Stella Lansing

[not even wrong]

I just came across her story and thought it was pretty interesting. Has anyone else heard of Stella Lansing and her pictures? Youtube has the Sightings clip of her story:

I thought the "Occupants" 8mm picture and the subsequent audio was pretty odd, especially since there was no audio track on the 8mm movie. Check it out around the 2min mark along with the audio around the 3 min mark. I am not enough of a video expert to know how this could be faked, although the picture to me looks like a TV image. A google search showed that something happened almost every time she took a video or picture. Anyway, I had not come across this story before so thought I would share. I did search and didn't see a previous post about her.

 

[not even wrong]

I found a pretty good article on this as well. Looks like it is from 1967. It is on the front page of a google search if it doesn't pull up for you.

http://www.ignaciodarnaude.com/cont...ng Contacts 1967,Mass.,Schwarz,FSR72V18N1.pdf

 

[Stagger Lee]

Strange case. Don't know what to think of the images. Obvious there are 3 figures(persons) in the image. She claims to have had other non-ufo experiences. I couldn't help but to think of the "ghost receipts" -where images of a person(s) appeared to print out on store purchase receipts. If not hoax, truly creepy stuff.

 

[technomage]

I just came across her story and thought it was pretty interesting. Has anyone else heard of Stella Lansing and her pictures? Youtube has the Sightings clip of her story:

I thought the "Occupants" 8mm picture and the subsequent audio was pretty odd, especially since there was no audio track on the 8mm movie. Check it out around the 2min mark along with the audio around the 3 min mark. I am not enough of a video expert to know how this could be faked, although the picture to me looks like a TV image. A google search showed that something happened almost every time she took a video or picture. Anyway, I had not come across this story before so thought I would share. I did search and didn't see a previous post about her.

Thanks for posting this. Very interesting and definitely creepy.

 

[Burnt State]

I feel like we've talked about her before on the forum but I can see no reference to her anywhere. Some of this content, the clock image and the occupants, do suggest double exposure work where images have been recorded in the dark with occasional bursts of other images such as faces projected (they look like a projection) and the clock lines look like animator direct to surface work, though as stated, working with 8mm to animate on the film is near impossible. Even work with 16mm is extremely difficult from many past experiences, but the fact the streaks overlap frames suggest that some mechanical agent was consistently used right on the film or as part of the process. I would be very hard pressed to recreate that direct to film and be frame consistent. But, if I double exposed it and the clock is a previously created image, and then the film is shooting that, then followed by shooting regular daytime work that effect could be achieved. Animating on 16 and projecting that into a light box and then reorient that with a super 8 could preserve only the clock elements which would overlap day time work.

We never hear what kind of film is being used. Her nightime shooting suggests she's a major experimenter. There is not only a super 8 sound film but I have a super 8 projector that allows you to record magnetic sound onto developed film that is many decades old so I'm not too sure about the interview experts. You can also create sound directly on the surface of a film the way Norman McLaren did though her sounds do sound recorded. She seems like an avid film buff and if you've got a cinematic addiction, your own developing tanks and time to experiment there is a lot you can achieve. Are her straight films available to see without all that tv documentary stuff? Some of the images seen here are downright perplexing and without seeing her straight films it's very hard to accurately comment about how they could have been made. In isolation with still frames they look incredible.

 

[not even wrong]

In reading the article it sounds like others who went with her experience strange things as well. That pdf article outlines one guy's experience and it is pretty interesting. It almost sounds like she is responsible for manifesting these things and others can see them. As for the pictures, I forgot if it was In Search Of or another show but I remember that guy who used to take pictures and things would show up. He always used that "viewing tube" in his hand and it was pretty obvious what he was doing. However he seemed to fool a lot of people.

 

[technomage]

She seemed legitimate to me, but I'm not an expert in these things.

 

[truthseeker]

Wow, that's pretty interesting.

 

[Christopher O'Brien]

Anyone remember Ted Serios?

 

[technomage]

Anyone remember Ted Serios?

Chris, is Ted Serios or Stella Lansing legitimate or are they hoaxes?

 

[Burnt State]

Ted Serios' ability to drink alcohol was only equalled by his slight of hand expertise. How he managed to do both simultaneously is the real mystery. What's fascinating here, like with Stella, they both had professionals who wanted to believe and consciously or unconsciously helped to magnify the myth and create a sensation around a fraud. This is a repeating pattern in paranormality and some UFO related tales. Beware the self-proclaimed prophet and their supporters with equal vigour.

Stella's clock sequences are the real giveaway as they look identical to animators who scratch on film.

 

[technomage]

Ted Serios' ability to drink alcohol was only equalled by his slight of hand expertise. How he managed to do both simultaneously is the real mystery. What's fascinating here, like with Stella, they both had professionals who wanted to believe and consciously or unconsciously helped to magnify the myth and create a sensation around a fraud. This is a repeating pattern in paranormality and some UFO related tales. Beware the self-proclaimed prophet and their supporters with equal vigour.

Stella's clock sequences are the real giveaway as they look identical to animators who scratch on film.

I am disappointed to hear that. I thought she was legitimate.

 

[technomage]

Let me add: Is there anyone in this realm that you feel is legitimate?

 

[Christopher O'Brien]

Haven't had any personal experience investigating claims of this sort.... If Robert Van de Broker is any indication... It would take a hellofalot to convince me... I mentioned Segos because he did have several high-profile supporters.

 

[Constance]

Rather than dismissing this case outright as a hoax accomplished by mechanical trickery, it might be useful to compare it with EVP and anomalous visual phenomena such as the images produced on unexposed film during the Schole experiments. It seems to me that some paranormal theories and speculations currently being applied to ufo-related phenomena would benefit by familiarity with a range of anomalous phenomena already investigated by the SPR over many decades.

 

[Burnt State]

Rather than dismissing this case outright as a hoax accomplished by mechanical trickery, it might be useful to compare it with EVP and anomalous visual phenomena such as the images produced on unexposed film during the Schole experiments. It seems to me that some paranormal theories and speculations currently being applied to ufo-related phenomena would benefit by familiarity with a range of anomalous phenomena already investigated by the SPR over many decades.

So you're suggesting instead of looking for obvious potential mechanical reasons for why and how these images are made we should look at other questionable photography such as the Scole Experiment which looks pretty much like Victorian psychic mediumship fakery on the highest order? They impose conditions, and create magic shows instead of any real contact with the dead. I started looking through their photography and was immediately stopped by the second link of photos of psychic photography. As soon as someone imposes a condition of magic i.e. taking pictures in the dark, you have to start getting suspicious about why, except to give the appearance of a more elaborate event taking place. I recognized something about the second photo sequence of Polaroids on their website right away:

In art chool, first year university profs liked to impress folks by playing with materials in processes through experimentation and unconventional processes. A favourite game was to take Polaroids into darkened rooms and burst the ink packets in the bottom of the Polaroid and then push them manually into the photo frame area. You could create elaborate rolling systems to squeeze the ink and then expose the photo frame to different tiny low level light sources, and then squeeze some more etc. much like the top row of photos above, you coud make some wicked textured images.

These images look like they have successfully mastered Van Den Broeke, Serios & Lansing techniques. Anyone who can repeatedly generate the rarest of the rare images usually has a technique to do so which has more to do with mechanical magic than psychic thoughtographs. Serios was championed for a long time, but he also imposed the conditions of his tiny cardboard tube that allowed him to conceal a lens and cut out piece of 35mm slide that he would then manipulate against the lens. The elaborate drinking and intensity is just for show. When you're working in the dark and wearing glow in the dak wrist bands like the Scole people you have to know a show is underway.

 

[Burnt State]

Let me add: Is there anyone in this realm that you feel is legitimate?

If you mean psychic photography then I can't say i've ever seen anything that stretched the boundaries of photographic trickery, I remember being very impressed with Kirlian Photography once and how you could tear off a leaf portion and then subject it to the Kirlian process where the whole leaf outline would appear to dance with light. Apparently residual leaf matter on the plate is all you need to register the Kirlian Effect. That was pretty disappointing. This type of imagery that has conditions attached to its capture is usually problematic.

 

[Constance]

You're a rather selective skeptic, Burnt. If you can place credence in exotic transdimensionals -- including some who might be conscious without being sentient? -- and who spend their time siphoning mental images directly out of our brains in order to {?? to do what with them?}, what would prevent the exquisite powers of these beings from developing images on film in pitch darkness?

 

[Burnt State]

You're a rather selective skeptic, Burnt. If you can place credence in exotic transdimensionals -- including some who might be conscious without being sentient? -- and who spend their time siphoning mental images directly out of our brains in order to {?? to do what with them?}, what would prevent the exquisite powers of these beings from developing images on film in pitch darkness?

No, that's not where i'm coming from at all. While I'm open to what may appear to be impossible in the macro universe I do think we should use the tools and knowledge we have here on earth to explain the mysteries we have here on earth. Those legitimate explorers & pioneers of science who want to expand our knowledges of what's possible should be celebrated but if it's hoax work then it needs to e called out, be it art or hood winking.

My position regarding why we see what we see has always been much more about us as co-creators of phenomena. I do not think entities siphon images from our brain though some posting on The Matrix thread hold that position. I'm much more inclined to believe that when we are confronted with an unknown stimulus be it UFO, monster or apparition, that we are the ones supplying the imagery in that moment. Our senses process the stimulus and produce the image in a similar mechanical process to how these fantastic photographs get processed. I see us as the active agent and the stimulus as the unknown. I think it might be too much of a leap to think the imagery is being planted in our brain as that's us surrendering our capacity and power for self-determination to an unconfirmed entity.

And yes I do believe in a possible non-sentient intelligence as per Duensing's description on Radio Misterioso, but not a conscious non-sentient - that's also presupposing something about the phenomenon. Plasma may just be plasma and balls of light unconsciously do strange things. Sometimes these balls of light appear to follow or interact with us and so maybe there's an intelligence there but it doesn't have to be sentient. I like to take it be step at a time. I think we may trick ourselves sometimes and imagine agency present in phenomena where in fact we may be the most active participant in such events, producing things like alien abduction syndrome.

We may be imagining certain experiences that we have entirely surrendered over to something completely non-existent, the way that Linda Cortile's son's repeated dreams of another girl get translated into him getting abducted, or the way I may mistake the wind blowing a Chinese lantern for a UFO, and suddenly feel afraid, or that it's responding to my thoughts. Our survival instincts can also help to make us believe a lot of stuff that may not be really happeningbthe way we imagine it. Intentionality is hard to prove when you don't quite know the origin of what is being perceived, but it may be in our nature to imagine such things.

 

[Polterwurst]

I was thinking about saying that you can't take Serios serious, but I'm abstaining from silly puns at the moment. What I meant to say is, with his lifestyle and drinking habits, it's obvious that he can't be trusted not to have done it for the little money and dubious fame it brought him.

But the fact that someone is a heavy drinker does not automatically make him or her a hoaxer. As far as I know, Serios was never "caught in the act"(?) despite being under observation and heavily drunk during many of the sessions.

And with Stella Lansing, it's much harder to believe that someone like that would even get it into her head to try to go for "money and fame" with an unlikely trick like that. She probably would have to have had technical assistance. And I can't imagine the psychologist not looking into the possibility of the film being tampered with. Has she ever been caught?

Although I tend towards the same direction as Burnt State, with self-proclaimed prophets and especially with Serios, I have my doubts if that can be the answer in all the "psychic fotography" cases. Of course, the film is being tampered with, but by whom? Couldn't the chemical processes be influenced by what has been called "discarnate consciousness"/"multiverse tricksters" or "parasites"?

In the case of the Scole films, many of the images allegedly developped on film that had never been in the hands of the "core group" but was bought, held and developped by experimenters that had been invited, many of which were members of the SPR. And if it was all victorian style fakery, how do you explain one of the invited scientists closing his hand around a "spirit light", feeling it move inside his fist but never feeling any strings or fibres attached to it? I do agree, though, that the sitting around in utter darkness makes all these psychic circles highly suspicious.

Speaking of seance circles, here is an interesting lecture by Stephen Braude on these topics (including Ted Serios):

Personally, I think Braude is highly intelligent. In his books he even strikes me as skeptical, and I just can't imagine that he would not be able to tell a fraudulent from a genuine phenomenon.