme mode). Phonemes are the smallest segment of human speech, and when appropriately combined in an audio file, can produce meaningful speech.

An important point to consider in the analysis of environmentally controlled speech synthesis for EVP formation is that the only physical process necessary to explain observed results is a change in ambient energy detected by the device. The library of words or speech fragments is part of the designed capabilities of the technology. See the Fall 2008 (Volume 27, Number 3) ATransC NewsJournal article The Paranormal Puck on page 9.

As we understand, other makers have incorporated a similar design in their devices.

What we learned about “Boxes”

We see introduction of the radio-sweep technique for EVP as the beginning of a fork in the road for the study of ITC. In the Opportunistic EVP fork of the ITC road, people who are interested in paranormal phenomena want to experience the phenomena firsthand. Many lack sufficient understanding of the phenomena to make an informed decision about how to have those experiences and if the experiences they have are actually paranormal.

Opportunistic EVP “boxes” using radio-sweep, EVPmaker-like techniques and detection of changes in environmentally energy to select prerecorded words seem to assure people’s ability to talk with the dead. The major problems with the Opportunistic EVP devices include:

      1. It is difficult to know if a possible EVP is an artifact of the device. We have yet to find a study of any of the devices intended to determine the limits of performance and the kind of artifacts they produce.
      2. The live voice versions we have examined seem to address a narrow number of memory locations. The result is too often repeated words that might only simulate communication.
      3. Box practitioners often report EVP that cannot pass a listening panel test.

The Transform EVP school of thought in the ITC community generally includes people who are usually better informed and are doing the work to understand the nature of ITC, and by extension, the nature of the greater reality. There are too many contributing factors to argue that Transform EVP is right and Opportunistic EVP is wrong. However, the listening panel test for the actual nature of the reported EVP does tend to support that contention.

We have been observers of the evolution of the ITC community since around 1987. As previously mentioned, the community has divided into two contradicting schools of thought in which Opportunistic EVP is a favored tool for ghost hunting and Transform EVP is preferred for research and grief management. A culture of using “silver bullet” devices and techniques thought to make ITC easy has become dominant in the paranormalist community. Those of us who seek a more science-based understanding of ITC are in the minority.

Since most “Box” output will not pass a witness panel test, the dominance of “boxes” seems to have retarded acceptance of EVP as a valid, researchable phenomena.

Foreign Language, Transform or Obscuring?

Several members in the (discontinued) ATransC Idea Exchange reported using recordings of foreign language as background sound for EVP sessions. What we refer to as “live voice” is not understandable to our English language trained ears so there seemed to be little danger of mistaking the pre-recorded speech input as EVP. Well, … that is the theory.

We tested the technique using before and after comparisons and a control recorder. (5) The input file included both male and female voice, making it easy for us to locate segments to compare. Because we did identify a few utterances in the input file that sounded a lot like English, we began comparing the two output sound files to see if any suspected EVP were in both. As it turned out, the majority were.

What we learned

We have had several instances in which foreign-language words are sometimes reported as having been “morphed” into EVP but then are recognized by a person who speaks the foreign language as not being EVP at all.

While it may be possible for previously recorded speech to be transformed into new speech as EVP, we have zero evidence of it. All of the reported “EVP” based on foreign-language sound sources have proven to be naturally occurring sounds. The frequency of false positive reports forces us to caution people from using that technique.

Visual ITC

Visual ITC is functionally the same as audio ITC (aka EVP). The Transform ITC version involves the transformation of chaotic visual noise into recognizable features. The Opportunistic ITC version is typically fortuitous arrangement of naturally occurring physical things to form recognizable features.

Visual ITC is not the same as apparition (ghost) photography. The difference is pictures of things in the scene compared to things being formed in other things. Apparition photography involves catching the object of the photograph in the scene. Visual ITC is the apparent result of the influence of intentionality to cause a previously absent feature to be formed in the scene.

Streaming Media

The chaotic signal of any streaming display can lend itself to the formation of ITC phenomena. For instance, faces can sometimes appear in spectrum displays of an audio stream. Pictures of trees taken from a fast-moving car side window can produce pretty good chaotic visible noise for ITC.

In principle, this technique should produce ITC but the examples we have seen have been primitive compared to video-loop or moving water examples.

Orbs

Orbs are usually circular features sometimes found in photographs. As we have learned, most orbs are:

  1. Caused by light reflected from particulates in the air. Dust, moisture, even flying bugs that are near the lens and that can be illuminated by the camera flash will often produce orbs. Such orbs are considered a camera artifact and are common in the point and shoot cameras that automatically add lighting to dim scenes.

We spent a lot of time trying to figure out what caused long trail-like lines in some photographs. Our current thought on this is that the flash illuminates bits of ever-present spiderweb.

“Flying orb” is probably a piece of spiderweb close to the lens. Picture by Dave ©Sircom2004

People sometimes attribute sentience to the orbs because of where they appear in the picture. Our observation has been that their location in the picture is probably coincidental. For instance, an orb that is over someone’s head is probably formed by a particulate that is only a fraction of an inch from the camera and not near the person at all.

Orbs are sometimes thought to be sentient because of the way they move. Our observations have been that such apparently intelligent movement is likely the effect of the movement of the air in which they are suspended.

Transform ITC can form in any sufficiently chaotic light. As it happened, orbs often produce such suitable light. It is common for people to report a face in an orb and to assume it is someone associated with the location, for instance the face of a local ghost.

It is common in Visual ITC to find so many face features that it seems there is competition on the other side for who can be seen in the picture. It is as if the etheric is made of spirits, and if a specific personality is not requested, the “background” of spirits will try to transform all available visual noise. Based on this “background effect” and the nonlocal nature of the etheric, it seems more likely that the ITC face has little to do with where or how the orb was formed.

  1. Caused by bright light reflecting from shinny surfaces. The light source and the reflective surface need not be in view of the camera lens. The resulting flairs can be orbs or bright artifacts. They are usually imaged on the lens and not in the scene.
  2. Caused by etheric critters. Some orbs are clearly not particulates or light flairs. Their movement is more like that of a small animal scampering about the room. The black, fuzzy, softball-sized orb discovered in an available light video taken of one of our walkabouts for Universal Studios is an example.
A videographer for Universal Films used available light video to record us walking up the stairs during a walkabout in Hollymount Castle, Los Angeles. We can just be made out beyond the landing’s decorative rail. At the top, Lisa recorded “Bettys in there” while we talked about a nearby bedroom. Reviewing the video showed that, just before, a softball-sized fuzzy black orb rapidly moved past us about a foot off of the floor. See arrow and enhanced inset.

As with so many other forms of paranormal phenomena, the study of orbs is complicated by the fact that most reported orbs are normal mistaken as paranormal while a few kinds may be decisively paranormal.

Trans-etheric influences appear to be the expression of a personality’s intention to communicate information. If that model is reasonably correct, that expression of influence involves some form of intelligence. Evidence of intelligent interaction with nature and absence of such obvious natural influences as air currents, latency and bright lights is the litmus test we have learned to apply when we consider orb evidence.

In the Implicit Cosmology, (3) which is the model we currently use for life, a person is described as a “an immortal self entangled with a human in an avatar relationship.” That is the “spirit having a human experience” view.

An important implication of the Implicit Cosmology is that reality consists of personalities and their expressions. Those expressions are moderated by each personality’s worldview. Our worldview is like a database containing instincts, memory and cultural influences. In effect, we experience (express) what we expect. Because our worldview is resistant to change, our expressions only slowly change.

A venue for learning such as the physical universe is based on a consensus of all of the personalities sharing the universe venue for learning. This consensus only gradually evolves making our physical space very stable and similarly experienced by others. We see this in the way the Hypothesis of Formative Causation (13) models “Nature’s Habit.”

Given what we think is true about ITC, it seems reasonable to speculate that a lifeform might select a near-physical aspect of reality to experience and only occasionally turn attention to the physical. In that view, what I call “Etheric Critters” might inhabit different but conceptually “near” parts of reality and only occasionally venture into “physical space.” Lisa suggested that they might be attracted to the expression of strong emotions. Are they feeding on our thoughts?

This conjecture might help explain how some orbs seem to come out of a wall, cross the room and enter into another wall, never to be seen again. We have experienced such. The MUFON Field Agent Handbook describes ball lightning in the same way we experienced the momentary appearance of a brown basketball sized orb as it charged across the room. Our cat followed it as if to play.

Obscuring

It has become popular to partially obscure a person’s face with something like translucent cloth and then claim the resulting blurred face has been transformed by spirit. A similar approach is photographing a normal scene as it is reflected onto a shiny, irregular surface.

Based on what we know about ITC, and even though I am an ordained Spiritualist minister, transfiguration phenomena seem to be least evidential of the phenomena of Spiritualism. Our mind attempts to find meaning in experiences. A veil over a face is intended to obscure it so that a viewer would not have the visual detail to recognize the face. When we are looking for transfiguration, our mind is happy to deliver the perception of a different, possibly anticipated face. It is sometimes referred to as “pareidolia” when this natural characteristic of our mind misattributes normal as paranormal.

While it is possible to find ITC in any chaotic noise, virtually all of the examples I have seen of the “obscure technique” were more likely normal misattributed as paranormal.

Video Loop ITC

In this technique, a video camera is pointed at a television or computer monitor display. The real-time output of the camera is connected to the input of the display so that the camera records what it has just recorded. The result is the display of chaotic visual energy that has been shown to be useful for the formation of Transform ITC.

This is one of the more often used techniques for collecting visual ITC. Although technically complicated, it often produces excellent examples of Transform ITC.

See Perception of Visual ITC Images below.

This is a video frame taken from one of our video-loop ITC sessions. Contrast in a region of the frame has been changed to make the feature more visible. The same region has been copied to a second file and contrast has been further enhanced. The feature appears to be a woman or girl wearing a bonnet and looking toward your right shoulder. The rest of the video frame contains many poorly formed face features.

Light Reflected from Moving Water ITC

Like video loop ITC, the Light Reflected from Moving Water (14) technique can produce useful examples of Transform visual ITC. The technique is simple to use, and while video can be used to record fluid motion, the higher resolution of still cameras can sometimes improve the visual quality of resulting paranormal features.

All of the visual energy conditioning is done by agitating the fluid which means a high resolution still camera can be used.

Except for the face, the left picture is typical for light reflected from moving water. The violet comes from the glass saucepan. The paranormal face at the right of the left frame has been enlarged in the right picture. It seems to be the face of an ancient king. The water was agitated with a moving finger. Note that there is at least one additional face feature … perhaps a man facing the King and holding his chin.

What we learned

The fact that we do find visual ITC features in streaming signals reinforces the hypothesis that ITC involves the impression of intentionality on less determinant physical (aka chaotic) processes.

Obscuring a physical thing to give the impression of transfiguration depends more on mental closure than on transcommunication. Consider the Gestalt Psychology Law of Closure: The human mind seeks to create coherence. If presented with a stimulus such as an image that contains missing elements, the mind will fill in those gaps to create the perception of a completed image.

The video loop and moving water techniques are intended to produce chaotic (less determinant) energy that is useful for paranormal image formation. Virtually the same kind of processes is thought to be involved in EVP.

It appears the physical process known as stochastic resonance or amplification is the main physical process involved in the formation of both audio and visual ITC.

There is also evidence that at least some of the anomalous faces are “dead” people. This idea is mainly due to the occasional face that is convincingly a loved one.

Studies

The ATransC conducted a number of organized studies between 2000 and 2014. Some were online with website visitors. Some depended on the participation of members who were competent EVP practitioners. Following tradition, I say they are studies rather than research because most were not conducted by recognized Ph.Ds. None of the reports have been peer reviewed by the ITC community. They should be considered more like advisory or proof of concept studies.

Despite our efforts to solicit guidance, most of the parapsychological community shunned ITC. Our alternative was to design studies we felt would expand our understanding of ITC. An important part of our duty as ATransC directors was to help our members understand the nature of what they were experiencing. That overriding intention informed the design of the studies.

A number of reports from other organizations helped us understand the implications of ITC and are included in the following overview.

EVP Online Listening Trials

One of our first organized studies was designed to give us a sense of how people hear and understood EVP. The questions we wanted to answer were if EVP are objective or some kind of group illusion and how well presumably untrained listeners would hear examples without prompting. Here is the Abstract for the EVP Online Listening Trials (15) report:

Abstract

A common explanation for Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) is that the reported utterances are mundane sounds mistaken as voice forming words. This report describes three online listening trials that were conducted to determine whether or not website visitors can correctly identify words that are thought to be EVP by listening to unmarked sound files.

A second consideration is that it is popular wisdom amongst EVP practitioners that one must learn to correctly understand EVP. A variety of approaches were tried to test this theory, including polling experienced listeners, using questions in an attempt to assess interest and predisposition to believe in EVP and asking participants to indicate experience in hearing examples. Analysis of the trials is included, along with an assessment of the reliability of the results.

When the total number of words correctly recognized for the three trials is compared to the possible number, the overall Percent Recognized Words (%Rw) was 25.2%, indicating that at least some EVP do constitute recognizable words.

You can listen to the examples by visiting the EVP Online Listening Trials web page. The introduction includes a brief discussion of the speech profiling work of Daniele Gullà with the possibly discontinued Italian paranormal study group Il Laboratorio. (16)

The study helped us understand that:

    1. Since the examples were unmarked during the study, we gained a reasonable argument that EVP are real and not illusion. The possibility of fraud is reasonably ignored because the examples were produced by many practitioners. The possibility of misattribution is decreased by the ability of some website visitors to agree on some or all of the words thought to be in the examples.
    2. The average of 25% correct hearing of EVP by the average person has held throughout our studies. The average improves as the listener gains experience listening to EVP.
    3. The study helped us understand the need for practitioners to use a listening panel to help establish the meaning of examples. See the Witness Panel Best Practice.(6)
    4. We had been noticing an apparent influence of listener’s cultural background and temperament.

Analysis of Supposed Paranormal Voice

Italian ITC researcher Daniele Gullà of Il Laboratorio produced an informative study of how a forensic-quality speech analysis program reports apparently paranormal speech. See Computer–Based Analysis of Supposed Paranormal Voice (9)

From Gullà’s report (concerning EVP):

    1. Summary of the resulting anomalies in the preliminary stage of the study
      1. Lack of the fundamental frequency or its partial presence with multiple fragmentations.
      2. Lack of the vibration of the vocal chords in timbre sounds with or without the fundamental frequency.
      3. Formantic structure sometimes replaced by a noise thickening in the relevant bands and showing a severe modification or a non-sinusoidal trend.
      4. Anomalous increase in the signal strength of the second formant and strengthening of the upper harmonics, poor melodic texture and fragmentation of the spectrum.
      5. Anomalies in the frequencies, with too high values of the fundamental and formants frequencies.
      6. Anomalies in the time of energy distribution in the whole signal structure which would seem to be made of many small side by side energy-packages, where it is difficult to separate the different structural elements of the spectrum.
      7. Anomalies in the signal periodicity detected in the autocorrelation analysis.
      8. Anomalous changes in the spectrum density.
      9. Anomalies in the utterance; it is difficult to obtain an acoustic chart.
      10. Anomalies in the time flowing with inexplicable slowing down or speeding up of the speech.
      11. Partial or total elision of the consonants.
      12. Harmonic distortions.

The study helped us understand that:

    1. EVP (by extension, also visual ITC) are simulations of biologically spoken speech, not exact copies.
    2. The arrangement of formants provides cues people are taught to recognize to find meaning in speech. People can learn to correctly hear and understand EVP as they become accustomed to the unusual arrangement of formants.
    3. The lack of voice box modulation points to a reason background sound is required for EVP formation.

The Work at Il Laboratorio

Italian ITC researcher Paolo Presi described the work of Il Laboratorio (Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Biopsychocybernetic Research) (17) for the 2006 AA-EVP conference. From the report:

Much research has been conducted in several different countries in order to help us understand the mechanisms governing the phenomenon. In Italy, we have an ongoing research program, named Sfinge Project, which is supported by a grant generously donated by the Swedish Helene Reeder Memorial Fund. Before dealing with the preliminary results obtained in the Sfinge Project, it is useful to provide some information about the signal acquisition and processing quality required to perform reliable analyses.

Also from the report:

In the following, the results of the analyses done on two very short tonal sentences are reported. The tonal sentences are saying: “ami Enzo?” (“do you love Enzo?”) and “oh mamma” (“oh mom”). It must be said that Enzo, the unknown speaker, is the name of the deceased son of Mrs. Russo. The analyses revealed several anomalies as follows:

    1. Modulations of signals changing mainly in amplitude instead of in frequency.
    2. Formants visibility limited to F1 and F2 only.
    3. Vibrations of vocal cords detectable in short intervals only.
    4. Abnormal fluctuations of voice frequency ranges.
    5. Poor melodic and harmonic contents.
    6. Vowels expanded in time.
    7. Abnormal excitation of cochlear liquid (simulated via software).
    8. The voice reverberation differs from the one existing in the room.
    9. Aleatory values of vowels in I.P.A. table.
    10. High content of noise and significant aperiodicity of signals.
    11. Impossibility for the software to structure a model of Vocal Tract due to the low influence of overglottal organs (resonators)
    12. Jitter values indicate the presence of possible dysphonias.

In his concluding remarks, Presi made a point to relate consciousness with the physical world:

The empirical evidence of paranormal voices and images teaches us that the physical and psychological relationships between consciousness and the physical world entail subtle effects and processes that often appear to violate the most fundamental and consolidated scientific paradigms of space, time and causality.

And

“It is evident that different operators obtain paranormal voices that have different acoustic characteristics even if they are experimenting using the same method and device. From my point of view, this could be the result of a different psychic model operating in the mind of each operator, at the conscious or unconscious level. It is probable that different psychic situations produce different physical effects depending upon the psychic model and how it is conceived and internalized by the operator.”

Display images are from Il Laboratorio.

The report helped us understand that:

    1. The Il Laboratorio team indicated support for the idea that a person’s worldview tended to influence ITC content. If true, our expectations, the way we imagine our world and if we are open to things paranormal may be more important than the hardware we use for ITC.
    2. Paolo Presi has expressed to me a number of times that (paraphrasing) he does not feel the hardware can be improved and that we should be looking at improving the person.

EVP Online Phantom Voices

A major problem for inexperienced practitioners is the tendency to think any disturbance in a sound stream might be EVP, and then to over process the example trying to make the possible EVP understandable.

The ground line (common or zero voltage) of an electrical circuit is usually contaminated with noise induced by ambient Electromagnetic Fields (EMF) and radio broadcast. The contamination is typically very low voltage, but if the supported sound stream is amplified more than a few decibels, that contamination becomes audible. This is especially true for handheld devices like audio recorders. A person’s body can exaggerate this effect by acting as an antenna to induce local energy contamination into a handheld device.

Audio management computer programs are powerful tools for experienced practitioners; however, they can be a trap for people new to the study. While over amplification can make radio broadcast contamination audible, over amplification using a Noise Reduction Tool will predictably induce a sort of ringing warble that is often mistaken as EVP.

Our mind’s tendency to find a way to explain sensed information can cause us to experience things that are not there. In some cases, this is in the form of misattribution such as mistaking a burst of static as a word.

We were perplexed by how frequently people brought examples of astoundingly long EVP to us which we only heard as noise, possibly containing a few, clearly random speech fragments. Listening panels could not find the reported words, but interestingly, many of the panel members identified other words.

In an effort to make sense of this dilemma, we set up an online listening study. Here is the abstract from the 2012 EVP Online Phantom Voices (18) report discussed below.

Abstract

A frequent source of consternation for people who are asked to listen to EVP examples is their failure to hear what is reported. It is expected there will be some disagreement between listeners and practitioners. That is the nature of EVP (see Online Listening Study). However, a problem develops when listeners report hearing only noise, and doing so with example after example from the same practitioner when the practitioner insists there are paranormal voices in the examples. The question necessarily must turn to why the practitioner is hearing what others do not.

For this study, sound files containing only noise were presented to ATransC.org online listeners who were told there was only noise and were then asked to report what they heard. The study confirmed the prevalence of people who report hearing “phantom voices.” The report includes a discussion as to why this may be.

This study helped us understand that:

    1. Our mind will attempt to characterize experiences based on our worldview. For instance, if we are expecting the name of someone, hearing a fragment of sound that has no intended meaning might be heard as a name. We have seen this when the claimed name contains several syllables, but the reported EVP is clearly only one.
    2. A surprising number of online respondents told us that they often hear voices. Our speculation is that we are preconditioned to find meaning in noise. While this does not seem to be a mental problem, it does suggest the need for people to learn to tell the difference between mental chatter and meaningful (purposeful) thought.
    3. People condition their mind to find EVP. If they are working with a streaming technique such as radio-sweep or EVPmaker, they will condition their mind to hear speech in that form of staccato sound.

Binaural Synchronization for EVP Preparation

The Association TransCommunication conducted a study to determine whether or not the use of binaural synchronization can improve a person’s ability to record for EVP. Two audio CDs were used by each participant. One included a set of frequencies developed by The Monroe Institute (TMI) (19) designed to facilitate meditation. The other was the same but included additional frequencies derived from analysis of a functioning trance-channel. (This technology is referred to as “Hemi-Sync®” by TMI.) (See The Monroe Way (20) for background.) Here is a summary of the results:

Abstract

This study is based on the question of whether or not a practitioner’s ability to record for EVP can be influenced by the use of binaural-beat synchronization of mental processes. According to research conducted by The Monroe Institute (TMI), neuron activity in the two hemispheres of the brain are synchronized with and entrained to the beat-frequency between left and right audio signals supplied to the ears via a stereo headset. A slowly changing beat-frequency can change this synchronization, known by TMI as a “frequency-following response,” so that the listener experiences meditative-like states of awareness. A CD containing a frequency set designed for meditation and a CD containing the same set of frequencies plus a set intended to facilitate access to what TMI refers to as an “inner-self helper” were used. The CDs were only labeled as “A” and “B.” Volunteer EVP practitioners were asked to conduct a series of ten recording sessions using each CD and make a self-evaluation of any changes from their expected success rate. No appreciable change in success rate was reported by the volunteers.

From the report: “Ten people participated in the study. All used the same type of recorder, but background sound, where they recorded and when was optional. Six kits were returned completed and two returned blank. As of this writing, two were not returned. An eleventh participant withdrew before beginning because they found the tones irritating.”

See the report at Binaural Synchronization for EVP Preparation. (21)

This study helped us understand that:

    1. Several participants reported that they did better with their usual recorder. We have since learned that the steady-state, white noise-like background noise produced in the recorders we supplied was not particularly useful for EVP.
    2. The protocol was too complex with too many new things for the practitioner to deal with to be useful in a remote, unsupervised study. The study also required participants to conduct many sessions while following the protocol.
    3. While we were fortunate to have ten ATransC members volunteer for the study, the results suggest that a much larger number of practitioners is needed for the study. It is also clear that the EVP sessions need to be supervised. Perhaps a more viable approach would be to arrange for a residential study at the Monroe Institute.

EVP and Geomagnetic Fields: Is There a Correlation?

We encouraged ATransC members to conduct studies based on their own initiative. Ambient energy such as climate or locally induced magnetic fields we believed to influence the quantity and quality of ITC. In this study, ATransC members Dave Schumacher and Cindy Heinen examined that popular wisdom.

Methods

EVP from 2001 to 2005 were obtained from the Southern Wisconsin Paranormal Research Group case files, the South Jersey Ghost Research Group and the personal files of Cindy Heinen. The number of EVP recorded on each day were tabulated in an Excel spreadsheet. Both days with EVP recorded and days where recording for EVP was attempted but there were no EVP recorded were included.

See EVP and Geomagnetic Fields: Is There a Correlation? (22) for the study report.

This study helped us understand that:

Although a limited study, this is one of the few we have concerning the influence of physical conditions on ITC. This and many anecdotal reports from ATransC members and practitioners in the larger community suggest that practitioner-witness expectations play a larger role in apparently paranormal experience than does the physical environment.

Information Gathering Using EVPmaker With Allophone: A Yearlong Trial

This study by ATransC member Cindy Heinen represents one of the efforts to determine if EVPmaker (11) can be used to gather information that is not known to the practitioner.

Abstract

This twelve-month trial was designed to determine whether or not information not known to a participant could be requested and received via Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) using EVPmaker with allophones.

A target object was left undisturbed in the same location at the beginning of each month for twelve months. Participants were asked to use only EVPmaker with allophones to produce a sound file containing the information identifying the target. To qualify submissions the project manager screened them for reasonableness. Those possibly containing usable information were submitted to a listening panel of people who were familiar with EVP but who did not know the identity of the target. If a majority of the listening panel heard information as reported by the participant, the submission was considered a valid submission. Submissions were rejected if a majority did not hear what the participant heard. Valid submissions were screened for a positive response by the project manager for inclusion in the study.

This trial did not produce positive responses based on the study’s protocol. However, the abundance of non-protocol EVP captured in the study might suggest EVPmaker is not suited for the type of communication this study was designed to capture. Also, participant knowledge of the target might have to be reexamined as several targets were identified either before the target was placed or after when the participant knew what the target was. Future studies may wish to look at these non-protocol results when designing a follow-up study.

See Information Gathering Using EVPmaker With Allophone: A Yearlong Trial (23) for the study report.

This study helped us understand that:

While our worldview is probably the major controlling factor, the tools and techniques we use to work with ITC have a lot to do our success. EVPmaker and similar technologies may technically work for EVP, but if it is more important to communicate via ITC than it is to prove EVPmaker works, it seems prudent to stick to the tried-and-true recorder with noise.

Trying to use ITC or even psychic functioning to collect information that we cannot verify has turned out to be a fool’s errand. Even when we know the target, it turns out that our etheric communicators sometimes give us the right answer but only indirectly. For instance, rather than naming the book, most of the EVP in the study were descriptive of it.

This reinforces the idea that physical objects are physical manifestations of nonphysical concepts. One of the characteristics of physical things is the meaning thinkers hold for those things. It appears that our communicators find it easier to speak of the meaning than of the physical name. This may help us understand why such information as numbers may not be easily expressed in our ITC, even in our dreams.

EVPmaker with Allophones: Where are We Now?

In 2008, ATransC member Margaret Downey demonstrated [apparent] real-time conversations using EVPmaker with allophones. See Downey Synthesized Speech EVP (24) to hear an example. Other practitioners reported similarly meaningful communications using the same technology, giving reason to think the time was right to closely examine real-time communication.

The transformation of available audio-frequency noise into speech for audio-recorder EVP appears to involve a direct mental influence on the noise to form speech.

The apparent mental influence for EVPmaker is on the random process used to control selection of memory addresses containing prerecorded speech fragments. While there does appear to be a mental transform influence on the random process controlling memory address selection, we consider EVPmaker an Opportunistic technique for EVP because it is dependent on what has been placed in memory. That is an indirect influence to produce EVP.

We contracted with Windbridge Research Institute (25) to conduct a study of EVPmaker using Margaret Downey’s work as the test material. The research question agreed to by ATransC was:

Can the EVPmaker software using the *SpeakJet allophones dataset produce real-time answers to questions that are posed by an operator under controlled conditions that eliminate conventional explanations for the results? [*Speakjet is a discontinued product.]

The project began June 2008 and the resulting report was published in the Summer 2011 Journal of Scientific Exploration. (26) (Article is on the Windbridge website here) The bottom line is that it is a “failure to replicate” report.

From the report:

“Taking all of these analyses into account, this study did not find evidence that the EVPmaker software using the SpeakJet allophones data set can produce real-time answers to questions posed by an operator under controlled conditions that eliminate conventional explanations for the results.”

And:

“The data in this study tend to suggest that the interpretation of EVPmaker conversations is a subjective process, the content of which is meaningful primarily (and perhaps solely) to the operator.”

Our Evaluation of the Study

The experience of working with Windbridge was disappointing. Our assumption was that Margaret Downey honestly reported the initial EVPmaker EVP. Thus, we were not so much trying to prove that EVPmaker EVP are real as we were trying to establish an objective demonstration that would help us understand EVPmaker EVP.

It was our clearly stated expectation to Windbridge that, if no EVP was found in the first try, we would discuss a second attempt using a different protocol. Perhaps we did not stress enough that a “Failure to Replicate” outcome would miss the point of the study.

A red flag came when the Windbridge researchers ignored much of our comments and suggestions as “commentary.” I am now imprinted with the sense that referring to someone’s input as “commentary” is the same as saying “I am the scientist. You are the layman client and have no say.” That is pretty much the definition of what I refer to as the Academic-Layperson Partition.

Trying to keep an even mind, we wrote our report as a response asking EVPmaker with Allophones: Where are We Now? (27)

Abstract

Based on a number of recent demonstrations by multiple practitioners, ATransC commissioned a study to determine the suitability of that technology for real-time, two-way communication. After three years, a “failure to replicate” style report was published. This article is a discussion of procedural concerns with the study and a discussion of lessons learned which may guide future studies.

This study helped us understand that:

    1. There is an academic-Layperson Partition that is (apparently) spontaneously enforced by the academic community. This study represents the turning point at which we gave up on academic parapsychology. We know EVPmaker can produce EVP. Our intention was to learn more about how … not if. The researchers approached the project as a “proof” or “no proof” question.
    2. We are careful not to tell researchers how they should do their work. However, we know a little more about the subject than the researchers and did try to advise them about what to consider and possible limits of their approach. They dismissed our input as commentary.
    3. How something like EVPmaker output should be studied is still open for discussion. The intention we expressed to the researchers was that, if initial efforts to study EVPmaker did not show the presence of phenomena, the study should be stopped so that a new protocol could be tried. The researchers ignored that and drove the study to a conclusion based on their judgement.
    4. Not considering client input means the researchers must make assumptions for which they may have too little experience. For instance, unless it has been “trained” to understand the staccato output of EVPmaker, the speech recognition software they tried was probably a useless approach to analysis.

Using Live Voice Input Files for EVP

We treat any use of real-time and prerecorded speech as “live voice.” That includes EVPmaker, radio-sweep and other techniques that use word libraries as raw input for the formation of EVP. Such EVP are generally considered Opportunistic EVP.

Part of the problem is that our mind is hardwired to find meaning in speech. That means our mind will try to morph a French word, for instance, into an English one we understand.

A similar effect is seen when our mind tries to extrapolate sound based on a fragment of speech. For instance, we might hear the fragment “to” from an intercepted sound stream containing the word “tomorrow” and hear the “to” as “Tom.” That might be reported by the practitioner as “He says his name is Tom.”

The Foreign Language EVP technique seemed promising. There is no apparent reason speech cannot be transformed into other speech employing the same principles involved in the simple recorder technique.

A strong proponent of the Foreign Language EVP technique did not take well our questioning her examples. To assure ourselves that we were not simply biased, we conducted an extended study of the viability of the technique. The study was never formalized because the growing conflict on the ATransC discussion board was basically the end of our efforts to keep the ATransC a viable Association.

From Using Live Voice Input Files for EVP page on ATransC: (28)

A popular technique for EVP collection is the use of prerecorded foreign language as a source of audio frequency sound. Popular wisdom has it that the communicating personalities will transform the words into words understood by the practitioner.

We used the same foreign-language input file for the Big Circle recording sessions over six months. This gave us ample opportunity to test the technique. What we found has been a real eye-opener. Both of us recorded and nearly every utterance one of us identified as an EVP could be found on the other person’s recording and the original sound file.

Each session, we played the foreign-language sound with a Sony ICD-B26 and recorded with a pair of Panasonic RR-DR60s placed about two feet away from the Sony. The only other sound in the meditation room we used is the normal, ambient sounds one would expect from a closed room with no forced air movement. Lisa typically turns off the Sony while we ask a question and then turns it back on while we seek a reply. DR60s are always in VOX mode.

The input file includes both male and female voice, making it easy for us to locate segments to compare. Because we did identify a few utterances in the input file that sounded a lot like English, we began comparing the two output sound files to see if any suspected EVP were in both. As it turned out, the majority were.

The current best practice for field recording is to use two recorders and discard anything found in both recording processes. (See: Using a Control Recorder for EVP (5)) This is a good practice because it is well established that EVP occurs in one analog segment so that two recorders will not “normally” record the same EVP.

EVP may occur as a transformation of the foreign language into the English words we understand, but based on our study, naturally occurring sounds in the foreign language are too often mistaken as English. This is enough of a problem to warrant recommending that, when using live voice, two recorders should be used, and both output files examined to assure suspected EVP are only in one of the files.

This study helped us understand that:

    1. Unless a possible EVP is decisively paranormal, it should be discarded. For instance, a normal word, fragment of normal speech or nonspeech sounds are too easily mistaken as paranormal.
    2. A policy of Decisive Determinism can help assure that questionable examples do not overshadow verifiably paranormal EVP.
    3. A control recorder (5) is essential if the policy of Decisive Determinism is not followed.
    4. A Witness Panel (6) should always be used if an examples is to be publicly displayed or if it might be used as any kind of “proof.”

Radio-Sweep: A Case Study

A brief Radio-Sweep Case Study (29) was conducted to make sure we were not the only people unable to make out the words from a radio-sweep example. All eight ATransC members commenting about the sample on the discussion board claimed to correctly hear it as it was reported. Yet uncoached online listeners generally failed to correctly describe the reported words.

Our conclusion was that people hear what is reported and not what is actually in the sample. To test this, we moved on to a more formal study reported below as A Research Study into the Interpretation of EVP.

Abstract

Radio-sweep technology, popularly known as “ghost boxes” or “spirit boxes,” is examined as a technology used for recording Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP). The results of a session reported in the ATransC Idea Exchange were used for a blind, online listening test similar to previous tests reported in the online ATransC Journal as EVP online listening trials. The generally negative results are reviewed and reasons why the technology may not be suited for trans-etheric communication are discussed.

This study helped us understand that:

    1. EVP that are not clear—typically single syllable utterances—will probably not be correctly heard and understood without coaching.
    2. The radio-sweep method for EVP may not produce EVP because of the intercepted bits of radio broadcast. However, the resulting chaotic sound stream may be used to form Transform EVP providing there are no discernable words in the raw input.

A Research Study into the Interpretation of EVP

Because of the number of false positives from the radio-sweep method, we asked the Rhyne Research Center (29) for help determining if radio-sweep examples can be understood by others. Our intention was to sponsor an informed study of how radio-sweep examples are heard and if the technique is reliable for EVP.

Here is the 3/17/2011 confirming email from Sally Feather.

Dear Tom,

I’ve now confirmed with Christine Simmonds-Moore that we’re ready to move ahead with the EVP project. So as soon as you could send the check for the amount allocated for this research, she will begin to first steps of the process. We already have approval from the IRB here on site, and Mark Leary continues to be a consultant with Christine, so we expect it can get started fairly soon.

Thank you, Sally Feather

I am pretty sure Mark Leary Ph.D. was the only practicing parapsychologist in ATransC. As it turned out, he is affiliated with Duke University which is next door to Rhyne. He really stepped up when the project with Rhyne was stalled, even contributing some of his personal money to help fund the study.

Here is the Brief from Part 3 of A Research Study into the Interpretation of EVP. (30)

Brief

In the past two issues of the NewsJournal (Winter and Spring 2013), I described two research studies that examined the problem of EVP interpretation. The first study looked at experienced investigators’ interpretations of nearly 100 EVP, and the second one examined lay people’s interpretations of EVP that were recorded using “radio-sweep” techniques. Although no experienced EVP enthusiast will be surprised that listeners disagreed in their interpretations of the various EVP, many will find the exceptionally low level of agreement troubling.

In the first study, only 21% of the listeners agreed on the most common interpretation on average, and many of the EVP showed no agreement across listeners whatsoever. Agreement was even worse in Study 2. When people listened to EVP without knowing what the investigators who recorded them thought the EVP said, they agreed with only 6% of the words that the investigators heard. And, only 1 out of 360 interpretations perfectly matched the investigator’s interpretation. These findings are particularly troubling when we consider that the investigators presumably submitted these particular EVP because they thought that the sound clips were among the best they had recorded.

All EVP investigators know that particular EVP are often interpreted in different ways by different people, yet they often act as if they know what a sound clip actually says. The low rate of agreement in interpretations of EVP is obviously a concern for those who are interested in EVP, so in this article, I will tackle the thorny question of how EVP enthusiasts should deal with this issue.

This study helped us understand that:

    1. Mark Leary concluded his report with seven cautions for practitioner:
      1. Don’t Be So Certain. The resounding conclusion from our two studies is that investigators should not be as certain of their interpretations as they often are.
      2. Don’t Share an Interpretation Until Others Listen. All EVP enthusiasts know that people’s interpretations of EVP are sometimes affected by what they think other people hear.
      3. Offer Alternative Interpretations. When listeners suggest different interpretations of an EVP, any interpretation that is independently offered by multiple people must be taken seriously.
      4. Calculate an Index of Agreement. Investigators should not assert that an EVP conveys a particular message unless at least 70% of listeners independently agree.
      5. Interpret EVP Word-by-Word and Encourage Partial Interpretations. EVP should be interpreted word-by-word (if not syllable-by-syllable), with listeners indicating uninterpretable syllables by an asterisk.
      6. Challenge Others’ Interpretations (Gently). The goal should be to find the best translation – not to prove that you are right.
      7. Leave Ambiguous EVP Uninterpreted. The failure to arrive at an interpretation that others independently agree with should lead an investigator to reconsider whether the sound clip is an EVP.
    2. This study gave us a good foundation to recommend the practice of using blinded listening panels.(6)
    3. We also recommend that single syllable sounds should be ignored unless they can be seen to be specifically on subject. From experience working with radio-sweep and other similar technologies, doing so would move the percent of correctly recognized words (%WR) to near zero, giving far too many false positive reports for Opportunistic EVP techniques.
    4. Based on this study and related work in the community, we feel comfortable recommending against the use of the radio-sweep technique for EVP.

Perception of Visual ITC Images

It has been common for people to come up to us after we gave a presentation to tell us that the EVP examples were impressive but that we should probably stop talking about Visual ITC. The Perception of Visual ITC Images Study (31) was designed to give us a sense of how well online website visitors saw visual ITC examples.

Abstract

In visual Instrumental TransCommunication (Visual ITC), recognizable features are found in what should be only random optical noise. No known physical principles account for the phenomenal features, and they may be found in virtually any sufficiently noisy media. Under the ITC Tab and Techniques Tab of this website include several such techniques for capturing the features. This report includes results of an online viewing study in which website visitors were asked to describe what they saw in unmarked visual ITC images.

Of the seven examples, an average of 61% of respondents correctly identified the feature. Each example was presented with original, grayscale and increased contrast versions. The increased contrast version was most often correctly identified.

All of the examples were collected with the video feedback technique in which a video camera is pointed at a television screen that is displaying what the camera has just recorded. The resulting loop is a closed circuit producing chaotic optical noise. See an example in the Video Loop ITC Section above.

This study helped us understand that:

    1. The average 61% correct image recognition from this study is comparable with the 25.2% correct word recognition finding from the EVP Online Listening Trials. (15) We know that ITC examples are best described as a simulation of what they represent. This tells us that it is necessary to depend on analysis of examples rather than depending on habitual perception. That is, our mind expects to find certain cues in words and images to identify their meaning. Those cues are typically missing in ITC examples. Consider Gestalt Psychology.(32)
    2. The use of a witness panel (6) is as important for visual ITC as it is for audio ITC.
    3. The examples are Transform ITC, meaning audio and visual Transform ITC appear to be formed by the impression of intended order on chaotic noise. This is demonstrated by examining the characteristics of the more suitable forms of noise. For instance, white noise does not appear to be as useful for Transform EVP as “dirty” noise. We have not seen visual ITC examples formed in featureless surface, but we do in the chaotic optical noise produced with the light reflecting from moving water technique (for instance).

Big Circle

“The Big Circle – Bridge to the Afterlife” (aka Big Circle) was spontaneously formed by members of the ATransC (at the time the organization was named the AA-EVP). See Big Circle Recording Sessions. (33)

The group began as members sharing EVP examples on the ATransC discussion board. At first, a few members were having success contacting recently transitioned loved ones. As interest grew amongst the Association members, the one interested in EVP for contacting loved ones came together as an online group dedicated to contacting loved ones on the other side via regular, coordinated recording sessions.

If you listen to the EVP example from Cathy offered on the Big Circle Recording Sessions web page, you can clearly hear Martha Copland’s EVP of her discarnate daughter Cathy saying, “Big Circle.”

Karen Mossey was one of the core members of the group. After the ATransC became inactive, she continued the Big Circle with a number of past members and a few new people who have expressed a desire to use EVP to contact loved ones. They have websites at “Welcome to Eternity” at welcometoeternity.com and “Messages From The Big Circle” at messagesfromthebigcircle.org

You can listen to some of the examples at:

atransc.org/karen-mossey-evp
atransc.org/copeland-evp
atransc.org/debra-ann-evp

The Big Circle helped us understand that:

    1. While the Big Circle was not begun as an ATransC study, it helped us see how a group of like-minded people can be more effective than individuals working alone. We applied that realization in designing the 4Cell protocol (below).
    2. There have been instances in the Big Circle in which practitioners recorded an EVP that seemed personal, but for someone who was not in the group. And then later, that someone was “guided” to join. This seems to indicate that not only is it possible for discarnate personalities to influence the behavior of physical devices, but they are also able to influence physical people’s behavior.
    3. The phenomena of ITC are both physically and mentally experienced. In the physical sense, they can reasonably be expected to have familiar characteristics such as transform or opportunistic phenomena. As ATransC Directors, we learned to evaluate examples based on conformity to expected characteristics for practitioners who considered ITC a means of gaining greater understanding. See Classifying Phenomena(34) and Characteristic Test for EVP (35) Best Practices.

We were not so technical if a grieving practitioner was seeking assurance that a recently transitioned loved one was okay. It is important for us to remember that a witness’ mental sense of something is probably an integral part of the phenomena.

    1. In the sense of seeking to understand the nature of ITC, reality and consciousness, a collective such as the Big Circle can support studies of such concepts as life on the other side and rapport.

4Cell EVP Demonstration

While it appears that anyone is capable of recording ITC, some produce more than average and clearer examples. The Big Circle included several such practitioners which gave us the opportunity to conduct organized studies of trans-etheric influences. Assuming qualified research practitioners were available, the trick was to find a way to make recording EVP more reliable while reducing witness coloring and environmental contamination.

One initiative to increase our understanding that has proven to be effective is the 4Cell EVP Demonstration, (36) which was conducted by association members and tracked in the ATransC Idea Exchange discussion board (now closed). The 4Cell project was designed to function as a test bed in which new ideas can be tried and the limits of EVP can be explored.

As the 4Cell demonstration matured with more cells and more experiments on record, we anticipated being able to provide solid support for the existence of EVP, and the fact that EVP may be evidence of sentient etheric-to-physical communication which might support the Survival Hypothesis. Further, we expected this proof to be in a form that the scientific community will be able to accept, and therefore, feel obliged to repeat the experiments.

Each cell consists of four people:

  1. A Requester who thinks of a request to be given to the cooperating etheric communicators. The Requester tells the Sender the request but not the expected response.
  2. A Sender who is given the request and then mentally conveys it to his or her etheric communicators while asking that they send the requested information to the Receiver. The Sender then notifies the Receiver that a request has been sent.
  3. A Receiver who conducts an EVP session while asking to receive the response to the request. If the Receiver thinks EVP are in the resulting recording, the sound files are sent to the Scribe.
  4. A Scribe who accepts what was received, if anything, from the Receiver and makes a first, independent determination as to what is said in the EVP. The first evaluation and results of collaboration amongst Cell members are documented in a standardized report. For ATransC sponsored Cells, the report is posted on the Idea Exchange for peer review.
  5. People who were not in the 4Cell are then asked to function as an independent witness panel to consider the offered response. The Cell’s determination of what is said remains as The Report, but comments from others are retained as a record of possible alternative considerations (peer review). See the Witness Panel Best Practice. (6)

4Cell members were asked to rotate positions for each new session, but we quickly found that it is more important that the cell has some degree of recording success so we began asking that each 4Cell has at least one experienced practitioner with some level of confidence that at least some messages will be recorded. The 4Cells were also asked to record when possible but at least on a monthly schedule.

This study helped us understand that:

    1. It became evident that EVP research requires the participation of people who can reliably produce EVP. This indicates that researchers using college students as EVP practitioners should first assess the student’s ability to collect EVP.
    2. Using the 4Cell protocol has shown that correct responses from communicating personalities are often about the answer or in some way indirectly correct. For instance, Vicki Talbott asked “What was the name of the tavern where I met my husband?” Correct answer: “The Waterfront.” Class B answer: “Has a view of the bay.”
    3. The 4Cell study showed that researchers can use something like the 4Cell protocol to research ITC, consciousness and other forms of etheric-physical influences. Further, it is not necessary for members of a cell to be in the same physical place.

Recording Thoughts of the Living

The Recording Thoughts of the Living (37) study was conducted to see if EVP could be initiated by still incarnate people.

Jacques Blanc-Garin and Monique Simonet

Jacques Blanc-Garin of the French group Infinitude conducted a series of experiments in which he tried to reach people while they were sleeping. In one example:

Excerpts from recording of Monique Simonet during sleep, April 7, 1995.

Jacques: “It is useless for me to explain to you how to make Tci. I believe that you are more expert than me in this domain and you will know how to use all vibrations that I can send you.”

Answer: “I would like to make it on the Earth” (very audible whisper).

Jacques: “I hope that I do not disturb your sleep.”

Answer: “It was foreseen, I will remember” (whisper).

Jacques: “If you answer me, you are maybe in the environment where I record. If that is it you can then tell me what I currently hold in my left hand?”

Answer: “It is a crystal” (whisper).

Jacques said that, “I indeed, had a crystal in my hand. Monique saw me!”

Lisa Butler and Sarah Estep

Lisa conducted an experiment in coordination with Sarah Estep in which Lisa recorded for EVP at a prearranged time she knew Sarah would be sleeping. During Lisa’s attempt to reach sleeping Sarah, she recorded “You have main contact,” and also, “Rain.” Interestingly, we later learned it had been raining at Sarah’s house. We asked, “Where are you Sarah?” The message came back “I am here.”

This study helped us understand that:

    1. If it is possible to collect EVP that are initiated by still physical people, it should also be possible that at least some other forms of transcommunication such as visual ITC, remote viewing and mediumship are also incarnate-to-incarnate personality exchanges.
    2. While the evidence seems clear that we have discarnate-to-incarnate personality exchanges the implication of incarnate-to-incarnate personality exchanges is that discarnate minds and incarnate minds are the same. The only apparent difference is that one is in the flesh and one is not.
    3. The implication is that a useful model to characterize the relationship between mind and human body is “spirit having a human experience.”
    4. Studies like this and the 4Cell study reinforce the idea that reality is nonlocal in the sense that, for mind, everywhere is here. This nonlocality has profound implications for metaphysics. For instance, we only record for EVP in “haunted” places because film crews want us to for the atmosphere. Being there also helps us focus (report).

Unrealized Studies]

We proposed several studies that were not started, or if they were, the participation was so little that they were abandoned.

Research Project: Energy Profile of Transform EVP

Abstract

The propose of the article, with Seeking EVP Examples for Study, is to issue a call for Transform Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) examples in the form of an audio output file containing the EVP and a file containing the environmental sound and/or sound used as input for voice formation. Both files must be so configured as to allow side-by-side comparison from a marker sound. The examples will be analyzed in an effort to find a relationship between EVP formation and the energy profile of the sound file which contains the example.

An overview of the various forms of EVP and current theories for Transform EVP formation are provided. A hypothesis is proposed that Transform EVP are formed via stochastic resonance and that the source energy in the form of the message (that which is amplified) is made available by strategically apporting sounds already present in the physical. The study is expected to show a net increase in energy associated with EVP.

Seeking EVP Examples for Study web page was our request for examples of Transform EVP that could be compared to supplied background sound so that the difference in waveform can be clearly demonstrated. We think our difficulty attracting examples was due to no longer having a membership organization and that the majority of peopled we reached had turned to the use of radio-sweep.

Sidereal Time EVP Study — call for participation

Asking practitioners to participate in a study to see if the ease with which they collect EVP changed with sidereal time. This is in reference to: Spottiswoode, S. James P. “Apparent Association Between Effect Size in Free Response Anomalous Cognition Experiments and Local Sidereal Time.” The Journal of Scientific Exploration. Society for Scientific Exploration. 1997. jsasoc.com/docs/JSE-LST.pdf

ET Visual ITC Study

Abstract

The first part of this essay includes an in-depth discussion of the nature of visual ITC. Emphasis is on transform phenomena that are collected as apparently paranormal features formed in visual noise. The more common characteristics are described, including some photographic examples. This introduction is used as preamble to describe the Extraterrestrial Visual Instrumental TransCommunication study (ET Visual ITC Study). The grading form and a brief introduction to the submissions are also provided. You, the reader, are asked to help with the study as a citizen scientist.

It was interesting trying to get this study going. We attended a UFO conference and showed examples of what we were looking for to several opinion setters in attendance. In fact, they showed no interest in ITC. If I was using the “sharing” as a test of scope of interest, I think I found proof of information silos in the paranormalist community. We see similar responses with reincarnation, Near-death and Out of Body experiencers.

Implications of the Lessons

Here is what I think we have learned and the implications of those lessons:

  1. ITC is an Objective Phenomenon – Examples of ITC are real in the sense that multiple people report experiencing them in the same or similar physical form, yet no known physical principles can account for them.

Inspired by EVP Online Listening Trials, Perception of Visual ITC Images, 4Cell EVP Demonstration in this paper.

  1. Some Examples are not ITC – Some experiences reported as ITC may be normal mistaken as paranormal or illusional. Researchers should be careful not to conflate false positive ITC reports (not ITC) with positive reports (actually ITC).

Inspired by A Research Study into the Interpretation of EVP, Radio-Sweep: A Case Study, Foreign Language, Transform or Obscuring?, Obscuring, EVP Online Phantom Voices in this paper.

  1. The Source of ITC – There is evidence that ITC might be initiated by both incarnate and discarnate personalities. There is also evidence that ITC might be initiated by animals and alien personalities. The common characteristic appears to be the presence of sentient, interactive personalities.

The three prevailing points of view about the nature of mind are:

    1. Our mind is a product of our brain (Physicalism). Implies that ITC cannot exist.
    2. Our mind is a product of our brain but there is an emergent quality of the physical that transports and retains thought (Physicalist Dualism aka Super-Psi Hypothesis). In this view, ITC are seen as evidence of passive residual thought energy (think Akashic Records).
    3. Our mind and thoughts are nonphysical. As a sentient life form, we are entangled with our human’s mind during a lifetime. (Strict Dualism aka Survival Hypothesis). Implies ITC are always initiated by a nonphysical sentience that may or may not be incarnated.

Inspired by ET Visual ITC Study, Recording Thoughts of the Living, Big Circle in this paper.

  1. Mind-to-Physical Influence – ITC appears to be enabled by mental influence on physical processes.
    • First Sight Theory (38) begins with the assumptions that our mind first psychically senses information and our thoughts have a psychokinetic component.
    • The BICS Essay Contest (39) asked the question “What is the best available evidence for the Survival of Human Consciousness after Permanent Bodily Death?” The majority of the 29 winning authors addressed the premise that the mind is nonphysical.
    • Studies have shown that meditating people can influence the randomness of Random Event Generators (REG). See Exploratory Study: The Random Number Generator and Group Meditation. (40)

Inspired by Recording Thoughts of the Living, Big Circle in this paper.

  1. Nonlocal – It appears that physical distance has no effect on ITC.
    • The term, “nonlocal” is sometimes used in the sense that “mind is not in the brain.”
    • Holography is often used as an analog. The information in holographic photographic plates is said to be nonlocal in that the whole image can be reproduced from any piece of the plate.
    • It appears that a remote viewer can access information from any place in the world.
    • Psi represents thought and the Psi Field propagates Psi. It is modeled as nonlocal and usually thought of as “here is everywhere” as in holography. Such apparent ubiquity may explain why Physicalists frequently turn to quantum entanglement to help describe reality.
    • ITC is showing that nonlocal is better thought of as “everywhere is here.” That would make reality a singularity. It also helps explain that travel in the Psi Field is accomplished by changing perspective and not by changing place.

Inspired by Recording Thoughts of the Living, Big Circle in this paper.

  1. Mind-Body Relationship – ITC seems to support the metaphysical view that we are spirit having a human experience. I have modeled that relationship as the Two-Mind Solution to the Survival Hypothesis. (41)

We are the “spirit” part of Two-Mind Solution. Since our core self seems to be represented as our personality, I say “personality” rather than “spirit.” Thus, our personality represents our primary self. It is symbiotic with our human avatar. Refer to the Life Field Complex Diagram below.

The human mind is the morphogenic or Body Mind in the sense of Rupert Sheldrake’s “Nature’s Habit.” See the Morphic Fields (13) paper. When our human body dies, its Body Mind is no longer entangled with our Personality and is thought to merge with a collective mind.

By the way, personality’s separation from the Body Mind (aka disentanglement) would likely cause a moment of disorientation. That might help explain the tunnel experience sometimes reported by near death experiencers.

We considered the protective suit and drone models to describe the relationships between our human and our personality but those models do not explain the influence human instincts have on our decision making. An avatar relationship does help explain the human influence. Avatar is from a Sanskrit word meaning “descent,” specifically the descent of a deity to the earth.

A good rendition of the Avatar model is in the Movie “Avatar.” In it, an actor enters into a device that helps him mentally link with a cloned native life form.

We know that our expressions (thoughts) are greatly influenced by our human instincts. This guided us to think that we somehow entangle with our human during a lifetime. To account for this entanglement, we composed a life field model as a building block of reality and included an Attention Complex as the core set of functions that produce expression. We knew the Attention Complex needed a database of sorts to represent instincts, memory and cultural influences. So we theorized a Worldview etheric database. The mind also needs some way to make decisions based on external influences as moderated by Worldview. That is why we included a Perceptual Loop.

We had pretty much finished the first version of the Attention Complex when we discovered James Carpenter’s First Sight Theory. (42) It pretty much supported our model and gave us a ruleset for the Perceptual Loop. See the About First Sight Theory (38) paper.

Considering the nature of some ITC messages, we speculate that at least one reason we incarnate is to gain understanding through human experiences. Also, a common theme in ancient wisdom schools is that we cannot leave the wheel of life and death in the physical (reincarnation) until we gain a degree of spiritual maturity. We do so by learning to make “meaningful” choices during possibly many lifetimes. See the essay The Razor’s Edge–Katha Upanishad. (43) By sharing the Attention Complex with our human avatar, and in effect, merging our worldviews for the duration of the human’s lifetime, we effectively became our human. Our speculation is that we do this so that we can gain understanding about the nature of physical reality through human experiences.

Inspired by Big Circle in this paper.

  1. ITC is Colored by Worldview – The practitioner’s and/or interested observer’s worldview tends to modify experiences to better agree with expectations.

Think of worldview as a database in our mind that contains our memory, our human’s instincts and cultural training. Sensed information is compared in our mind with our worldview in an “agree,” “disagree and change” or “ignore” process I refer to as the Perceptual Loop.

The fact that our worldview modifies information that comes to us means the experiences we report to others are likely colored by our beliefs. This “coloring” of sensed information during the development of perception is a characteristic of both conscious and unconscious sentience. Realizing that people tend to color accounts of experiences, we have learned to be conservative in our trust of personal experience reports, such as those from out of body and near-death experiencers.

Consider First Sight Theory. I have included the basics of the theory in the About First Sight Theory. (38) paper. The First Sight Theory Corollaries can be considered a rule set for how the “Agree” decision is made in the Perceptual Loop. The Inadvertency and Frustration Corollary is a good example:*

Information gathered via Psi is not available to conscious experience but does contribute to the formation of conscious experience by the arousal of anticipatory networks of ideas and feelings (assuming that they are heavily weighted, afforded slow switching and approached with the intention of assimilation). Because of this arousal, their action can be glimpsed consciously only by observing thoughts, feelings and behaviors that are inadvertent; that is, not intentional and not obviously caused by any current experiences. Someone who has become skillful in interpreting them is thought of as relatively psychic.

The Switching Corollary suggests a way to manage the content of our worldview:

A person will be fairly consistent in how information is processed, (but) may switch in how information is weighted, the sign attributed to it, and therefore, whether or not it is included in behavior. This switching will occur rapidly or slowly depending on the consistency and purity (focus) of unconscious intention, and this, in turn, is determined by the relative weight of the information over time, situational factors that promote or diminish critical analysis, changes of approach in a task and mood.

We think the one influence we have on our worldview is our conscious expression of intention as shown in the Attention Channel in the Attention Complex Diagram above. The act of examining the implications of our perception with the intention to align the nature of our perception with the actual nature of reality has traditionally been seen as a way to manage worldview. That is the way of the Seeker. See The Seeker’s Way (44) paper.

Item 10. Feedback in this list also discusses the modification of our worldview.

* James Carpenter’s First Sight Theory is explained in a 2015 book, First Sight: ESP and Parapsychology in Everyday Life. (the link is to Amazon, ISBN-13: 978-1442213913). The book is fairly complex. In an effort to make it more accessible to my readers, I have paraphrased some of the terminology in my writing. However, I have not managed to communicate with Carpenter to see if I am using it correctly.

Inspired by A Research Study into the Interpretation of EVP, EVP Online Phantom Voices and Using Live Voice Input Files for EVP in this paper.

  1. Mental Predilections Moderate Transcommunication – People’s ability to collect examples of ITC may be determined by a composite of imperatives.

The Attention Complex function model only represents how we think. If our worldview is a database populated with memory, instincts and cultural training, the algorithm for how that information is used is controlled by such concepts as purpose, discernment and temperament. Those influences bias the outcome of the Perceptual Loop toward particular outcomes.

The factors that seem to most dominate the perception algorithm include:

    • Instincts – Instincts are primarily from species specific morphogenic memory. The most dominant instincts represent a sort of prime directive to do what is needed to assure continuation and dominance of the person’s gene pool. These are generally known as our survival instinct.
    • Cultural Indoctrination – We learn “right thinking” from our community. Cultural indoctrination and an instinctual urge to promote our family combine to turn our worldview toward agreement with the dominant social influences.
    • Memory –The way we integrate experience into memory is biased by instincts and cultural training. In turn, our memory tends to color how we relate to each new experience. This tends to be a self-reinforcing feedback loop as discussed in Item 10, below.
    • Circumstance – “Opportunity” might be a better term. The circumstances of our life tend to determine the nature of our experiences, and therefore, our memory. For instance, cultural circumstances tend to influence our education, work and social opportunities.
    • Discerning Intellect (Lucidity) – It is useful to describe a continuum with human instincts dominating our choices (decision making) at one extreme and discerning intellect at the other. Morphogenic instincts dominate decision making unless they are overridden by mindful intent. See the Temperament Mediated Perception Diagram below.
    • Temperament – Temperament represents our predisposition for how we make choices. It is an important predictor of behavior. The four temperaments (aka traits or styles) identified in David Merrill & Roger Reid: Social Styles provide a simple model for the study of behavior. (45)(46) (47) They are:

Analytical: Thinking, thorough, disciplined
Amiable: Supportive, patient, diplomatic
Driver: Independent, decisive, determined
Expressive: Good communicator, enthusiastic, imaginative

These temperaments are further divided so that one might be an Analytical-Driver or an Amiable-Expressive. See How We Think. (48)

The Temperament Mediated Perception Diagram illustrates three of the factors that moderate how we make choices. The left side of the diagram indicates a person making choices almost entirely under the influence of human instincts. The right side represents a person making choices mostly under the influence of discerning intellect.

The key to moving toward the more discerning intellect side of the diagram appears to be learning to habitually examine the implications of our thoughts and actions.

Inspired by A Research Study into the Interpretation of EVP, EVP Online Phantom Voices and Using Live Voice Input Files for EVP in this paper.

  1. Intentionality – The model that seems to best describe ITC is that a life form’s intention can influence physical processes. We think the actual influence of intentionality is on the nonphysical concept representing the physical thing.

We see evidence in ITC that expression is sometimes in the form of the intention to change something physical. We have not been able to identify a direct etheric (mind)-to-physical interface. That, and the way practitioners unconsciously appear to influence the tone of EVP, leads us to speculate that the path of influence is from mind to the concept (thoughtform) representing the physical thing to be influenced. In turn, the influenced thing is experienced by others as part of their personal reality.

This is an important indicator for how a practitioner might improve ITC. We have noted that steady-state noise like white noise is not as useful for EVP as relatively chaotic noise. If the physical is an expression of etheric mind, then the thoughtform representing white noise may be a factor. As it is, white noise is much more determined, meaning that each next instant is the same as the previous.

Chaotic noise is more useful for Transform ITC. We think this is because it is less determined because each next sample is different than the previous sample and has not yet been decided. In contrast, being determined implies that its current state has momentum and is difficult to change.

The idea that a thinker might be changing the thoughtform (concept) rather than the physical thing reinforces the idea that thought precedes physical reality. This seems to tell us that it is important for us to learn to manage our intentions.

Inspired by our study of physical mediumship (see under the Mediumship Tab at ATransC.org) and Transcommunication Devices discussed in this paper.

  1. Feedback – Just as physical systems are regulated with feedback, so it appears that thought systems are regulated with feedback. The Perception Feedback Circuit Diagram below models how the intention function provides a feedback signal that moderates the expression forming functions of the Attention Complex.

Remember that the Perception Feedback Circuit Diagram is a function model. All of the boxes represent mental processes in the mind. However, while the Attention Complex represents a mostly unconscious process (depending on lucidity), the Intention Review function is a mostly conscious process. In effect, it represents the “I think I am this” sense of being.

The Attention Complex produces our mind’s expression. That is, we express an influence “into” the etheric as our thoughts and impressions. We perceive what we are expressing. Put another way, we are aware of our thoughts.

Considering the Temperament Mediated Perception Diagram above, the Intention Review function for most people agrees with their instinct dominated worldview. That suggests that the Moderating Feedback signal (E) would equal Expression (C) for most people.

An important element of the Seeker’s Way (44) is for seekers to learn to habitually contemplate the implications of their expression. For seekers, then, the Moderating Feedback would tend to turn their expressions to better agree with the actual nature of reality (as they understand it). That means the Moderating Feedback signal (E) would be to induce a change in Expression (C).

The feedback function is an important part of how people respond to experiences. A person who has a “fearful” personality will tend to reinforce their fear during their Intention Review. That is, if a person thinks ghosts are scary, the mere suggestion of a ghost might be exaggerated into a scary experience.

Inspired by Big Circle, EVP Online Phantom Voices and Using Live Voice Input Files for EVP in this paper.

  1. Rapport – I define the Organizing Principle (49) of Rapport as “Personalities are interconnected by links of cooperation (influence) forming a matrix of relationships (cooperating community).” One personality’s awareness of another personality manifests as a link of influence between the two life fields that is related to attention and intention. The nature of this link of rapport depends on the clarity of awareness (lucidity) and the reason for the awareness (intention). These links are dynamic and are thought to facilitate cooperation.

Mind-to-mind connection with other people can be characterized as rapport. The quality of that rapport depends on our worldview and our ability to manage how our mind processes information resulting in outward expression and how we perceive that expression.

Rapport appears to be related to psychic sensing. More lucid rapport is thought to be possible by learning to manage such mental functions as First Sight Theory Corollary 9 – Switching (related to focus) and First Sight Theory Corollary 5 – Weighting and Signing (related to intention). (38)

Suspended Judgement is the preferred attitude for the study of things paranormal. In effect, rapport represents a link of familiarity and expectation. That conditioned response can degrade our ability to perceive the actual nature of new experiences.

  1. Cosmology – This paper is all about our efforts to understand ITC. We consider it our duty as ATransC Directors to convey what we have learned to the public. However, the lack of a Ph.D. limits our credibility. That is, what we say is given much less authority than if the same was said by a person with a Ph.D.

It does not matter what that degree is in. We have been ignored, sometimes shunned, always discounted by people with degrees that are often irrelevant to ITC such as biology, philosophy and psychology. This reinforces our sense that there is an Academic-Layperson Partition that is spontaneously imposed by academics. I think of it as the Wizard Syndrome. I think of laypeople’s acceptance of the partition as the Wizard of Oz Syndrome.

Many Ph.Ds. are trained to conduct organized studies, but they are seldom qualified practitioners. To study ITC, it is necessary to have reliably available examples to study. But the Academic-Layperson Partition has seemingly given academics permission to be less than fair with practitioners. That is why I wrote the Open Letter to Survival Researchers. (50)

The solution, I think, is for the academic community to develop a consensus cosmology that models paranormal phenomena in general. The need for such a cosmology has become one of my talking points when I comment on research reports. The Implicit Cosmology I have developed is an example, but I realize it is probably primitive compared to what scientists would want. See the Toward a Consensus Cosmology paper. (51)

I think the community would progress faster toward better understanding of things paranormal if we had a widely accepted model to refer people to for further study. Rather than someone like Lisa and me having to refer to experience for authority, we would be able to refer to the cosmology for the community’s authority.

Inspired by Radio-Sweep: A Case Study, EVP Online Phantom Voices and Using Live Voice Input Files for EVP in this paper.

Our Hope

The phenomena of ITC are profoundly fascinating. Their very existence hints at characteristics of reality that are unknown by mainstream science. They shout about characteristics that tell us we are more than our physical body. The thought model that seems to best describe ITC is that we are spirit having a human experience.

Think of the implications of that. Who are we as “spirit”? If we are having a “human experience,” how should we think of our human? While we are having our human experience, who is speaking in our EVP? Whose face do we find in our Visual ITC?

We can only propose theories to answer these questions. There are fundamentals that must be understood before our actual nature can be known. The takeaway from ITC is not just a picture or the voice of a loved one. ITC represents a modern revelation about our true nature.

From my perspective as a modern-day seeker:

The First Revelation was The Emerald Tablet

The 6,000-year-old Emerald Tablet (52) is for me the first recorded revelation about our spiritual nature. As I read it, it is instruction about The Creative Process: (53) “Changes in reality are expressed via personality’s attention on an imagined outcome with the intention to make it so.”

The Second Revelation was The Katha Upanishad

The 4,000-year-old Katha Upanishad (43) provides important instruction from the “God of Death” to a seeker concerning our spiritual nature. It was based on oral tradition handed down in the Hindus Vally. The God of Death describes a person as a chariot driver. The driver would be Mind One and the horses would be Mind Two as Avatar.

To escape from the wheel of life and death, the God of Death also advises the seeker to learn to make meaningful choices (discerning intellect) rather than pleasurable choices (instinct driven).

The Third Revelation was The John 14 of the Christian Bible

The 2,000-year-old John 14 is a revelation for me because Jesus is shown to be reminding his followers about what he has taught them. It seems all my life, I have been hearing Christians blithely say that the rest of us could only get to heaven by accepting Jesus as our Lord and Savior. See Metaphysical View of John 14. (54)

Of course, as a Spiritualist, I am rather vocal about how we cannot be forgiven. That is, Vicarious Atonement seems to violate the tenets of personal responsibility and the need to gain understanding through experience.

Line 8 of John 14 tells us “Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” In this line, Jesus has told his disciples that he personifies the path that they must follow to return to God. He is showing himself to his followers as the three aspects of the teacher: Follow what I teach as the path; observe me as I live that truth; and realize the results of how I have lived.

John 14 represents the true meaning of what the ancient teachers intended. They did not teach blind faith. They taught about the immortality of the spiritual self and the implications of personal responsibility. It is later generations that have turned those lessons into their faith-based thought of today.

The Forth Revelation was The Hermetic Tarot

I only recently elevated the Tarot to one of my revelations. While I have studied it for many years, only in retrospect have I realized how often I turn to it for inspiration and assurance. The Hermetic Tarot is thought to be based on playing cards which have been adapted for use as a means of fortune telling. Occult versions of the cards based on the Hermetica began to show up in the 1300s as a tool for teaching the seeker’s true nature as an immortal personality. See The Hermes Concepts Paper. (52)

While the Tarot is most commonly used for divination, in their occult use, the 22 Major Arcana, sometimes referred to as 22 Keys (keys to secret wisdom), represent the path to self-realization. Each card represents a step along the path beginning with Key 0, The Fool, which represents the person both at the beginning of the cycle of education as, … well, as a fool, and at the end of the cycle following key 21 as the now enlightened, … well, still a fool because the cycle is never-ending.

The Fifth Revelation is Instrumental TransCommunication

The reality of ITC as trans-etheric phenomena is self-proving in that anyone can easily replicate the processes that produce examples. ITC is fun to work with and sometimes provides important solace for people who have lost loved ones. However, it is the way that examples are collected and the implications of ITC that reveal so much about our spiritual nature.

This paper describes my point. The natural evolution of our study of ITC has been our seeking ways to share what we understand with you. However, it is for you to do the work of learning what we teach. If you do step on the seeker’s way, be mindful that revelations are not by people. Teachers are only lightkeepers. Revelations are the evidence and sound reasoning that remind us of our actual nature. It is for you to decide. Understanding comes from contemplating the implications, no matter who is speaking.

References

  1. The Silva Method. silvamethod.com.
  2. National Spiritualist Association of Churches. February 2012. nsac.org.
  3. Butler, Tom. “Implicit Cosmology.” Etheric Studies. 2015. ethericstudies.org/implicit-cosmology.
  4. Butler, Tom and Lisa. “ATransC NewsJournal Archive.” Association TransCommunication. atransc.org/category/archive.
  5. Butler, Tom (et al). “Best Practices: Control Recorder for EVP.” Etheric Studies. 2007. ethericstudies.org/control-recorder.
  6. Butler, Tom. “Best Practices: Witness Panel.” Etheric Studies. 2013. ethericstudies.org/witness-panel.
  7. Butler, Tom. “ATransC White Paper on Transcommunication.” Association TransCommunication. 2014. atransc.org/itc-white-paper.
  8. Mierzwinski, David. “Simple Optical Microphone.” Association TransCommunication. 2016. atransc.org/optical-microphone.
  9. Gullà, Daniele. “Computer–Based Analysis of Supposed Paranormal Voice: The Question of Anomalies Detected and Speaker Identification.” Association TransCommunication. 2004. atransc.org/gulla-voice-analysis.
  10. Butler, Lisa. “Martha’s Message from George Wynne.” Association TransCommunication. 2016. atransc.org/marthas-george-wynne-evp.
  11. Martínez, Francisco. “EVPmaker 2.5, Stefan Bion, Developer.” Software Informer. evpmaker.software.informer.com.
  12. “Global Consciousness Project: Meaningful Correlations in Random Data.” noosphere.princeton.edu.
  13. Butler, Tom. “Morphic Fields.” Etheric Studies. 2018. ethericstudies.org/morphic-fields.
  14. Butler, Tom. “ITC experiments using Light Reflected from Water.” Association TransCommunication. 2016. atransc.org/downey-water-itc.
  15. Butler, Tom. “EVP Online Listening Trials.” Association TransCommunication. 2008. atransc.org/evp-online-listening-trials.
  16. Il Laboratorio (no longer exists). Interdisciplinary Laboratory For Biopsychocybernetics Research (Il Laboratorio).
  17. Presi, Paolo. “The Work at Il Laboratorio.” Association TransCommunication. 2006. atransc.org/presi-il-laboratorio.
  18. Butler, Tom. “EVP Online Phantom Voices.” Association TransCommunication. 2012. atransc.org/phantom-voices.
  19. The Monroe Institute. www.monroeinstitute.org.
  20. Butler, Tom. “The Monroe Way.” Association TransCommunication. 2008. atransc.org/monroe-way.
  21. Butler, Tom. “Binaural Synchronization for EVP Preparation.” Association TransCommunication. 2009. atransc.org/hemi-sync-for-evp.
  22. Schumacher, Dave, Heinen, Cindy and Carter, Chris. “EVP and Geomagnetic Fields: Is There a Correlation?” Association TransCommunication. 2016. atransc.org/evp-and-geomagnetic-fields.
  23. Heinen, Cindy. “Information Gathering Using EVPmaker With Allophone: A Yearlong Trial.” Association TransCommunication. 2010. atransc.org/information-gathering-using-evpmaker.
  24. Downey, Margaret. “Downey Synthesized Speech EVP.” Association TransCommunication. 2008. atransc.org/downey-synthesized-speech-evp.
  25. Windbridge Research Center. windbridge.org.
  26. Society for Scientific Exploration. scientificexploration.org.
  27. Butler, Tom. “EVPmaker with Allophones: Where are We Now?” Association TransCommunication. 2011. atransc.org/evpmaker-study-where-are-we-now.
  28. Butler, Tom and Lisa. “Using Live Voice Input Files for EVP.” Association TransCommunication. 2012. atransc.org/live-voice.
  29. Butler, Tom. “Radio-Sweep: A Case Study.” Association TransCommunication. 2009. atransc.org/radiosweep-study1.
  30. The Rhine. The Rhine Research Center. rhine.org.
  31. Leary, Mark. “A Research Study into the Interpretation of EVP – Three parts.” Association TransCommunication. 2013. atransc.org/radiosweep-study2.
  32. Butler, Tom. “Perception of Visual ITC Images.” Association TransCommunication. 2010. atransc.org/visual-perception-study.
  33. Cherry, Kendra. “What Is Gestalt Psychology?” Verywell Mind. 2022. verywellmind.com/what-is-gestalt-psychology-2795808.
  34. Butler, Tom and Lisa. “Big Circle Recording Sessions.” Association TransCommunication. 2006. atransc.org/big-circle-recording-sessions.
  35. Butler, Tom (et al). “Best Practices: Classifying Phenomena.” Etheric Studies. 2013. ethericstudies.org/classifying-phenomena.
  36. Butler, Tom. “Best Practice: Characteristic Test for EVP.” Association TransCommunication. 2019. atransc.org/characteristic-test-for-evp.
  37. Butler, Tom. “4Cell EVP Demonstration.” Association TransCommunication. 2005. atransc.org/4cell-evp-demonstration.
  38. Butler, Lisa. “Recording Thoughts of the Living.” Association TransCommunication. 2001. atransc.org/recording-thoughts-of-living.
  39. Butler, Tom. “About First Sight Theory.” Etheric Studies. 2018. ethericstudies.org/first-sight-theory.
  40. Butler, Tom. “BICS 2021 Essay Contest – Proof of Survival.” Etheric Studies. 2021. ethericstudies.org/bics-2021-essay-contest-proof-of-survival.
  41. Mason, Lynne, Patterson, Robert and Radin, Dean. “Exploratory Study: The Random Number Generator and Group Meditation.” Academia.edu. 2007. www.academia.edu/30794323/Exploratory_study_the_random_number_generator_and_group_meditation.
  42. Butler, Tom. “Two-Mind Solution to the Survival Hypothesis.” Etheric Studies. 2021. ethericstudies.org/two-mind-solution.
  43. Duggan, Michael. “James Carpenter.” Psi Encyclopedia. 2020. psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/james-carpenter.
  44. Butler, Tom. “The Razor’s Edge–Katha Upanishad.” Etheric Studies. 2016. ethericstudies.org/razors-edge.
  45. Butler, Tom. “The Seeker’s Way.” Etheric Studies. 2022. ethericstudies.org/the-seekers-way.
  46. Merrill, David W. and Reid, Roger H. “David Merrill & Roger Reid: Social Styles.” Management Pocketbooks. 2017. www.pocketbook.co.uk/blog/2017/04/18/david-merrill-roger-reid-social-styles.
  47. Buckley, Dylan. “4 Most Common Temperament Types.” Better Help. 2020. www.betterhelp.com/advice/temperament/4-most-common-temperament-types.
  48. Poncela-Casasnovas, Julia et al. “A study on human behavior has identified four basic personality types.” uc3m – Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. 2016. www.uc3m.es/ss/Satellite/UC3MInstitucional/en/Detalle/Comunicacion_C/1371223155576/1371216052182/A_study_on_human_behavior_has_identified_four_basic_personality_types.
  49. Butler, Tom. “How We Think.” Etheric Studies. 2014. ethericstudies.org/how-we-think.
  50. Butler, Tom. “Organizing Principles.” Etheric Studies. 2015. ethericstudies.org/organizing-principles.
  51. Butler, Tom. “Open Letter to Paranormalists: Limits of science, trust and responsibility.” Etheric Studies. 2017. ethericstudies.org/open-letter-to-paranormalists-science.
  52. Butler, Tom. “Toward a Consensus Cosmology.” Etheric Studies. 2023. ethericstudies.org/toward-a-consensus-cosmology.
  53. Butler, Tom. “The Hermes Concepts.” Etheric Studies. 2016. ethericstudies.org/hermes-concepts.
  54. Butler, Tom. “The Creative Process.” Etheric Studies. 2014. ethericstudies.org/creative-process.
  55. Butler, Tom. “Metaphysical View of John 14.” Etheric Studies. 2015. ethericstudies.org/metaphysical-view-john-14.
Learn about books I have written to help explain lessons learned from ITC here. They are also on Amazon.

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