Revealed: How Thomas Edison spoke with ghosts

Edison built a device to talk with the dead

During his lifetime, Thomas Alva Edison filed for almost 1,700 patents. 1,093 applications were successfully awarded the prodigious inventor.

Yet in the archives of his achievements at the Edison National Historic Site, housing five million pages of documents, none of them mention—and no where can be found—a patent, schematic or even a scribble for a paranormal invention that is still attributed to Edison today: the psycho-phone.

Edison’s psycho-phone used to talk with ghosts

The psycho-phone is a curious device with an even curiouser history.  Said to be the culmination of the inventor’s research into the otherworld, or life after death, the psycho-phone allegedly gave the user access to the dead. Supposedly loved ones could be contacted through it or the brains of famous men such as Aristotle or Julius Caesar could be picked—assuming the user was able to converse in ancient Greek or Latin.

The Scientific American interview

The story of Edison’s quest to invent a machine that could place phone calls to the dead is a murky one. It can be traced, however, to an interview he gave to “Scientific American” during the 1920s.

During the conversation with reporter B.F. Forbes from the magazine, Edison confided he was working on a machine that could contact the dead. The story made headlines in many papers across America.

Excerpt from Scientific American interview

“If our personality survives, then it is strictly logical or scientific to assume it retains memory, intellect, other faculties and knowledge we acquire on Earth. Therefore…if we can evolve an instrument so delicate as to be affected by our personality as it survives in the next life, such an instrument, when made available, ought to record something.“

This intrigued the reporter, who asked Edison to expound upon the idea.

Edison obliged him saying “it might be possible to construct an apparatus which will be so delicate that if there are personalities in another existence or sphere who wish to get in touch with us in this existence or sphere, this apparatus will at least give them a better opportunity to express themselves than the tilting tables and raps and Ouija boards and mediums and the other crude methods now purported to be the only means of communication.”

Full, incredible story here!

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