“esreveR” Speech

It has been called the discovery of the 7th sense. The research into this phenomenon has been described as being of "Nobel calibre". It has been featured in numerous publications around the world, and in the United States it became a household name in the late 90s. It is called Reverse Speech, the phenomenon of hidden backward messages in speech. It initially gained worldwide fame in the early 80s as those strange backward messages in rock and roll. Since that time, research has progressed significantly and it is now known to exist in all forms of human speech. ~ReverseSpeech.com

It’s amazing how funny things sound when you listen to them backwards. Any kid can recite A to Z but have you tried doing it in the reverse – from Z to A? Okay, that’s freakish. Or maybe, you want to try to reverse the sentence components when you speak – object, subject then predicate – instead of the grammatically correct way. Alright, that’s Yoda-ish.

But what happens when you play your favourite song backwards? They sound like gibberish. Sometimes, however, you may get a few sensible phrases amongst the nonsense. This is know as “reverse speech”, a curious hypothesis first put forward by David John Oates.

Wow, how lucky was I to have stumbled upon this term! Tan Sri told me that you can hear Satan’s voice by playing Hotel California backwards. He didn’t know what they call that phenomenon, though. (Erratum: It isn’t Satan’s voice but the phrase “Yeah Satan (gibberish) organised his own religion”.

I’m always interested in bizarre things. So, I wanted to try it out – if only I know how to play the song backwards! It happens that Hotel California is a classical example of the so-called “back-masked songs” and the file is available on ReverseSpeech.com, together with loads of other samples.

Essentially, the theory of reverse speech explains that it has to do with the development of human speech. “Children speak backwards before they do forwards. Then, as forward speech commences, the two modes of speech gradually combine into one, forming an overall bi-level communication process.”

Covert speech is actually the subconscious mind speaking, but is masked by overt speech. Some even take a step further by claiming that it is possible to detect lies through reverse speech. “If a lie is spoken forwards, the truth may be communicated in reverse.” If you ask me, I’d say it’s quite hard to believe.

However, reverse speech would not have gained so much popularity as it did, had the back-masked messages not made direct reference to Satan more often than not. This of course, deeply stirred the religious zealots like those ignorant people who believed in witchcraft and black magic back in the Dark Ages. Satan has possessed the minds of the singers, they say. Well, considering the neo-Satanism messages hidden in some heavy metal songs in those days, the fear is understandable.

I downloaded some of the more interesting songs from the website and had to listen to them more than once before actually getting the “message”, even though I knew what exactly to listen for. (I suggest the use headphones so that they sound clearer.) For instance, the Night Prowler (must be some really old song) has the covert message, “Oo, Listen to me, I'm from hell… (Gibberish, blah, blah, blah)… I'm the Lord Lucifer.” And when the song was played backwards at a lower speed, it sounded rather spooky! Now, I have problems sleeping at night as my imagination works overtime. Sigh, timid guy!

The Beatles’ albums hinted of Paul McCartney’s death – even though we know he’s still alive – using back messages and plenty of clues in their lyrics and album covers. There’s an interesting theory behind it, that he is replaced by his look-alike. Certainly, many dismiss it as a hoax. Anyway, that’s a different subject. I digress.

And, yeah! While you’re at it, here’s an interesting one worth trying out. I’m sure you know the Popeye theme song. Listen to it backwards and golly, you hear obscenities! Cool! It doesn’t sound like what they say it should be, though.

Hmm, I wonder where I can get a software which can play songs backwards…