Szalay, Attila von

Category: Other spiritually gifted people

Attila von Szalay, [date of birth and death unknown]  known to his friends as Art, was an American photographer of Hungarian descent, described by his contemporaries as “ a gifted psychic and yogic practitioner”.  He lived in southern California for most of his life but was born in New York, travelling west in the 1940s to take up a career in photography.

Far left Bayliss,

Psychic ability

His psychic abilities developed spontaneously when he was a young man, and he took up yoga in order to develop them.  As a consequence of his yogic studies, his psychic abilities ‘blossomed’, including the ability to leave the body at will. He even took particular delight in popping in on people now and then.

Raymond Bayless, a 2l-year veteran of Los Angeles's ‘psychic scene’ was a witness to von Szalay's remarkable abilities as well as the victim of some of his more bizarre and sudden ‘appearances’. Bayless documented several examples of von Szalay's ability at OBEs and telepathy in his book  Experiences of a Psychical Researcher.  It might be added that Art also had auditory hallucinations.

His work in EPV - Electronic Voice Phenomena

Attila von Szalay was among the first to try recording what he believed to be ‘voices of the dead’ as a way to augment his investigations in photographing ghosts. He began his attempts in 1941 [some sources say 1936] using a 78 rpm record, but it wasn't until 1956, after switching to a reel-to-reel tape recorder, that he believed he was successful.

Working with Raymond Bayless, von Szalay conducted a number of recording sessions with a custom-made apparatus, consisting of a microphone in an insulated cabinet connected to an external recording device and speaker. Szalay reported finding many sounds on the tape that could not be heard on the speaker at the time of recording, some of which were recorded when there was no one in the cabinet.

He believed these sounds to be the ‘voices of discarnate spirits’. Among the first recordings believed to be spirit voices were such messages as "This is G!", "Hot dog, Art!", and "Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all".  Friendly spirits then.

Von Szalay and Raymond Bayless' work was published by the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research in 1959. Bayless later went on to co-author the 1979 book, Phone Calls From the Dead.

At this point, it may be helpful to read the section on 'Electronic Voice Phenomenon' – or EVPs.  His OBEs and other psychic experiences were genuine.

Observations

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• Bayless, Raymond - A shared hallucination, Raymond and his brother both hear the voice
• Bayless, Raymond - Fortean phenomena
• Bayless, Raymond - I dreamed that I had killed an elderly lady and carried her head around in a box
• Bayless, Raymond - The apporting paintbrush
• Bayless, Raymond - The haunted house of Mrs. Bruce Ogden in Eagle Rock, California
• Bayless, Raymond - The poltergeist activity in the house of Mr. and Mrs. Grover Smith
• Bayless, Raymond - The whispering voices of the Navajo reservation near Tuba City, a shared hallucination
• Szalay, Attila - An OBE to visit his friend Raymond
• Szalay, Attila - Apporting or transporting unusual Canadian pennies
• Szalay, Attila - Began to sing, Hold That Tiger
• Szalay, Attila - I was lying in bed when I heard a series of flutelike sounds
• Szalay, Attila - Pouring perfumes out of his chest
• Szalay, Attila - Producing a splendid spontaneous display of psychical lights
• Szalay, Attila - Psychical voices
• Szalay, Attila - The ghostly arm folded back upon itself like an accordion and disappeared from view
• Szalay, Attila - Visiting his friend Raymond out of body