In early 2002 I planned a series of ITC presentations through the Midwest in mid October, at Lincoln NE, Chicago IL, Canton OH, and Rye NY. I happened to know individuals in those cities who were connected to large circles of spiritually minded individuals—Scott Colborne in Lincoln, Laurie Pentell in Chicago, Ted Hanley in Canton, and Kim Blaker in Rye, so we all began to make plans.

I wanted to bring the luminator along, and I figured a car would be the best mode of transportation. I decided against airplanes for a couple of reasons. For one thing, in February 2001, I had taken the luminator along on a flight to New York, and one of the internal fans was broken by rough baggage handling despite the well-padded box in which I'd packed it. Also, since the 9/11 attack, air travel has become more difficult because of heightened security measures. If suspicious guards demanded an explanation of the luminator and its purpose, I'd either have to lie ("It's a speaker.") or give them a description that would start their eyes rolling. So I rented a car.

Crossing the Mississippi was a little like crossing into heaven. We're told that the colors we experience in the next world are beyond what we can even imagine seeing through our physical eyes. Likewise, the autumn foliage along the highways, especially through Pennsylvania, was breath-taking—glowing hues of translucent orange and flaming reds that we rarely see in Colorado.

In Lincoln we held the seminar in Scott's metaphysical bookstore, "The Way Home," which had bright, overhead, full-spectrum, fluorescent lighting. There were 63 participants. I took dozens of pictures for my files, and dozens more for the folks to take home with them, having the individuals pose in front of a display case filled with crystals and jewelry, with colorful papers on the wall. Nearly all the pictures came out with anomalies, looking much like these two pictures of Beth and Donna.

One woman noticed a large face showing up in most of the pictures directly to the left of the person in the picture. It seems to be formed largely by the items on the wall in the background, so I shrugged it off as coincidence…but who really knows for sure? The more I learn about the mysteries and miracles of spirit, such as spirit faces emerging from human faces in the luminator images, the less inclined I am to reject perceptions outright.

In any case, many people had spirit faces clearly superimposed. Here are close-ups of Beth and Donna. In each of them you can see a rather clear spirit face down and to the right of the woman's face.

In Chicago, Laurie arranged for the seminar to be held in a meeting room located in the rear of a popular metaphysical store. The room was somewhat isolated and quiet, with dim lighting. For the picture-taking session after my audiovisual presentation, I inserted a screw-in fluorescent bulb into a light fixture on the right of the person, along with three incandescent bulbs in another fixture on the left. The four bulbs provided just enough lighting for the Polaroid pictures. (Bear in mind that for all of these pictures we take in the presence of the luminator, the flash unit on the camera has been completely taped over with black tape, except for a hole about the size of a sesame seed which allows a tiny flash of light to escape.) The Chicago pictures yielded very few anomalies, compared to other sessions elsewhere. I think it had to do with the lighting. The luminator's inventor, Patrick Richards, said he has best results under fairly strong fluorescent lighting. At times I have had good results in incandescent lighting also, so there is still work to do in determining optimal lighting for these images. The two pictures below were among those taken in Chicago.

Peg, an attractive Irish-American woman with red hair, was the only person to get a clear spirit face in the first round of pictures that evening (those are the pictures I keep for my files). In this picture, her face is completely replaced by the rather plain-looking face of a spirit, possibly a male. Unfortunately I did not take a clear picture of Peg that evening for comparison, but the face in the picture is clearly not hers. Someone took a picture of me that night, and it was representative of nearly all pictures taken that night: No anomalies.

The Canton event was sponsored by the local chapter of Spiritual Frontiers Fellowship. Ted Hanley and his friends rented a partial ballroom at a Holiday Inn where there was ample lighting, both fluorescent and incandescent, each controlled by a set of switches. For the picture session, I turned down the incandescent lights and had the individuals pose in front of a blank wall directly under a bank of fluorescent lights. These two pictures are representative of the evening's results.

Cal and several other people that evening had the actual light fixture on the ceiling somehow manifest on the Polaroid print, indicating that something very odd occurs with the available light in the presence of the luminator. I have seen this anomaly occur many times; banks of bright fluorescent lights positioned on the ceiling above the subject—far out of the range of the camera shot—some how show up as a ghost image on the photo. Many people in Canton also had clear spirit faces superimposed over their faces, as in the close-up of Alex.

 The Rye presentation was like a homecoming. About a year earlier, in February 2001 I had presented there with some fabulous results during the photo session, and several people returned a year later to rekindle ties and see the latest developments in ITC. There were also many new faces. Our presentation was in the same cozy room of the Wainwright House as in 2001. It overlooked Long Island Sound and had incandescent lighting pleasing to the eyes. I replaced one of the bulbs in a wall fixture with a screw-in fluorescent bulb, and each person posed next to that fixture. Before sharing two pictures from the 2002 event at Rye, I'll first show three pictures received there the previous year:

As reported elsewhere on this website, Connie's son had died recently in an accident and appeared with his mother in one picture. Two pictures of Tina were withheld from publication until now, by Tina's request. Tina's husband had died recently of a prolonged illness and was frequently by her side in spirit. She could feel his presence and often heard him laughing quietly in her mind.

In fact, Tina told me that she had been reluctant to come to my presentation in February 2001 because there was a blizzard outside, but her husband had insisted, through telepathic urgings, that she come. I had taken two pictures of Tina at that session, and in one of them her husband showed up with some clarity. She showed me a lifetime picture of her husband, and the resemblance is uncanny. She told me recently that she would sometime send me a copy of the lifetime picture of her husband, which I can publish beside the picture above for comparison. If I receive that picture, it will be included in this article.

Connie and Tina were both present again at the October 2002 session, and although they did not get good spirit pictures that evening, others did, including Gale and Joyce, below. To the left of the women you can see the glare of the fluorescent bulb, and on the wall in the background of each picture are the incandescent bulbs in wall fixtures.

Both women have fairly clear spirit faces superimposed, somewhat down to the right of their own faces.

The results of this trip through the Midwest seem to suggest that fluorescent lighting does indeed help in getting spirit faces on Polaroid film in the presence of the luminator. I plan to start using fluorescence more prominently in the experiments, and we'll see if the results improve as well.

California 2002.

In November 2002 I got some good results during a road trip to California with the luminator. The New Science Ancient Wisdom conference was held Nov 9 in the International Center ballroom in Berkeley. The main lighting came from large halogen light fixtures on the ceiling. Incandescent lighting was shining from a few chandeliers and from wall fixtures around the perimeter of the room. I replaced two incandescent bulbs from the wall fixture near the luminator, with two screw-in fluorescent bulbs. The two pictures of Linda show typical results of the lighting that day. For the first picture of the morning (left), Linda posed near the luminator, and the curtains of a large window were open, allowing sunlight to stream in on her. There are no anomalies at all in that picture, probably because of the bright sunlight. Also in that picture you can see the incandescent lights of the wall fixture (left) and the chandelier (top). Once I closed the curtains, the phenomena began to manifest. In the second picture of Linda you can see the light from the chandelier "bleeding" down toward her.