BUREAU OF LOST CULTURE - Voices from the Other Side (16/08/2025)

They called them the voices of the dead. Whispers in the static. Words in the hiss. Messages that—so believers said—slipped through the veil between worlds and onto magnetic tape.

The story of Electronic Voice Phenomenon, or EVP begins in the late 1950s, when Swedish artist Friedrich Jürgenson was out in the countryside recording birdsong. On playback, he heard not only the birds but what he swore were voices—some speaking to him directly, including that of his deceased mother. Latvian-born psychologist Konstantin Raudive took up the work, making thousands of recordings and publishing his 1971 book Breakthrough, which brought EVP to wider public attention and cemented its place in paranormal lore.
We explore the history, practice and spiritualism of EVP— and its connection to the technology of sound recording with Rikard Friberg von Sydow whose research examines how we preserve and interpret recorded sound, and Carl Michael von Hausswolff — Swedish sound artist, composer, and curator.