The Strange Story of SPIRICOM: A Comprehensive Investigation of Claims Made For The World’s First Electronic Spirit Communication System by Dr. S. Rorke with J. Hale |
“This is a strange story. It is either true, or it is not. That determination has to be left up to the reader.” - John G. Fuller |
With those tantalizing words from his Author’s Note page, the prolific and popular writer John G. Fuller evokes the challenge inherent within what proved to be his last book, “The Ghost of 29 Megacycles”. First released in Britain in 1985 and in the U.S. a year later, “The Ghost of 29 Megacycles” introduced readers to an eclectic group of techno-psychic experimenters that operated collectively as the “Metascience Foundation”. In the late 1970’s, Metascience Foundation members believed that they had achieved two-way radio style communication with the spirits of several deceased individuals while using a system of electronic equipment they called “SPIRICOM”. If their claims were valid, the Metascience pioneers would certainly deserve to have their story shouted from the rooftops throughout the world, and their names should be held to at least the same level of honor we reserve for the likes of Heinrich Hertz, Nikola Tesla, Alexander Graham Bell, and Guglielmo Marconi. Indeed, the SPIRICOM story has been and still is being spread across the world in books, magazine articles, and yes, there are even articles about SPIRICOM on the internet. In fact, many thousands of websites discussing SPIRICOM in virtually all languages can be found on the net these days, thanks in large part to a recent resurgence of interest in the matter that was sparked by an October 31, 2004 (Halloween night) discussion of SPIRICOM on Art Bell’s popular radio talk show, Coast to Coast AM heard on hundreds of radio stations around the world, listened to by millions. Art Bell dutifully reported the available evidence of the Spiricom story, however all too often, information available on the web and from various other second and third hand sources comes in the form of diluted, distorted, and inaccurate retellings. Fortunately however, the Metascience Foundation conducted their business with a degree of transparency and openness that is frequently lacking in the paranormal world. Thus, even though most of the original participants have themselves now moved on to the realm of the non-living, we can still read their original words and study the original evidence they left behind as we search for clues to help us determine whether the strange story of SPIRICOM is true – or if it is not – as John Fuller admonishes us to do in “The Ghost of 29 Megacycles”. Fuller’s now out-of-print book is actually just one of several “officially sanctioned” versions of the SPIRICOM story that were published, but it could rightly be regarded as the most thorough “behind the scenes” look into the SPIRICOM story. It’s worth noting that by the time his book about SPIRICOM was written, Fuller’s career had already spanned 6 decades. He had been a writer, director, and producer for numerous programs in the earliest days of television. He was a columnist for The Saturday Review of Literature magazine, and had even been a Broadway playwright, but Fuller was probably best known as being the author of “The Interrupted Journey” which, in 1966, marked the debut of the Betty and Barney Hill UFO abduction case. That was Fuller’s first book dealing with subjects that fell into the category of “the unexplained” and from there he went onto to produce many more including “Incident at Exeter”, “Arigo: The Surgeon With the Rusty Knife”, “The Ghost of Flight 401”, “The Airman Who Would Not Die”, and several others. In “The Ghost of 29 Megacycles”, John Fuller explains that he was personally solicited to tell the story of SPIRICOM by George W. Meek, the founder and head of the Metascience Foundation. Meek was, by all accounts, a very sincere, credible, and well-credentialed gentleman with a background in business and engineering. Meek, along with his wife Jeanette, had visited Fuller and his wife Elizabeth at their home in Connecticut one cold and blustery afternoon in November of 1981. As they all sat by the fireplace enjoying “steaming mugs of tea”, George Meek presented his strange story of the SPIRICOM in something of a multi-media format that included audio and video recordings of alleged dialogues with the dead, along with a personal narrative revealing details of his own rather fascinating life. A tall and well-dressed man whom Fuller judged to be in his “late sixties or early seventies” (he was, in fact, 71 years old at the time), George Meek explained that he had enjoyed a successful career in business but that he had always felt a strong curiosity and affinity for things attributed to the realm of the spiritual world. Following through on a personal commitment he’d made to himself some five years earlier, upon reaching the age of 60 Meek retired from his business career and had, since then, been devoting his time, energies, and personal funds toward seeking and promoting a better understanding of man’s underlying spiritual nature. Meek had set out on a course of research that included extensive world travels and the establishment of personal contacts with “professional and technical people over the world who seemed to share his interest.” His network of contacts included “physicists, nuclear chemists, biochemists, psychiatrists, and other professionals,” as Fuller recaps from the introductory remarks that Meek had made during their chat in 1981 (Fuller, 1986). Early on during his period of full-time involvement with spiritually-oriented research, George Meek learned (circa 1971-1972) that a trance medium in Philadelphia had reportedly made contact with the discarnate spirit of a famous scientist who, although having died in 1962, was now seeking to assist the Metascience group from “the other side,” as it were. The deceased scientist, Dr. W.F.G. Swann, was said to be offering his help in developing an electronic means for effecting radio frequency contact with the spirit world. Upon hearing this news, Meek wasted little time in setting up research facilities in both Philadelphia and in the Ft. Myers, Florida area where he and his wife then resided. The labs were dedicated to furthering the line of research and producing the equipment necessary for building a sort of “electromagnetic-etheric” bridge (Meek, 1973) that would span the gap between “séance and science” (Meek, 1972). After a series of disappointing early attempts, the Metascience researchers were discouraged, but not ready to admit failure. They believed that it was simply a matter of time and continued experimentation until they assembled the right combination of equipment and tuned across the correct band of radio frequencies before they would hear Dr. Swann’s voice coming through loud and clear over the earphones of their unusual apparatus. Then, in 1973, a new direction was abruptly taken when George Meek came in touch with a rather enigmatic character named William J. O’Neil. Bill O’Neil was a self-employed radio-electronics repairman, ventriloquism hobbyist (Meek, 1999), and self-proclaimed psychic who had been involved with his own series of experiments involving interactions between brainwaves and electromagnetic waves. Unfortunately, O’Neil’s private experiments had led him into a period of deep depression and mental uncertainty during which he began to question not only the underlying nature of reality, but his own personal sanity as well. O’Neil’s questioning and his own quest for spiritual understanding had prompted him to write a letter to the editor of a magazine called Psychic Observer, a monthly periodical published in the Washington, D.C. area which described itself as a “Journal of Spiritual Science”. O’Neil hoped that the magazine’s editor, Rev. Henry Nagorka, might be able to help him understand and come to grips with the bizarre mental effects he had experienced after conducting his unusual experiments involving ultrasound and beat-frequencies. As fate would have it, George Meek happened to pay a visit to the Rev. Nagorka’s home some time after O’Neil’s letter to the editor had arrived. When Meek began to discuss his own interest in what sounded like a path of research similar to what O’Neil had described, Nagorka retrieved O’Neil’s letter and passed it on to Meek. Soon, George Meek began corresponding with O’Neil by mail, eventually they met, and in time Meek decided to provide O’Neil with the caliber of sophisticated electronic equipment that Metascience had deemed appropriate for use in their attempts to contact the spirit world. As you might imagine, such a project would require quite an eclectic team of workers; engineers and technicians working hand in hand with psychics and mediums, some on a volunteer basis, some as paid employees. With complex equipment to be constructed and tested, the need for suitable physical facilities, and all the routine variety of business expenses to be accounted for, Metascience operated as a 501(c)(3) foundation for scientific research and public education and it relied on membership fees as well as tax-free donations for monetary support. According to Meek, the SPIRICOM equipment had required major funding and: “I was lucky enough to get Jim McDonnell, chairman of the board of McDonnell Douglas, interested in the project...I worked out a deal with him where he would let me go ahead and design and build the equipment. He would pay for it and then lease it back to me for a dollar a year”. (Fuller, 1986, p 17) Despite the organization’s non-profit status, and funding from MacDonnell in the amount of $500,000 , the Spiricom device was for sale, according to Alexander MacCrae, for $10,000 per unit (2004, p 123). A small portion of an operating budget “at the rate of $250,000 per year” (Meek, 1987, p 2) went to William O’Neil (Fuller, 1986) for his ITC research. O’Neil, a schizophrenic (Pratt, 1992, p 5) and a ventriloquist (Meek, 1999, p 193) working for Meek’s Metascience Foundation, which foundation was known to be in possession of an electro-larynx device (Meek, 1982a, p 30), produced the controversial Spiricom recordings. The recordings are allegedly two-way, real-time communication with a deceased NASA scientist named George Jeffries Mueller (Meek, 1983), an “engineer with the National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA) before his death in 1967” (Macy, 2008, ¶7). George Meek assured the world in an April 6, 1982 press conference at the National Press Club, in Washington DC, regarding the discarnate voice claiming to be that of Dr. George J. Mueller: “We have been able to verify all the facts of his life” (Meek, 1982b). While there was a George J. Mueller, he never worked for NASA. And while there is a NASA George Mueller, most recently a consultant to Kistler Aerospace, he has not expired yet and might rather strongly object to being confused with the discarnate voice representing himself as the NASA Mueller (see our revised essay called Two Georges Too Many- Hale & Rorke, 2007). It is strange that most of facts of the life and death of Dr. George J. Mueller, aka the Spiricom Mueller (as reported by Meek, investigated by Fuller, and later parroted by Macy) would check-out, except for this invented stint with the US Space Program. The discarnate voice directed O’Neil to a hard- to-find Army publication on electronics he had authored while among the living (Mueller, 1949), and to an even more obscure article in the peer-reviewed journal Physical Review on “The Distribution of Initial Velocities of Positive Ions from Tungsten” authored by Dr. Mueller in 1934, alerted the Spiricom operator of his relationship to Cornell University, gave a Social Security number that matched as belonging to one George J. Mueller, and even confirmed the details of his untimely death due to a heart attack May 31, 1961, 6:15 PM- or as the death certificate on file with the state of California’s Department of Public Health records indicate: “Death was caused by ventricular fibrillation due to myocardial infraction” (Certificate of Death, Orange CA- BK120, PG 814)- and on and on, but somehow became confused about whether or not he was employed by NASA? Making matters worse was the fact that the Cornell University records (the earliest known official records of the Spiricom Mueller, aside from census records that lack detail) and his death certificate (aforementioned) all have his middle name correct (Jefferis), while the Metascience team insisted on “Jeffries” as his middle name, as reported by the discarnate Doc Mueller himself, of course. This begs the question: Why would the discarnate Doc Mueller not only have padded his resume’ from the great beyond, but also forgotten his own middle name? Perhaps the devil is in the details. Speaking of details, what should one make of the aurally abrasive oscillations on the Spiricom recordings that sound exactly like an electro-larynx device being modulated by human lips, glottis and oral cavity (as reproduced by Dr. D. Rivers, Speech Pathologist for Baylor University, and more recently by producer Tim Loud) punctuated by the bewildered Bill O’Neil gathering results for George Meek of the Metascience Foundation, who by their own admission were in possession of “an artificial larynx” as early as 1978? (Meek, 1981, p 30) And what should any thinking person conclude when a schizophrenic, possessed by magical-thinking with a penchant for ventriloquism (O’Neil), funded by a fantasy-prone and invested benefactor (Meek) give us ‘proof’ that personality and memory survive physical death in the form of a conversation in which the deceased ethereal technician and the earth- bound operator never – not even once – speak an utterance at the same time? Well, the devil was in the details. References: Certified Copy of Vital Records (1967). Certificate of Death- George Jefferis Mueller. Orange County, CA- Book 120, Page 814. Fuller, J. (1987). The Ghost of 29 Megacycles: The Most Amazing Breakthrough Ever in Life After Death Research. Grafton: UK Fuller, J. (1986). The Ghost of 29 Megacycles. Signet: NY MacCrae, A. (2004). EVP and New Dimensions. Sanctuary Press: LuLu On-Demand Manuscript Publishing Macy, M. (2008). Resonance- A Key to ITC Contacts: 2001. Retrieved August 31, 2008 from http://www. worlditc.org/f_05_macy _resonance.htm Meek, G. (1972). From Séance to Science. Regency Press: UK Meek, G. (1973). From Enigma to Science. Weiser: US Meek, G. (1982a). SPIRICOM: An Electromagnetic-Etheric Systems Approach to Communications with Other Levels of Human Consciousness. Metascience Foundation Meek, G. (1982b). Press Conference- SPIRICOM: Its Development & Potential. National Press Club [VHS] Washington, DC Meek, G. (1983) Pilot Study of a Report on 23 Years of Research into the Basic Nature of Man [VHS]. Kesselring Prod. Meek, G. (1987). Metascience Research Division Memorandum. Internal Memo Meek, G. (1999). Enjoy Your Own Funeral. Galde Press: US Mueller, G. (1934). The Distribution of Initial Velocities of Positive Ions from Tungsten. Physical Review (Vol. 45), p 314 - 319 Mueller, G. (1949). Introduction to Electronics- Department of the Army Technical Manual T0 16-1-224. TM 11-660 Series, US Government Printing Office |