I have always been fascinated by the paranormal. Witnessing a number of otherworldly events over the years has led me to accept that unseen phenomena are an integral part of our everyday lives. It matters not whether we are consciously aware of them or choose to disbelieve. They are as real as we are.
A desire to photograph such experiences, as a way of confirming what I have seen and sensed, has remained with me since commencing a career in photography in 1971. Although I have never pursued unusual phenomena, I have been fortunate to have unintentionally captured unexplained occurrences. Such an event happened to me two years ago.
One Thursday afternoon on the day of Halloween, which is also the beginning of the Druidic festival Samhain, I drove to the top of Dakota Ridge with my friend John Conway. He is a medium and shamanic practitioner who created regalia of a bird because of a dream he had 27 years ago. Elders had come to John and told him to build a bird. He calls this bird White Raven. Once a month from Spring to Fall John dances in solitude on the side of the mountain with support from his Elder/Friend Xwectaal Dennis Joseph of the Squamish Nation. John dances and goes into a trance-like state for about ten to fifteen minutes while wearing the regalia.
Using a slow shutter speed, while shooting at 10 FPS to capture the motion of the dance, I closely followed John while tuning in to the amazing energy in the air. The dance was mesmerizing. I watched the spectacle unfolding before me as he spun this way and that, flapping the feathered cape. John was in a world of his own that I believed I was only watching and doing my best to capture. Gradually he came to a stop and dropped to the ground, wrapping the cape around him.
Although happy with the results on the camera, it was not until I opened the images in Lightroom and tinkered with various settings while processing that I saw white lines across the sky in every photograph. There were always one or two lines in the same position, only seen when contrasted with the blue sky. An extreme wide-angle lens may have captured even more lines. These white lines were not physically visible in a normal sense. At first, I thought they might be an anomaly, but then I saw one image where it appears White Raven’s feathered hand is wrapped over the top of one of the lines. Notice how the white line threads its way through the feathers of the regalia. That should not be physically possible.
I was told by Ross Andaloro, who is a crystal energy healer, that these were lines of energy not normally visible to the naked eye. The Hawaiian Kahunas (or shamans) call them aka lines or “lines of the world.” Some who claim to be able to “see” energy refer to it as the Divine Matrix that links everything together on this planet. The movie series The Matrix is loosely based on this concept. The Celts believed that the barriers between the physical and spirit worlds break down during Samhain, allowing interaction between us humans and those in spirit. Something magical transpired on that Halloween day.
I have not been able to replicate the lines. I have tried without success on two other occasions using the same camera and Lightroom settings. On that one instance, with no expectation, I slipped into a space where the energy matrix became visible for my camera to capture. It is not a Photoshop trick, although I admit to removing tree stumps from the image because of clearcutting on the side of the mountain where John danced.
These photographs were a confirmation of the existence of an unseen world that is hidden within the everyday dramas of ordinary life. They are a reminder there is magic in the air if we are willing to open our eyes.
