Psychologist Jeffrey Mishlove writes in “Beyond the Brain: The Survival of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death,” that beginning with Thomas Alva Edison, researchers, hobbyists, and ghost hunters have been experimenting with electronic devices for communication with the deceased. Popular television programs and books report hundreds of successes.
The potential criticism of apophenia (projecting meaning onto random stimuli) clouds most instances. However, we shouldn’t lightly dismiss Instrumental Trans Communication. The late Willis Harman – emeritus Stanford University engineering professor – took this data seriously. While many discarnate voices appear vague and subject to varying interpretations, others are unmistakable.
Konstantin Raudive’s return. In the following video excerpt from the mid-1990s, Willis Harman expresses his interest in the phenomena. After World War II, commercial tape recorders became available. It wasn’t long before voices mysteriously appeared on tape. Researchers and hobbyists soon came to accept that these were discarnate entities.
Konstantin Raudive was an early researcher who died in 1974 but kept up his interest from the other side. Messages and pictures from him have come through on audiotapes, videotapes, television screens, and computer disks.
Dan Drasin, an esteemed colleague I have known for over thirty years, presents (with audio) several Konstantin Raudive communications to which Willis Harman was referring. One recipient, Mark Macy – author of Instrumental Trans Communication (ITC) books, tape-recorded detailed technical instructions from Raudive. Raudive’s voice is clear!
Anabela Cardoso’s voices. Cardoso is a former Portuguese diplomat who has served as Consul General in the United States, Spain, and France as well as Charge D’Affairs in Japan and India. She has authored three books on ITC and, over two decades, she has made hundreds of audio recordings of anomalous voices.
Cardoso has specialized in a technique known as Direct Radio Voice. She tunes her radios to a government channel, reserved for emergencies, so the only sound normally is white noise. When voices appear, she can engage in two-way conversations, even though there is no radio transmission coming from her end. In the following video, she describes how she communicates with her family members who call her by her pet name of Bela.
Psychologist David Fontana, former president of the Society for Psychical Research, has observed Cardoso communicating with these voices on multiple occasions. He states, as a corroborating witness:
The voices were clear, at normal volume, and ... there was no doubt that the voices were direct communications with Anabela and could not be dismissed as stray radio voices.
Fontana conducted his own tests and background research and concluded that Cardoso, herself, was not engaged in subterfuge.
Cardoso also organized a two-year study of the voices, conducted at a well-equipped and well-shielded acoustical laboratory at the School of Engineering, Vigo University, Spain. There, many anomalous voices were detected and independently verified.
Phone calls from the dead. As in the previous videos, individuals report having received telephone messages, and sometimes clear, two-way conversations with the deceased. Researchers D. Scott Rogo, working with Raymond Bayliss, carefully investigated fifty such cases.
Callum Cooper, a psychologist in the UK has continued to investigate over thirty additional cases. Cooper has analyzed these cases, putting them into different categories. He describes what a typical case, in the most extreme category involving a prolonged conversation, would be like.
The telephone conversation, initiated by a discarnate person, might last half an hour and be with somebody whom you believe to be alive. The conversation could cover many topics and end with a suggestion that the person will be going away. Only later it is learned that the caller was deceased. The phone company will then show no call record.
I had a minor experience along these lines in combination with a lucid dream involving the late Elisabeth Targ who died in 2002. In the dream, I was conversing with Elisabeth (who had been a friend) and congratulating her on all the reported after-death communications involving her. When I picked up the receiver, all I heard was white noise. I do not recall another time when I answered a ringing phone to discover only white noise.
Russell Targ, Elisabeth’s father, also describes an incident where Elisabeth communicated, shortly after her death, by interfering with the electrical circuitry in his house. On that occasion, not long after Elisabeth’s death, he was with his son, Nicholas and Elisabeth’s widower, Mark Comings. They remarked to each other that, because Elisabeth was such a strong person, perhaps she would try to communicate. At that moment, all of the lights in the house went off and came back on. As Russell was commenting on how unusual that was, as if someone has turned the circuit breaker for the whole house on and off, it happened a second time.
Jeffrey Mishlove’s essay, “Beyond the Brain: The Survival of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death,” received first prize in the 2021 Bigelow Institute’s challenge to provide proof for the survival of human consciousness after death. Footnotes in Mishlove’s essay and videos he refers have been removed in this presentation but are available in his essay, which may be downloaded at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php. Mishlove is a licensed clinical psychologist, author, and host on YouTube of “New Thinking Allowed.”