The Society for Psychical Research (SPR) and the Voice Phenomenon 
(We don't like it...let's forget it)

An official commentary to Raudive's book and the claimed Voice Phenomenon came four weeks after the publishing. During a BBC2 transmission (Late Night Line-Up, 26 April 1971) Mrs. Rosalind Heywood, a Vice-President of the S.P.R. stated: "Over the weekend I rang up three electronic experts, they all said that they could think of 12 different ways in which the voices could have occurred."
Mrs. Haywood also told one of those present (Mr. Peter Bander) "...she had read only parts of the book because she had only been told over the weekend that she was to appear in the Monday programme...". Mrs. Heywood of course was totally right. If one ask an electronic expert if it's possible to connect a radio-receiver to a tape-recorder and receive some voices who later are declared as belonging to deceased persons - then maybe there are "12 different ways". But if she had given her question a more fair wording and asked if it would be possible to do the same in the screened laboratories of Belling & Lee Ltd. or with a screened apparatus built up by technicians from Pye Records Ltd.? And did she mention that all the used apparatus was unknown to Raudive and he was not allowed to touch it during the whole experiment? Now of course I don't claim that Mrs.Heywood was unfair. But she was just totally unable to explain to the "three electronic experts" what she actually was asking for. And this incompetence she seemingly shared with most of the S.P.R. and several others. In the Summer 1971 edition of Light (College of Psychic Studies), an other well-known parapsychologist, Mr. N. Gaythorpe, simply states "... that there was no place in serious psychical research for irresponsible conclusions of the sort... and the whole thing is electronic nonsense."

In the mean time, Mr. David Ellis, M.A. had been awarded the Perrot-Warrick post-graduate Studentship for Psychic Research (administered by Trinity College, Cambridge) for the investigation of the "Raudive Voices" or, if you prefer, "the thing which is just electronic nonsense." Mr. J. H.Cutten, the secretary of the S.P.R. was appointed as supervisor for Mr. Ellis. Mr. Cutten belongs to the group which also had made up their minds, that the voices had nothing to do with psychical research and Mr. Ellis was totally dependent on Mr. Cutton's opinion and advise. But what in reality should be the subject of Ellis investigation? Something which had nothing to do with serious psychical research? One or more of Mrs.Heywood twelve different ways how it can be done? Or perhaps just some electronic nonsense? Or had the SPR in the meantime accepted the results of the recent investigation and the documentation of the Voice Phenomenon's reality? I have a suspicion that this thought never even crossed the minds of Ellis or Cutton. One only can ask if Ellis really investigated a phenomenon without having certainty that it existed at all? Furthermore Ellis' investigations were far from being serious research, and in reality he never examined the real Voice Phenomenon. What he investigated was particularly Dr.Raudive's unsystematic playing around with radio sets, diodes, microphones etc. and in addition Raudive and Ellis - sometimes also other occasionally present participants - had seemingly endless discussions concerning the correct interpretation of the heard voices. (As already earlier mentioned the paranormality of many of Raudive's voices was highly doubtful.)
Additionally the whole investigation and all discussion once more was surrounded by a totally unproved and irrelevant spiritualistic hypothesis veiling the few established facts. So the negative outcoming of Ellis "investigation" was given in advance and hereafter the problem was dead in the eyes of the SPR.

  David Ellis

But The Voice Phenomenon is, as far the question concern a documentation, a pure technical affair. Ellis technical know-how seems to have been nearly nothing and the results he obtained were not negative. He did not obtain any results at all.

Was and are the parapsychlogists and the SPR particularly altogether interested in a serious investigation of this strange phenomenon, an investigation that includes first and foremost the involved physical/technical mechanism and first then a possible (if any at all) parapsychological aspect? Seen in the light of their total ignoring of the serious technical examinations which had taken place, I have my doubt. And if the really aim of SPR's "investigation" made by Ellis alone was to crush the reputation of Raudive's work and with it also of this unpleasant phenomenon - then of course they succeeded.
Nevertheless Ellis continued his cooperation with Raudive some time after in Germany and Raudive describes some of there experiments in his book from 1973. As he never gives an exact date it is nearly impossible to arrange his cooperation with Ellis in chronological order.
Last time David Ellis brings up the Voice Problem for discussion is in his book "The Mediumship of the Taperecorder" from 1978. His mostly negative conclusions and irrelevant investigations, have additionally contributed to destroy the reputation of the whole matter.  (Bibliography 9)

Regardless of Ellis' and several other more or less objective statements during the following years, one fact remains unchallenged: The conclusion of the 1971 investigation made by Belling & Lee Ltd., Pye Ltd. and many others : 
... " In view of the tests carried out in a screened laboratory at my firm, I can not explain what happened in normal physical terms." 
"This is no trick and this is no gimmickry; this is something we have never dreamed of before..."

Today, thirty years after, the investigations has never been repeated and all this statements still remains undisputed. 
And nearly twenty years ago these statements also became the stimulus and starting point for my own research.

But first we once more have to return to Dr. Raudive.

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