Brief History of Reverse Speech

Reverse Speech is a communication process that occurs every time we speak. It manifests backwards in our forward communications and can be heard by recording human conversations and playing them in reverse.

In October 1983 David J Oates, founder, researcher and developer of Reverse Speech, dropped his walkman down the toilet bowl after which it would only play backwards. Six months later he found his first backward message in the track ‘Stairway to Heaven’ by Led Zeppelin. The backward message occurred in the last part of the song and said: “Play backwards. Hear words sung.” This led him into further research. Over the next few months, while playing most of his music collection in reverse, he found intelligent messages in music as well as speech.

In 1987 Greg Albrecht, a long-standing friend and colleague, joined David in his research. They correlated all David’s findings and brought out their first book ‘Beyond Backward Masking’, containing the theory of reverse speech and reverse speech complementarity.
David moved to San Diego in 1995 where he set up a private practice in reverse speech. He also brought out his third book ‘Reverse Speech, Voices from the Unconscious’ and became a popular guest on various US radio and TV shows.
David returned to Australia in November 1999 where he maintains a private practise and teaches Reverse Speech students to practitioner level.

We can assume that reverse speech (RS) has always been present in human language, yet could only access it with the invention of the tape recorder during WWII by the German people.

Speech reversals occur in forward speech and are formed automatically by the brain. They are delivered, received and understood on an unconscious level and relate to the forward dialogue in human speech.

Reverse Speech offers enormous benefits both in therapeutic and everyday situations. It enables people to understand their behavioural motivations, and gives them a powerful tool and resource to heal undesirable patterns and belief systems.

The sacred nature of this work consistently shows itself in the powerful and god-like nature of many reversals. Since having started the process of Reverse Speech as my own personal development process as well as having completed training as a Reverse Speech Practitioner, my life has undergone immense and powerful changes. I feel honoured to be part of this incredible and exciting breakthrough in human development.