EDGAR ALLEN STEDEL.
Saturday April 13 2002.
Wombarra.
Great Southern Land Mass Known As Australia.
As I write this, it is a beautiful Australian morning. Slight breeze coming in off the Ocean that stretches out here so far, so blue – less than 100 meters from where I type.
I had no idea which category or which RO Forum the following would fall under. I didn’t know if anybody else up on the RO Forum had ever experienced anything like this. Or if they had, whether they are still regarded as sane, or whether their studio bookings suddenly went down. I thought maybe Julian’s Forum would be a good place - because I trust him. And he’d soon know this was not some idle chatter from Stedel on too much coffee. He’s very knowledgeable, He’d soon see that the Ghost or Spirit I talk about here is not some compact digital mixing console. He’d get frightened though, and shut my post down. I wouldn’t blame him.
Whatever….It’s best I do this on the Fairlight Forum which I moderate.
But first, if you decide to go further, oh brave Reader, take care.
FAIRLIGHT FORUM MODERATOR STEDEL advises caution. This tale is as true as the blood that runs through your veins. Though it may turn to ice chilled water when you finish reading this. Pay close attention. If it’s nighttime where you are, and you’re alone – maybe you should come back in the morning. Or at least go and grab a friend. Or check on the children.
This is true.
But first… take a break for a minute. Then either continue to read or decide to come back later. But please, whatever you do, pay close attention.
This will take a little bit of time, so please, bear with me.
THE BOOK OF GHOSTS
Chapter One
Six years ago I acquired a house, in partnership with my ex-partner – (who now lives overseas). The property now house’s me, two others, and my studio. We took possession, as you do, with, dreams, hopes, and a whole lot of money owing to the bank. But… (- we had plans! - ) we could cope with that. Eight weeks later I moved out. This wasn’t in the plan. A number of quite extreme events had taken place. At first, I thought these to be of things corporal. The sad, twisted cliches that fill any C&W lonely beer drinkers song. I now think this may be wrong.
There may well be other, alternative possible explanations, way beyond our ken.
I began moving back into the house three years ago.
At first things were good. I began to appreciate more how beautiful it is here. And how much I love the area in which I live.
About a year later I was alone in the house. I had been working in my studio,
sample mangling on a much loved, at the time, Ensonic ASR 10 keyboard-sampler workstation. About 1.40am I decided enough was enough. Time for some well earned sleep. I shut down the workstation, and switched off the studio lights. I then began to walk through the house switching off any other lights blazing away my hard-earned dollars.
I went into the lounge room, and walked across the polished wooden floor to switch off a lamp. As I walked back to the main light switch, I thought I saw something moving, right at the edge of my peripheral vision. I could have sworn I saw something move over near the fireplace. I quickly turned to see what it was..I couldn’t see anything. There was nothing there. Stedel, I said to myself, you’re spooking yourself. Grow up. So I switched off the main light and walked into the kitchen. I had a strong feeling that I was being followed.
If you haven’t already left, and are wondering whether to think on this for a while, cool. -- - uh - just got to get U2’s "Elevation" playing one more time –‘scuse me,.. Sorry had to stop here for a moment. It’s good I’m writing this in the day. Even now…as I write this, my blood starts to run cold, and I keep an eye constantly over my shoulder.
So ….returning to that dark wild night…. It was now, nearly 2.00am. Back in the kitchen ( - I’m looking at its open door now - ), the light is still on. The feeling hasn’t gone.. I’m being followed… it’s so damn strong, it’s almost physical. Goddamn! I have to stop and turn around, and face whatever it is, front on. I do this and stand there for a while.
Nothing. This is kinda getting unsettling now. I check the other rooms. Still nothing. I go back to the kitchen and have a little chuckle to my self. Stedel you still believe in ghosts, goblins and angels, I told myself, and grinned at thinking, yes I do. I liked that. Yes, ghosts and goblins, angels, God, Jesus, and the Argonauts too.
I switched off the kitchen light and went to bed. I had been lying there, drifting off to sleep, when I felt a gentle, but firm, slap upon my cheek. Undeniable this time. I sat bolt up right and turned on the light. What the f**k was that I thought. Shit!… I sat there preparing myself for anything, and listened for any sound from any other part of the house. After about twenty minutes nothing else had happened.
With a mix of relief and amazement, and slightly angry, I turned off the light and went back to getting some sleep. About ten minutes later… the same thing. Only this time it was if somebody had taken a running jump from the bottom of the bed, and landed on my legs….
Where they stayed and settled for a moment. I jumped up and f**kin’ switched on every light in the place. In fact those light kept blazin’ all through the night and into the day. Yes sir! All day and all of the night. Remember The Kinks? The only time I feel all right, is with the lights on? Not this ghost baby. Not with this Stedel!
I had no sleep that night. In the morning I made myself a coffee. I sat in the kitchen and thought about what had happened during the night. I walked around the house - went into every room. Checked outside. Strolled to the path that goes down to the beach, and looked down the coast. Went back into the house, and got ready for work. The next night
was as quiet and as uneventful as I’d ever experienced. I had a good sound sleep.
So dear reader. I ask.? Is Stedel mad? Would you trust any of what I say from this day on? Perhaps you never did, confirmed now, your thoughts of me. ( -His lunacy I saw from first day he first posted -).
Except…. Dear folk,… so smug, so gentle there. I’m not the only one who’s spent time with the Ghost who visits, and lives in my studio here. …..….And this was not the only experience I myself have had.
There, my tale begins. So… go back to work, or whatever you do. And if this tale visits you occasionally…perhaps late in the night, when the wind’s lonely groan wakes you from where you fell asleep at the console’s feet, (after making a note to call the acoustics expert who sound proofed your studio) remember -these words, written here, are true. But don’t worry, I myself was skeptical – to say the least – and, if told this story by somebody else, would think yes, something’s amiss, but it’s with yon brain there. If you are still with me..,Have a break. See what you think by the end of Chapter Two. I’ll post sometime soon…..
(but not at night!).
I've been talking to Stephen Paul on his forum about this. Stephen has had some sort of "spooky" experiences himself. At the moment I'm really interested in his theory about reverb (a particular favourite enhancement of mine in the recording and mixing process).
If any of you have had any "BOOK OF GHOSTS" type experiences, I'd love to hear them. You will be treated very seriously, as I said, what happened, and what is happening in my studio now, is real. However you explain it, whatever basis you think this is happening on...apart from an extended example of individual and samll group hysteria.
Try and come back for part 2. It gets better.
Kind regards.
In the best of spirits,
Stedel
:cool:
Topic Tags
Comments
Stedel That experience sounds very alarming. I saw a progr
Stedel
That experience sounds very alarming.
I saw a programme a few months ago here where people were experiencing very similar experiences to you as a result of very low frequencies caused by a variety of natural and man made sources. They did controlled tests where people were fed these frequencies and felt literally grabbed at, slapped and poked, set upon, creeped, and saw movement/entities out of their peripheral vision and felt watched....
Have you considered the possibility that there may be a source of sub frequencies causing the distubance?
Renie
Originally posted by Renie: Stedel.. Have you considered the
Originally posted by Renie:
Stedel..Have you considered the possibility that there may be a source of sub frequencies causing the distubance?
Renie
Hi Renie.
Yes I have.A couple of points on this:
1.I have been thinking a lot about the natural- accoustic and reverbration properties of the area where I live. The topographical characteristics of this area provide for a pretty spectacular natural amphitheatre - on an epic scale.Within this "Grand
Theatre" there are pockets of naturally occuring spaces that have a more local reverbration and sound displacement quality. For instance, we have a strange sub-woofer effect from the house next door.
At different parts of my house, it sounds, and feels, as if the people next door are walking in my house. They're not. Many people have been fooled by this, sometimes thinking there's somebody in the house We can also, in the front "TV" room, hear at times,(not all the time) quite clearly, conversations the people next door are having..and no they're not yelling, just normal speaking volume, which given distance, walls etc. we shouldn't hear. So there is a "sound throwing/displacement" characteristic here. But not all the time.
Over the next few months I'm going to try to establish a log of the weather conditions, time of day, hot, cold, raining, before a thunderstorm, after a storm etc. If I had a barometer (hmm I should get one) I would look at atmospheric pressure levels etc.See if there is any correlation.
2. The sound waves, lower frequency stuff is interesting. My ghost has been experienced by quite a few people. All of these people had no knowledge that anything like this was going on in the house, and they certainly had no knowledge that:
a. Other people had experienced "spooky stuff"in this house.
b. That when they described their own individual experience to me, some of their experiences were very similar.Significantly so.
I'll be posting in more detail on this but consider the following:
* This has now been a featured experience of at least 7 people who have stayed at my house over the last 4 years.
* Their experience has been incredibly vivid.
* Most people don't really have a visual experience of this, and more commonly claim an incredibly strong physical sensation whenever whatever happened to them.
* The last person to experience this (apart from myself, which has kinda been on-going lately, but it's cool; - I'll also post on this later) did have a visual experience however. A brief, but very strong one, which caused him to flee the room and stand pretty shakenly in the front garden at 3.00am in the morning, until he was coaxed back in.This was about three weeks ago.
* A common feature is that the "prescence" is percieved to be female. Now, why should that be?
Maybe we should re-open the Gender Forum. "Sub-harmonic frequencies - are they having sex?" Or
"Patriarchy in Eigentones - Time for a Women's Movement?".
* Yes, when talking about a physical sensation, one would naturally think about soundwaves - why? Because sound is a physical thing.But why the sense of any lower or subfrequency activity that we possibly do perceive at this level, being arc'd as a human prescence in the situation here?
Intriguing.
I have a "mirror" post/topic on this at the Stephen Paul Audio Forum.
(Dead Link Removed)
Stephen Paul, who very courageously has not kicked me off his forum (depite the fact that my poetry was really BAD) posted this:
Stephen Paul: QUOTE (from "Is This What You Guys Think Of Me" – Stephen Paul).
"I posted long ago on RAP about my experience and beliefs concerning live echo chambers and that they are doors between the worlds…and are often as a result, -very – haunted.
More on that later"
END QUOTE
Keith W. Blackwell kindly posted me this link to the article Stephen Paul wrote:
[[url=http://[/URL]="http://groups.googl…"]STEPHEN PAUL'S ARTICLE-inc Mic's & Eigentones, Reverb, (and a bit more discretely than me) Ghosts.[/]="http://groups.googl…"]STEPHEN PAUL'S ARTICLE-inc Mic's & Eigentones, Reverb, (and a bit more discretely than me) Ghosts.[/]
As you know, Renie, reverb is a favourate interest and "effect" of mine. I'm not quoting Stephen's reply to say "Hey everybody, I talk to the Big Guys round here", but to underscore that this is a very
serious topic for me, one that I hope may last for several months, in it's own, quiet, discrete, and ghostly way - and that other people also take this sort of thing seriously, and give time for reflection, investigation, postulation. And that yes, in the final analysis, it does have something to bear on our work, as musicians, engineers, producers, truck drivers, waitresses, poets, and scientists, and artists
OK. So stepping outside of the scientific side of things.
I have been talking to some of my friends amongst the older residents here, about whether or not they had heard of, or even experienced themselves,here in the local area, anything that could be called or considered as being a "Ghost Story". Guess what?.......
:cool:
I'll be back - I'm just chasing up the links to and
from Stephen Paul Audio
Originally posted by Henchman: Well, my wife, step-daughter and
Originally posted by Henchman:
Well, my wife, step-daughter and I were having a long period of nothing but bad luck in an apartment we were living in. So, even though we are not religious at all, we had our place blessed after a friend mentioned it might help. And I tell you, it made a difference. Things started to turn a round. Coincidence?
mark
Well, I'm beginning to think possibly not. For whatever reasons.As I said, there are things beyond our ken.........
I'm very interested in this "stuff" at the moment (as you can see).
Some of my ex's friends a couple of years back got into a book called "The Celestine Prophecy"..I read a bit, but thought it too New Age-ish and Kitsch (I'm like that sometimes)...now I'm out on a limb here already, so let's just accept that in terms of credibility and B.F. Skinner psychology I'm crazy OK? Everybody comfortable with that?
Cool because I am.
The whole concept of ghosts, as we can already see, has it's "prescence" in contemporary scientific research re lower frequencies - which would also then have some sort of "prescence" in recording (well at least my brain thinks so) perhaps we can talk about this. People still talk about a studio or space as having "a good vibe" - even younger generations than me.
If you haven't read Stephen Paul's article where he talks about eigentones - I recommend you visit and have a read.The links - I'm about to place on my reply to Renie's post above.
"Ghosts", are "present" in my culture.
Superstitions, legends,and Shakespeare is full of them. From Macbeth to The Twilight Zone, Frankenstein to Star Trek.To my studio. Ghosts as we know are found in many many cultures, stories, and traditions.The most common thing to do is nowadays to look at it from a scientific base, either sub-harmonic frequencies or evidence of visual/tactile/auditory hallucinations - all indicators of the onset of schizophrenia, with associated "pleasures" such as paranoia, delusion, and ultimately madness.
Well yes, these things need to be considered, and used to examine whatever it is that I and many many people throughout history have experienced.
However, there is a gentle side to this, a "magical" and "echantment" aspect that is present, yes, even when we decide to add reverb on the Aux Send - that keeps us on our toes, and humanises the whole process for us.
As I said, things beyond our ken....
Hope you stay for some more of this post. I think it's kinda going to be around for a while...
So does my ghost BTW...
Yours, in the fullness of empirical knowledge,
Stedel.
Well, my wife, step-daughter and I were having a long period of
Well, my wife, step-daughter and I were having a long period of nothing but bad luck in an apartment we were living in. So, even though we are not religious at all, we had our place blessed after a friend mentioned it might help. And I tell you, it made a difference. Things started to turn a round. Coincidence?
Also, another place we were living in had a strange presence. In fact there were evenings when I didn't like working in my small studio set-up in the basement. And my wife said she always felt like she was being watched late at night if she got up to go to the bathroom.
mark