Backward masking

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For those living in an alternative reality, Conservapedia has an "article" about Backmasking

Backward masking was a scare promoted by a number of Christian evangelists, most notably Jacob Aranza during the early 1980s. Allegedly, several rock songs had messages that could be heard if the record was played backwards, glorifying Satan, drug abuse, or the occult. It was part of the Satanic Panic.

The backward masking scare alleged that a large number of songs contained backwards messages, and that most of them promoted Devil-worship. These songs did not, in fact, contain any deliberately placed backward vocals at all. When played backward the result was gibberish that could be interpreted as a backward message by somebody letting their imagination run away with them. Among the songs alleged to contain such messages:

"Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin. Allegedly contained long passages of Satanic stream of consciousness drivel if played backwards along the lines of "happy is the man who makes me sad whose power is Satan"
"A Child Is Coming" by Paul Kantner and Jefferson Starship. Allegedly, "Son of Satan" repeated over and over when played backwards.
"Another One Bites the Dust" by Queen. Allegedly, "Start to smoke marijuana" (or "It's fun to smoke marijuana") when played backwards.
"When Electricity Came To Arkansas" by Black Oak Arkansas. Allegedly, "Satan Satan Satan, He is God, He is God, He is God" when played backwards.
and so on

William Poundstone's 1983 book Big Secrets investigated these and many other alleged backward messages and found them nothing but unintentional gibberish. [1]

Backward masking even got a day in court when the band Judas Priest was sued in 1990 over their 1978 song "Better By You, Better Than Me". The song allegedly contained a subliminally recorded "do it!" The lawsuit alleged that the subliminal message in the song led two Nevada teens to enter into a suicide pact. The court dismissed the lawsuit. Interestingly, the song is actually a cover, and the original was by a band named 'Spooky Tooth'.

So many Black Oak Arkansas songs were accused of having Satanic backward messages that the scare is probably responsible for most of the post-"Jim Dandy" album sales of that obscure one hit wonder.

[edit] Real backward "masking"

Even though much of the panic was over non-existent or unintentional maskings, there have been real instances of artists deliberately placing backward vocals and sounds in their recordings. Early examples include the Beatles, Frank Zappa, and the band Bloodrock, who placed such a message in "Gotta Find A Way" on their 1969 debut album. These messages were either humorous or done for artistic effect, and not "Satanic" in nature at all. The Beatles, for example, recorded several songs with various tracks, including vocals, running backwards. They tend not to contain Satanic lyrics, however. Usually they are repeats of things already sung forwards.

On the triple-disc^[1] set "Sandinista!", by the Clash, the master backing track of Something About England is also used for Mensforth Hill - but played backwards.

Prince put a deliberate Christian message backwards in "Darling Nikki", the controversial song about masturbation which set off the censorship campaign in the late 1980s that led to "Parental Advisory" labelling of music: "Hello, how are you? I'm fine, because I know that the Lord is coming soon."

Released in 1966, the 45rpm record for "Yellow Balloon" by the band of the same name has the forwards version on side 1, and the same song played backwards in its entirety (called "Noollab Wolley") on side 2.

"Weird Al" Yankovic has included backmasked segments at least thrice:

"Nature Trail to Hell" includes the words "Satan eats Cheez Whiz".
"I Remember Larry" includes the words "Wow, you must have an awful lot of free time on your hands."
The six-second 'song' "Bite Me", a hidden track on the Off The Deep End album, is a reversed sample from another song.

[edit] Forward masking

In the Cheap Trick song How Are You? from the album Heaven Tonight, after a lyric that says roughly "What you said, I know you're lying", there is a speeded-up bit of vocal tracking that, when slowed down, is revealed to be a recital of the "Lord's Prayer". Pretty damning, no excuses there.

At the end of the Beatles song Strawberry Fields Forever there is a slowed down sample of John Lennon allegedly saying, forward, "I buried Paul," but he's really just saying "cranberry sauce".