Note: Mr Marc Buck, a retired policeman and current ITC researcher in England, sent me a copy of his countryman Ken Webster’s The Vertical Plane, which is out of print since the 1980s and very hard to get here in the States. So, thanks to Mark Buck, I finally got a chance to read Ken’s landmark book this week and to write up a synopsis with a few of my own observations. Others have explored Webster’s work in much greater depth… case in point a forum that really digs into the subject (you can find 30-pages-and-counting of thoughtful dialog there), and a blog dedicated to “time slips” that discounts Webster’s experiences as a hoax, and an insightful book review. My article below doesn’t dig too deeply into Ken Webster’s experiences (which I’m confident are valid interactions across time and dimensions), but I share a few thoughts that seem important to me. As with most of my writing, I just try to figure things out and put them in perspective.

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Ken Webster’s story starts in late autumn 1984, in his cottage in the village of Dodleston, sitting on the border between England and Wales 30 miles south of Liverpool.

Ken and his friends Debbie (Oakes) and Peter (Trinder) start experiencing strange goings-on in the cottage. First there are footprints on the wall and writing on the floor, as though a dyslexic ghost gets things mixed up. Then different kitchen items keep getting stacked up into tower formations.

In the coming months the phenomena evolve into dozens of computer texts in Olde English from someone identifying himself as Lukas Wainman, who says he’s currently living in the same cottage in “Dudleston,” in the 1500s, late into the reign of  King Henry VIII (1491-1547) who’s currently married to his last wife, Queen Catherine Parr.

A couple of examples of MESSAGES (with translations) from Lukas:

• I HATH NO KINFOLK TO FYND, MYNE WIF WAS WRECHED WITH THY PESTILENCE ANDMTHE LORD DIDST TAKE HER SOULE AND HER UNBORE SON (1517). MYNE FARME ’TIS HUMBLE BUT IT HATH A PRETTY PARCEL O LAND….
• I have no kinfolk I can tell you about, my wife was taken with the pestilence and the Lord did take her soul and her unborn son (1517). My farm is humble but it has a pretty parcel of land….

• MYNE FREEND WEN ME SAYETH DESIDERIUS MYNE GOODLY FREEND I MEENETH I HAN OONLY MET WITH HEM THRYES AT CAMBRIDGE… HE HADDE GOODLY HUMOUR AN WOLD OFT BE PLEYFUL AN SINGE TO HEMSELVE WEN HE WERT NAT SYK HE DIDST APASS IN 1536 AT BALE LUKAS
• My friend, when I call Desiderius my good friend I mean I have only met him three times at Cambridge… He had good humor and would often be merry and sing to himself when he was not sick. He died in 1536 at Basle. Lukas

What seems to be happening is this: Ken is a teacher who has access to a computer from the Maths and Computer Department at school, which he sets up in his home. A copy or spiritual template of that computer, or some other spirit-world communication device, somehow materializes in the 1500s home of Lukas, who sees it as a sort of mystical device with strange lights through which he can communicate with other-worldly beings (Ken and his friends from the 20^th Century). Both computers (or devices) are in the same physical location, but four centuries apart.

That’s what seems to be happening, but what’s really happening, I believe, is something else. Maybe something simpler, or maybe more complicated. I explain my theory at the end of the article, and you can decide. Here’s a hint:

I think what Ken Webster had was an ITC bridge, similar to the ITC bridge of INIT… and I’ve come to believe lately that there are several key ingredients that make an ITC bridge possible.

One is an “ITC disposition.” I suspect Debbie Oakes and/or Ken Webster had an ITC disposition needed for the Dodleston bridge, the way that Maggy and Jules Harsch-Fischbach had an ITC disposition that fueled our INIT bridge.

Yang Fudse, a Chinese healer from the 3^rd Century AD, told our INIT group:

In specially suited experimenters (to whom you wrongly refer as “successful”) there develops a sort of “emotional lance” in the center of their emotional consciousness which “materializes” inaudible and invisible tones, signs and pictures in your realm. People are usually born with this particular polarization of consciousness. Others may try as hard as they can, they will not get these results.

To this day I have only a vague sense of what that actually means, but it’s probably the best available definition of what I would call “an ITC disposition.” So an ITC disposition is one prerequisite for an ITC bridge.

A second prerequisite for an ITC bridge is a competent spirit team. For our INIT group it was Timestream Spirit Group; for Ken and Debbie it’s Group 2109, whom we’ll talk about in a moment. That competent spirit group also has to include finer beings, or ethereal beings, who have the power and will to sustain and protect an ITC bridge.

Meanwhile, 20^th Century Ken and 16^th Century Lukas spend much of 1985 getting to know each other’s worlds, lives, and personalities. Debbie starts having frequent encounters with Lukas in her dreams, and Lukas develops a crush on Debbie. While Debbie is a charming, sensible, down-to-earth young woman here on Earth, she sometimes finds herself feeling like a flustered schoolgirl during her dream encounters with Lukas, who by modern standards would be considered a rather chauvinistic and domineering, sometimes bullying fellow… but with a kind heart.

As a warm friendship develops across time, however, disruptive or contentious or troublesome forces begin to enter the picture… forces on both ends of the bridge.

Troublesome Forces at the Other End of the Bridge

On Lukas’s end of the bridge it’s “Group 2109,” who seem to be coordinating the bridge, or “the leems” as Lukas calls it. The 2109 group seem to be researchers from our future who are experimenting with time manipulation between 20^th Century Earth and 16^th Century Earth. (But who they really are, again, I try to explain at the end of this article.)

Ken soon starts to get texts from “2109” as well as from “Lukas.” The 2109 texts are in a more modern form of English… and the messages not particularly friendly and heartfelt like the texts from Lukas.

This is one example of a text from 2109 group, who inform Ken and his friends that the project is being managed by higher forces, whom I suspect are finer spiritual beings who are closely monitoring, regulating, and protecting the bridge (the way that The Seven monitored, regulated, and protected the INIT bridge with Timestream spirit group). The 2109 group also inform Ken that “Lukas” is not the fellow’s true identity. His real name is Thomas, or Tomas.

• WE ARE ALL CAPERBLE OF MAKING MISTAKES, ARN’T WE. YES, TELEPHONES … THE THINGS THAT YOU MAY CONSIDER ADVANCED COMMUNICATION – IF ONLY YOU COULD SEE WHAT IS TO COME!.WE, IN YOUR BETTER INTRESTS MADE SLIGHT ‘ADJUSTMENT’ TO YOUR CONVERSATIONS ( – BUT PLEASE LET US CALL HIM BY HIS TRUE NAME)WITH THOMAS. WE ARE NOT ENTIRELY IN COMAND OF THIS EXPERIMENT, SO WE CAN ONLY SAY THAT COMUNICATIONS WILL CEASE NO EARLYER THAN NOVEMBER (NOT NESSESERALY WITH THOMAS),AH, WE SEE, YOU WANT SOME PROOF FOR YOUR LITTLE COMIC!,WELL WE THINK YOU SHOULD FIRST TRY TO REVISE ON WHAT HAS ALREADY BEEN SAID. IF YOU TELL US WHO IS ‘ONE’ THEN WE SHALL GIVE YOU 100% EVIDENCE FOR THE PEOPLE DIRECTLY INVESTIGATING YOUR PHENOMENA. 2109

This is typical of many messages from Group 2109, which are often cryptic and condescending… a fact that stirs up growing frustrations and suspicions among Ken and his friends.

Such emotional bristling does not lend itself to a healthy, stable ITC bridge, according to the information our INIT group was receiving from our own spirit group, Timestream, around the same time (maybe a few years later), who usually addressed us with respect and friendship and told us on one occasion, “It can only work when the vibrations of those present are in complete harmony, and when their aims and intentions are pure.”

Group 2109 didn’t seem to foster that kind of harmony and purity of aims and intentions.

Troublesome Forces on This End of the Bridge

Enter investigators from the Society for Psychical Research (SPR).

Typical of many SPR investigators, John Bucknall and Dave Welch are a skeptical team. They suspect from that onset that Ken’s claims and experiences are probably (or at least very possibly) a hoax.

Lukas senses troubles right away:

•  “Aren’t they scholars from our beloved Oxford? Why do they come to see my ‘leems’? What cause do these men serve by doing so?” (Chapter 25)

Ken Webster had early hopes about the SPR investigators:

“14 May (1985). Mr John Bucknall rang. He was, he said, the SPR field officer which John Stiles had promised. I took to him instinctively, he sounded young, intelligent and precise. I felt relieved in the way that a patient often finds relief in simply knowing that the doctor will call. John Bucknall, so I conjectured, with a few questions and a couple of evenings sitting quietly with Debbie in a sealed house, would proclaim us all extremely sane. He might even write a report for the Society describing just how valuable the case was.” (Chapter 17)

That optimism soon changed. Ken wrote:

“Dave Welch huffed and puffed his way to and fro with a reel-to-reel tape recorder, bags of wires, rolls of sticky tape and other assorted items. John Bucknall detailed the plan for the evening. In the studio they would set up a ‘listening post’ with a microphone run out of the window across the kitchen roof and through a slightly open skylight into the kitchen itself. They would set it running and wait in the living room….”

“John Bucknall was trying not to chain-smoke. He emphasized that many of these sorts of phenomena are entirely fraudulent or are massive elaborations upon some quite explainable occurrence. Was he here to investigate or to name the guilty persons?” (Chapter 17)

My take? ITC is a difficult process here on Earth. A stable bridge requires trust, honesty, friendship, and love, but humans by nature aren’t always trusting, honest, friendly, and loving. When suspicious, fearful, people get involved with an ITC bridge, the bridge destabilizes and disappears. Kind of a “Catch-22” scenario.

That was probably the case with Ken Webster’s ITC bridge, which seemed to work best when the SPR investigators weren’t around.

In other cases, ITC bridges will invariably falter when researchers are dishonest, insincere, self-seeking, or malicious. That wasn’t the case with Ken Webster and the Dodleston bridge, but it seems to be a kind of rule-of-thumb for ITC research everywhere. There must be trust, honesty, friendship, and love… the kinds of things you’d probably find prominently in the hearts and psyches of people like Debbie Oakes and Maggy Fischbach.

Two Unanswered Questions and Best Guesses

First, was there an actual, physical communication device in Lukas’s cottage 4 centuries ago on physical Earth, or did all of that happen in an astral template of the Earth?

I suspect the latter. I’ve come to believe that every material thing in our material universe, whether a molecule or a rock or a tree or a person or a planet… everything has a spiritual template. And that template exists while the physical thing exists, and it continues to exist after the physical thing dies or is destroyed.

So the ITC bridge between Ken and Lukas wasn’t built between two physical locations on physical Earth at different times, but between Ken’s physical location and the astral (spiritual) location where Lukas, Thomas, Group 2109, and other personalities are still living since the death of their carnal bodies. From our perspective of three-dimensional living, we could say that Ken’s physical location and Lukas’s spiritual location are superimposed over each other… just as physical Earth and Earth’s spiritual templates are superimposed over each other.

At one point in the book, Lukas is taken away to prison. Ken and Debbie are alarmed and worried that Lukas has died in prison. I suspect the truth is that Lukas can’t die, because he’s not a carnal human living a carnal drama; he’s an astral spirit who’s reliving patterns of earthly dramas that keep spinning in the astral world or spiritual template in which he’s now living.

Here’s a MESSAGE (and translation) from a fellow named “John” that arrived while Lukas was in prison:

• THE SHERYFF DOES ASKE THAT THOU SPEKE TO HYM WYTH THY SELVEN SHEWN TO HYS EYE FOR THY PURPOSE RATHER THROUGH THE COMUTER WHICHE HE HATH NO SIGHT FOR ELLES THE COMUTER MUSTE BEE TAKEN TO LUCAS IN BOWGHTONE PRYSUN OR NANTWHICHE IF HE BEE THYR NOWE TO SHEW HE SPAKE TROUTHS BUTT TIS NOT ETHE TO MOOV THY DEVICE FOR YT SEEMS TO MISAPERE WHEN ENY HAVE TRYD ONLIE WHEN LUCAS BEE HERE DOES YT SHYNE AS SOLYD I CRY THY TELLYNGS TO POST JOHN
• The sheriff does ask that you speak to him in person rather than through the computer, which he can’t see. Otherwise the computer must be taken to Lukas in Boughton prison or Nantwich, if he is there now, to show that he spoke the truth. But it is not easy to move the device as it seems to disappear when any have tried. Only when Lukas is here does it appear solid. I beg a quick reply so I may go to him. John

This message sounds rather insane in this carnal world Earth that we inhabit. But in an astral world, or a spiritual template of Earth, it makes more sense. Lukas might have been inconveniently carted off to prison for a while in one of those astral dramas that keep spinning around in that shadow world, but the computer-template-device (leems) that’s been materialized by Group 2109 and their supervising team in Lukas’s astral cottage has to stay in the cottage… and since the device is synchronized to or customized for Lukas, it becomes less solid and less operable when Lukas isn’t present. So… Lukas is shortly released from prison and brought home so he can continue his ITC work until the bridge is scheduled (by the finer spiritual supervisors, whoever they are) to close down sometime around November earth time.

This kind of scenario is certainly not easy to follow and grasp with our carnal minds, but I think it starts to make more sense as we begin to understand our spiritual nature… which has always been wrapped up in mystery for us noble-savage humans who spend our lives running around and bumping into each other on planet Earth.

There’s a bigger, multidimensional picture that ITC researchers are starting to get a better glimpse of. Hopefully humanity will be patient with us as, together, we try to figure it all out.

Second, how were all of those messages entered into the computer-template-device in Lukas’s 16^th Century cottage?  Did Lukas and the others have to sit in front of a keyboard and hunt-and-peck the messages painstakingly with their fingers… the way that we carnal humans have to do in this dense world?… or is there some means of converting their thoughts into words?

Again, I suspect the latter.

While Ken Webster’s Dodleston bridge and INIT’s Timestream bridge were operating late last century, an even more famous bridge was underway at Scole, England. The Scole group asked their spirit friends on one occasion how they were able to speak with such loud, clear voices that filled the room where the researchers sat in a circle. One spirit replied:

“We don’t actually speak. We think our message, and there are others here who, by some miracle, are able to convert our thoughts into the words you hear in your world.”

The same was probably true for Ken Webster and for our INIT group. When our spirit friends spoke to us through phones or radios, or when they sent text messages through our computers, they didn’t speak or type the way we do here on Earth. They simply had to think their messages, and there were teams of experts around them in the spirit world who had the knowledge, ability, and will to convert those thoughts into sounds and text and images that would be meaningful to us dense, carnal humans on this dense, carnal Earth.

That’s the gist of ITC communications at the present time of human evolution. It’s still a little dense, but we’re all doing the best we can.

As we humans become more astute or multidimensional or more acclimated to our dealings with the invisible worlds around us, ITC will become a more fluid process. Of that I have no doubt.