INSTRUMENTAL TRANSCOMMUNICATION
“I have been at work for some time building an apparatus to see if it is possible for personalities which have left this earth to communicate with us. If this is ever accomplished it will be accomplished not by any occult, mystifying, mysterious or weird means, such as are employed by so-called mediums, but by scientific methods.”
Interview with Thomas Edison in the October 16, 1920 issue of The American Magazine.
Within ghost hunting and parapsychology, electronic voice phenomena (EVP) are sounds found on electronic recordings that are interpreted as spirit voices. The term Instrumental Trans-Communication (ITC) was coined by Ernst Senkowski in the 1970s to refer more generally to communication through any sort of electronic device such as tape recorders, fax machines, television sets or computers between spirits or other discarnate entities and the living.
Claimed photograph of the Brown Lady of Raynham Hall, taken by Captain Hubert C. Provand. First published in Country Life, 1936
“Evocation of the Dead Ones" - Emile Bayard (1870)
in The History & Practice of Magick by Jean-Baptiste Pitois
BREAKTHROUGH - An Amazing Experiment in Electronic Communication with the Dead
by Konstantine Raudive (1971)
“It certainly sounds fantastic to assert that we have made contact with spirit-beings, i.e. the dead, through tape-recordings. Today, however, when more or less adequate technical devices are at our disposal, it is possible to test the facts by experiment and to lift them out of the realm of the fantastic. Tape-recorder, radio and microphone give us facts in an entirely impersonal way and their objectivity cannot be challenged. […]
Man has an inherent, stubborn characteristic: the wish to fathom his own destiny—within himself and concerning himself. We die whilst we live, for our concepts of life and death conceal the future that awaits us. From the fragments we hear in the voice-experiments I have made we can perhaps form some ideas about this problem. My research has led me to the personal conclusion that apart from the biological-psychical level on which we human beings here exist, there is a second level: that of the psychicalspiritual being, whose potentialities are only released after death. This psychical-spiritual being tries to build a bridge between its world and that of our earthly form of life, and it endeavours on its own initiative to make contact in order to guide those on earth into a new reality. Only someone who himself ventures to plumb these inaccessible layers of human existence, where we discern neither beginning nor end, only a forward compulsion of ourselves and our lives, can assess the true position.
It is quite possible that one day results will emerge from the voice-experiments that will have a bearing on the highest, indeed the ultimate goal man has sought throughout the ages and is still seeking the answer to the question: who am I and where am I going? Death might then be seen as no more than a metamorphosis from one state of development to another.”
Vilhelm Hammershoi - Interior Artificial Light (1909)
HAUNTOLOGY (a portmanteau of haunting and ontology, also spectral studies, spectralities, or the spectral turn) is a range of ideas referring to the return or persistence of elements from the social or cultural past, as if to haunt the present. In the 2000's, the term was taken up by critics in reference to paradoxes found in postmodernity, particularly contemporary culture's persistent recycling of retro aesthetics and incapacity to escape old social forms. Writers such as Mark Fisher and Simon Reynolds used the term to describe a musical aesthetic preoccupied with this temporal disjunction and the nostalgia for “lost futures". It typically draws on British cultural sources from the 1930s to the 1960s, including library music, film and TV soundtracks, psychedelia, and public information films; often through the use of sampling. So-called hauntological musicians are described as exploring ideas related to temporal disjunction, retrofuturism, cultural memory, and the persistence of the past.
“Ghosts arrive from the past and appear in the present. However, the ghost cannot be properly said to belong to the past .... Does then the historical person who is identified with the ghost properly belong to the present? Surely not, as the idea of a return from death fractures all traditional conceptions of temporality. The temporality to which the ghost is subject is therefore paradoxical, at once they return and make their apparitional debut [...] any attempt to isolate the origin of language will find its inaugural moment already dependent upon a system of linguistic differences that have been installed prior to the originary moment."
Peter Buse and Andrew Scott, discussing Jacques Derrida's notion of hauntology
in The Metaphysics of Crackle: Afrofuturism and Hauntology by Mark Fisher.
KlAUS SCHREIBER'S
ELECTRONIC VOICE PHENOMENA
Retired West German fire Equipment inspector Klaus Schreiber channels spirits in a very literal way. Mostly with his television set.
One morning, while watching “Incredible Stories” on television he was inspired by the topic of electronic voice phenomena (EVP). After discussing EVPs with his friends, he decided to do an experiment. He purchased a tape recorder, put a new tape in and started a recording. He spoke to Peter, a deceased friend who knew all those present at the meeting. Peter responded: “hello friends” on the tape. During his experiments he heard the voice of his daughter, Karin, and the other family members. It was through these audio messages that he received directions to capture video images. In May 1984 he received the following message, “Record on TV.” [...]
He tried several techniques to record images from the TV, tuning it to an empty channel, capturing images in slow-motion and fast motion, but everything failed. He finally ended up with the TV recording its own image in a feedback system. He ended up with a screen with a luminous effect that periodically oscillated. Schreiber’s “Vidicom” was first used on September 30, 1985. Researcher and physicist Prof. Dr. Ernest Senkowski witnessed the phenomenon and vouched for its authenticity. Schreiber described the procedure as a way to activate a “morphogenetic” field. He photographed images of many strangers as well as his family and famous people. A typical session would begin with a TV screen full of dots. Then small ovals would appear one after another, each growing quickly until they disappeared offthe screen. Within minutes faces would start to appear along with voices, to the astonishment of Schreiber himself and his visitors.
In 1986, Schreiber’s second wife, Agnes, died. Schreiber followed two years later in 1988 after suffering a heart attack. His obituary said, “There is no death – there is only a passing to another level of existence. – I am with you." Schreiber left behind a large collection of video images. Martin Wenzel continued working with the technique and captured additional images. According to the Luxembourg ITC group, Klaus Schreiber continues broadcasting images hoping to be picked up by researchers here on Earth. “We are told that pictures such as these remain in ‘the quantum of spacelessness and timelessness,’ and perhaps it is just ‘a matter of time’ and receptivity before they are captured by equipment of receptive ITC experimenters on Earth.”
“These voices had certain characteristics but, although twice the speed of normal human speech, could be clearly understood. Further investigation had shown that the voices did not appear at random but seemed to respond to invitation to manifest themselves. A great number of experiments had obviously been conducted, and the phenomenon was still being examined by scientists in other countries who had been called in by Dr. Raudive.”
Peter Bander, Preface to Breakthrough...
by Konstantine Raudive (1971)
Katsushika Hokusai - The Ghost of Kohada Koheiji (c. 1831–32)
THE SEEKER There is an ancient, Pagan Celtic term called thin places used to describe places of mesmerizing, elusive beauty that take us out of oursleves and alter our perception of the world around us, if only for a few blissful moments. As the ancient pagan saying goes, there are only three feet between Heaven and Earth, but in thin places that distance is even shorter. These are spaces where we encounter the Divine and meet our true selves.
The Seeker is a powerful representation of our inherent desire and ability to seek knowledge. Knowledge of the self and for the self. The Seeker offers a lifting of the veil so to speak - in which we have the opportunity to take a glimpse of ourselves in our raw, true form.
CREDITS
Instrumental Transcommunication original ebow improvisation recorded on July 27th, 2020. Released as Chants Magnétiques on ‘Dark Exits' (2020). Remixed in 2025 by Sébastien Dumontier, mastered by Laurent Roussel.
Acoustic & electric guitars, keyboards, Mellotron and voices played by Finrod Artîwelë. Additionnal cymbals played by The King Herself & Lavinia Roussel.