Electronic Voice Phenomenon or, more widely known as E.V.P., what is it?  E.V.P. is simply the ability to record voices of the dead on audiotape.  This phenomenon has been around since the 1920’s and had the interest of the well known scientist Thomas Edison * October 1920 issue of 'Scientific American'* who believed that the use of recording devices or other such apparatus, could very well be the communication link between this world and the other. 

In 1979, George Meek and Bill O'Neil created a device specifically to communicate with the dead; this device was called The Spiricom, which employed the use of 13 tone generators along the range of an adult male voice. Mr. O’Neil was said to have conversations with the deceased, Dr George Jeffries Mueller.  A total of 20 hours of recordings was made of dialogs between the two.

Many have given theories as to what causes this to occur, from CB radio interference or other vocal signals being picked up by the recording device to the more simple of explanations, that people hear what they want to hear on the recordings and pick out sounds that resemble words.  

How would you go about obtaining your own example of E.V.P.?  Simply by going to any known “haunted” areas such as cemeteries, abandoned buildings or areas such as battlefields where it is known people died, while using any tape recorder or digital voice recorder, and ask questions while the device is recording, giving sufficient time between questions for the disembodied voices to answer. 

According to Sara Estep, the founder of the American Association-Electronic Voice Phenomena, there are classes to the different voices that can be heard.

• Class ‘A’ voices are the clear, easily heard and able to be duplicated to other tapes.
• Class ‘B’ voices are clear and loud enough to hear without the aid of headphones.
• Class ‘C’ voices are the quiet, whispery voices that need sound boosting and are often undecipherable.

These voices are never heard during the recording process, only upon playback is this phenomena heard, which makes it an easy target for debunkers, many of which believe that the voices are added to the tracks afterward by the person doing recordings.  Many of the results are short phrases, single words, laughs or other human-like vocal sounds.  E.V.P. voices are not limited to English speaking occurrences; there have been some recordings of foreign languages as well as animals.

Many believe that these voices are happening due to the electromagnetic energies that comprise a spirit, or the use of “ectoplasm” focused onto the tape, or digital recording media.

The correlation of E.V.P. and Reverse Speech Phenomenon are close.  Whereas E.V.P. is the recording of disembodied voices, Reverse Speech is the occurrence of the recording of a person speaking normally and the resulting tape played backwards.  The study of Reverse Speech has been around for quite some time.  And some believe that the use of this can bring to light the underlying feelings of the speaker.  For 20 years researcher David John Oates has been studying this phenomenon, referring to it as a sub-conscious Truth Detector.
   
Examples of reverse speech include the Beetles recordings played backwards revealing another message. Although deliberately inserted into the recording this is known as backwards masking.  Other songs, including Stairway to Heaven, by Led Zepplin, include natural reversals. 

Oates has studied recordings of political officials such as George W. Bush, and found some interesting messages in the reversals. Such as  “We will sit in Baghdad” this was taken from a speech with George Bush two weeks prior to the United States going into Iraq.   If, as Mr. Oates says, Reverse Speech is a truth detector, then it could be used to deter crimes, to help get to the root of problems and to help get proper diagnosis from patients.

In each instance of either E.V.P. or Reverse Speech, it is up to the listener to decide what they hear.  Is it truth or fallacy?