In 1988 when you were first diagnosed with colon cancer and began your own spiritual search, what lead you in the direction of Instrumental Transcommunication (ITC)?

With death staring me in the face, suddenly I had know what really happens to us after we die. But I couldn't take it on faith. Not that there's anything wrong with faith, but I've always needed good, solid evidence to convince me of something beyond my understanding. And afterlife was certainly beyond my understanding. So in 1991 I attended an IFNS (International Forum on New Sciences) conference in Fort Collins, CO, and ran into a fellow named George Meek, who is regarded by many to be the father of ITC research because of the Spiricom device that he and an associate named Bill O'Neil developed around 1980. O'Neil would stand in front of the Spiricom device and talk to someone across the veil the way the other people might stand in front of a speakerphone and talk to someone across town. George Meek also shared a letter and picture that his wife Jeannette had sent him after she died. The letter contained lots of details from their life together, and the picture showed the paradise world she was living in since leaving the Earth, and both had been delivered through a computer in Europe while George was at home in North Carolina. Those ITC contacts nearly knocked me out of my chair because they provided exactly the kind of evidence I needed to convince me that the afterlife is for real--assuming the contacts themselves were for real. I visited George Meek at his home and flew to Europe to visit other researchers, and what I found changed my life forever. There could be no doubt of the legitimacy of their claims, and so I was so deeply moved that I have been completely immersed and devoted to ITC research ever since.
 

ITC seems to be a very big umbrella under which many forms of spirit communication fall. What is your definition of ITC?

ITC, in its most basic definition, is the use of TVs, radios, telephones, computers, and other technical devices to get information directly from the worlds of spirit in the form of voices, images, and text. For a broader understanding of it, though, we have to take into account that fact that ITC is a marriage of technology and the human mind, and it also involves a close rapport with a spirit group, or team of invisible collaborators. We are isolating certain psychospiritual qualities that are possessed by all ITC researchers who receive exceptional contacts. Those qualities include a focused will that penetrates the veil like a lance. They also include a resonance or harmony of the thoughts, attitudes, and dispositions of all researchers working together on an ITC project, as well as of their spirit collaborators.
 

Technology has advanced so much in the last 20 years. The Internet has exploded, cell phones are everywhere, satellite radio is growing, smaller and faster computers are widely available -- with so much communication and recording equipment available to the masses, is ITC research getting easier or more difficult?

It's safe to say that with all these wonderful technologies, the potential for exceptional ITC contacts is growing immensely, but the challenge, again, is the same as it has always been: nurturing and sustaining the right psychospiritual qualities among a group of researchers over time. Once that happens, then the rich garden of technical receiving devices on Earth will "come alive" with ITC communications everywhere in the world. I have no doubt about that. Unfortunately, hormones and egos create dissonance among humans, making it hard to sustain the necessary conditions for ITC over time.
 

When did you begin using the Luminator device in conjunction with photography? Was your first attempts just experimentation or was your intent to make some kind of significant contact with the other side?

At an ISSSEEM (International Society for the Study of Subtle Energy and Energy Medicine) conference in the spring of 1999, I ran into Jack Stucki, a therapist who used a luminator in his practice. He and other users of luminators sometimes reported strange faces appearing in photographs of their clients. When I saw some of those pictures, I recognized them immediately as spirit faces, and I knew the luminator would be of tremendous value to my ITC research. So I bought one from the inventor, Patrick Richards of Michigan that fall, and since then I've collected hundreds of spirit faces on Polaroid film.
 

How does your ITC method differ from what many ghost hunters and paranormal enthusiasts refer to as spirit photography today?

It's been my experience that the spirit worlds are all superimposed over each other and over our own physical world, separated by vibration, not by distance or space. So essentially the spirit worlds are everywhere, and they range in nature from very subtle and divine worlds beyond form and structure (the realm of angels or ethereal beings), to rather dense and dark worlds (the realm of ghosts and lost souls). Between those two realms are many paradise worlds where most people go after they die to get settled into a wonderful existence free of pain and suffering.
Typically ghost hunters and paranormal enthusiasts are drawn to cemeteries, haunted houses, and other places that we humans often equate with dead people, so what they usually tap into is a dark and dense realm inhabited by troubled spirits. In my ITC research, the aim is always to get in touch with paradise and beyond--that is, the finer realms of spirit inhabited by entities who are happy and at peace, and who choose to work closely with us on serious projects to open communication channels between our world and theirs. My work requires a close rapport with a dedicated spirit group, whereas ghost hunters simply want to detect the presence of whoever's there, at least that's my perception of how it is for the most part.
 

Since you co-founded the World ITC Organization, how have you seen the study of ITC evolve?

Things have changed more slowly on this side of the veil than I had hoped or expected. I assumed that as more people became aware of ITC and spiritual reality through our spreading the word, contacts would improve very quickly. I'm finding it's a slow process to chip away at people's uncertainties, doubts, and fears about spiritual existence, and I believe that's one reason why ITC contacts are not improving as quickly as I'd like. But, then, the best things in life often take time and don't come easy.
 

Your new book, Spirit Faces, explores many of the intriguing photographs you have taken throughout the years. What can evidence like yours teach us about ghosts, spirits, and other non-physical beings?

Of the five or six books I've written or published, this is easily my favorite. My purpose with this book was to use the good, solid afterlife evidence provided by the photographs as a basis on which to share much of the vast information about spiritual reality that I've learned during the past sixteen years of ITC research--where we go when we die, what our lives are like when we go over there, what kinds of nonhuman beings exist in the spirit worlds, how the many worlds of spirit interact with our world and affect our lives, what we can do in this lifetime to be sure we wind up in a wonderful afterlife scenario, and so on. So the evidence itself--the actual photos--can help convince us that there really are spirit worlds right here with us and that the inhabitants of those world can be very close to us and influence us. The additional information in the book can give readers a very intimate understanding of spirituality in its broadest sense--everything from ghosts and spooks to angels, eastern mystics, and ascended masters.
 

Who is Spirit Faces written for?

I tried to write the book for everyone.
 

With almost two decades of research into this, do you feel we're moving into a more spiritually enlightened time?

At the moment it feels to me as though humanity has opened a sore that has been festering for centuries with cultural, political and religious incompatibilities, incorrect knowledge, economic inequities and environmental degradation. With the sore now opened by unprecedented communication and transportation technologies that force us all to look at each other and get to know each other, we're suffering a lot of pain with terrorism and political insanity, but I see us on the threshold of a very healing time. There might be some more suffering in the coming years, but once we've worked our way through it, there is a truly golden time ahead, and the foundation of that golden era will be a new spirituality based on a profound understanding of the big picture. We will forge a "fruitful, endurable relationship with the light, ethereal realms of existence," in the words of our spirit friends, so that love and wisdom of the ages can stream into our world through ITC systems and other channels.
 

What is one of the funnier communications you've seen come through with ITC?

Some of the warmest and most casual communications between people and spirits in history, I believe, happened to Maggy Harsch-Fischbach of Luxembourg and her many invisible friends and loved ones in the Timestream spirit group, and before that to Bill O'Neil during his more than twenty hours of direct dialog with our spirit friend "Doc Mueller," gathered over a period of four years of experimentation with Spiricom. Certainly the funniest conversations were between O'Neil and Mueller. On one occasion they joked about the gassy effects of eating steamed cabbage (a food that Mueller missed since passing (pardon the pun) to spirit. On another occasion Mueller tried to persuade O'Neil to call a secret government phone number where someone could verify Mueller's background during lifetime, but O'Neil was afraid he'd get in trouble or be considered crazy if he called it (which he never did, by the way). On still another occasion, this dialog ensued:

O'Neil: It's almost 4 o'clock in the morning, and last time we talked was, what, about quarter after 2. I just forget what time it is.
Mueller (spirit): There we go with that time thing again. William, you know better than that.
O'Neil: What's that, Sir?
Mueller: You know better than that. I'm not aware of time over here.
O'Neil: Well, I know, that's what you've said, Sir.
Mueller: I'm not joking, William. I'm not joking.

In that conversation and several others, there's a fair amount of humor that is inevitable when two people in very different realities have to work together on a project.

But I suppose my favorite all-time joking in an ITC contact was when the famous EVP pioneer Konstantin Raudive called AA-EVP founder Sarah Estep on the phone in 1994, twenty years after his death. When a surprised Sarah heard the voice of her deceased colleague, she exclaimed, "Dr. Raudive, how are you?" And Konstantin replied, "I'm as fine as a 'dead one' can be. Dear Sarah, thank you for all the work you've done...." And the conversation continued from that. Konstantin and our other spirit friends had been telling us often that their lives are so much richer than lives on Earth, but we on Earth often think of afterlife as a dreary subject. So he was making light of that misconception.
 

What's an example of a simple ITC practice that our readers can try for themselves?

EVP, or electronic voice phenomenon, is the precursor to ITC. It's the use of an audio recording device to get short, faint spirit voices. Most ITC researchers began with EVP experiments before moving into video, telephone, and other more advanced techniques. In the past few years EVP has undergone a major transformation. What began with bulky reel-to-reel tape recorders in the 1950s, eventually evolved into the use of cassette players, minidisk recorders, and computers to record voices. Now, suddenly, EVP researchers are seen carrying tiny digital voice recorders in their pockets and purses, so they can do experiments anywhere, anytime, and that's the recent transformation--the use of small digital voice recorders.

For a person wishing to start ITC experimenting, a voice recorder is the way to go. Very simple and efficient. There are many websites today describing effective techniques to start experimenting, including our own website, www.worlditc.org. The most important preparations are the mental and emotional ones, since we attract into our work spirits of like disposition. Most of us want to get in touch with loving, helpful spirits, so we should first get ourself into a loving, positive frame of mind. Then we should get the equipment (a voice recorder) and silently announce our intention, which is to open up communication channels with friendly, supportive spirits. This can best be done during prayerful or meditative moments in our lives when we can clear our mind and commune with the other side in a happy way. (If we're harboring any fears or insecurities, it's best not to start experimenting.)
When those psychospiritual conditions (such as a happy disposition) are right, then we simply start recording and ask a series of questions, with a short period of silence between questions. Then we play it back and listen closely for tiny voices answering our questions. Some people have luck right away, others have to be patient and keep trying. Once you start getting good voices on a regular basis, follow your inner guidance on how to move into more elaborate forms of ITC communications.

October 2006