Voice Transmissions With The Deceased
by Friedrich Juergenson

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214 CHAPTER 43

The Swedish Broadcasting System wants to know precisely – The objections of Stensson – The radio engineers can only marvel

A well-known Stockholm journalist, Urban Stenstroem, incidentally it was he who published the first articles about me in the “Svenska Dagbladet”, also suddenly heard mysterious voices on a tape recording. Mrs. Stenstroem, a journalist in her own right and a theater critic, bought a portable tape recording for her professional use. Her interest was aroused and she sits with friends until late at night in front of the microphone. A female voice comes through in German and Russian: “Listen! People-owls!” Someone who works until late at night is known in Swedish as a “night owl”.

The Swedish Broadcasting System contacts me. They want to devote a program to me, but are not quite sure how to go about it.

First of all, the sound engineer Stensson was asked to conduct experiments at my home in Nysund. He arrives with an assistant and a Ms Dasie Kelberg. The latter is a journalist and has published her first article about the voice phenomena in “Stockholm’s Tidningen”.

The guests arrived in Moelnbo during the late afternoon, until everything was prepared and by the time we had eaten it was already around nine in the evening. Stensson had brought with him his own recorders, control instruments and tapes in sealed containers.

The result of the first recording is negative. I suggested to Stensson that he should remain in Nysund a whole week because in order to obtain good results one needs lots of time and relaxation. Also, one ought not make recordings late in the evening. The best time is between 19 and 21 hours.

215 Stensson agrees. Ms Kallberg also wanted to come with several friends.

In the meantime Swedish and foreign newspapers and magazines publish extensive and attention-getting reports on the “ghostly voices of Moelnbo.” And some Swedish stations transmit a few short radio reportages to Germany and Austria.

The Swedish Broadcasting Corporations engages in further negotiations with me.

My conditions are: I want a series of broadcasts in which leading parapsychologists from Sweden and elsewhere will have the floor. Arne Weisse should direct the broadcast and play the tape that was recorded in December 1959 in his presence and that of Dr. Bjoerkhem. If the conditions turn out favorable, we would like to try for a few direct recordings. In the meantime, however, Arne Weisse had joined Swedish television and some difficulties arise.

What the Swedish radio would prefer would be to eliminate the voice phenomenon altogether through a technical and completely “natural” explanation. Since no “natural” explanation can be found, they want the “ghostly voices” at least to be clearer and louder. The whole issue is contradictory in an amusing way, because on the one hand, one doesn’t dare to acknowledge the existence of the voices as those of the dead, but at the same time desires broadcast quality recordings. During one of these silly discussions I asked the question: “Will the Swedish Broadcasting Company (SBC) offer an honorarium to the dead?”

Arne Weisse appears at my place with a colleague. They are both ready to prepare several television transmissions with me as the lead person. But the SBC insists on having the right to the first broadcast. The tension increases between radio and television. My sole concern 216 is an objective and comprehensive presentation of the most important facts. Both parties know exactly that I would rather forgo the broadcasts altogether than allow that the entire affair would be placed into a dubious light for publicity reasons.

Several weeks pass. Stensson is overloaded with work. We meet now and again for lunch in the old town. We enjoy a friendly and open relationship. Stensson is a thoroughly open-minded and kind individual. Of course he would prefer to find a harmless and completely normal explanation. On the other hand I insist that the facts alone need to be heard. The listeners themselves should form their own opinion. Stensson is of the view that the kind of program I would like to see would cause an enormous shock in the outside world.

I assert: “Only in the camp of nationalist materialism.” “And the church?” Stensson injects. “She will recover quickly from the shock, because she believes after all in the existence of the soul after death.”

In conclusion Stensson promises to come to Nysund next week for new recordings.

The evening after our conversation I am sitting next to my tape recorder. I am apprehensive, I feel insecure. A timid thought races through my head: “What if my friends from the other side will again refuse to appear?” I am ashamed of my doubt, but on the other hand there is so much to be ventured.

My wife is firmly convinced that our friends are a hundred percent certain to appear on such an important occasion. I turn on the radio and the tape recorder and begin to turn the dial gingerly. I scan the frequencies slowly, as usual from left to right. As always I am in the medium wave band.

But there is no Lena, nor signals!

217 I sit indecisively a little while next to the radio. Suddenly I hear Lena’s energetic voice: “Keep, keep! Direct contact!”

I turn on the tape recorder immediately and listen intensively. I hear a couple of male voices singling, it sounds like an Italian hit tune. Lena signals additional contacts, I listen with even greater concentration but am unable to understand the words right away.

Suddenly I hear my first name called twice. It is sung by a male voice that sounds a lot like Arne Falck. I can hardly wait for Lena to signal the end of the transmission. Finally the song ends in the roar of the ether.

The recording is a new direct hit. It provides a direct answer to my question and my doubts. It is really Falck who sings and who is accompanied in the background by a few more male voices. The entire message has the purpose of informing me in a humorous way of the promise of the dead. Falck sings in Italian, German, Swedish and Russian: “Soon the people will hear you…Friedel you will be happy, we never deceive…Friedel you will be pleased…who deceives is the stupid, wicked moon, Luna is a cheat…”

Our poodle Carino too gets a greeting, then Falck turns to his son Bengt and says: “I find Bengt so sweet …”. With “the moon alone deceives…” he ends the transmission.

The mention of the moon needs to be taken entirely seriously, because I have frequently had the experience that the phases of the moon play a very large, possibly even a decisive role in the electromagnetic interference that is used for the transmissions. The most favorable conditions are provided during a full moon when the sun, the earth and the moon are lined up in a straight line.

218 When Stensson, his assistant Koistinen, Ms Kallberg and several gentlemen make their appearance I am completely relaxed and filled with joyful confidence.

We start with some longer microphone recordings that are registered simultaneously with two tape recorders. One recording is being made with Stensson’s the other with my tape recorder. Stensson states that he never experienced any kind of extraneous voices in insulated studios during controlled recording sessions.

“Nonsense!” a male voice interrupts this interjection that was heard later by all those present. Ms Kallberg is scribbling furiously. We turn on the recorders again. I report on the occurrence in my attic in September 1959, when Carino was alone in the room and I was on the telephone with my wife in the apartment below. After I said a little agitatedly “and then…” and make a slight pause, a loud bang is heard just as if someone had clapped his or her hands loudly.

I continue and say: “It was completely quiet in the room, you could only hear the soft rolling of the tape…” They were repeated after a second by a strong male voice.

Stensson is aghast. His assistant Koistinen likewise cannot understand this phenomenon. Stensson opines: “The bang is even stranger than the voices. One should have been able to hear it in the room.”

Around half past eight we start with the radio recordings. I sit in front of Stensson’s radio, which is connected to a Norwegian tape recorder. Koistinen has attached a room antenna and grounded it on the heating pipes.

Koistinen is sitting directly next to me; behind me stand the acquaintances of Ms Kallberg and my son Peter. Stensson and the other guests are drinking coffee in the parlor, which is located directly below my study.

219 I turn the dial carefully and hear Lena’s voice on almost every frequency. I have a little difficulty turning on the Norwegian tape recorder since every time it is switched on a siren-like static interference sound is heard. Koistinen monitors every phase of the recording carefully. Every now and then he turns on the tape recorder according to my instructions.

Right at the start one hears the voice of the “old Jew.” He makes some disparaging comments about the “junky connection…” Perhaps he has in mind the temporary antenna that Koistinen had mounted in the study?

Then Tatjana’s aria starts from the opera Eugene Onegin. I know the text and have myself sung the role of Onegin. But what we are hearing here in no way matches the original text because Tatjana is singing: “Friedrich, the dead stands alone!…”

I am too excited to listen carefully to the subsequent text. Lena too urges more recordings. I am nervous and we switch the machine off and on several times.

And now came the high point of the evening. At first one hears that howling “switch on noise” through which a male voice calls out: “Contact!” and then one hears above all the static Felix Kersten’s eager, excited voice that calls out to me loud and urgently: “Friedel! Listen to me, Friedel! Turn below!”
Peter calls behind me: “This is Kersten! Kersten!”

I jerked and lost the frequency. Koistinen jumped up and hurried downstairs. “Lets go, all of you, Kersten is on the radio!…”

Everyone hears the tape recorded text and talks at the same time. Stensson repeats continuously: “Strange, strange; I don’t understand anything any more…”

After a while we take up the contact again over the radio. Now Bojevsky chimes in. He sings a song, and first greets Carino with “Shalom!” He sings about the dead and identifies himself. However, the tone quality isn’t good and one can only hear some of the words.

220 It is late. We are excited and I start to get tired. The last thing I hear and record on the tape is Kersten’s voice, who calls out to us in Swedish a little irritated: “Problem! Do you hear really?”

The dear Falck had kept his promise.

When I received the tape recording a few days later, I discovered a series of interesting details that we overheard in our hurry at the time of the recording. I was annoyed that the howling switch on sound blocked out a sentence of Felix Kersten. But I succeeded in recapturing it after all with the help of a provisional filter.

“Dear Friedrich…” Kersten started, “in Sweden the sixteenth contact…” after which followed the clear text mentioned above.