Electronic Voices: Contact with Another Dimension? [Paperback]

If you are one of those people, as I once was, who thinks that listening for electronic voices, purportedly coming from the "dead," is like looking for faces or figures in the clouds, this book and the accompanying CD with some of those voices, may prompt you to rethink it all.

While many such voices are clearly muffled, muddled, garbled, and otherwise indistinct, the author reports receiving a number that were loud and clear. And they were often more than simple utterances. Some of them involved philosophical discussions, and one dialogue between the author and a spirit communicator lasted two-and-a-half hours. "It was against all I understood of reality, and certainly against all known laws of science that I could not only hear such voices, but that they appeared to actually come and dialogue with me from another dimension, which I supposed was the next world," author Anabela Cardoso writes.

Dr. Cardoso, who speaks six languages, is a highly-respected diplomat, having served as Consul-General for Portugal in a number of countries, including the United States and France, and as Portuguese Chargé d'Affaires in Japan and India. The Foreword to her book is written by Professor David Fontana, former president of the Society for Psychical Research in London. In fact, Fontana was called in to witness some of the phenomena. "Firstly, I have no doubt about the reality of the voices received, and secondly, I am confident that these voices are not susceptible to normal explanation," Fontana offers, adding that acoustic analysis of the voices indicates that they lack characteristics present in the human voice, supporting the view that they are not manmade.

Cardoso devotes the first 46 pages of this 236-page book to explaining the methodology and history of Instrumental Transcommunication (ITC) and its variations, including Electronic Voice Phenomena, (EVP), Direct Radio Voices (DRV) and Voices on Tape (VOT). She then tells how she became interested in the subject and of her initial experiments, beginning in 1997. She recalls having heard of ITC before her experiments but didn't take it seriously as she assumed that anything as important as contact with the deceased would be big news around the world. Still, she was puzzled by the fact that some respected scientists, theologians, engineers, technicians, and academicians were reporting contact with "other dimensions" or the "dead."

She tells of contact from her deceased grandmother, father, and brother, and then from an entity calling himself Carlos de Almeida, a seemingly knowledgeable and experienced communicator who was able to answer many questions for her before he told her he would be advancing to a higher realm and thus unable to further communicate with her again. At times, Cardoso could hear the spirit communicators talking among themselves, as when they discussed how best to answer her question. There was much that was not clear, however, and it became apparent to Cardoso that there are many obstacles to inter-dimensional communication which are difficult to overcome.

The purpose of it all? "Besides the obvious purpose of informing us that life does not finish with physical death, one of the main goals of the most comprehensive ITC communication appears to be an attempt to contribute to the expansion of human consciousness by conveying to us information of high ethical content which breaks with conventional human values," Cardoso answers.

Now that she has been involved in the field for a dozen years, Cardoso laments the fact that mainstream science has been so stubborn and closed-minded. "Unfortunately, any high profile technician or scientist will, in general, not only refuse to examine the evidence but also refuse to supervise the reception at origin of the voices to be analyzed...," she writes, adding that the materialistic worldview prejudices them against even considering the various ITC phenomena. She points out that even the majority of parapsychologists know little or nothing about the subject. "Moreover, they also do not know that they do not know, and this is an even bigger problem," she adds.

Yes, it is mind boggling and will probably exceed the boggle threshold of a large percentage of readers, but there are many other credible people reporting similar contacts and so it is extremely difficult for the open-minded person to write it all off as just so much bunk. For the truly open-minded person, Dr. Cardoso offers a very interesting, informative, intriguing, and inspirational read.

I heartily agree with the review by Michael Tymn in Hawaii (above). I've just finished Dr Cardoso's book and enjoyed it very much. The style makes me feel I know the author, since the narrative is essentially a personal journey explaining how she became involved in this research and what she discovered along the way. It seems to me she has bravely stuck her head up above the parapet, knowing there must be many people keen to pour scorn on such anomalous phenomena. She comes across as a very persistent and rational researcher. Also, acknowledging her emotional responses to events gives the text added interest and depth. I appreciated the historical survey of EVP in Chapter Two.

Personally, given the shortcomings in the quality of some of the communications received, both in intelligibility and the sometimes incompleteness of sentences, I know I could not possibly have stuck with the project as the author has done; and for twelve years!

Dr Cardoso gives an interesting view on the afterlife, making parallels with 'The Road to Immortality' - a description of `The Other Side' communicated to the medium Geraldine Cummins by the renowned (deceased) psychical researcher Frederic Myers. Cardoso draws out the similarities between this book, and her own research findings.

If I missed one thing, it was a summary of the higher ethical teachings that she and other European researchers have received as a result of their research. I found it illuminating that the 'invisible communicators' were not always permitted to say what they wanted, being refused permission by a 'higher power', but nonetheless a hint of the substance of these teachings would have been welcome. There are other instances in psychical research evidence where it appears that we Earthlings should not be allowed to know everything of the next dimensions.

This book is an excellent contribution to the literature, not least because the author's sources were mostly from research texts that have not been translated into English. The way the original language of the communications (mostly Portugese, some German) is followed by the English translation in brackets, was really helpful. This book provides one more step towards the eventual acceptance of survival after death - based on the evidence - and readers may even want to take up this line of ITC enquiry themselves. The book explains how to do it. A good read.

There are a handful of books written on this facinating subject about contacting the dead through Electronic Voice Phenomenon, but each one different. This book however goes a step further to describe Instrumental Transcommunications (ITC). Examples of ITC are capturing images from video cameras linked to TV sets and reviewing freeze frames. For anyone who has seen the movie 'White Noise', this book will help explain the methods demonstrated in the film. Computers used to capture EVP are mentioned.
A recommended read from a different perspective of audio contact with another dimension.