'Disembodied Voices: True Accounts of Hidden Beings' Explores Often Overlooked Fortean Phenomenon

In Disembodied Voices: True Accounts of Hidden Beings, author Tim Marczenko explores the strange, often overlooked phenomenon of disembodied voices and the inconceivable entities that might be behind them.

Marczenko begins by relating his own experience of almost being lured into the woods as a child by a mysterious voice, calling him by name, enticing him to follow it as it had “found something” that he might find interesting.

“Tim, come here; I found something,” it called. “Come into the woods; you’ve got to see this. I’ve got to show you something.”

Ultimately, the young Marczenko decides not to follow the voice; an act that he speculates may have prevented his untimely—and permanent—disappearance. While the author does spend a couple of early chapters covering voices which arise seemingly out of mental illness and those that have had benign effects on their listeners—to first differentiate between voices that might have prosaic explanations and then acknowledge that some of the truly unexplained incidents do seem to be beneficial—the vast majority of the book is spent on the more malevolent aspects of the phenomenon.

He covers folklore from all over the world in his exploration of this unexplained phenomenon, from the Nishi—a Bengali ghost said to lure its victims to secluded areas by calling to them in the voice of a loved one—to Iceland’s resident elves, the Huldufólk, or “hidden people,” and a variety of other trickster spirits and faeries. These beings share a few common traits among cultures, not the least of which is that they are largely unseen and capable of being extremely dangerous.

Which leads us to the crux of Marczenko’s work: that some trickster entity appears to be hunting people in out-of-the-way locales across the world. He lays out his evidence in the form of his aforementioned research into cultural beliefs and a wide variety of first-person testimony, plus a number of verified accounts of mysterious deaths and disappearances. It’s compelling work, capable of convincing any open-minded fortean that something profoundly unnerving, at the very least, is going on. Anyone interested in the invisible world and the machinations of its inhabitants will find this book to be a welcome addition to their fortean library; albeit one probably best not to be read alone at night.

Disembodied Voices: True Accounts of Hidden Beings is available through Amazon.

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