September 20, 2002: EVP - Brendan Cook & Barbara McBeath
The funeral director contacted GIS after experiencing apparitions of a small child and a man in his residence. The team believes a spirit followed him home from his work with the deceased. Multiple recordings capture a child's voice responding to questions and instructions in real time, including saying "father," "okay," and "it be okay." The interactive nature of these voices provides compelling evidence for the survival of consciousness after death.
Art opens the show with open lines, covering news stories including missing Russian nuclear warheads, an IBM supercomputer sold to the Air Force for tracking orbital objects, and a fascinating journal article about scientists triggering out-of-body experiences through brain stimulation with electrodes.
Key Moments
EVP traces back to Edison and Marconi: Brendan Cook places EVP's origins in the 1950s and notes that both Edison and Marconi worked on machines along the same lines, with Edison reportedly designing a device intended to talk to the dead.
Digital recorder breakthrough overturns the theory: Cook reveals the GIS has begun capturing EVP on a donated RCA digital recorder with an internal hard disk, which contradicts their long-held theory that EVPs only imprint on magnetic tape.
Child's voice answers 'father' from a funeral director's home: Cook plays the first EVP from a funeral director's house where activity began after work seemed to follow him home. Brendan asks 'Will you talk with me?' and a child's voice clearly responds 'father.'
You stay who you were when you died: Art and Brendan land on the implication that personality, age, and disposition persist after death - a child remains a child, a grumpy old man stays grumpy - clashing with conventional images of heaven.
'Go ahead and go play' - child's voice answers an invitation: The owner, coached by GIS to address the entity as if it were living, says 'You can go and play in Derek's room, okay?' A child's voice responds 'okay' on the recording though no child was present.