Microwave Auditory Effect

 

The first American to publish on the microwave hearing effect was Allan H. Frey, in 1961. In his experiments, the subjects were discovered to be able to hear appropriately pulsed microwave radiation, from a distance of 100 meters from the transmitter. This was accompanied by side effects such as dizziness, headaches, and a pins and needles sensation.

The microwave auditory effect, also known as the microwave hearing effect or the Frey effect, consists of audible clicks (or, with modulation, whole words) induced by pulsed/modulated microwave frequencies.

The clicks are generated directly inside the human head without the need of any receiving electronic device. The effect was first reported by persons working in the vicinity of radar transponders during World War II. These induced sounds are not audible to other people nearby. The microwave auditory effect was later discovered to be inducible with shorter-wavelength portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. During the Cold War era, the American neuroscientist Allan H. Frey studied this phenomenon and was the first to publish^[1] information on the nature of the microwave auditory effect.

Sharp and Grove developed ‘receiverless’ wireless voice transmission technologies for the Advanced Research Projects Agency at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, in 1973. In the above mentioned journal entry to The American Psychologist, Dr. Don Justesen reports that Sharp and Grove were readily able to hear, identify, and distinguish among the single-syllable words for digits between 1 and 10 . Justesen writes, “The sounds heard were not unlike those emitted by persons with an artificial voice box (Electrolarynx). Communication of more complex words and of sentences was not attempted because the averaged densities of energy required to transmit longer messages would approach the current limit of safe exposure.  Microwave hearing is not only disruptive to the sense of hearing, it could be psychologically devastating if one suddenly heard “voices within one’s head