The History of Reverse Speech

By Lee Butler

The History of Reverse Speech – It is said: ‘The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.’

Gilgamesh, Sumerian Texts and the Old Testament all reveal information of One True God, the Tower of Babel and the Great Flood.

Before the flood was sent to deluge everything on Earth and before the destruction of whatever the tower was, the whole Earth it is said was of one language and of one speech.

Adam and Eve having learnt good and evil like the Gods were forced out of the Garden of Eden to fend for themselves with Lord God placing spinning gyroscopic sword wielding angels at the gates of the East side to keep man out. Adam and Eve got busy and eventually someone became displeased of what mankind was doing with its tower and destroyed it, confounding man’s tongue with 42 languages at the same time.

Did that God confound their speech as well. Do we now have many languages and 2 speeches?

Australian national David John Oates believes so. He is our modern day discoverer of a second speech present within man and has named it ‘Reverse Speech’. Since his discovery David has tirelessly pioneered the research, documentation and development of this field and technology for us all to access this information for over 30 years.

Backward Masking and Back Masking

1983 was the year David began to discover and uncover a form of intelligible speech that is spoken backwards at the very same time that we are expressing our forwards speech.

He heard about some backward messages that could be found in playing ‘rock’ music recordings of the 1960’s and onwards in reverse.

1966 saw the record release of ‘They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha, Ha”‘. It was produced by ‘Jerry Samuals’ under the name ‘Napoleon XIV’ and was considered a novelty record as the B side was the same A side recording to be heard entirely backwards.

This release inspired other artists to begin to incorporate backward music in their recordings too. The Beatles were famous for doing so particularly on their album ‘Revolver’. John Lennon of the Beatles created controversy when he claimed the group were more popular than Jesus Christ leading to condemnation and record burning on the streets of America. Shortly after, hidden backward messages were to be found on Beatles records as well as hidden symbolism on the record covers sparking the conspiracy that Paul McCartney had died with messages such as ‘Paul is dead man. Miss him, miss him, miss him.’ and ‘I buried Paul’. This new gimmick served well to rekindle those record sales to replace the recently burnt ones!

It wasn’t long before many more artists joined in the craze with teenagers all round the world aurally scanning their albums backwards to discover the hidden messages and compare their findings with friends.

This technique was called ‘Backward Masking’ and were the result of messages deliberately recorded backwards and inserted or ‘tracked’ onto a recording meant to be played forwards.

1967 and the ‘Summer of Love’ gave way to a pandemic of backward hidden messages. Many bands began to experiment with messages but some appeared not to have been intentionally tracked onto the recordings but derived, with no mechanical manipulation what so ever, from the vocalists singing voices themselves. The reverse fad now began to catch the attention of other ears followed by their hysterical tongues.

It wasn’t many years before the community at large became concerned. Scientists, politicians and religious groups all took interest with some claiming the messages were from the devil himself and would be a cause of harm to those that listened to them.

This scaremongering caught the attention of David Oates whilst he was running a halfway house for street kids. Were all these messages satanic in nature? Were the halfway house youths really in danger from listening to rock music played backwards? With a rewired tape player David set about finding out and soon his backward playing tape machine discoveries shifted from pure curiosity to an obsessional study for him.

Whilst listening to these studio engineered backward masking messages David discovered some other messages that were not intentionally made by the music production studio teams. These naturally occurring communications coming from the singing voices of the vocalists he termed ‘Back Masking’ to distinguish them from the backward masking messages placed by the record producers.
His first back masking message heard in this way was from a ‘Def Leopard’ track ‘Stairway to Heaven’ and the final line of the song played backwards revealed ‘Play backwards. Hear words sung’ and where you can hear more reversals earlier in the song.

A skeptical mind may inquire if these Reverse Speech communications are merely a coincidence amongst the gibberish of our forward speech played backwards. Research has shown that there are far too many reversals obtainable from our grammatically correct forward speech, coupled with the unique relevance to the subject matter of that speech to remain coincidence. Also, two people vocalizing the same thing can produce completely different reversals and it is next to impossible to consciously create them either in spontaneous speech or written and rehearsed lyrics.

Reveal to World

At the time David found it difficult to research what these messages were and where they were coming from, with very little reference to them at the local libraries and book shops. He did however discover that it was not the Beatles that introduced these backward messages as other examples could be found as far back as 1924 on a ‘British Broadcasting Corporation‘ (BBC) commercial ‘Auntie Aggie and the BBC‘ revealing the reversal ‘This is not a noose, no its really not‘.

It took David 2 years to convince himself that the speech reversals he was consistently finding in recordings of both vocalised songs and regular speech were a unique discovery and very real and not just part of his imagination, like images in the gypsy tea leaves. He could not escape the fact the reversals were consistently revealing what people were really feeling at the time of the recordings and real facts revealed, such as names of people and places, they had actual experience with were too common to be any mere coincidence.

Two years later David co-authored his first book about Reverse Speech ‘Beyond Backward Masking: Reverse Speech and The Voice of the Inner Mind‘ with fellow researcher and good friend ‘Greg Albrecht’. It was noticed backward messages were frequently complimentary to the forward messages and could be heard at least once every 30 seconds and so their findings at the time were quickly promoted to a skeptical Australian public.

Despite initial skepticism their news did catch the interest of some scientists, whose tests demonstrated their subject’s brain patterns showed detection of both deliberately placed backward masking and naturally occurring speech reversals in recordings played forwards; but most importantly the brain could differentiate between the two.

David embarked on a mission to get the word out to the world with lectures, training classes and media interviews to give us all new understandings of language and the inner recesses of the human mind.

1988 saw David move to Brisbane where he worked with therapist Dr. Caroline Meade analysing the reverse speech of her patients. He began to teach training classes in 1989 and took initial studies in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and hypnosis to advance his growing therapeutic practice.

In 1989 David moved country to Dallas, USA where he soon caught the attention of ‘C.B. Scott Jones’ who worked for a prominent US Senator to seek out new technologies and bring them to mainstream attention. Lectures were set up in Washington DC to present Reverse Speech to the ‘Intelligence’ community.

During this period David had been analysing the speech of prominent and famous public figures and unwittingly revealed secret operational code words and military manoeuvres through the speeches of the then President ‘George Bush Jr’.

A memo from Jones to the then Secretary of Defense ‘Dick Cheney’ was leaked to the press and overnight Reverse Speech became a household name questioning whether the President was hiding secret codes in his speeches.

David was asked to stay out of the public eye and heeded this warning to focus on training classes and the therapeutic aspects of his studies.

In the same year David was requested to give testimony in a prominent court case with the rock group ‘Judas Priest‘. The ‘heavy metal’ group and record producers ‘CBS Records‘ were being sought for damages after two youths attempted to commit suicide by shooting themselves with a shot gun after hearing the ‘hypnotic’ music on the album ‘Stained Class‘. One youth died instantly and the other was severely disfigured with claims they had shot themselves after repeatedly listening to the group’s music which it was alleged contained subliminal messages including: ‘Let’s be dead‘, ‘Fuck the Lord‘ and ‘Do it‘.

Although David did not have to provide testimony in the end the ‘Judge’ made an important statement as part of his judgement. The lawsuit failed because the evidence was not convincing enough (for the Jury) to suggest that the backward phrases, which were undoubtedly recognised to be there, were caused by anything other than coincidence of sound. There was also insufficient evidence to suggest that they could be subliminally suggestive.

The 6.2 million dollar case may have had a different outcome if David had provided testimony for he was a man who knew that the coincidence of sound the judge talked of was more than just coincidence and the scientific Electroencephalograph (EEG) studies had begun to substantiate the backward phrases or speech reversals were indeed recognised and acknowledged by at least some aspects of the human brain.

1995 to 1997 saw David establishing a very active therapeutic practice, more books published and becoming a popular guest on American radio and TV. A mysterious fire destroyed the Reverse Speech premises early 1997 which prompted extensive security measures but they did not stop the numerous break-ins and computer hacking over the following couple of years. David established his own worldwide syndicated radio show but got embroiled in a nasty lawsuit involving a rival radio show host. Death threats and hate mail led David to settle out of court and return to Australia.

Despite America losing David his discoveries and legacy continued particularly in Oregon where practitioner ‘Jack Johnston’ assisted police and law officials in solving crimes using information gained through reverse speech and then verified by the authority’s acting on the information. Through Jack’s work Reverse Speech is now an accepted course in a major Oregon University and the course accepted by the Oregon State Police as credits towards their cadet’s training.

David still lives in Australia where he continues to enjoy his therapeutic practice, continued promotion of reverse speech through his new books and radio and TV appearances as well as training students from all over the world, many of whom go on to be successful practitioners themselves.

Some of these practitioners are now beginning to write their own books as well as setting up further training platforms around the world.

Back to the Future

There are already many applications for reverse speech. Areas already covered include personal development, rehabilitation and therapy, family therapy, business partnership analysis, corporate business decisions, suitable employee applicant decisions, investigatory work both private and assisting the ‘Authorities’ as well as assistance in remote viewing work.

On one of his websites David writes:

“As you can see the application of reverse speech is bigger than we can imagine. It gives us insights beyond what we can consciously know in virtually every situation.

Imagine asking yourself any question and getting an answer of TRUTH from your unconscious mind to shed new light on decisions or challenges that are existing or even unknown and then receiving a solution to those challenges that is virtually 100% accurate if enough information is given in dialogue.”

World renown Radio Programme host Jeff Rense quotes:

‘This is all just the tip of the iceberg with vast scope for many more applications and understanding as voices from the unconsciousness become more widely accepted, developed and utilised by mankind to re-vamp and re-structure the societies we currently live in.’

Hooray for David Oates! And let mankind steer the history of reverse speech on the path of truth to telepathy.

My Expanded Understanding of Reverse Speech 2

By Addy Pitman

What is Reverse Speech?

My Expanded Understanding of Reverse Speech 2 – Reverse speech was discovered over 30 years ago by David John Oates. He came across meaningful, intelligible, grammatically correct messages while playing speech in reverse. Through many years of research, it has been noted that reverse speech occurs in all languages and forms of speech.

When verbal communication is recorded and played in reverse, obvious phrases can be heard. These phrases are almost always in direct relation to the forward spoken language and can be heard in regular intervals . Because forward speech and reverse speech are complimentary of each other, it is considered to be an inherent form of verbal communication among all of us. What can be heard in reverse is as unique as the individual speaking. In fact, two different people reading the same words aloud will have varying messages when played in reverse. Also, children as young as 4 months old can be heard communicating when their forward vocal sounds are played in reverse.

How Reverse Speech Came To Be

In the fall of 1983, David John Oates accidentally damaged a cassette player. He was unsuccessful at fixing it and it would only play tapes in reverse. Months later in April of 1984, while running a halfway home for youths, some of the teens came to him about messages that could be heard when playing songs in reverse. He remembered his broken tape player and began experimenting with playing songs backwards. The first backwards message Oates discovered was from playing Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven in reverse. He heard, “Play backward. Hear words sung.” Oates spent months reversing his music collection. He went on to reversing the speech of politicians and friends. The first reversal he found in regular speech was in Neil Armstrong’s famous words, “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” Those words are “man will space walk” when played in reverse. Oates realized there really were meaningful messages present in all speech played in reverse and that the messages were not satanic. As he continued his research he noticed metaphors were apparent in reversals and that reversals were much more than coincidental. He applied Carl Jung’s theory to help interpret metaphors and archetypes. This lead Oates to a deeper understanding of his new Reverse Speech Theory. After Oates compiled numerous findings on Reverse Speech, he began authoring books, appearing in newspapers and on television programs. Over the years, he has worked with psychologists, doctors as well as U.S. officials while applying his theory. Today, David John Oates resides in Australia. He continues to write books, teaches Reverse Speech, and hosts his own radio show. Oates has a private practice and implements the many benefits that Reverse Speech has to offer the world.

Reverse Speech and The Mind

We know that logic and language are formed in the left hemisphere of the brain whereas creativity, intuition, and emotion are formed in the right hemisphere. It is postulated that reverse speech is produced in the right side of the brain. As we consciously speak forward (left brain), our unconscious mind speaks backwards (right brain). Therefore, two transmissions of thought are being presented simultaneously by both hemispheres of the brain. This is also known as speech complimentary.

Reversals are multidimensional and relate to the mind . The mind can be divided into three to three levels of consciousness: the conscious mind, unconscious mind and the super conscious mind (connection to universal consciousness or higher self). Reverse speech opens the door to information from all three levels of the mind. It is remarkable in that it gives way to the truth. At our deepest level of consciousness we strive for conveying the truth no matter how much our conscious mind wants to control what is said in forward speech. Reverse speech corresponds to our psyche as a whole. Just as our unconscious mind communicates with us through dream metaphors, reverse speech can communicate with our psyche in a similar manner as specific metaphors and archetypes are revealed as well. These metaphors and archetypes can be further examined to provide deeper meaning and healing at the soul level.

Seven Check Points and Validity Factors

The 7 check points were created by Oates to maintain continuity among reverse speech professionals. Often times when beginning analyzing forward speech for reversals, students can place their own beliefs and experiences into what they are hearing in reverse. Students naturally try to attach meaning to reversals. This is also known as projection. The 7 check points help to minimize the effect of projection and keep Reverse Speech consistent. The most important aspect of check point and validity factor standards are “when in doubt, through it out.” If reversals do not meet at least three or more of the seven factors, the reversal must be discarded.

The seven checkpoints are as follows:

1. The syllable count of the entire reversal phrase will be recognizable in a high-quality reversal.
2. Vowel and consonant sounds in each syllable must be clear and concise.
3. Words must be clear and discernible both in the beginning and the end of the reversal phrase.
4. The spacing between each word should be plainly distinguishable from other words in the reversal, they should not blend together.
5. The reversal must stand out from surrounding gibberish.
6. The tone of the reversal phrase should have a consistent flow from beginning to end.
7. A good reversal will have a clearly steady beat or tempo from beginning to end.

Once these checkpoints are in place, then the validity factors can be applied. Reversals can be verified from one to five. Five being the highest rating, and one being the lowest. Only validity factors with a rating of three to five should be included in transcripts and presented to the client. Anything less can cause misinterpretation and restrict the true results of a session.

• VF 5: All seven Check Points are met – the reversal is very clear.
• VF 4: One Check Point ONLY may be imprecise.
• VF 3: Two Check Points may be imprecise.
• VF 2: Three Check Points may be imprecise.
• VF 1: Four Check Points may be imprecise.

Reversal Categories

How Reverse Speech compliments forward speech is broken down into specific categories.

1. Congruent Reversals: These are reversals which serve to confirm that which is spoken forwards in regular speech.
2. Incongruent Reversals: These reversals are found to directly contradict what is being spoken forwards indicating a disbelief or lie.
3. Expansive Reversals: These reversals add additional information to the forward dialogue.
4. External Dialogue: Reversals which contain a communication to another. Possibly used to influence another to agree with what the speaker is saying.
5. Internal Dialogue: These reversals will reflect internal thought processes, conscious and unconscious, as the psyche talks to itself, organizing behavior and self-analysis.
6. Internal Command: These reversals will give a direct command concerning some action that must be taken by the conscious self. Reversals will often begin with the word you.
7. Trail and Lead Reversals: These reversals will appear in a conversation either before or after a topic is discussed in forward speech. In other words, they either “lead” the discussion or “trail” on after the topic has changed.
8. Future Tense Reversals: These reversals predict a future event or outcome.
9. Premonition Reversal: These reversals predict a future event in which the subject has not conscious knowledge, such as an accident, illness or injury.
10. Comparative Reversals: These reversals are not necessarily complimentary but will refer to an emotional matter. In other words, the reversal will convey a similar emotion attached to an unrelated forward dialogue.

Reversal Structures

Reversals appear in many various styles and structures.

1. Normal: Most reversals appear as a single sentence of a few words with direct and noticeable complementarity with the forward speech.
2. Long Sentences: These reversals are less common than others and can include up to 12 words. It’s important to analyze the reversal thoroughly to be sure that the reversal is not simply 2-3 words separated by gibberish.
3. Single Words: These reversals are common but they also can be coincidental. The validity factor should be high and the reversal should relate to the forward speech.
4. Semi-Formed: In a small number of reversals, the last half of the last word, or the whole word, will disappear into gibberish. It is always the end of the reversal.
5. Mirror Image: The reversals will be exactly as the forward speech, word for word.
6. Sentence Building: The forward speech will be completed in reverse.
7. Cause and Effect: These reversals will contain 2 separate sentences with punctuation and will complement each other.
8. Link Reversals: These reversals are very unusual. They occur between people who are in-tune with each other. The forward dialogue responsible for the reversal comes from the last words of the first speaker’s sentence and the first words of the second speaker’s sentence. Sometimes the reversal will sound as if it is one voice, even though two different speakers are speaking.

Personal Experience with Reversals

I had recently completed my certified hypnotherapist training last year and was suspect that something was “missing.” I felt there was a missing component to hypnotherapy but was unsure what that component was. One day, I was browsing YouTube and came across Jeff Rense’s channel. The first video that I clicked on happened to be about Reverse Speech and David John Oates was his guest. I listened to Oates talk about the implications of reverse speech and how he would apply metaphors found in the speech reversals to get better outcomes and deeper healing with hypnosis. It was my “ah ha” moment. It was exactly the training I was looking for to go along with what I believed to be lacking from hypnotherapy alone. I was amazed and excited as he played some of the reversals during the show. I knew then I found what I was looking for. I downloaded the Reverse Speech App that day and began my pursuit of finding reversals. I signed up for training as soon as I could. I look forward to continuing my endeavors into Reverse Speech and becoming a Reverse Speech Practitioner.

My first experience with Reverse Speech was soon after I down loaded the Reverse Speech App to my iPhone. I had signed up for the training, but in the meantime, I thought I might see how it worked. Having no prior training sure made it difficult to find reversals. The importance of training is extremely essential as I look back. In my first reversal, I had recorded my 18 month old son. He had just learned to say “flower” so I thought it would be fun to draw some pictures of flowers with him to reinforce his vocabulary. I recorded him for a few minutes as we colored. At the time, his vocabulary was pretty limited.

When I played his speech in reverse, he clearly said, “Here we have flowers.” I was astonished. Not only was it perfectly clear, but it was a congruent statement because we were drawing flowers and talking about them at that moment.

During the third class in the investigator training, we learned about reversals in infants and children. This area is close to my heart as I am also a elementary school teacher and a mother of four. David played a recording of a 13 year-old girl who was mentally disabled. The girl’s mother had sent a 30 minute recording of the girl making moaning sounds. When David played the reversal the young girl said, “Mommy, love you.” Hearing that come from the forward sounds of moans brought tears to my eyes. It must have been a very heart-warming moment for the mother to hear those words coming from her daughter. As an educator, I am dumbfounded and saddened that we do not take advantage of Reverse Speech in our Special Education classrooms and schools world-wide. The applications would be endless. Furthermore, parents who have never heard their child communicate or speak would actually be able to do so. Reverse Speech software would be extremely useful to both parents and special needs educators alike. Once my training is complete, I plan to become an advocate for Reverse Speech use with special needs children.

Conclusion

I am eager to continue my training in Reverse Speech. Looking back at when I first enrolled in classes, I am amazed at how much I have learned thus far. All areas of Reverse Speech interest me, but I am very interested in how it relates to children. I am currently substitute teaching, and left full time teaching in order to find other ways to be of service to children. I felt that my calling became more of a healer than that of an educator as the years passed. I had witnesses so much over medicated, abused, and traumatized young children that I wanted to help them in another capacity. I decided pursue hypnotherapy as a means to help with their healing. We are so limited as teachers in the classroom. I am grateful that I discovered Reverse Speech and I look forward to serving our world with the invaluable tool that is Reverse Speech.