During a recent conversation with several group managers, the issue of colloquial English in EVP research was raised.  The obvious problem is that if for instance an EVP is attributed to a 19^th century human, can we assume that he or she continues to learn modern colloquial phrases?  Would Jesse James be heard saying, “Whatever…” or “I’m bad?” To assume that a spirit can learn or assimilate new language can raised problems when we fashion a hypothesis on the overall argument for the survival of human consciousness after death as well as the nature of the afterlife as assumed by earlier research.

To fully appreciate the predicament colloquial language raises, we have to look back at the basic assumptions of learning and linguistics. If you accept the concept that learning a language requires consistent emersion in the society that creates it, then we have to ask if survivors of death actually exist in a separate sphere, rather than remaining on Earth as time progresses.  If the spirits remain with us, then the concept of true colloquial language is not only possible, but likely.  This theory however flies in the face of conventional wisdom, as noted in the obvious bulk of the existing recordings that seem to be encapsulated in the language of the spirit’s own time and place. Anne Boleyn has never been quoted as say, “What’s Up?”

When an infant is born, he or she is more or less primed to learn language, by three months, he has already mastered the different intonation and basic building blocks of speech, long before his body develops the mechanism of talking and it has been shown that infants can master several languages at the same time with relative ease, but by the age of three we begin to shut down those learning pathways in favor of more complex ones and soon new entries into our lexicon are not as simple. Once an adult, the addition of new words and phrases becomes a completely different process and repetition becomes the key factor for learning new phrases.  This then begs the question if the learning process exists after death, which would imply constant communications between us, both living and dead.

One skeptic discussing these possibilities raised the question of omniscience after death, therefore capable of all things, including language, but case histories seem to suggest that most spirits speak only one language and often have problems communicating with living beings who speak another. Referring only to religious doctrine, this is a gift only held by God, although theology allows for other similar gifts being endowed to man in limited ways, such as the omnipotence of a Pope in matters of church doctrine, which is of course another universal hot-button topic. 

After some basic research, I have not found any cases where a spirit spoke in more than one language, except in cases where they were already multilingual in life and even those cases are perplexing in that they do not always chose to communicate in their non-standard language and subject to their own time period. In fact, I have always worried about communications shown on TV between American investigators and native speaking ghosts to begin with. 

If in France, I ask a question in English, the response is most probably going to be “Qu'avez-vous dit?” at least in the countryside where the use of English is frowned upon. In other words the common answer to any question or statement in one language in another persons’ country would most probably be, “What did you say?”  When an investigator asks questions in English in let’s say Latvia, and is supposedly speaking to a Dark Ages knight, it seems incredible that they would make themselves understood, never mind get a rational response. I would expect either no response or some arcane version of the native tongue, or perhaps even something in Latin because of the church connection in that era, where everything written was in Latin text.  Frankly, the argument against the validity of that kind of communication can begin with the fact that there were no humans on earth, including what was England, who spoke colloquial English as we speak it in the period from 500 to 1000 AD.

The only way to rationalize this problem is to suggest that the spirit is responding in a universal language of thought, which is then autotranslated to the listener in his native tongue; this of course suggests that we are dealing with communications of the mind, not tongue and also raises the ugly question of mental constructs, or something very much like it. While not impossible, it becomes muddied when you introduce a recording device into the equation and therefore suggest the communication as auditory, and not mental.  Nevertheless, our job description is to answer the question if the “human consciousness survives death,” and not if human speech survives the process.

So we seem to be faced with the greater question of the definition of communications and survival. Webster says:

If communications is first the exchange of information (including systems defined as “behavior” and later a rapport; i.e., a sense of mutual understanding and sympathy),  then the bidirectional exchange through thought is acceptable.   We already know that psychic  communications have been confirmed from the Duke studies and the field of psychoacoustics is now an accepted field of science, thus it is reasonable to assume that at some time in the future, we might be able to confirm or deny the nontraditional exchanges between the living and the dead without common language as a barrier.

 All of this flies in the face of our own current studies where we are attempting to confirm that auditory phenomenon is a physical construct and not mental.  We currently depend of elaborate devices to record sound, register seismic activity related to things like ghostly footsteps, etc. while working equally hard at the application of photography in various forms to confirm the existence of spirits.  If in fact, the entire realm of the departed is based on conscious imagery, then we have possibly missed the entire point.  To this juncture, we have been studying the effects that have been reported over the ages as physical presences; to now suggest they are actually mental projections would open an entirely new avenue of research. At this very moment, we are experimenting with computer interfacing between known EVP recordings and state of the art “dictation” software to test the validity of some psychoacoustic researchers that think all EVPs are simply audio matrixing; i.e., the human brain interpreting noise into words, which in our research is way off the proverbial mark.

While the lure of explaining all manner of unexplained phenomenon as mental construct is tempting, if you apply the simple principal of Rick’s Unified Theory of Everything, that is that all unexplained phenomenon are related, be they spirit apparitions, UFOs or even some infamous cryptids, we find ourselves with several lose ends.

The possible implication would be that historically a disembodied spirit has never been accused of physically harming a living human. The best that can be documented are a few rare cases where the witness simply became distracted at the sight and harmed himself or the extreme cases where someone dies from a medical condition supposedly induced by the vision which literally scared the victim to death. If in fact, ghosts are metal constructs, we should be able to find references to significant loss of life at their hands, simply because we already know that such is possible in the study of OOBE and telepathy experiments in the past.

This then suggests that if a ghost is formed by mental imagery it is telepathic and not the creation of the viewer. Likewise, that is the only way that you could have multiple witnesses to the same event.   A study in the early 1960’s found that even when a group is subject to mass post hypnotic suggestion, they will all vary in the minutia of their vision. This was the basis for a piece of science fiction by Rod Steiger, in which several individuals all have the basic understanding of an aircraft that mysteriously lands at an airport on time, but without any crew or passengers.  While each shares the physical existence of the aircraft, on closer inspection each sees subtle differences, for instance in the color of the seat covers inside the aircraft.

 While Steiger’s case was fiction, it was based on experiments where subjects were allowed to “fill in the blanks” of a post hypnotic suggestion, thus they all “remembered” a man dressed for the beach as suggested in the session, but could not agree on the color of his shirt, if he wore a hat or what kind of shorts he was wearing.

This even goes back to the experiments of the ASPR at the end of the 19^th century, and could explain why a noted coworker who was recently deceased, could carry on conversations through a psychic medium on very minute details of his research, but could not recall the name of the people he had eaten his last meal with on Earth.  Of course, this is all conjecture!

Given all of these facts and following them to a logical, if not always rational conclusion, we find ourselves back where we began, which is in the pursuit of field investigations.  It is our task to collect evidence, not to feed the flames of conjecture and if there is an answer to be found by us to this conundrum, it will lie in the details of our work and not conjecture.

At the moment, we are faced with the fact that some EVPs are filled with colloquial English, some more recent than the demise of the subject spirits who apparently uttered them.  It is our job to report what we have found, not necessarily explain them. We can quip that any given spirit appears to be a fast learner, or debate among ourselves the very nature of our subject, but without a pile of data, nothing will ever be concluded of any value.

Probably the most important point here is in the application of what the ASUP Guidelines calls the multipoint process for the evaluation of all evidence.  Simply put, we must first capture the evidence, then in the case of a recording, listen to it carefully and once an EVP is identified, forward it up the line for further consideration. As you all know, we apply a five level classification system and once classified, the EVP is subject to review later. In most cases the discussion concerns the classification, rather than content, but all of it is open for review at any point along the way, even after a case is closed if someone challenges the material.

The classification process however is not the first step.  Unless the field investigator submits an EVP to the Director for Evidence Review, it does not legally exist, so always remember the initial decision that something might be paranormal is in your hands, no one else’s.  While it can be eliminated or the classification changed throughout the process, you are the one who starts the wheels rolling and the better you are at identifying true EVPs the easier it is for everyone else.

It is not our responsibility to wade in on the debate of problematic data, like the colloquial EVP or foreign language interpretations.  If there is a good reason to submit an EVP that sounds like a foreign language, the Directors will address that need, but it is your job to find the EVP in the first place. In some cases we find ourselves reviewing dozens of recordings, in others one or two, but it is the quality of that evidence that really matters, so as with all things, take your time and do the job right!

 © 2009 Rick Moran and the ASUP, Inc. All rights reserved.  Republication with permission.