By Luke Todd
David John Oates lectures on his Reverse Speech theory Wednesday night in the Rogue River room.

David John Oates has heard countless stories; stories full of truth, lies, and exaggerations of all kinds. But in the end, Oates knows how to get to the bottom line.

The trick? Reverse Speech.

“It’s a dialogue to your inner-self,” said the Australian-native in the Rogue River room Wednesday night.

Reverse Speech is a technique Oates discovered that follows the conscious and subconscious thinking of the mind. Oates tracks this by taping human speech and then playing them in reverse.

“In casual speech, in every 20 or 30 seconds full of gibberish you will hear an intelligent sentence,” Oates said.

This sentence, Oates believes, comes from the subconscious mind. It is supposed to illustrate what the person is really thinking about or feeling. It can also reveal if a person is lying.

Oates’s theory of Reverse Speech states that the “process of spoken communication is two-fold, forwards and backwards. As the human brain is constructing the sounds of speech, it is putting those sounds together in such a way that two messages are communicated simultaneously, one forwards from the conscious mind and the other in reverse from the unconscious mind.”

Several examples in his presentation were used to illustrate his discovery. For instance, Oates played the famous quote by Astronaut Neil Armstrong when he first landed on the moon.

“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

In playing this statement in reverse, gibberish was the only sound distinguished at first. But then, a melodic sentence sounded over the speakers.

“Man will spacewalk,” the reversal said clearly.

This is what Oates said is a mirror-image reversal, explaining that Armstrong’s subconscious mind was thinking exactly what was being said at the time.

In another and more controversial instance, Oates played a reversal he did on a sound clip from Patsy Ramsay, mother of JonBenet Ramsay, who was talking with a reporter.

“I don’t know anyone who could be this vicious,” Ramsay said in the clip, referring to the murder of her daughter.

Oates’s reversal of the sound clip melodically said, “I’m the only one.”

Several other reversals have been performed on famous and infamous public figure heads including George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Paris Hilton, Angelina Jolie, Osama bin Laden, as well as several military officials on the subject of Roswell.

His passion for hidden messages in the unconscious mind came to him 24 years ago while running a halfway house for rural street children in Australia. He had heard about a rumor of the devil talking if musical records were played backwards. After going home and investigating this claim, Oates said he instantly heard audible sentences among gibberish while the record played backwards.

Upon inspecting his entire music collection, Oates said that he found intelligible sentences in nearly 50 percent of them, all of which had nothing to do with the devil.

“I actually found most statements to be about love, politics and the like,” said Oates.

From then on, he began to explore regular human speech and has since found reversal sentences in nearly all sound clips he has come across.

In addition to reversing speech to find the true meaning of words, Oates has performed his discovery on several clients who have problems in their lives that need to be resolved.

Oates said that he met with a woman once who was depressed. In that meeting he recorded the conversation and played reversals until he came across one audible sentence, “Need more sunlight.”

He reported that the woman took down her curtains, cut the trees surrounding her house, and within a couple of weeks, her mood had significantly improved.

“What we are tapping into is the totality of who we are,” Oates said. “Whether we follow that advice or not depends on how well we know ourselves.”

Oates said that Reverse Speech, when used in the psychological context, tells him what to say to his clients. He feels that the answer to their problems lies within themselves.

Although the practice of Reverse Speech has not been a widely accepted tool of use in the areas of psychology, politics and law enforcement, Oates his hopeful to spread the word of Reverse Speech around the U.S.

“Reverse Speech is not given much credibility at this stage,” Oates said. “It’s a very tough skill to pick up, and that puts many people off. You have to be very dedicated.”

Oates said that to examine one sound clip can take anywhere from two to four hours.

“I thought it was valid and very useful in many areas,” said Jan Elliott, a member of the audience and a clinical social worker. “I have a client in mind that I would like to use it [Reverse Speech] on.”

In the end, Oates hopes that his discovery will pick up more notoriety and become accepted by mainstream society.

“Its ultimate goal is to lead society to truth.”

For more information on Reverse Speech, go online at www.reversespeech.com.