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"The Ghost Orchid: An Introduction to EVP" |
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Written by Jen Warren
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Friday, 27 January 2006 |
 This disk combines recordings from two well-known Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP )
researchers: Raymond Cass, whose work makes up the bulk of this disk, and Dr. Konstanin Raudive,
who not only produced thousands of tapes during his lifetime but is also alleged to have appeared on
recordings himself after his death. (In case you were wondering, Dr. Raudive says he's "living fine.")
Ash International
The packaging for this rarely available release (it's gone out of print
twice in seven years) is lush and obviously produced with care. The
booklet includes not only an essay explaining EVP, but also includes
detailed and thorough biographies of Cass, Raudive, and Friedrich
Jurgenson (who pioneered the technique after finding voices on his
tapes of bird calls). The cover image—an adaptation of a
polygraph—and the photos of Cass and Jurgenson are printed in a
silvery ink with a slight metallic sheen. The polygraph image is
repeated in the inside of the booklet and is the perfect visual
representation of eerie, distorted speech. The title itself is
significant too...a ghost orchid is a tiny and rare flower, hard to
come by and grow.
I was a bit apprehensive of listening to this CD initially—I'm the
sort of person who avoids scary movies and covered her eyes during the
bloody bits in Gladiator—but I actually did not find the recordings to be particularly scary or
creepy, perhaps because I was expecting them to be. If I walked into an empty
room where these recordings were being played, however, I can't say I wouldn't
be scared half to death. The voices do sound ethereal and other-worldly at times;
at other times they sound like a commercial or the oldies station
being played on a cheap stereo down the block. They speak in English,
German, Russian, and Latvian, and sometimes combinations of several
languages (the so-called "polyglot voices"). They sing, laugh, and are
said to respond directly to researchers and address them by name. Each
fragment is repeated three times to give the listener a chance to
really hear and absorb the voices.
These voices are said to be ghosts attempting to communicate from the
afterlife (including Winston Churchill), psychic impressions from the
researcher himself, and even extraterrestrial beings (the evidence for
this being their bad grammar). I'm not sure I buy any of those
explanations myself, but I do find these recordings fascinating
and compelling. Some of the transcriptions of the voices are a stretch
and don't sound to me much like what they're "supposed" to (I've also
possibly identified an "unknown" alien word as a German surname). Even
viewing these recordings as the results of radio interference, cordless
phones butting in, or CB or shortwave radios breaking through, they can
be enjoyed as the sonic equivalent of a found poem.
samples:
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