Audio recording of Freddie (Jonathan Reed)

Audio Excerpt 1: Reed speaking to Freddie, who screeches and throws a cup. Reed: "I won't hurt you anymore."

External audio
Audio recording of Freddie
Audio excerpts — creature throws cup, creature gets upset, communication hurts, exodus (6:22)

The audio recording of Freddie is a short sound recording that, according to Jonathan Reed, captures the vocalization made by the small non-human intelligent being he called "Freddie" as he opened the chest freezer in which he was keeping it at his home near Seattle, Washington. Reed said he made the recording on a deliberate return to the freezer some days after the Jonathan Reed forest incident near Snoqualmie Pass in October 1996, by which time the being he had believed dead had, in his account, revived; he played it on Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell on March 16, 2001. It is counted among the documentary evidence of the Reed case, alongside the Jonathan Reed home video of Freddie, the Jonathan Reed forest video, and the photographs of Freddie.

Because the recording captures sound alone, it cannot by itself establish what produced the sound; its identification as the being's voice, and the account of when and how it was made, rest entirely on Reed's testimony, and the original tape has not been made available for independent acoustic analysis. The recording belongs to a case that investigators have characterized as a fabricated hoax,[citation needed] though Reed maintained the account consistently across broadcasts between 1998 and 2013 and presented it as one strand of a larger body of photographic, video, and physical evidence.

Background

After returning home from the forest, Reed placed the being in the freezer, reasoning that a freezer would preserve what he believed to be a corpse, and described the unit as a large chest freezer in his garage — "a crypt freezer, like a coffin." He recounted: "I didn't want to bring it in the house. I didn't want to look at it."

The recording

According to Reed, some days after the forest incident the being he believed dead revived and began producing vocalizations. Reed subsequently made an audio recording by opening the freezer and capturing the resulting sound, which he described as a scream. Reed stated: "This is opening the freezer, him screaming, and closing the freezer."

On Coast to Coast AM on April 20, 2000 — one of his earliest broadcasts on the subject — Reed described the moment of the being's revival in detail: "Without thinking, I just opened the top of the freezer and to my surprise, my creature sat up and looked right at me and let out a scream that basically forced me back away from the freezer." He emphasized that the recording had been made not at that first moment of revival but on a later, deliberate return to the freezer: "This was not the time that I recorded it... later on I went back in and actually recorded the sound of him screaming when I opened the freezer."

The scream was described as physically forceful. Reed recounted that the being "sat up out of the end of the thermal blanket and screamed at me in such a way that it... forced my chest back against the wall," and, on a 2013 Dark Matter broadcast, that the sound was "so intense, it was so powerful that it felt like it was pushing against your chest, pushing you away," as though it were a defensive reaction.

Broadcast and response

The recording was played on Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell on March 16, 2001, during a lengthy interview. Bell's on-air reaction — "Oh my God, you're gonna live to a good old age. That would have done me in" — reflected his stated response to hearing the sound. Reed responded: "Well, it done me in too, the first time around. I didn't go back out there for a long time, until Gary came over. And then we didn't know what to do." Bell additionally noted that the being was alive and revived inside the freezer "where it's been for days at what? Probably near zero temperatures."

The revival is also documented in the Jonathan Reed home video of Freddie and the photographs of Freddie, both produced during the same period at Reed's home and described in his 2000 book LINK: An Extraterrestrial Odyssey, co-authored with Robert Raith. Reed also stated that he had separately recorded the scream to audio tape and that the being produced this scream on multiple occasions when the freezer was opened.

Recorded communication sessions

Audio Excerpt 2 (2:55–3:58): the being's vocalizations become increasingly agitated.

Audio Excerpt 3 (3:58–5:35): Reed describes the alleged telepathic contact — "Hurts my head," "It hurts," "Go back."

Audio Excerpt 4 ("Exodus", 5:35–6:22): Reed narrates his movements as he slowly backs away.

In addition to the freezer scream recording, a series of four audio excerpts document Reed's deliberate attempts at communication with the being after it had emerged from the freezer and begun to calm. An introductory narration on the recording states: "He took a recording device out to his garage. Opened the freezer, allowed the creature to come out, and then he made attempts to communicate to the creature, to give it water, to offer it food, and to basically try to keep it calm."

In the first excerpt, labeled "Creature Throws Cup," Reed can be heard speaking in a calm, reassuring tone: "Okay. Move. No one is going to hurt you. Anymore. I won't hurt you anymore." What Reed presented as the being's vocalizations — high-pitched chirps and screeches — are audible throughout. The being reportedly threw a cup during this session, prompting Reed to repeat "no more."

The second excerpt, "Creature Gets Upset," contains no discernible human speech — only the being's vocalizations of increasing agitation.

In the third excerpt, "Communication Hurts," Reed can be heard saying: "I don't know what this means. Hurts my head. It hurts. Go back." The being's vocalizations occur concurrently with Reed's speech, consistent with his later accounts of simultaneous vocal and telepathic communication producing physical discomfort.

The fourth excerpt, labeled "Exodus," captures Reed narrating his movements as he backs away from the being: "Okay, it's alright, I'm gonna go. Alright, I turn it off. Alright, I won't. I'm just going to walk over here."

Behavioral progression

Reed described the being's behavioral progression during the days following the first freezer scream. After the initial revival and screaming episode, its vocalizations shifted: it "at least no longer screamed" at him and "would now make little chirpy, squeaky sounds," and Reed talked to it as he would a dog or a member of his family in order to keep it calm. By around the ninth day the being had begun voluntarily exiting the freezer on its own, sitting in front of the unit and rocking back and forth in a fluid motion while making eye contact with Reed: "It actually would get out of the freezer on its own, sit in front of the freezer, kind of rock back and forth in a very fluid motion... and look at me with these big two inch oval eyes... It started to communicate through telepathy." This progression — from screaming at freezer openings to voluntary emergence and telepathic communication — frames the audio recording as capturing only the earliest phase of the being's revival, before what Reed described as a sustained relationship with the being developed.

Provenance and authenticity

Questions raised publicly about the provenance of the audio recording centered on why Reed would have had a tape recorder active when opening the freezer. The December 28, 1998 broadcast addressed this directly: a listener submitted the question "how is it that the doctor just happened to record the scream of the alien when opening the freezer — why was he carrying a tape recorder turned on when opening the freezer?" Reed's collaborator Raith answered: "That was not the first time that I had gone out to the freezer; this was much later when I made that recording." This was offered to clarify that the recording was a deliberate documentation effort made on a return visit, not an accidental capture at the moment of first revival.

The same December 1998 broadcast addressed the cameras Reed had used: asked whether he had a Nikon, Raith described the unit as "an eight millimeter straight eight, but it is made by Nikon" — which Bell noted few realized Nikon had manufactured — adding that it was "an older machine," and that the still camera was an older 35-millimeter Nikon. Reed stated that, in addition to the audio, he had photographed and videotaped the being at his home and retained the recording: "I actually took pictures of it. I took video of it, and I do have that recording."

As an audio-only artifact, the recording is inherently limited as evidence: it carries no image, so it cannot show what produced the sound, and whether the captured scream issued from a non-human source rests wholly on Reed's account of the circumstances under which it was made. A reading common among those who treat the Reed case as a fabricated hoax holds that the scream is an ordinary or manufactured sound presented within that account — the recording restating Reed's claim rather than independently testing it.[citation needed] A common reply among those who treat the case as authentic is that the sound's reported physical force, which Reed said pressed against his chest and to which Bell reacted on air, and the consistency of Reed's retelling across broadcasts from 1998 to 2013, are difficult to square with fabrication, and that the recording is one strand of a multi-format record that also includes the home video, the photographs of Freddie, and the recovered Link bracelet.

Context within the Reed evidence corpus

The audio recording occupies a distinct position within the broader Jonathan Reed evidence corpus. Unlike the Jonathan Reed forest video, which documents events at the incident site, and unlike the still photographs and Jonathan Reed home video of Freddie documenting the being's physical examination at Reed's home, the freezer scream recording captures what Reed described as a behavioral event — the being's volitional response of screaming and sitting up when the freezer door was opened — which he took to suggest a level of conscious awareness incompatible with the deep incapacitation he had believed present in the days following the incident. The scream's force and the being's postural response of sitting upright were cited by Reed as evidence of the being's ongoing vitality throughout the period of freezer storage, and raised questions about the nature of its apparent initial "death" state: whether the being had been genuinely unconscious, temporarily suspended in a state of physiological dormancy, or had been deliberately feigning incapacitation.

References

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