Reverse Speech

Around 1986 I had an experience that still gnaws at me. I was playing a cassette tape on my boom box (hey, it was the 80's!) and I heard background noise. When I turned the volume up I heard garble and then I heard very clear English say, "Sit up you cxxksuckers". I drove to a friend's house and had him listen without telling him what I heard. He played it on his stereo equipment and then spoke to me the same thing I had heard. I realized that what I heard was Side 2 of the tape passing under the head backwards as the alignment must have been slightly off. I want to make it clear that this was not a matter of interpretation. I took it to the pastor of my church (BTW, I regard religion as BS these days) and he heard the same thing without me telling him what I heard. It was his voice on the tape, made during his teaching. He was shaken. I turned over the tape to him so he could take to his seniors and that is the last I saw of the tape. I can't make anyone believe what I am saying is true but, I am only asking you pretend it's true to offer any ideas on how such a thing could happen. I played the tape on Side 2 and found the phrase, "...we are supposed to walk what [or "how"]?-circumspectly". I spoke that phrase into my old computer and I was able to play it back in reverse. As I recall, I might have reproduced a word or few syllables or whatever, but not that phrase.

Then, more than 10 years later I was listening to the radio and I heard David Oates talk about reverse speech. Say what you will, there were two things he said about reverse speech that were consistent with my experience. One, he said the reverse speech is always truth, that it can't be anything else, that it reveals a persons naked thoughts. And this pastor was acerbic and threatened to kick people out of service for being distracted, etc. (his father was a military man). The other thing he said was that the reverse speech is always relevant to the forward speech. It fit the context. I still didn't believe it was true but I was compelled by the explanation.

I've listened to samples of Oate's own recordings and EVP things and I've never heard anything anywhere as clear as this. Oates claims there is a biological explanation. He says that infants first learn to speak in reverse and then grow out of it. How valid that claim is, I have no idea. That's way beyond me. I guess I'll never know. Even if I had the tape, what's that going to prove? It may help you to believe what I am saying but, I don't think it would explain anything. It was obvious that it was his voice. It wasn't interference of captured radio waves, background noise, etc.

So it was simply his voice, his timing, his inflection, cadence, whatever in reverse, that produce a very clear phrase that was consistent with both the context/setting and his demeanor.

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