Backmasking – fact or fiction?

Of course, when you play ANYTHING backward, it sounds spooky! But note, when you read books or listen to tapes or CDs on the subject, they tell you WHAT to listen for before you hear it. If it's so clear what's being said, why do they have to point it out to you so you'll notice where it is and then tell you what's being said?

Probably the true test is to play the song backward for 10 people —
not just the snippet but a large portion of the song — and ask them to
tell you if they hear anything being said and what they hear being
said. Don't tell them what to expect; just ask them if they heard
anything, what they heard and where they heard it. Then compare what
each person's answers as to what he thinks was being said. As a
seasoned music listener, I think you'll discover that they have widely
varying answers. Consider this; even in songs that are sung forward,
people often differ in what they think the words are, let alone
backward songs.

Remember the end of Strawberry Fields Forever? When they had the
whole "Paul is dead" rumor thing, people said John was saying "I
buried Paul." Some people thought he was saying "I'm very bored."
Most people now seem to think he was saying "Cranberry sauce." There's a big difference between those three sentences, yet they all sound the same.

Even among backmasking "experts," opinions vary on what they hear:

The following is an excerpt from the book "Big Secrets" by William
Poundstone (William Morrow and Company, 1983), which discusses many of
the backmasking rumors and talks about backmasking in general and
about phonetics.

Also, please note his approach: "Big Secrets rented a recording
studio to test the secret-message rumors. New copies of the records in
question were transcribed on quarter-inch master tape. Where rumor
alleged that a single stereo track contained a message, right and left
stereo tracks were transcribed separately. Records with alleged
inaudible messages were treated similarly. To test claims of reversed
messages, recordings on the master tape were edited out and spliced in
backward. Twenty cuts or portions of cuts from sixteen albums were
tested."