Can't read recovered word files!!!?

I recently recovered some word files that were deleted off of my portable hard drive. The problem is that when I try to open them with word 2007, all that shows up is a bunch of gibberish. Word 2007 tells me to "select the encoding that makes your doent readable". I can select: Windows (default), MS_DOS, or Other encoding, but when I choose any of them, all I see is a bunch of characters not normally seen on a keyboard. Is there any software that can repair these files so that I can read them? Any help would be greatly appreciated.