Talking with Microwaves

Do the D.E.W.

The November 1940 issue of the pulp magazine, Astounding Science Fiction, published a forgettable but prescient short story by author L. Sprague de Camp. “The Exhalted” was a sci-fi yarn about an unhinged inventor and his arsenal of directed energy weapons (DEWs). Wreaking havoc on unsuspecting civilians, de Camp’s main character produced everything from a ray-gun that could raise a person’s temperature by “applying the right e.m.f. [electro-magnetic frequency];” to a “soft-speaker” that used “a supersonic beam” to generate “the effect of audible sound-frequencies when it hit the human ear.” The device discreetly projected suggestions into a target’s head while the victim experienced nothing more than “a still small voice in his ear apparently coming from nowhere.” Throughout the tale, these contraptions are used to surreptitiously manipulate and influence others behavior. In this way, de Camp showcased the art of electronic harassment and the concept of covert voice-to-skull (V2K) transmission decades before government officials complained about the mysterious onset of discomfort and strange sounds in their heads.

Despite the addition of a talking bear, ‘The Exhalted’ wasn’t one of de Camp’s best short stories.

Reports of these unexplained ‘attacks’ on CIA officers and diplomats have accelerated in recent months. Often referred to by sanitized monikers like ‘Havana Syndrome’ or ‘Anomalous Health Incidents,’ experts suspect that these episodes of electronic harassment are a result of exposure to a directed energy weapon.

The Pentagon seems to agree. It has asked employees to be on the lookout for a list of potential symptoms that reads like a warning label for the side-effects of microwave radiation. A September 2021 memo advised personnel to report any signs of “troubling sensory events such as sounds, pressure, or heat.”

The media has cast doubt over the possible involvement of directed energy weapons, even though official estimates acknowledge over 200 cases that fit the profile. The puzzling condition has been written-off as mass psychogenic illness, chirping insects, or simply a hang-over. Many news outlets echo a variation of Foreign Policy Magazine’s sentiments—they brazenly declared that “aside from the reported syndromes, there’s no evidence that a microwave weapon exists—and all the available science suggests that any such weapon would be wildly impractical.”

In reality, there’s a mountain of evidence indicating a microwave energy system was used, with an indispensable clue being the reports of isolated, anomalous sounds. Per Forbes, affected individuals “typically hear a burst of high-pitched, grating noise with no obvious source before suffering other symptoms. Other people in the same building do not experience either the sound or the other effects.” The presence of ‘private’ sounds that only select people can detect is a telltale sign of voice-to-skull transmission using microwave-powered directed energy.

DEWs inflict damage by hijacking waves of electromagnetic radiation. Tucked between low frequency radio waves and higher frequency laser beams, microwaves carry energy that can be aimed (or ‘directed’) at a range of intended targets, both mechanical and biological. Sensitive electronics are susceptible to microwave interference, enabling DEWs to drop enemy missiles and drones out of the sky. They can also quickly heat water—even when it’s located beneath a person’s skin. Focused microwaves induce an intense burning sensation felt by anyone within range. They’re robust—able to impact a target from a long distance while withstanding a variety of weather conditions—and do the job in a stealthy manner. As author Philip Nielsen put it in his book, Effects of Directed Energy Weapons: “Microwaves damage targets by more subtle means.” This subtlety and stability made the development of microwave weapons an attractive prospect.

Despite the media’s reluctance to recognize reality, directed energy weapons are not a new phenomenon. Contemporary DEWs have their roots in the early 1900s, when inventors worldwide sought to develop a version of a ‘death-ray-gun’ that could exploit the destructive power of unseen energy fields.

During this era, inventor Nikola Tesla wrote multiple letters to the editor of the New York Times speculating on the future of “harnessed energy.” He foresaw a world where wars would be fought with directed beams of destruction; boldly revealing that he had discovered how to project “wave-energy to any particular region of the globe.” Years later, Tesla outdid himself, claiming he’d perfected a silent, invisible “death-beam.” When pressed for details, he was short on information: “Now is not the time to go into the details of this thing.”

Despite impressive proclamations, there is little proof that Tesla ever manufactured such devices. That didn’t stop the Feds from investigating. Declassified FBI files divulge that the agency took an interest in Tesla’s work. After he passed away in 1943, agents tracked down most of his papers in an effort to validate claims of his death-ray technology. Their official position was that the recovered documents held nothing of value, with no evidence that his DEW had ever been assembled.

The DoD was interested in rifling through Tesla’s papers.

Tesla wasn’t the only one experimenting with directed energy, a number of ambitious inventors had their sights set on weaponizing the electromagnetic spectrum. Notable among them was British tinkerer, H. Grindell Matthews. A 1924 issue of Popular Mechanics featured an article insisting that Matthews’ “death-ray” had the power to take down a plane using a beam of energy. It could also inflict bodily harm: “Cases are reported where intense burns are received on occasions when the workers came into contact with it.”

Grindell’s 1924 contraption resembles a powerful spotlight.

Predating both energy-aficionados was John H. Hartman, an American inventor who claimed to possess a powerful spotlight-weapon capable of transmitting lethal shocks. An 1898 edition of Literary Digest expressed skepticism, calling the machine “important, if true.”

Their suspicion is understandable. Most early attempts at DEWs were plagued by a lack of transparency or convincing results. A few demonstrations were hastily organized for potential investors, but these showcases were usually underwhelming and failed to deliver on their creators’ lofty promises of infinite annihilation.

A drawing of John H. Hartman’s death-ray in 1898. He claimed that his DEW was deadly at long distances: “Everything it strikes will go down.” He proposed using it against the Spanish in Cuba during the Spanish-American War.

In the 1960s, scientists discovered one of directed energy’s most fascinating qualities: microwaves could transmit ‘the voice of God’—relaying sounds and words only audible in the intended target’s head.

The first indication that certain frequencies could produce noises inside someone’s skull came about when biologist Dr. Allan Frey visited a co-worker who said he was hearing odd ‘clicks’ and ‘zips’ while standing in front of a radar (radars operate on the same frequencies as microwaves). The sounds were inaudible to others in the area until they were within the sweep of the radar’s beam. After confirming the phenomenon firsthand, Dr. Frey gave it a name: the microwave auditory effect (later referred to as the ‘Frey effect’). Despite the absence of traditional acoustic sound waves, an audio response was achieved by stimulating the brain with microwave energy. The method was crude at first, but it demonstrated the possibility of discreetly communicating using silent microwaves.

(For his part, Dr. Frey continued investigating interactions between living things and electromagnetic waves, later becoming an early critic of cell phones and potential links to cancer. In a 2010 interview with GQ magazine, he equated the global proliferation of cell phone frequencies to “a grand world experiment without informed consent.”)

In the early 1970s, Dr. Joseph Sharp built off Frey’s observations by designing a set of sophisticated experiments to test the capabilities of microwave-hearing. Dr. Sharp was familiar with the concept of voice-to-skull after acting as lead scientist on a classified Pentagon initiative known as Project Pandora—an operation spun-up to research the biological and behavioral effects of microwaves on humans.

Ever wonder why ‘voice-to-skull’ is abbreviated as V2K instead of V2S? Us too. We have no clue.

A 1975 American Psychologist article (“Microwaves and Behavior”) caught up with the progress of Dr. Sharp’s V2K work, reporting that his team had successfully demonstrated the ability to ‘hear’ and distinguish between specific words “by radiating themselves with these ‘voice modulated’ microwaves.” The article noted that the ‘voices’ they heard in their heads were robotic and “not unlike those emitted by persons with artificial larynxes.” Dr. Sharp’s experiments were a significant advancement in voice-to-skull technology—proving that the manipulation of pulsed microwaves could produce complex sounds, not just basic noises.

Research into this field blossomed in the proceeding decades. Multiple patents were filed by individuals claiming to have a way of generating localized sounds via microwaves. From the 1983 apparatus that promised to simulate hearing “by introduction of a plurality of microwaves,” to a 1989 “method of irradiating a person’s head to produce sound,” inventors were finding novel ways to blast people with directed energy.

The U.S. Army recognized the potential applications of rapidly developing voice-to-skull science in a 1998 summary, “Bioeffects of Selected Nonlethal Weapons.” The document confirmed that “microwave hearing technology could facilitate a private message transmission,” while at the same time admitting that “it could be psychologically devastating if one suddenly heard voices within one’s head.”

Army officials deny that they ever deployed their vehicle-mounted microwave-gun, yet some researchers believe that their DEW did make an appearance in the 1990s. Known as the Active Denial System (ADS), it worked by creating a large beam of energy that caused rapid heating in the sub-dermal layer of a target’s skin.

Dr. Nick Begich, a regular guest on the paranormal radio show Coast to Coast AM since the Art Bell days, a vocal critic of the notorious HAARP installation, asserts that military DEWs were used to overrun Iraq’s army during the Gulf War. He cites reports from captured Iraqi soldiers who were adamant that they were V2K victims, insisting that voices were being broadcast into their heads from an unknown source. According to Begich, these “silent sounds” contained bogus messages from ‘Allah’ along with demoralizing information such as “precise information on the units to be bombed each day, along with a new, silent psychological technique which induced thoughts of great fear in each soldier’s mind.” The military contradicts these claims, citing human-rights concerns as the main reason that their microwave-DEW was never utilized in combat situations.

Records available from the Small Business Innovation Research program (SBIR) affirm that the U.S. Air Force awarded $800,000 between 1993-1995 to fund research into a “revolutionary new form of communication” using microwaves. Without elaborating on specific applications, the studies concluded that “voice communications, via the microwave auditory effect, are highly feasible.” V2K appeared once more on the USAF’s radar in 2002-2003, when they acquired the rights to a set of voice-to-skull patents with titles that leave little to the imagination: Method and Device for Implementing the Radio Frequency Hearing Effect and Apparatus for Audibly Communicating Speech Using the Radio Frequency Hearing Effect.

From a 1989 patent: “A method and apparatus for simulation of hearing in mammals by introduction of a plurality of microwaves into the region of the auditory cortex is shown and described. A microphone is used to transform sound signals into electrical signals which are in turn analyzed and processed to provide controls for generating a plurality of microwave signals at different frequencies. The multifrequency microwaves are then applied to the brain in the region of the auditory cortex. By this method sounds are perceived by the mammal which are representative of the original sound received by the microphone.”

Not to be left out of the military voice-to-skull DEW party, in 2003 the U.S. Navy funded the research of a private company with a promising V2K device. The revealingly named MEDUSA (Mob Excess Deterrent Using Silent Audio) was ostensibly listed for use as a defensive crowd-control option. It worked by creating “a strong sound sensation in the human head when it is irradiated with specifically selected microwave pulses of low energy.” These extremely irritating sounds were meant to “incapacitate” a target, but Navy documents indicate that MEDUSA also had the potential for more advanced modes of communication—a project summary concluded that specific microwave pulses could be “transmitted to produce recognizable sounds.” The paper trail shows that the Navy’s partnership didn’t last long, and the device’s patents were later acquired in 2004 by the Sierra Nevada Corporation (an aerospace contractor with close ties to the Department of Defense).

Are microwave DEWs being used to instigate the Havana Syndrome? There is proof to suggest this is true despite skeptics’ contentions. Beyond historical evidence that a V2K effect might be involved, medical experts like Dr. Beatrice Golomb, MD, professor of medicine at University of California San Diego, believe that “of hypotheses tendered to date, (RF/MW exposure) alone fits the facts, including the peculiar ones.”

This jives with the assessment provided by Dr. James Lin, a highly-accomplished researcher of high power microwaves (HPMs). He’s published a catalog of scientific papers and is editor of Bioelectromagnetics, a journal dealing with the biological effects of electromagnetic fields. He recently told the New York Times that a microwave DEW could generate the focused sounds reported by some Havana Syndrome cases: “The beams ... could be fired covertly, hitting only the intended target.” Sounds like a line from de Camp’s short story.

In fact, today’s victims of electronic harassment suffer much like the targeted individuals did in the 1940 sci-fi tale. Caught off-guard by the effects of V2K, and finding no source for the sudden voice in his head, one afflicted character was left with “nothing for him to suspect except his own sanity.” Sadly, this may be one of the more damaging outcomes of the covert use of DEWs on an unknowing populace. As explanations for Havana Syndrome continue to elude the CIA’s special investigators—and members of the press uphold theories favoring mass hysteria—the confusion and anxiety experienced by affected individuals will remain very real.

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