“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” --Carl Sagan

In December 2017, Oxford resident and amateur filmmaker Gary Arnold was sitting in a local library about to read Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” in advance of the holiday season, when he began to experience a sensation that could best be described as an extreme ringing in his right year.

Using a $5 old school tracfone with its standard digital voice recorder he purchased from a local electronics store, he made his first recording. He played it back and instead of hearing the annoying, crystalline ear-ringing sound he had heard in the library, Gary heard a strange, disembodied voice whisper, “Mr. Arnold.” Curious if it would happen again, he returned to the library the next day and made even more recordings that revealed  more voices.

At first, Arnold thought maybe he had stumbled into the clandestine crossfire of secret military communications, maybe even some type of artificial intelligence beaming down from satellites, or perhaps other exotic interference around him.

None of it was true, but the possibility of being selected by ethereal entities to be a liaison of sorts had begun interrupting Arnold’s otherwise normal life. He discussed the problem with his wife, Antje. He visited his family doctor as well as a psychologist, a neurologist, a psychiatrist and an ear specialist, all in the hopes of ruling out the possibility that he was experiencing the first signs of dementia.

The diagnoses all came back negative. Gary Arnold, the married father of two children, was not cracking up, but rather, was finding himself on the receiving end of a fantastical mystery he could neither fathom nor solve.

Searching for answers, he eventually found that he was experiencing what is known as Electronic Voice Phenomenon -- or EVP. Now, was this merely audio pareidolia, a form of apophenia, which is a more general category for the human tendency to seek patterns in random information?

850 recordings

Over time, whenever Arnold returned to the library, the unusual sounds came to him.

“It’s an outlandish story that borders on sheer lunacy and the completely  absurd, but it is, in fact, true,” said Arnold, who has made over 850 recordings so far. “I am not into rituals. I am not into ceremonies or the occult. I don't believe in hocus pocus. I was raised Protestant and before all of this, I simply believed in God, Heaven, and an afterlife, etc.

Whether these recorded voices even represent evidence of the afterlife or the presence of ghosts, aliens or inter-dimensionals that exist within the universe, I really needed to understand just why these beings are even sharing these messages with me through a world of whispers.”

Using his video camera to record film shot mostly in the Oxford area, Gary has incorporated snippets of these incredible recordings and his own narration into Subterranean Séance: The Evidence Speaks, a 29-minute film that documents his mind-boggling journey...his quest to understand (eliminated the repeated understand) the nature of EVPs, and specifically, its impact on his life.  Arnold said the film serves as both an EVP treasure hunt of sorts to encourage audience participation, and as a gateway to spotlight serious scientific investigation into this paranormal phenomenon.

In his film, Arnold shared the spectral analysis he performed on four separate "Class A" EVP recordings he made where in each, he asks a simple question. When he asks the beings to identify what type of entity they are, the answer heard on the analysis is faint but still audible: “Aliens.”

In another clip, he asks if the beings are “otherworldly” or “other-dimensional,” to which a voice replies, “Otherworldly.”

‘Makes it hell for voting’

Over the past few years, there have been many instances where these invisible entities have shared detailed information and facts with Arnold about the beings' realm, and personal information such as knowing the name of his wife, children and family pets. Sometimes, they make their appearance individually, but on one occasion that also took place in the library in the summer of 2019, two voices were heard – a male and a female.

“I decided I was going to ask them if they could glimpse into our future, which mindblowingly they said they could,” Arnold said. “So I asked them to describe the upcoming Presidential election. Remember, this was 15 months ago!”

Arnold noted that the entities described a coming chaos. They used the word ‘urgent,’ and he could clearly decipher the words, “Makes it hell for voting,” which now in hindsight he assumes was in reference to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has greatly complicated this year’s voting process.

“I then decided to ask the real question on everyone’s mind,” he said. “I asked, ‘If all this is true, then who will win the 2020 Presidential election?’ One voice definitely answered, ‘Donald Trump.’ I’ve recorded the same responses from them several more times since that day back in the summer of 2019. The prediction is consistent with the reports we have been hearing about how Donald Trump could  ultimately be triumphant  in the US Supreme Court after a contested election.”

Some of Arnold’s clips have undergone detailed audio analysis by forensic scientists, who describe audio sound wave patterns are similar to those of fingerprints that can be precisely analyzed by their waveforms in order to prove their authenticity. Comparatively, photographs can also be analyzed pixel by pixel to determine if it they are genuine or photo- shopped. So, the forensic scientific reports shows how Arnold's clips are legit. The messages are a genuine mystery.

Arnold said that when the entities speak, they use a completely different signal-to-noise vocalization ratio -- quite different from how the human voice -- we use air moving across vocal cords via a larynx to create words. These beings do not. They seem able to impart patterns into ambient white noise.  Older model phones are able to record this vocalizations, while more modern Smart phones do not because the newer phones use special filtering algorithms to eliminate the hiss.

Despite the hundreds of hours Arnold has spent listening to, recording and analyzing these voices on his own, one question may never be solved, at least in this lifetime.

“Do I definitely  know who or what they are?” Arnold said. “No. Do I suspect? Yes. The word I would use to describe them is ‘ultra-terrestrial.’ These are beings that have perhaps have been alongside mankind since time immemorial, but just out of our range of our perception. My concern is to understand exactly what type of relationship they have to our species. Have these entities subliminally whispered in the ears of leaders throughout human history to perhaps affect our development? What is their real agenda?  Are they possibly a threat?

“Are these entities the residual energies of those who have lived before? Again, I don’t know, but whoever and whatever they really are and wherever they come from, these entities speak in whispers, and the crucial key to unlocking this research is found in our ability to amplify their whispers.”

While the basis of Arnold’s involvement in making the documentary and his investigation of EVPs stands on scientific data, he is also asking his audience to suspend their disbelief that the phenomena exists somewhere in the universe. "I want people to be at the least open-minded, to even consider what seems the nonsensical. The evidence speaks. Dare we listen?"

This insurmountable truth is what’s real,” Arnold says in his documentary, “and that’s how we move forward in life – not to put our heads in the sand and hide from the truth, but to stand on the truth and use it to further our curiosity and our place in the universe. “The dawning truth is that we’re not alone.”

Subterranean Séance: The Evidence Speaks is available for rental by visiting https://gumroad.com, for $1.99. To see a trailer of the film, visit Subterranean Séance: The Evidence Speaks on YouTube.

To contact Gary Arnold, email [email protected].

 To contact Staff Writer Richard L. Gaw, email [email protected].