Voice Transmissions With The Deceased
by Friedrich Juergenson

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99 CHAPTER 22

Mother’s voice – Mitzi’s breath – The singing yoga instructor – Always this strange polyglot Speech – Caryl Chesman’s execution

April 30, 1960, an ordinary Saturday, presented me with another great success.

Out of an old habit I kept the microphone in front of the open window and when I heard a finch starting his merry trills in front of the window I decided to record his song. I played back the recording immediately, and all of a sudden - in the middle of the birdsong - I heard a voice calling my name. It was my mother’s voice. Her name was Helene and she had died in 1955 following a pelvic fracture. Unintentionally my mind jumped back to her last hour when I sat at her deathbed and held her soft warm hand in mine until her last weak pulse beat had ended.

I played back the tape again. The voice sounded lively and warm, one could even hear something of concerned impatience when she called my name for the fourth time: It sounded as she worried that I could not hear her.

I hurried from home to call my sister and my wife who had gone out. When I came back. Mitzi our male cat was stretched out on the table blinking lazily in front of the open window.

I turned the tape machine to microphone recording once again because I had the distinct feeling that something else was going to happen.

The result of this second recording was even more startling because out of the stillness of the room a female voice started suddenly to 100 speak, I recognized the voice as that of my mother. This time her voice sounded a little tired, not as lively as before and she sounded as if she was half asleep, speaking in gasps and with some difficulty. “You love, you live in love…” Her voice seemed a little shaky. “In me lives Elly… Friedel lives…you live…oh! We live…Elly, Friedel, Papa lives…many live, oh, oh you love Helene…”

When I played this recording later to my sister and my wife, they recognized mother’s voice immediately. They listened with emotion and could hear the same words I had heard.

Later that evening I turned on the radio and immediately heard Lena whispering; “Pelle…all mothers have a heart…” Lena said with emotion in her voice.

This charming sentence ended a successful and happy day.

The next day – it was the first of May – I started early in the morning to check out the latest recordings. In joyful gratitude I listened to my mother’s voice and had thoroughly analyzed every word.

In spite of my great satisfaction the question concerned me how my mother succeeded in creating so many sounds in a quiet room. I noticed that the similar words, lives, loves and love were repeated several times, a situation that indicated the presence of limited sound frequencies. I finally realized that it must have been Mitzi’s breath that provided the raw material for the formation of words, which also provides a natural explanation of the gasping way of speech and the pauses between.

I was just getting ready to rewind the tape when I heard in my headphones the special signal that was then being used occasionally by my friends (to alert me) on radio frequencies. 101 Just the fact that such a signal could also be given without a radio connection was immensely significant.

I turned on the radio immediately just by pushing the closest key which happened to connect me to a Swedish long wave station that was broadcasting a lecture on cultural history.

The lecturer’s voice was loud and distinct, but at the same time one could hear a tenor singing whose high voice sounded as if it came from a distance. The tenor sang without any accompaniment and the melodic phrases seemed improvised. The voice sounded somehow familiar to me, and in the next moment it hit me like a bolt of lightning: it was the voice of my childhood friend - Boris Sakharow!

Everything took place too fast, I could barely catch a few words, among them my own name and “Boris Raja”, then the singing stopped.

I was once again too excited, too eager, and too impatient to understand the words correctly right away. Only after several hours had passed did I succeed in figuring out the correct word sequence.

I have to give some explanations here as concerns the singing of Boris Sakharow. Boris was an extremely talented multi-faceted human being. He played piano superbly, painted, drew and sculpted and not like a good amateur, but as a real artist. He had mastered numerous languages, among them Sanskrit. Several books of his devoted to the teaching of Yoga had been published in Germany.

But Boris’ greatest passion was to sing. His was a lyrical tenor voice with an unusually high timbre, practically a counter tenor.

For 27 years I had not seen Boris and now I was sitting here in my little garret listening with great emotion to his song.

102 “I am sending you a contact, Friedrich!…” Boris sang in German, “Boris Raja, who lives and works in Heaven, Amen...and guards the wisdom of Yogis…Amen!”

Boris sang intensively, his voice increasing in sonority. There was no real melody, the song consisted of high notes that were sung fortissimo.

Strange, Boris too, seemed to be in a hurry.

As pleasantly surprised as I was I couldn’t figure out and asked myself with some concern: why did Boris sing instead of speak? And why did he use German even though the two of us always used to talk Russian with one another? I had long noticed that most voices that addressed me via tape or radio used a curious mixture of languages and kept changing around certain words and phrases in a strange fashion.

However, my anonymous friends already a year ago had used an expression “the polyglot communication department” in connection with a task that I was supposed to handle in the future. At that time I misunderstood what they meant and only now did I begin to understand the connection and realized that my knowledge of several languages represented a significant factor.

It was the 1st of May when got into contact the first time with Boris, the same day that Felix Kersten and my mother spoke with me. Who would be next?

Only gradually can one absorb the true significance of these contacts. They trigger a kind of joyful shock and one needs to get used to them.

103 It so happened that in this great joyful daze I had forgotten about the fate of Caryl Chesman, the American who was sentenced to dearth and whose execution was to be decided on during this period. Since my radio had become somewhat disorganized I tried to establish contact with Lena, my otherworldly assistant, the following evening.

The first word that Lena spoke was in Swedish: “executed”.

Then she recounted somewhat disjointedly: “I already told Maelarhoejden Lena. Pelle, you can help. Chesman executed…help Karma, help Pelle!…” Lena’s voice sounded excited and eager, and she mixed up German and Swedish words.

I think that in those days many European followed Chesman’s desperate battle for his life. It was an unyielding and cruel race with death that lasted twelve years, a pitiless cat and mouse game that ended with the guardians of soulless red tape felling their hunted prey. The case of Chesman represents a shameful blot not only on the US system of justice, but also on the supporters of the death penalty throughout the entire world.