BornDeadandThenRisen
The evil spirits that be in the region of the air, doubt much when they hear the bells ringing Jacobus de Voragine
sound is a haunting, a ghost David Toop
Since time immemorial the spiritual world has been associated with metallic resonances.
It is said that in the Middle Ages night watchmen would carry bells as spiritual weapons in order to ward off the dark spirits dwelling in the air. At that time, the deceased were also guided into the afterlife by the sounds of bells, pots, or indeed any metallic object. That is why bells still ring in churches: they are a way to warn evil spirits that they are unwelcome and also to gather the souls seeking salvation.
Metallic sounds have not been the only ones associated with the border between the world of the living and the world of the dead. Infrasound, consisting of frequencies that are below the threshold of human hearing, has also been a field of study for relationships between sounds and spirits, or let’s say…ghosts. In 1997 Colin Cook, a tour guide in Coventry, England, escorted several tourists to a 14th-century cellar in which many visitors had chilling experiences. Although Cook never sensed anything supernatural there, he says that several of the tourists who visited there with him were noticeably affected. He first describes the experience of a Canadian journalist who says he felt as if a balloon was being pressed against his back, between his shoulder blades, in addition to the sensation that a woman was watching him over his shoulder Another visitor, a man from Latvia, said he felt chills when he entered the cellar and also claimed
to perceive a presence. Nevertheless, there was no physical manifestation of any kind. Staff at the tourist information center stated that a significant number of visitors spoke of this presence, although they provided few details, and most left in a hurry 1
This cellar provided a good opportunity for Vic Tandy to test his theory that infrasound can cause humans to experience the sensation of contact with ghosts. For the test he used a Bruel & Kjaer type 2209 sound level meter, equipped with a microphone sensitive to frequencies up to 1 Hz, connected to a frequency analyzer. A recording was made of the background noise in the cellar, and this is where the phantom frequencies appeared: those at 19 Hz. Another important fact was that a frequency sweep showed that there was a frequency in the basement between 2 and 4 Hz that appeared to be modulating at 19 Hz. This point is particularly noteworthy, since scientists such as Jeff Hecht and Klaus-Dieter Thiel have emphasized the significance of infrasonic frequency modulation in enhancing the effectiveness of sonic weapons.
Hildegard von Bingen says that sounds are the outline of the sky. Could infrasonic and metallic sounds be the contour between our reality and that of the spirits?
“Make pomegranates of blue, purple and scarlet yarn around the hem of the robe, with gold bells between them. […] Aaron must wear it when he ministers. The sound of the bells will be heard when he enters the Holy Place before the Lord and when he comes out, so that he will not die” (Exodus 28:33-35).
In the last chapter of Folk-lore in the Old Testament there is an extensive account of how bells were used to ward off evil spirits and offer a peaceful pathway to those who were about to die: “Stubbes tells of the dreadful end of a profane swearer down in Lincolnshire: ‘At the last, the people perceiving his ende to approche, caused the bell to
1 Vic Tandy, “Something in the cellar,” in JournaloftheSocietyforPsychicalResearch,vol 64 3, no 860, available online.
toll; who, hearing the bell to toll for him, rushed up in his bed very vehemently, saying, “God’s bloud, he shall not have me yet”; with that his bloud gushed out, some at his toes endes, some at his fingers endes, some at hys wristes, some at his nose and mouth, some at one joynt of his body, some at an other, never ceasing till all the bloud in his body was streamed forth. And thus ended this bloudy swearer his mortal life.’”2
Throughout the Middle Ages, it was not only the night watchmen who carried bells as spiritual weapons. It was believed that on certain dates the specters haunting the air and those indulging in witchcraft came out to wander, so that the church bells would be rung all night long. It seems that these acoustic tools for preventing evil became weapons for the living rather than the dead, as with police sirens or the LRAD 3
Or could it be that the bell of the garbage truck is the one that today protects us from evil spirits?4
Counterpoint
I’m thinking not only of sounds that cannot be heard because they’re below the threshold of hearing, but also of those sounds that, even when it’s possible to hear them, are poorly understood, diffuse, or hazy.
° Hidden, inaccessible sound message… Silhouettes amplified by molecules.
° Jabberwocky: empty messages, sounds that elude
2 James George Frazer, Folk-loreintheOldTestament(Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2010), 420
3 Be sure to read “The Sound of Fear 3” in this same volume if you would like to learn about how the most evil-sounding spirit today would seem to be the U S military (Editor’s note )
4 Throughout most of Mexico, garbage trucks announce their presence with the ringing of a bell.
perception.
° A sound message is emitted, travels in the air (it dies) and is perceived halfway, or differently, by a listener (it’s reincarnated).
°
A sound is reincarnated in the perception of the listener A reincarnation that becomes a translation, a mirage. But there are also sounds that seem to annihilate the message in pursuit of pure sonic power, as though they were somehow stillborn.
I hear the incomprehensible shout of a vendor who stands at the traffic light on the corner opposite my apartment. I look for him and notice that, even a few meters from him, I can’t understand what he’s saying. After some minutes of lending my ear, I finally understand: “a liter of water for ten pesos.” A proclamation that’s sustained not by the message it carries but by the power of sound itself. At the end of the day, most likely what the vendor wants is, rather than to be understood, for motorists to look at him to show them the water I would bet that most people ask him how much the water costs.
[SoundCloud]