This anthology brings together rare documents pertaining to
so-called
occult phenomena, most of them taken from little-known archives.
In the course of three volumes, this series traces an audio history of
parapsychology. The first volume is an exploration of spiritualism and
haunted houses. It features records of spiritual séances and medium
trances, haunting spirits and haunted places, audios of Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle, Harry Houdini...
“Have a gramophone in every grave...”
James Joyce, Ulysses (1922)
The documents gathered here are, by their extravagance and far-fetched
aspects, more than the mere objects of belief one would be tempted to
reduce them to. They are vestiges of aberrant phenomena, fossils of an
unknown civilization buried in the depths of the unconscious that are
revived, in a way, when we listen to them. They can be understood as
“works,” in the full artistic sense of the word, and constitute a kind of
“cabinet of sound curiosities” that is worthy of aesthetic interest.
Sometimes imbued with a disconcerting dramatic intensity, these documents
bear the features of an authentic time machine, placing the listener in
the position of a witness of the time immersed in the dim darkness of the
experimental hall. And it is at that precise moment that the aesthetic
power of these archives takes precedence over their probative value. Their
somewhat old-fashioned charm, maintained by the surface noise of magnetic
tapes and old wax disks, gets stronger with each listen.
Side 1
Spiritual Séances and Medium Trances
01 Arthur Conan Doyle on Spiritualism [London, England, May 14, 1930]
02 Gladys Osborne Leonard and the spirit of “Feda,” in the presence of
Reverend W.S. Irving and T. Besterman [London, England, November 17, 1932]
03 Rudi Schneider's Trance [London, England, 1933]
04 Harry Houdini's “final séance” [Hollywood, USA, October 31, 1936]
05 Ivy Carter Beaumont aka “Rosemary”: “The Speech of Ancient Egypt,
Eighteenth Dynasty” [England, July 14, 1938]
06 Einer Nielsen and the “spectral voices” of “Astrid” and “Bischof
Liljeblad” [Copenhagen, Denmark, c. 1950] 1'16
07 Leslie Flint and the “voice” of Oscar Wilde of Reverend W.S. Irving and
T. Besterman [London, England, August 20, 1962]
08 A spiritism séance broadcast on the radio [Paris. France. 1976]
Side 2
Haunting Spirits and Haunted Places
09 The Rosenheim case [Germany, December 1967]
10 The Th. case of Reverend W.S. Irving and T. Besterman [Switzerland,
April 16, 1967]
11 The S. case [Germany, 1968]
12 The P. case [Germany, December 1971]
13 Knocking phenomena [Germany, 1974]
14 Émile Tizané about “little hauntings” [Paris, France, 1976]
15 Voice produced by Janet Hodgson during a trance [Enfield, England,
January-February 1978]
16 Dominique and the “talking wall” [La Machine, France, 1973]
17 Anneliese Michel's Exorcism Ritual by Father Arnold Renz [Klingenberg,
Germany, 1976]
18 Denys Renaudin's investigation of a haunting case [Paris, France, 1979]
19 Jack Sutton and the “haunted airfield” [Norfolk, England, c. 1980]
20 “Paranormal” explosion [London, England, 1995]
