When I found out about something called the "spiracom" system, I was… dumbfounded. The system drew my curiosity because it combines a variety of subjects that individually interest me: music, electronics, shortwave radio and the paranormal. Put together, there is a distinct addition of attractions. The proposed function of this system is nothing less ambitious and startling than to facilitate two-way communication with "spirits"! You can google for spiricom and read the whole story. The system as presented consists of multiple tone generators, an RF signal generator, and a shortwave receiver. Each of these separately can (and often do) hold my attention for some time. While reading up on spiricom, it occurred to me that the multiple, separate tone generators spiricom requires could easily be replaced by a PC utility called Audactiy. See sourceforge.net for that neat little freebie. Audacity is nice because as I create sine waves, it assigns each one its own channel, so that the level of each can be controlled at any time. Other utilities like this will mix the sine waves together in one signal, rendering the mixing impossible.
So of course, I went about building my own version of this system, just for fun. I dug an old RF signal generator out of a closet, (a Heathkit SG-6) and connected a PCs sound card output to the AF input of the signal generator. I hung a length of wire off of the RF output, and tuned a shortwave receiver to the generator's freq. (somewhere around 20mHz). I used Audacity to create a handful of sine waves (per the suggestions on the various spiricom websites) and then tweaked everything so that the radio was receiving signal. In fact, I can receive it throughout the house. Supposedly, the spirits (if they are desirous to contact those of us still living) are able to modulate the various tones in such a way as to cause one to hear a voice on the radio. And that's the subject of my latest contribution to the world of recorded noise. I recorded this with a Shure SM58 laying in front of the radio on my nightstand.
spiricom.ogg (01:13, 726k, vorbis, mono, 96k encoding)
So, here I am listening to this stuff come across my shortwave, waiting for someone on the "other side" to say hello. Maybe I should make another pot of coffee.
