EDISON ENIGMA: I HEAR DEAD PEOPLE
NOTE: There are many people who do not understand what I am about to do on Halloween night. While the facts surrounding this experiment can be found by clicking here, I want to talk about a little history and the reasons why I feel this experiment is important. I would like to invite everyone to approach this experiment with an open mind and with reverence. This is not an activity that will create evil or ill will. It is an activity dedicated to the seeker, the dreamer, and the pure of heart—Clyde Lewis Ground Zero October 31st, 2010.
About two years ago I was notified that my mother had pancreatic cancer. It was a blow to me because my mother was always full of life and love and the announcement hit me hard and reminded me of my mortality. It wasn’t long after that my doctor had told me that I had Cancer and that I needed an immediate nephrectomy or I would die within 6 to 8 weeks.
It was another blow because after all of the times that I had explored the possibility of life after death, and with all of the ghost encounters I experienced I realized that I still didn’t believe that all of the paranormal activity was proof of any life after death.
I was still afraid of dying and was still of the opinion of how unfair death truly is. With every EVP I have ever recorded I can only determine that being a ghost is a lonely experience. I have determined that spirits want to contact us because they either miss us or they are frustrated because on the other side they truly have a lot of regrets and unfinished business that they wish they could rectify.
My experiences with ghosts are well documented. I had a ghost enter the radio studio one night in Salt Lake City with many witnesses present. I was in a southern Washington Grave Yard where a spirit had leaped from the ground through my feet an out of my chest and we had recorded it all on film. We even caught an entity climbing out of a grave.
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But that still has never given me comfort. I could see an eternity of me hovering around my cold grave expecting flowers or a visit and when I am bored I decide to do Ouija board duty to scare teenagers. The other alternative would be to live in a sponge painted place wearing only a terrycloth robe and scandals talking about the exciting passages found in the bible. I see how we humans deal with death, from vampires to zombies. It all seems to be brutal and comical and for some reason never gives us comfort in knowing that we will be spending more time in the grave than we did breathing.
As I was contemplating my own death, my mother decided to call me. She told me that she was aware that I have been searching for answers about life after death. She knew of the ghost voices I had recorded and all of the photos of ghouls and ghosts that I had claimed to have filmed. She wanted to call me to tell me that had died the night before.
The way she worded made it sound as though she was calling me from the other side. My mouth dropped and I stated, mom you are speaking to me so you aren’t dead. She laughed and said that she was very much alive now, but that during the night she knew that she had died. I asked her how she knew and she responded that she was having trouble breathing and that as she tossed and turned she noticed that there appeared to be a light on in the room. She slowly opened her eyes and said she saw what appeared to be a window.
The window was right above her and she said it was if it was in the middle of her forehead. She said that she could still feel that she was in her body, but that this window of light was between her eyes and that looking through the window was her deceased mother, Father, and aunt. They were asking her to come with them. She told me that she asked them if she could take a diet coke with her and they said no. So she said that they would have to wait and that she would have to tell me about her experience. A week later my sister had called me up to tell me that my mother was closer to death. She was unable to speak.
The family had all said their goodbyes but I was in Portland and couldn’t be by her side. I asked my sister to put the phone up to my mother’s ear. I could hear her labored breathing and the death rattle in her lungs. I realized that this was her final moments. I said, it’s okay mom, this is your son and I am sorry I am not there in person to tell you that I love you. Remember the window mom? I think that now you can go through that window and you really don’t need that diet coke now.
Her breathing had quieted down. It sounded as if she had relaxed a bit after I spoke to her. I said its okay mom you will be fine. I then hung up the phone. Fifteen minutes later my sister called to tell me that she had passed away. I didn’t hear my mother’s voice before she died, never heard a goodbye and wanted so badly to hear her speak to me.
I thought with all of the EVP I have recorded, with all of the ghost voices that I have presented on radio shows – couldn’t even hear the last words of my mother, just a death rattle and gasp.
After she died, I had to focus on the way I was going to avoid my death. I needed surgery on both kidneys and I was convinced that I was going to die as well.
I had my surgeries and survived them. My life had been wiped clean of a lot of things. I had to quit a very good paying Job. I was going to be unable to do anything for at least a year and the very thing that defined me, my radio show had to be placed on hiatus.
I decided to get a laptop and found that I could still do radio shows online and produced mini documentaries while laid up in bed. Many of my first shows were about electronic voice phenomena or EVP. I also did shows about ITC which stands for inter-dimensional Trans-communication. ITC was very intriguing because it was a way to use electronic devices to communicate with the dead.
Mark Macy once appeared on my Ground Zero show to talk about phone calls from the dead. He proposed that it was possible to communicate with the dead using telephones, radios, and the television. A lot of it seemed a bit weird until Macy had pointed out to me that the famous inventor Thomas Edison wanted to contact the dead using a lot of the knowledge he appropriated from others that used resonant frequency, radio telephone transmission, electric power and light. The Electric Ouija Machine and Psycho-phone seemed to be a combination of several technologies that when used with powerful transmitting devices would open a portal in the ether which would make it possible for the dead to speak with the living.
On September 7th, 1897 Edison patented his spirit communication machine with the US patent office. There are many websites that suggest that Edison’s vision of communicating with the dead was all an urban legend and yet there were ads that were placed in the Saturday Evening Post advertising a marvelous contraption that allegedly could communicate with the dead.
General Electric also talks about Edison’s devices on its website and how the spirit machine was a national sensation after World War I.
In 1920, Americans were still reeling from the horrific casualties of World War I. Meanwhile, spiritualism, Ouija boards, and the slew of new technological inventions from men like Thomas Edison were capturing the national zeitgeist. All these converged when Edison told American Magazine that he was working on a device known as a “spirit phone” — in other words, a phone that would let the living communicate with the dead.
The result was a national craze. Most of the major newspapers and magazines in the country leapt to cover this astounding new “invention.” And the magazine that broke the story received over 600 letters to the editor from people obsessed with the device.
These letters range from offers of help with the design to claims that such a machine already existed — and at least one gentleman wrote to ask how he could place a call once he reached the afterlife, since he expected to die shortly. –from the General Electric history Edison’s forgotten ‘Invention’: A Phone That Calls the Dead
It needs to be addressed that Edison by this time had already invented the phonograph which was an invention that could play back the voices of the dead. Radios were also able to play the voices of dead souls for the living’s enjoyment so the logical next step was to contact the dead using several of the ideas that he had patented.
Now computers can play voices of dead people as well. It was a concept that now would be taken for granted but back in the 1920’s people hearing the voices of the dead played for them on a box and a rolled tube was phenomenal.
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In 1995 the Beatles had used this technology to reunite. The song Free as a Bird is actually a song that featured the ghostly voice of John Lennon appearing with the other three Beatles. Lennon had once said that spiritualism should interest everyone. He often attended séances and had premonitions of his death.
Paul McCartney had confessed that during the recording of the song Free as a Bird , John’s ghost was in the studio. McCartney stated that during the recording session they intentionally put a reversed message in the song. In the final moments there was gibberish and then they heard the words “I’m John Lennon”—the words when reversed say “Turned Out Nice Again.” McCartney had said that it was unintentional. The phrase “Turned out nice again” at the end of the song is a reference to George Formby, a musical hall entertainer who played the ukulele and is represented in the closing scenes of the video. “Turned out nice again” was Formby’s catchphrase. The connection here is that George Harrison played the ukulele and was a member of the George Formby Appreciation Society.
McCartney took it as a good sign and a white noise message that John was trying to speak to the Beatles and approve their reunion. I remember that before the reversed speech and the hidden message the end had a barrage spectrum of noise and ethereal sound. It was in some way homage to the idea of using a resonance loop for an effect. The same type of resonance loop theorized by Edison to contact the dead.
The barrage of resonant white noise, the reversal and the way the words “I’m John Lennon” show up in the gibberish seemed a bit eerie for a pop song. Moreover it was the same recording equipment that Edison originally appropriated for the communication with the dead. The equipment throughout history had been perfected and eventually produced the recording of a dead John Lennon singing with his living band mates. The radio, another technology that Edison had a part in perfecting, played the voice of Lennon from the grave. The EVP presented itself in a reverse back masking.
After more study into Edison’s Enigmatic quest for communication with the dead I found a lot of dead ends. The phonograph and radio were limited with their minimal power and the idea of two way communication made to the dead was dismissed. The psycho-phone and electric Ouija were all said to be worthless.
It is an interesting fact of history that while all of these so called spirit contraptions were out there somewhere, there seems to be a discrepancy as to whether or not Edison kept the blue prints and schematics of his device. His psycho phone prototypes and Electro Ouijas were said to be counterfeits and the whole process was said to be a huge joke that Edison was playing on the public.
Edison, it seemed wanted to throw off wannabe rivals with his death communication machine and mentioned in Scientific American that the mechanism had to have a valve that could release unspeakable power so the slightest whisper from a person from beyond could be heard.
He apparently did not have that power, however today we have communication devices with unspeakable power. We have technologies that can be used to manipulate environments to reveal what had been hidden in the past.
I had a theory that if raw audio or straight drones could be looped and create feedback perhaps voices could be heard in the sound waves. I was already using tape recorders to collect EVP, but my dream was to somehow find a way to send resonant signals over large areas to find voices hidden in frequencies.
There were indications that white noise off of a television set could be used for this, and when I was in High school we used to create video feedback that would create images that looked ghostly. We actually did this for fun and the effect was actually inspired by the movie Poltergeist where Carol Anne stares at the TV and says “They’re here.”
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We realized later that this technique had been used to allegedly receive images from the dead.
The Movie “White Noise” starring Michael Keaton utilized this technique; however the information in the film confused the issues of Electronic Voice Phenomena and Inter-dimensional Trans communication.
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After the film was released I found a site online that talked about a man named Frank Sumption. Sumption created an electronic ghost communication device called Frank’s box. His box had nothing to do with the Edison Psycho-phone or electronic Ouija. His box provided audio barrage noise that could be manipulated by spirits to produce EVP.
Frank stated that when he created the box he was not inspired by Edison, but by an article he read about EVP in popular Mechanics. Frank’s Box was a specially modified radio that sweeps its tuning across AM, FM, or shortwave bands. Sumption’s idea was that spirits would be able to piece together words at random to communicate with the living.
I had spoken with a number of paranormal groups about the use of Frank’s box and some had told me that a similar way to create a box was with a Radio Shack radio. I then contacted my Friend Dr. Jonathan Burgess and asked if he knew what could be done to hack a radio and make it simultaneously run frequencies back and forth as with Frank’s Box.
The radio shack brand of radio that could be hacked safely was hard to find. We had to hunt them down at a warehouse in Tacoma Washington.
After we found a box we ordered them and prepared them for spirit communication. In 2009 Jonathan and I tested a radio in my old haunted apartment. We did some experiments to see if we could contact the dead using the device. We wanted our results to be heard by others so we arranged a live broadcast of our experiments live on the internet. We immediately found success.
After the show I had said to Jonathan that Edison wanted to use the radio to contact the dead and that this may be a link to do so. All I needed to do was ask a local radio station to broadcast a few minutes of this white noise barrage to see if anyone else could hear voices from the dead. I figure no one would see that this mad idea was worth looking into.
If Edison believed, I wanted to say that I could utilize the radio transmission power, to broadcast a loop of other frequencies out into the sky and possibly pick up the sounds of voices.
It may not be Edison’s original Vision, but the radio was meant for communication everywhere. It was a key to communicate with beings in the outer reaches of the ether. I then realized that the idea of a two way communicator with heaven was not an idea that was only held by Edison. It was an idea that perhaps was first spoken of in the bible.
In the book of Numbers we read of how Moses would speak to God using The Ark of the Covenant. The voice of God or an entity from beyond would speak above the head of Moses just between the two terminals that were made of gold and shaped like cherubim.
Now in commentary by biblical scholars we read that the voice of a person was heard in the tabernacle speaking to Moses from the Ark of the testimony. Therefore it can be surmised that the Ark was used to communicate with God or with spirits that were not in the room. The Mercy seat as mentioned in the bible and located in the Ark was also known as “The oracle.”
The oracle seemed to be a stone or from what I can determine to be a magnetized stone. There were gold plates that were positively and negatively charged in order to produce a great deal of electrical power. The power was so great that it killed Uzzah a character in the bible that attempted to steal it. He touched the Ark and it killed him instantly.
It is proposed that a powerful charge was used to create a resonant frequency to communicate. The book of Samuel even states that Samuel and Eli would speak to the Ark and communicate with beings. All those who officiated near the Ark had to wear protective clothing and head coverings to prevent their hair from falling out and their skin to get boils. Sometimes there was a great cloud that formed over the Ark and Moses was instructed not to go near the Ark when it had this cloud near it.
The power to speak with discarnate beings has been spoken of in all histories and texts for centuries. Magicians, preachers, popes and prophets all claim to have been influenced by spirits. Some claim the ability of automatic writing and scrying. These abilities are said to be gifts however if these spirit channels could be opened up using powerful transmitters wouldn’t it be worth our while to at least give it a try and see if we can get the same spirits to speak with us?
In 1949, Marcello Bacci of Italy began recording voices. He was using an old tube radio. Bacci had claimed that these voices were strange voices from the dead.
People would come to Bacci’s home to talk with their departed relatives. A few years later, two Italian priests named Father Ernetti and Father Gemelli were trying to record a Gregorian chant on their magneto-phone, but the machine malfunctioned. Father Gemelli looked up and wished his Father were alive to help him. Surprisingly his father’s voice answered from the magneto-phone, “Of course I shall help you. I’m always with you.”
I am fascinated with the rich History that surrounds the controversy of EVP and ITC. I have decided to create an experimental test live on the air. Using the idea of the Spirit Box, with the invention of a radio that scans frequencies at about 8 stations per second I am using the FM radio station where I work as Ground Zero for a 100 Kilowatt test that will broadcast the frequency loop to my listeners and to everyone on the internet.
In the crossing of the frequency streams I am convinced that the random sounds of the radio scanning will create a “white noise” barrage that can provide raw audio for any entity that may be in each individual household a means to communicate.
Since I announced that this plan will be carried out, I have talked to Krocks Radio One Zero Point Radio my affiliate in Casper, Wyoming to see if it was possible to have their Carrier Current AM station “AM 1670 Stereo” broadcast the show as close to being in sync as possible via a studio internet feed. Using the Carrier Current AM System he will put 50 Watts into the Neutral and Ground Wires of the Power lines, with a footprint of an antenna of a 50KW Station.
This event will be carried out at Midnight Pacific time October 31st, 2010.
Those who will help me with this event are Dr. Jonathan Burgess, the man who helped devise the digital radio that scans the dial randomly. Once again this radio is similar to the Ghost Box of Frank Sumption and his work.
I have also asked for the assistance of David John Oates creator of Reverse Speech, who has an ear for sounds and phonic formations in gibberish and white noise. Oates’ work has been heard all over the world and seen on all of the many prominent talk shows in The United States and Australia. I will also be using the talents of Reed McClintock whose metaphysical assistance is needed to put people into the mindset to receive such information from a paranormal source.
I am proud to be able use the radio as a tool to create a unified interest in the paranormal. I am also doing this so that we can find the peace of knowing that people thinking together and working together can possibly tap into the world of the unknown and realize that there are people on the other side, some that aren’t already born wanting our success.
Edison’s work may or may not have survived him at death. However it seems that Edison may have somehow spoken to his colleagues after he passed on. According to Paul Blosser, Edison had been nicknamed “the Old Man” by his assistants and he had once recorded the popular song Grandfather’s Clock with the words “…But it stopped short, never to go again, when the Old Man died.” This prophetic message was fulfilled by Edison’s attempt to communicate at the time of his death. Edison died October 19, 1931 at 3:24 a.m.
Three of his assistants reported that their clocks stopped precisely at 3:24 a.m. Three minutes later, the grandfather clock in Edison’s laboratory also stopped.
Even more outstanding is Edison’s communication with the living some ten years later. Edison purportedly communicated to two of his associates during a séance in 1941. In the communication received, he offered the names of three people who could lead them to the blueprints of his spirit box.
Today the idea never dies. It will live again this Halloween.
Tune in, you may hear something inspiring.
