Aleis­ter Crow­ley in cer­e­mo­ni­al garb, 1912, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

We’ve all had our wits scared out of us by films, images, and the writ­ten word, but some­how few forms work their haunt­ing mag­ic quite so effec­tive­ly as sound alone. Think of the snap of the twig in the woods or the creak of the stair­case in the emp­ty house — or, to take it far­ther, the sound of pos­sessed chil­dren speak­ing in tongues. You can hear record­ings of that and oth­er unusu­al phe­nom­e­na at Ubuweb, which hosts the col­lec­tion Occult Voic­es – Para­nor­mal Music, Record­ings of Unseen Intel­li­gences 1905–2007.

The eerie record­ings on offer include “audio doc­u­ments of para­nor­mal phe­nom­e­na includ­ing trance speech, direct voic­es, clair­voy­ance, xenoglossy, glos­so­lia includ­ing eth­no­log­i­cal mate­r­i­al, para­nor­mal music, ‘rap­pings’ and oth­er pol­ter­geist man­i­fes­ta­tions as well as so-called ‘Elec­tron­ic voice phe­nom­e­na.’ ”

A rich mix­ture indeed, and one that begins with those pos­sessed kids, all of them record­ed in the post-Exor­cist late 1970s and ear­ly 80s; you can hear the eight-year-old “Janet” sound­ing not unlike the dev­il-filled Lin­da Blair in the record­ing embed­ded above.

Lat­er we hear from medi­ums like Britain’s famed Leslie Flint, one of the last of his kind to osten­si­bly speak direct­ly in the voic­es of the chan­neled deceased, includ­ing fig­ures as accom­plished and dis­tinc­tive as Oscar Wilde in 1975 (above), Char­lotte Bron­të in 1973, and Win­ston Churchill in 1980.

The col­lec­tion also con­tains the voice of Arthur Ford, who made his name as a medi­um by claim­ing to have made con­tact with the spir­it of Har­ry Hou­di­ni. In the clip above, you can hear five min­utes of Ford’s final Hou­di­ni séance, con­duct­ed in 1936.

No col­lec­tion of occult mate­ri­als would be com­plete, of course, with­out some­thing from Aleis­ter Crow­ley, sure­ly the most famous occultist in mod­ern his­to­ry, and one known in his time as “the wickedest man in the world.” Just above we have Crow­ley recit­ing “The Call of the First Aethyr,” a piece of occult poet­ry he record­ed in a 1920 ses­sion that pro­duced the only known record­ings of his voice.

Though Crow­ley, like many of the oth­er spir­i­tu­al­ists cap­tured here, hailed from Britain, much of the mate­r­i­al in the col­lec­tion comes from Ger­many, espe­cial­ly the kind of para­nor­mal music heard just above. But no mat­ter where in the world these record­ings were made, and whether or not you believe in the exis­tence of oth­er realms beyond that world, describ­ing any of the record­ings gath­ered here will leave you grasp­ing for any adjec­tive besides oth­er­world­ly.

Enter the archive of Occult Voic­es here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

3,500 Occult Man­u­scripts Will Be Dig­i­tized & Made Freely Avail­able Online, Thanks to Da Vin­ci Code Author Dan Brown

1,600 Occult Books Now Dig­i­tized & Put Online, Thanks to the Rit­man Library and Da Vin­ci Code Author Dan Brown

Aleis­ter Crow­ley Reads Occult Poet­ry in the Only Known Record­ings of His Voice (1920)

The Strange, Sci-Fi Sounds of Skat­ing on Thin Black Ice

Eerie 19th Cen­tu­ry Pho­tographs of Ghosts: See Images from the Long, Strange Tra­di­tion of “Spir­it Pho­tog­ra­phy”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Let’s sus­pend dis­be­lief for a moment and watch Hitch­cock give new mean­ing to “scaredy cat.” Enjoy.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Alfred Hitchcock’s Rules for Watch­ing Psy­cho (1960)

Hitch­cock­’s Secret Sauce for Cre­at­ing Sus­pense

Alfred Hitchcock’s 7‑Minute Mas­ter Class on Film Edit­ing

Alfred Hitch­cock Presents Ghost Sto­ries for Kids (1962)

A cou­ple of days ago, Paul Now­ell (aka Paul the Trom­bon­ist) sent out this sim­ple tweet, show­ing what hap­pened when his iPhone’s voice recog­ni­tion sys­tem hap­pened to cap­ture his trom­bone ses­sion and turned it into words. The tweet went viral. And now, 65,000 “Retweets” and 198,000 “Likes” lat­er, you can see how the orig­i­nal record­ing ses­sion went down. Enjoy the demo below:

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Miles Davis Dish­es Dirt on His Fel­low Jazz Musi­cians: “The Trom­bone Play­er Should be Shot”; That Ornette is “F‑ing Up the Trum­pet”

Farmer Ser­e­nades Cows by Play­ing Lorde’s “Roy­als” on the Trom­bone

Direc­tor Michel Gondry Makes a Charm­ing Film on His iPhone, Prov­ing That We Could Be Mak­ing Movies, Not Tak­ing Self­ies