Talk:Electronic voice phenomenon



invention of telephone
The telephone is the oldest technology that was used for EVP.

With the invention of telephone there was first time a device that could transmit human voices over long distance and convert between sound waves and electric signals. So in the telephone research labs of Graham Bell, people first time perceived yet unheard electric noise phenomena turned into sound through the phone receiver.

Bell himself was agnostic but sympathized with Unitarian belief. Particularly he was engaged in spiritualism and attempted to contact his dead brothers. Although his assistant Thomas A. Watson made seances as a medium, Bell sought scientific truth, so questioning fake stage magic tricks of psychics and the human tendency of self-delusion, he struggled to use his acoustics knowledge to develop technical means to directly communicate with the spirit realm - hoping to create a tool for more objective answers. Reports of his experimental discoveries raised interest in spiritualist groups; so e.g. "phone-voyant" mediums claimed to hear ghost voices in the crackling noises of early telephones.

Later Thomas Edison challenged Bell and Nikola Tesla who can first build a spirit phone. Although no device was found, the invention of telephone (talking to a person without seeing etc.) remained associated with ghosts. E.g. the German language word "anrufen" (to make a phone call) was previously solely used for calling a god or spirit being.


 * https://www.brantfordexpositor.ca/opinion/columnists/mabel-tells-bell-about-her-belief-in-spiritualism
 * https://www.brantfordexpositor.ca/opinion/columnists/bell-discusses-spiritualism-with-mabel-i-havent-a-particle-of-belief
 * https://www.ozy.com/true-and-stories/the-greatest-turn-of-the-century-inventors-really-wanted-to-talk-to-ghosts/221925/
 * https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/dial-a-ghost-on-thomas-edisons-least-successful-invention-the-spirit-phone
 * https://www.salon.com/2017/10/08/who-you-gonna-call-edison-and-the-science-of-talking-to-ghosts/

92.193.22.221 (talk) 19:52, 16 June 2022 (UTC)


 * WP:SYNTHESIS of sources, none of which explicitly discuss the article topic (EVP). - LuckyLouie (talk) 20:17, 16 June 2022 (UTC)


 * The early telephone laboratories first time researched technology for transmission of voices through electricity; hence the historical spiritualist application of that knowledge is by definition even the origin of EVP research. Therefore this clearly belongs to the core topic of this article. 92.193.107.75 (talk) 16:11, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

Instrumental Transcommunication (ITC)
ITC not mention? EVP is part of ITC. ED 2607:FEA8:483:8E00:1078:240D:8BA0:6B4A (talk) 21:14, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
 * It’s mentioned 3 separate times in the article. - LuckyLouie (talk) 22:47, 26 April 2023 (UTC)