Photographing Entities, Aliens and Spirits from the Netherworld

By Sean Casteel

Tim Beckley has often said that he feels that what takes place inside a séance room or a haunted house is pretty much parallel to that which you can find manifesting at a UFO landing site.

“In both places,” Beckley said, “you can find the levitation of objects as well as the percipient   witnesses suddenly finding themselves lifting up and floating off the ground. There have also been numerous cases of people and objects passing through walls and other seemingly ‘solid structures,’ such as the outer hull of a UFO. When photographs are taken, eerie forms often appear on the film from ‘out of nowhere,’ forms that could be Ultra-terrestrials or spirit messengers.”

To Beckley’s way of thinking, the Scole Experiments may offer the best proof that “space beings” and spirit beings are closely aligned and have been able to show themselves under tight, rigidly controlled circumstances. 

The famous Scole Experiments were a series of séances that took place in England and ran from   1993 to 1998. The experiments were conducted in the village of Scole, in the region of Norfolk, in the basement of a farmhouse that came to be called the “Scole Hole.” The experiments received so much excited buzz that the prestigious Society for Psychical Research asked to observe, test and record what took place.

TECHNOLOGY MEETS THE SPIRITS

In a 2005 article, Jeff Wells called the Scole experiments “a five-year exercise in contact with discarnate entities that saw psi phenomena under exceptionally controlled circumstances. The phenomena recorded in the Scole sittings was unusually rich and obtained under protocols anticipating the objections of skeptics. There was channeling, of course, as well as spirit voices, noises, dancing lights, levitations and physical manifestations of alleged spirits. Also, ‘apports,’ – the inexplicable materialization of dozens of objects onto the session table, including an original pristine copy of ‘The Daily Mail’ from January 4, 1944, and a tiny gold disc with hieroglyphics, ‘the source of which has not been identified.’ And remarkable captures on audio tape, photographic film and video.”

Wells provides more detail on the equipment used by the experimenters.

“Photographic experiments,” he writes, “included independent investigators initialing and placing unopened and unexposed film in a sealed tub, sitting with the tub at a session and then overseeing the film’s development. Results included the imprinting of poetry, esoteric symbols and diagrammatic instructions to improve the transmissions.

“The video experiments began in May, 1997,” Wells continues, “and were dubbed ‘Project Alice’ because they involved an arrangement of mirrors before a camera to capture moving images sent from the spirit world. Mirrors have long been used as an aid to receiving visions from other realms. John Dee’s obsidian mirror, used by his scryer, Edward Kelley, in his Enochian work [intended to communicate with angels] is on display in the British Museum.”

[Check out the Inner Light/Global Communications book “Angel Spells: The Enochian Occult Workbook of Charms, Seals, Talismans and Ciphers,” by various authors, including myself.]

Wells writes more of the camera experiments.

“For most of the experiments,” he explains, “the camera sat on its tripod in the dark, positioned before two mirrors. At the end of the sessions, the team often saw that the camera had repeatedly and impossibly zoomed in and out on its own accord. And the tapes contained weird scenes, smiling faces, vibrant colors and hints of body parts moving across the screen in a red light. One tape showed a pink and gold line running horizontally across the screen which pivoted to reveal it was a square set on edge. As it rotated, it was seen to contain an image. According to the Scole team, ‘This was a very clear view of an animated interdimensional friend, whose features, to say the least, were not exactly as our own.’ They called their new friend ‘Blue.’ His screen capture is the classic ‘gray alien.’”

MANU’S ASSESSMENT OF THE SITUATION

At this point in his article, Wells discusses an entity named “Manu,” described as “a powerful and extremely spiritual guide,” who had allegedly first spoken in the context of CIA-sponsored mediumistic contact experiments that began in 1952 and who also spoke to the Scole group. Manu warns of the coming of “a great awakening in many ways.”

“What we do here is part of that plan,” Manu declares. “There are cosmic, pulsating images coming to Earth all the time. Everything is evolving; nothing stays still. At this time in his evolution, man is ready for these energies to come upon him and give him what he is thirsting for. So we shall give him the refreshing rain of knowledge, that he may drink from these waters and that he may know of his own spiritual self.

“First, we must reach out to man’s higher aspect,” the spirit continues, “and then filter down to his everyday life and the choices he makes. Only that way will change come about. As you think of the people of this Earth, and the very Earth itself, so you help to activate these ancient vibrations that are coming forward at this moment. The age is right for this to happen.”

According to Wells, the Scole experiments assumed that the entities with which they made contact were spirits of the dead who were curious themselves to make contact and formed a complementary team on the other side. The experimenters trusted the spirits to be who they claimed to be because of the benign nature of the contact and the fact that some channeled voices would transmit messages from loved ones containing information only the contactee could possibly know.

THE SPR REPORTS ON THE APPARENT MIRACLES

On the website of the Society for Psychical Research is more about the Scole Experiment, including some further fascinating details on the apparent “miracles” that transpired.

“There were temperature changes and breezes,” writes SPR author Tom Ruffles. “Intelligent-seeming lights flashed around the room, bouncing on and seeming to go through the table, touching sitters on request and even seeming to enter them. There were patches of light forming human faces, a disembodied hand and other materializations. There were levitations of objects. Amazing images were recorded on 35 mm film: faces, glyphs, diagrams, verses, texts in various languages. Some 80 apports were received. The best had to be a postcard with the caption, ‘If living, please write. If dead, don’t bother.’ Which indicates a sense of humor on someone’s part.”

Ruffles goes on in his cataloging of the exciting test results.

“In addition to the spectacular light shows and images,” he writes, “there were thousands of hours of spirit communication. The personalities coming through were consistent, sometimes answering questions before they had even been asked. Tapes in a recorder with the microphone removed still captured voices, and there were other voices which emanated from different parts of the room, referred to as an ‘extended voice.’ The culmination of the work was ‘Project Alice,’ an experiment using a video camera and mirrors angled so that it recorded its own viewfinder. The setup produced amazing images, including faces and colors, otherworldly scenes, and what seemed to be some kind of ‘interdimensional doorway,’ none of which could be explained by it being simple feedback or the camera’s own output.”

A NATIVE-AMERICAN DANCES FOR SOME SCIENTISTS

An interesting factor that argues for the authenticity of the Scole results is that many outsiders were invited to sit in on some of the sessions. In addition to the sittings in Norfolk, the group went overseas, to the Continent, Ireland and the United States. The implication is that the larger the number of sitters, the harder it would have been for fraud to occur.

As part of their reaching out to other parts of the world, the Scole team traveled to California and conducted nine separate sessions there. At one session, scientists from NASA and Stanford University were asked to attend and invited to search the room, a basement gymnasium, before the session began.

A Native American materialized during the session, dancing and chanting, and drums which were mounted high on the wall began to beat. Then familiar spirits appeared, calling some of the visiting scientists by name even though their identities were unknown by the Scole team. The spirits explained to the group that the area was an ancient sacred site and the peoples who had lived there long ago were influencing the session. Interestingly, some of the astrophysicists later started a group of their own.

THE TRULY MAGIC CRYSTAL

Back in England, one event, described as something “inexplicable by the normal laws of science,” involved SPR member Arthur Ellison. A crystal, illuminated internally by the “spirit team” on the other side, levitated and settled in a Pyrex bowl. Ellison was invited to pick it up, which he did. He was then asked to try again and found that his fingers went through it. When asked for the third time, he was once more able to pick it up.

Robin Foy, one of the primary members of the original Scole team, explained that this was a metaphor for our lives, the earthly body giving way to the incorporeal, only our essence remaining when the physical is removed. Ellison was close to the bowl with his head over it to prevent a hand or mechanical device reaching in.

“It is at such points,” writes Ruffles, “that these possible scenarios for fraud are stretched to their utmost.”

Arthur Ellison died in 2000, two years after the Scole Experiments were concluded, so perhaps his experience with the crystal was a “metaphor” directed at him in particular?     

VIOLATING LAWS OF TIME AND SPACE

Ruffles writes that the explanation for the cessation of the sittings “will play havoc with anyone’s boggle threshold.”

“This involved entities from the future,” he explains, “who were attracted to the energies being generated at Scole. Those energies were creating an ‘interdimensional time wave pattern’ which violated the ‘cosmic and interdimensional laws relating to time and space,’ thereby severing contact with the spirit team. Naturally, this brought the experiment to an abrupt end, on November 6, 1998.”

It sounds a little like the spirits on the other side were “busted” for breaking a spiritual law regarding time paradoxes, an idea that is complicated enough when viewed from this side of the veil but surely even more complex when one thinks of how such things are seen by whomever governs the spiritual realm. The careful “stepping around” of time paradoxes may also be a factor in UFO sightings and alien abduction since anomalies regarding time are often reported in those contexts as well.

In its report on its five-year project, the Scole group commented that, “Our understanding of what Manu [the ancient spirit mentioned earlier] told us is that humanity has, consciously or unconsciously, been sending out a signal asking for help for our world for some time and that many loving beings have heard our plea. They are now coming in response to our request to aid us in any way they possibly can. It seems that many dimensions are bound together with the common thread of love. This love transcends all other things. What a truly wonderful notion that is.”

WHITLEY STRIEBER COMMENTS ON THE SCOLE EXPERIMENTS

When I interviewed alien abductee and bestselling author Whitley Strieber in 2012, I asked him about the Scole Experiments and the image capture of an entity identical to the gray aliens so often seen in ET encounters.

“The image that was seen in the Scole Experiments was very interesting to me,” Strieber replied, “because I think that whatever is here has come into contact with that level of human being first, that they are already well-involved with what we call the dead and are just now beginning to penetrate deeper into the body of the species, into the more dense areas, which is where we are, the living. The more dense physical area.

“And I’m not so sure,” he continued, “that they have the ability to completely express themselves in the physical realm. I suspect that part of their interest in us might be that we have these two very distinct levels of being. We’re like the caterpillars and the dead are the butterflies. But I wouldn’t say, for example, that the dead are a supernatural element at all. I think they’re part of the physical world, but a part of it that we don’t understand or know how to address yet. So I found that picture [the gray alien image capture] very interesting and very supportive of what our findings are.” 

STRIEBER’S VISITATIONS FROM THE DEAD

I also asked Strieber about the appearance of deceased friends and family sometimes reported by close encounter experiencers.

“I have been thinking a lot about that,” he answered, “because there can be no question that this is true. It has appeared in so many of the letters that we’ve received, in my own life, and in experiences that groups of people have had in our cabin in upstate New York. So it is true. When I had my first close encounter, there was a man there who I knew. And I was astonished to find a few weeks after my experience, the December of 1985 experience, that he’d been dead since the previous March. The reason I initially thought that I was the victim of some kind of criminal activity, being assaulted and drugged and so forth, was that he was there. He had been a Central Intelligence Agency agent and I was just suspicious that something was up. I didn’t know quite what it would be, but I was very suspicious. Then I was amazed to find out that he was dead. I’ve even seen his grave. He’s certainly dead.

“We used to have people in groups up to our cabin,” Strieber went on, “and we found that they often would see the dead in the context of the Visitors [Strieber’s name for the aliens]. Two people sleeping in the bed in the basement woke up to find a dead friend standing at the foot of the bed. In the letters we’ve received, it’s absolutely commonplace. So I’ve discarded the idea that this is ‘scientists from another planet’ coming here to study us. It’s something else. I think that what it represents in part – and it’s very complicated – is mankind’s next step, our movement to another level of being in which what we call the dead will not be so mysterious. They will be part of life in a certain way. I think that the Visitors bring with them – and understand, I don’t say that I think they’re not aliens. I don’t know what they are. But they bring with them a dropping of the veil between the living and the dead.”

I reminded Strieber at that point that he had once said something about the dead coming to dwell among us, the living.

“Well, I don’t know why they wouldn’t be,” he said. “I have had in my experience a relationship with someone I regarded – and who identified himself – as dead. The relationship lasted for three years. He had a limited ability to manifest a physical presence. When he was physical, he was very small and very light, but definitely human-feeling and looking. The very last time that I would ever see him, at that cabin in upstate New York, he manifested as a glowing light and it was absolutely awesome. He indicated to me during the course of our relationship that he was from ‘between the lives,’ that he would eventually one day be in the physical again.

“Interestingly enough,” Strieber said, “his primary concern, when he first showed up in my life, was the degree of my loyalty to my wife. And that was tested. The other thing that happened first, before he proceeded, was a ‘life review’ where he went through my life with me and did it in my mind in pictures. Incident after incident after incident of my life, looking for where my conscience resided. Once I seemed to have passed these tests, then the relationship grew.”

Even those with only a cursory knowledge of Near-Death-Experiences will recognize the familiar “life review” phase that often takes place after the soul has been ushered into the presence of the great and loving light. Strieber’s remarks in the interview also touch on spiritualism as he describes befriending an only partially physically-manifested soul who told him he was “between the lives,” which seems to mean Strieber’s friend was awaiting reincarnation and beginning life anew. The occupants of the UFOs and the residents of the spirit world manifest themselves in so many ways and in so many lives but rarely do so as clearly as in the life of Whitley Strieber.

SUGGESTED READING

“The Scole Experiment” by Grant and Jane Solomon

“Solving The Communion Enigma,” by Whitley Strieber

FOR VIEWING ON YOUTUBE OR ON DVD BY UFOTV:

“The After Life Investigations”