Short stories: Paranormal

I am a paranormal researcher, starting way back in the 1970's. As a child, I studied the paranormal, reading entire volumes of it on everything from the afterlife to UFOs. Reading an astonishing and truly amazing book, "Breakthrough" by Dr. Konstantin Raudive, I proceeded to try and do what the book documented and purported could be done by anybody with simple and basic recording equipment: recording voices of the dead through a simple tape recorder onto magnetic recording tape. In those early, mostly analog, pre-Internet years, I proceeded to launch a mind-blowing scientific experiment that would have many incredible and astonishing implications and ramifications to my life...contacting the dead.

The voices were purported to be only audible during playback, never during recording. My first recorded EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena) voice came through distorted and rhythmic, but was clear enough to be heard as "Yes". This was December 26, 1978, the day after Christmas (the tape recorder was an asked Christmas gift in preparation for me being able to replicate these mind-boggling experiments on my own). The recording was made with a blank tape against total silence; the voices only audible during playback.

The word 'yes', of course, did not prove that an afterlife existed and could interact with the crude interface of a tape recorder. But it was enough for me to contiue on the track that would result in the recording of many more paranormal voices running into the thousands, in an era long before the horror EVP movie "White Noise" so dramatically portrayed EVP by a man (played by Michael Keaton) supposedly picking up the voices of his dead wife on tape (and through computer). The movie seemed to be inspired by the explosive growth in the research by many others, who were also inspired by "Breakthrough", et al.

Within weeks, I had recorded dozens more of these voices claiming to be of the dead. Shocked, surprised and somewhat amazed I continued on, encouraged that there was something to a phenomena that was still (at that time) known mostly in Europe, originally pioneered by Friedrich Jurgenson, who brought EVP out into the mainstream by inadvertently recording them during a recording session of bird calls. Friedrich Jurgenson was the first researcher to document the phenomena, which, eventually, Latvian psychologist Dr. Konstantin Raudive launched his own ground-breaking research that helped immensely popularize it.

By late 1979, I had many tapes of voices claiming to be of the dead. These obviously had nothing to do with recording erroneous radio and TV signals-the "voices" had an intimate knowledge of me, my family and my history. They responded to oral questions that I posed about their existence, even giving their names...and more importantly my name. The odds of me picking up mundane radio transmissions stating my first and last name in context to me talking to the dead, and those same voices claiming to be of the dead, including one saying very clearly, "Dead are on your tape recorder, Todd Daigneault" are absolutely astronomical: tens of millions of one for one example, hundreds of billions for multiple examples.

Sometimes if I asked, the "electronic" voices would tell me where certain family members where at the time. Other voices talked as if they figured nobody could hear them, describing accidents that they were in, or other ways that they died, sometimes in very long snatches of conversation. I would only get the long conversations if the tape recorder ran for 5-20 minutes. Sometimes the EVP was in loud, clearly audible whispers. One voice recorded in late 1979 even said with a heavy English accent: "This is Death Radio." (after I could hear the tuning of radio stations in the playback).

Sometimes the EVP, like it did for Konstantin Raudive, would mix different languages together. In my case, French and English in their conversations with me (I am half-French, but do not speak it). This is a very interesting aspect of the phenomena, mixing different languages of the experimenter, even if they did not speak it. It seems that interacting between two quantum-realities, "heaven" and the earthly-plane can cause the communications to come out in different languages mixed in the same phrases. Also, the "squeaks", "pops" and "beeps" that accompanied the Apollo moon transmissions were also prevalent during some of my early recordings, indicating some possible long-range modulation...Certainly, between quantum-realities could be construed as a "long-range modulation".

In order to properly document the EVP, I used the tape counter to mark each voice. Sometimes different voices would blend into each other without a pause. The tape counter was an absolute necessity to not only 'separate' these voices, but to be able to find other voices. A very good idea, especially if the machine was left recording for long periods of time, and periods of paranormal voices would appear at different intervals. In the beginning, I did not...but found it an absolute necessity as time went by, so I could create a proper reference to my voice.

I ended up recording over a period of ten years heavy and a few additional years not as much, reaching astonishing conclusions in this research after an experiment done with a quartz crystal pressed onto the 'third-eye Chakra point' of mystical lore while recording EVP. I tried to put my own thoughts onto tape while recording, using this crystal and succeeded! It was not the crystal...for I removed it and it still worked. This helped to prove some of my later theories that the disembodied spirits were using dormant and non-dormant areas of the brain to help relay their voices from their quantum realities onto the low frequencies of the tape recorder that could be a conducive frequency for their voices.

The spirits also seemed to sometimes rely on energy of humans talking and from certain other radio signals to come through louder and in longer phrases, even if the tape recorder was not run for longer periods of time. I employed what I called a 'diode-receiver', a very crude circuit that was like a miniature FM radio receiver, with a random tuner and copper wire antenna that was connected to the tape recorder by a cable and plug. I had it built for me from a schematic in one of the EVP-books; researchers using it for years to pull in the "spirit" voices. Entities were able to use the energies of the radio frequencies and human voices speaking to come through more clearly and in a more "normal" sounding way. The circuit produced an astonishing amount of very clear voices for me in the several years that I used it, with far more "human sounding voices" than I was used to recording.

Additionally, I started to research the possibilities of recording spoken words from different times and places. But these signals were still like the EVP, sometimes spoken in short batches, sometimes rhythmic, sometimes "robotic-sounding", even if it was run for longer periods of time. I could record anybody I thought of, at any distance, like the spirit voices. But, like the recording of the spirit voices, there was not always a lot of useful info-and like a long-range radio, the "signals" would come in and out.

While all of this was going on, pictures were taken by me showing an alabaster-colored horned head coming out of the ceiling, and a picture with bluish energy emanating from the tips of simply-constructed aluminium foil pyramids. The greatest paranormal picture I took showed an astonishing image of what looked like a peek into a 'heaven-like' reality. The pic was a glowing image of a church with four skeletal beings, with what looked like human cells attached by wire draped over them. The image seemed to be hanging in hyperspace. Brilliant energy was radiating from the picture with several detached, non-human heads hanging over and around it. I took this picture on Christmas day, 1986, on a strong feeling to photograph the window. Interestingly enough, the flash did not go off. The image was certainly no double-exposure...

Those same beams of radiant energy in the picture came out in other photos I took over the years. Another photo of the window taken years later by me showed smaller, less developed views of what seemed like a similiar paranormal reality...perhaps both images of "heaven". I took photos of myself in the mirror in 1992, showing faint, but very distinct images of a Star of David and a man with a sword. Additonal photos snapped by me during the same time, same place showed glowing orbs in the hallway. I had incredible dreams of floating around the same glowing orbs during that same time

For many years, I had many incredible experiences with the paranormal and found out that my psychic abilities were very adept, well-honed...and continued to develop as time went by. One night, I was awoken by a glowing image of a woman running towards me. The glass shards from a broken goblet were still there in the morning after kicking at the entity, but breaking the glass. This was no dream or illusion, for the image was blurred (I wear glasses). I wrote a story in the 1990's that was eeriely predictive of 9/11 in several paragraphs, describing a military alert, missiles launched and the collapse of several incredibly tall buildings. Scratches even appeared on my arms after using an Ouija board.

I saw three eerie-looking men dressed completely in black watching me once or twice over the years (a phenomena well documented in UFOlogy of three humanoid-looking men dressed in black sometimes terrorizing UFO witnesses into silence over significant UFO sightings or really hard evidence). The three men in black always seemed to emerge from some form of 'hyperspace', sometimes enveloping their victim in some form of 'time-distortsion' or other paranormal phenomena, which left the victim in an altered state of reality. Maybe it was a reality between realities, or part of their reality, or even the effects of the energies cascading from their quantum reality, such as what I had seen in my photo of the beings and the buildings taken in 1986. I had done some significant research into recording "space-alien" voices, as I had started shifting away from recording spirit voices after the initial quartz-crystal research experiment proved there was far more to this phenomena. The three men in black may have served as a warning to me...

An American correspondent of mine, inadvertently picking up EVP on his telephone answering machine, who was more of a victim than anybody who ever wanted anything to do with it showed me logs of his with an entity named 'Kensington' after I had received similar contacts from the same named entity. He sent me tapes of the sometimes rhythmic, sometimes faster sounding EVP, which I was all too familiar with. A chill went down my spine as I listened to what I had heard over the years doing my own research, made more frightening by the fact that my American correspondent never tried to deliberately record them.

I have long since stopped recording the EVP, but still have paranormal experiences from time to time. Waking up one day to somebody touching my forehead, a blonde man ran from my bedroom into nothingness. A terrible nightmare of an evil-looking being sitting in my computer chair woke me up. The chair was still spinning! At another time, between sleep and waking, I found myself hovering over the couch. I am well-versed in 'Lucid-dreaming' and 'night-terrors'-these phenomena were neither. Although I have long since shut down the research, the 'door' I opened to other dimensions and quantum-realities remain wide open...Or is it that I am just more aware of interactions with other realities that may have been happening all my life...and to many others during their lifetimes. Interactions that are as common as people walking down the street.

The research came out of natural curiousity of the unknown. That innate, natural curiousity led to far more of an understanding of the unknown...and the huge ramifications that went with that knowledge. As human beings, we can be so limited in our understanding of the unknown. But a simple instrument such as a tape recorder can open the doorway to many other realities-bringing a flood of the reality of these other realms out in the open for all to marvel and wonder at it. But it definitely is not for the faint-hearted, and is mind-blowing in its scope and range. In some ways, it's almost like the puzzle from the Clive Barker classic film "Hellraiser". I never saw the Cenobites and the gateway to hell...or did I at times in other equally frightening versions?

I also found out over the years that various relatives of mine had a number of paranormal encounters. Relatives of mine were followed by a pristine-looking black Sedan (a car so common in the men-in-black lore). The car ended up ahead of them, without going around them. My mother and my aunt recently document to me seeing human forms moving out of the corners of their visual range in their respective abodes. In the 1970's, long before my first EVP encounters, my younger sister said she saw a little man standing on the bathtub. During that same time, my older brother told me that the attic door moved while he lay on his bed. He also had frequent dreams of climbing a ladder into some kind of spaceship.

These paranormal encounters were happening for a long time. Although terrified and intrigued during these times, I wasn't able to fully comprehend everything until much later. My realization was that many others were having paranormal experiences without fully realizing them and their impacts on their lives. The tape recorder just allowed me to understand all of these experiences much more, in effect to be able to fully focus on them and put them into some kind of proper context towards a larger understanding. In 1977, well over a year before I read Breakthrough and was even aware of EVP, I started picking up strange and unexplained voices while doing a dictation...Now I understand...