Swedish film producer, singer, artist Friedrich Jürgenson, born February 8th, 1903 is considered the first to capture EVP successfully on a recording device. Accompanied by his wife Monica on June 12th, 1959 Jürgenson drove to their country house to enjoy the summer’s warmth.
Jürgenson had no idea the chain of events that would transpire on that very day that would inspire him to commit much of his remaining life to the study of Electronic Voice Phenomena. Choosing to record a soundtrack of birds chirping with his reel to reel tape recorder he ventured outdoors at 4:00 pm.
Reviewing his recording, a strange noise seemed to overpower the recording of birds that manifested into what sounded like a trumpet almost as if it was meant as a point of attention. The sound of chirping birds was seemingly pushed to the background and arising after a burst of what sounded like interference a voice although faint spoke the words in Norwegian remarking about “Nightly bird voices”.
Jürgenson felt that there might be an electronic failure in his recorder but found no malfunction when he repeated a recording session. At the time of the recording, nothing else was heard other than the birds chirping in the wilderness.
Jürgenson’s curiosity was peaked by this strange audio anomaly and continued recording finding more soft whispers appearing on his recordings. At first he believed in the possibility these voices could be transmissions from outer space.
Then one recording would change his life forever. After playing back his reel to reel he was stunned to hear his mother’s voice say “Friedel can you hear me. It’s mammy.” His mother had passed away long before and the endearment he had heard was used exclusiively by her. Completely stunned Jürgenson was now convinced that these strange audio transmissions may very well be from the dearly departed.
Abandoning his previous occupations, Jürgenson concentrated solely on his recordings using nothing more than a microphone and his reel to reel. At times, this was a difficult task because an adjustment had to be made in tape speed. The voices he was capturing were in Russian, English, Italian and German sometimes even in a mixture which he later termed as “polygot”. Fortunately Jürgenson was fluent with all these languages so the somewhat encrypted messages were easier to comprehend.
Jürgenson adopted a new method of recording in the spring of 1960 by one transmission asking him to use a radio frequency which would enable him to communicate real-time. Later he used a variation modulating between 1445-1500 kHz. The term Jürgenson Frequency is assigned to 1485 kHz which he used in his research until his death.
Jürgenson published two books on Electronic Voice Phenomena the first entitled "The Voices From Space" in 1964 and the second "Radio and Microphone Contacts with the Dead" in 1968. Several press conferences were undertaken but Jürgenson's appearance diminished as he aged. He continued persuing audio recording and his love for painting but unfortunately this great man passed away in 1987 leaving a legacy of audio recordings.