Messages from the "Other Side" - but who are we talking to?

The past year of paranormal investigations has become a paradigm-shifter for us, but we didn't realize the Other Side would start initiating contact with us!

(This is the final article in a three-part series on "When the Other Side contacts YOU!" If you missed part one, click here. If you missed part two, click here.)

Last week, we shared a strange photo that showed up on Mark's camera after an investigation at the Twin Lakes Inn in Twin Lakes, Colo. -- but he didn't take this photo. The images intrigued us because closer examination revealed several faces, particularly animal heads. We set the anomalous photo aside and continued our analyses of the many other findings we had accumulated for our book Wild West Ghosts.

Whoever -- or whatever -- had sent us that photo wouldn't be ignored.

The next conversation?

This past spring the photo reappeared, this time showing up on Kym's camera. But that wasn't the strangest part.

To the left, you see the photo from Mark's camera. To the right, you see the version that later appeared on Kym's.

It's clearly the same composition, but the newer version is, well, even stranger, and for a number of reasons we've explored in recent months. The most obvious anomaly is that it seems to have captured the reflection of a flash. But Kym didn't take it; neither of us did. It simply showed up this way. Okaaaaay.

Set that observation aside for a moment. We'll come back to it.

Next, we showed the new version to a friend who has much more experience with "spirit photography." She played with the contrast and reversed the photo to see what she could come up with. (She doesn't use fancy photo editing software, by the way, just simple freeware designed to clean up photos minimally.)

Her tinkering revealed this image:

The large semicircle on the left side is the reverse of the semicircular iron backboard grate of the bed just above the flash. If you take a few moments to scan and inspect this close-up, you should be able to see a number of faces. Start with the profile of the bearded man's head looking to your left in the upper right corner.

Then find the face looking pretty much straight on in the very center of the picture.

Next, try to ignore the centered face and re-see the "cut off" top of his head as part of the larger figure of a woman. The tip of the man's nose is her chin, the darkened cut-off are eyes looking to the right, with her cheekbone defined on the right just below the cut-off. The man's eye becomes her mouth and his eyebrow becomes the tip of her nose. The bottom of his jaw becomes a necklace or collar, with her shoulder extending along the black space descending to the lower right in the photo.

These kinds of superimposed images are similar to the green boxer shown in the previous article that also has a cat forming the right side of the dog image (by re-seeing the dog's right eye as the cat's left eye.)

Could all of this be mere pareidolia (the mind perceiving images where none exists)? Of course, and we continue to ask ourselves that question.

But that solution isn't compelling to us because of the unexplained origins of the two original photos. Someone -- or something -- sent them to us, presumably with intent.

If another investigator had shown us these images, we'd feel dubious. No offense if we've already broken your willing suspension of disbelief. All we can do is assure you these photos are genuine, playing only with  contrast and color values to highlight what seems to be there already.

Okay, we're working our way back to the flash but with one more important observation along the way.

Look again at the flash picture earlier in this article, and this time notice the smeared lines running left from the green swatch toward the flash. Over the green swatch there appears to be a backwards capital "S" -- in fact, we think that's what it is.

To the right is a close-up of that portion of the photo, reversed and false-color-altered to enhance the "scrawl." The capped "S" might be the word "Send." And other words, or at least letters, appear above and to the left of that "S." We're open to suggestions.

We're still considering what the next step should be, and we're considering the idea of writing our own scrawl on the photo and taking a picture to see if it comes back altered again.

In any event, this latest series of photo-ITC encounters has led us to a number of tentative observations:

1. The faces and images embedded in these photos suggest a sophisticated level of optical manipulation, let alone the ability to generate and implant photos on our cameras. This ability seems consistent with the history of others' reported ITC phenomena as well as our own successes in capturing audio and video recordings.
2. Both the flash and the scrawl seem to have been generated from the perspective of the Other Side -- remember we had to reverse the image to see writing, which suggests it was written *from* the Other Side and sent directly to us.
3. We may have to rethink what constitutes the "Other Side." Or at least we may be oversimplifying what constitutes the Other Side. Perhaps paranormal encounters produce results from more than one origin. Certainly, the photos we received suggest some sort of technology beyond the means of our assumption that we're only dealing with etheric, disembodies entities (i.e., ghosts or spirits).

Clearly, we got attention of someone or something, and they decided to contact us after our initial investigations. But who or what is the source of these communications?

Many of our audio-only digital recordings as well as the ghost box EVP we captured seem contextually consistent with our intended "ghost hunt" findings. However, we also seem to have established some sort of conversation that reaches outside the paradigm we assumed we were investigating.

We invite your comments and observations. We don't have answers to explain all the evidence our journey has uncovered.

Reality is undoubtedly much more complex and fantastic than we can even imagine.

* * *

We're still having as much fun analyzing the results of our investigations over the past year as we did conducting those investigations for our book, WILD WEST GHOSTS.

There are puzzling experiences and encounters aplenty out there, and you just may want to pick up a copy of the book for either your own armchair musings or else as a guide for some of your own expeditions into the fascinating world of the paranormal.

You can pick up the book as either an e-read or a trade paperback. Visit our Website for the links.

In the meantime, happy hunting!