Strange Frequencies: The Extraordinary Story of the Technological Quest for the Supernatural—Peter Bebergal (New York, NY, USA: Penguin Random House, 2022, 256 pp.)

Abstract

For over 40 years, starting in 1954, Popular Electronics Magazine was the major American publication for electrical hobbyists. The last years of the magazine saw it renamed Computers and Electronics. This is an unremarkable history but, as explained by Peter Bebergal about 3/4th of the way through his fascinating book Strange Frequencies, there is an issue from October 1995 that proposes experiments that deviate from the magazine’s usual gadgetry. The magazine is easily read at this website https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Poptronics/90s/95/PE-1995-10.pdf . The cover features a middle-aged man hunched over a reel-to-reel tape recorder. Behind him, he is haunted by a trio of faded ghost-like figures. The cover story is captioned, “Ghost voices: Are the dead trying to contact us through electronic means? Try these experiments and see for yourself” The article begins with a discussion of two electronic voice phenomena (EVP) experimenters of the 1950s: Frederich Jurgenson and Konstantin Raudive who claimed that with electronics they have communicated with the dead and that they have recordings of those voices preserved on tape. During his lifetime, Raudive asserted that he captured about 70,000 such communications.