October 30, 2004: The Dead Speak - Brendan Cook & Barbara McBeath
Cook and McBeath discuss the disproportionate number of children's voices in their recordings, estimating roughly 70 percent of captured EVPs sound like children. This observation troubles both researchers, as it challenges conventional assumptions about what happens to innocent souls after death. They note that recordings from prisons and cemeteries consistently yield the most disturbed and unhappy voices, with almost no references to God, heaven, or religious themes.
Art also introduces the Spiricom tapes from the 1970s and 1980s, in which researcher George Meek and technician William O'Neill achieved sustained two-way voice communication with a deceased scientist named Dr. George Jeffries Mueller. The full technical schematics for the Spiricom device were made freely available to encourage future research into instrumental communication with the dead.
Key Moments
70% of recorded EVPs are children's voices: Cook and McBeath tell Art that the majority - roughly 70% - of voices they capture sound like children, including a recording of a young girl pleading 'help me find my dad.' Both say the finding has overturned their assumptions about what happens to innocent children after death.
The 'Help me' child EVP from Gold Hill Hotel: At the Gold Hill Hotel in Virginia City, Barbara asks 'if there's someone here will you make your presence known to us' and a child's voice answers 'help me' three times in clear despair. Art calls it the worst he has heard.
EVPs vs near-death experiences: which is true?: Reading a fast blast from a listener named Dot, Art asks why reported NDEs are uniformly positive while these EVPs sound desperate and confused - a contradiction neither he nor his guests can resolve.
Deer Lodge prison: 'Hello Siberia' and 'they sat back to back': After being locked in overnight at Montana's Deer Lodge prison, Cook's team captures a voice saying 'they sat back to back' (matching the guard's account of how prisoners were punished and hosed down) and another saying 'hello, Siberia,' the prisoners' nickname for the freezing solitary block where many died.
The Vatican investigated EVP after a monk recorded his dead father: Cook recounts that two monks recording Gregorian chants captured a voice the recording monk recognized as his deceased father using his childhood name. Taken to the Pope, the case was reportedly judged not to contradict scripture and worth scientific study.