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Ghosts & Computers (Including The Vertical Plane)

escargot said:
This thread needs a rename.

Ken Webster and The Vertical Plane don't come up easily in searches on'ere. No thread has the phrase The Vertical Plane in the title.

The case is important if only because it expresses the dissonance often felt in the face of new technology: put simply, to outsiders it looks like magic or the supernatural.

As this thread mentions Webster and the book a lot, with various relevant threads merged into it, perhaps the phrase The Vertical Plane should be included in the title.
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Done.
 
I love The Vertical Plane for several reasons.

1. It was such an obvious hoax.
2. It happened nearish to where I live.
3. Around the same time, my family too had the use of BBC computers which was still rare.
4. People believed it because they didn't understand the technology.

(4) reminds me of the huge potential for fraud found in early photography by miscreants.

One of the biggest exploiters of alleged Spirit Photography, William Hope, was based in Crewe only 30 miles away.
Although Hope was repeatedly proved to be faking images of dead people in the 1920s he was still believed because the operations of the technology were not widely known.
 
escargot said:
I noticed yesterday that we have a copy of The Vertical Plane here. Looked at its price on Amazon, 2nd hand, and it's £35 and more. :shock:

How can it be worth that much, I wonder? It's not even that good a read!
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The book is selling for hundreds of pounds now.

0FBFFACB-A962-4A33-BD4C-3215D0E5B291.jpeg


The story has just been featured on Astonishing Legends. They didn’t really come down on either side of whether they thought it was true or a hoax. Though I felt towards the end of the second episode they were hinting towards elaborate hoax.

I’m in the middle of reading an ePub version that is available.

Me, so obvious a hoax from day one, but what fascinates me is trying to work out how it was done.
Who, the girlfriend with the help of someone, likely the paranormal researcher recommended by 2109.

The AL crew mention an Internet forum that the paranormal researcher and the girlfriend still answer questions on to this day.

My alternative theory is that it is 100% a work of fiction by the elusive Ken Webster.
 
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Naughty_Felid said:
As I don't have the book, I'm working on quotes given during the podcast, (they have a copy).

"Fairy gold" - first mentioned by Shakespeare, so later than Lukas.

Fishing for salmon and Herring in the river Dee - Still trying to figure out it Shad, ( a name for freshwater herring), was a name in the 1600th
century as Lukkas mentioned he fishes for salmon and herring and he cannot mean regular herring.
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Here’s a link to an ePub on archive.org

https://archive.org/details/the-vertical-plane-ken-webster
 
JamesWhitehead said:
Well, they are asking that price! :thought:
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It’s ridiculous. It’s not even particularly well written. I found it awkward to read in dinner places and got completely confused as to what was happening.

I think ultimately that it was a complete work of fiction by Ken and his friends that got out of hand.
 
Mr. Banooka said:
a complete work of fiction by Ken and his friends that got out of hand.
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The video makes the interesting point that the book did not appear until some five years after the events.

The origins probably lie in the dynamics of the household. Ken does not appear to have been profit-motivated - the national press merely picking-up the local newspaper coverage. Love the pre-internet computer background! :loveu:
 
It is a fascinating story. My first thought was that it was Ken’s girlfriend along with the paranormal investigator they are advised to go to by 2109 pulling an elaborate long-game prank.

If it was a prank and not the complete work of fiction I now believe it to possibly be, I’d love to know how they pulled it off.
 
Mr. Banooka said:
It’s ridiculous. It’s not even particularly well written. I found it awkward to read in dinner places and got completely confused as to what was happening.

I think ultimately that it was a complete work of fiction by Ken and his friends that got out of hand.
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It's a terrible book, really boring. You're better off reading about the case on Wikipedia.
 
JamesWhitehead said:
Quite a good, new video on the Dodleston computer ghosts.

I had forgotten that they claimed to have contacted the future as well as the Tudor past! o_O

Yet it all seems very much of its own time!
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How very odd. YouTube just suggested this video, which has only been there a couple of weeks, to me - but I can't quite figure out why. I'm not logged in but YouTube makes suggestions based on cookies. I really haven't looked at too many Fortean videos. Maybe it's because I followed a few links from this forum?

BTW, I hadn't read this thread before. In fact I only found it when I looked to see if the events on the video had been discussed here.
 
Mr. Banooka said:
The book is selling for hundreds of pounds now.

View attachment 46694

The story has just been featured on Astonishing Legends. They didn’t really come down on either side of whether they thought it was true or a hoax. Though I felt towards the end of the second episode they were hinting towards elaborate hoax.

I’m in the middle of reading an ePub version that is available.

Me, so obvious a hoax from day one, but what fascinates me is trying to work out how it was done.
Who, the girlfriend with the help of someone, likely the paranormal researcher recommended by 2109.

The AL crew mention an Internet forum that the paranormal researcher and the girlfriend still answer questions on to this day.

My alternative theory is that it is 100% a work of fiction by the elusive Ken Webster.
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Bloody hell! I'm going to put my copy up for sale for £362.75, if anyone is interested.
 
Just seen a post on the Facebook group about this case, it's one of those that you want to be true, and perhaps there was a grain of truth and it's been embellished a little (or a lot) this seems to happen in lots of paranormal stories, the truth may be worth a couple of short essays but there is a book to be filled

Wasn't Ken Webster a member on here at some point and answered some questions?

I wonder what he is up to nowadays it would be really good to have his input
 
Ken has been in touch with Scott and Forrest at Astonishing Legends. He’s republishing the book to stop the scalpers. He’s declined being interviewed, but has told the guys that he’ll answer any questions the listeners send in.
 
*bump*

Some renewed interest in this case:

The case of an allegedly haunted 1980s computer that started communicating with a teacher in archaic English has baffled paranormal investigators for over 35 years. Known as the Dodleston messages, they were a series of communications a teacher received on a BBC microcomputer in 1985. This was before the internet was commonplace and the computer was not connected to a

https://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/nostalgia/ghost-typing-1980s-computer-accuses-23427572

Perhaps because:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Vertical-P...1648145919&sprefix=The+vertica,aps,163&sr=8-1

The Vertical Plane: The Mystery of the Dodleston Messages: Second Edition Paperback – 1 Feb. 2022​

 
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WeirdExeter said:
*bump*

Some renewed interest in this case:

The case of an allegedly haunted 1980s computer that started communicating with a teacher in archaic English has baffled paranormal investigators for over 35 years. Known as the Dodleston messages, they were a series of communications a teacher received on a BBC microcomputer in 1985. This was before the internet was commonplace and the computer was not connected to a

https://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/nostalgia/ghost-typing-1980s-computer-accuses-23427572

Perhaps because:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Vertical-Plane-Mystery-Dodleston-Messages/dp/0955983150/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2FD9NGWUJC7BK&keywords=the+vertical+plane&qid=1648145919&sprefix=The+vertica,aps,163&sr=8-1

The Vertical Plane: The Mystery of the Dodleston Messages: Second Edition Paperback – 1 Feb. 2022​

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Does this devalue my 1st edition (see above)... Funnily enough I had no takers...
 
SimonBurchell said:
Does this devalue my 1st edition (see above)... Funnily enough I had no takers...
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It is a fascinating case, but the thorny issue of money and, some might argue, profiting from their experience. I challenge the Webster to give all profits from the new £14.99 to a charity so that they can be absolved of profiting from what they present as evidence for the supernatural and life after death
 
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*bump

My interest in Dodleston was re-stirred during yesterdays heat...I vaguely recalled one of the messages from 2109 saying something about living/feeding off a heat energy that we wouldn't recognise ...Do you think this is it? ;)

It does fascinate me that such an elaborate plot took place. If it is a fraud (and I don't really claim to know for sure either way - how could I) then they deserve kudos for creativity if nothing else. Home computers were in their infancy and the internet wasn't even a public domain thing. To come up with such a ruse is quite cunning.

If nothing else, a tale that borders time and space peeked the Whovian in me to pay attention :)
 
Just thought I would bump this up seen as it was mentioned in the time slips thread

I know people say it was obviously a fraudulent case and I tend to agree, however nobody has come up with how they pulled it off
 
Robbrent said:
Wasn't Ken Webster a member on here at some point and answered some questions?
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It reminds me a bit of a forumist here a few years back calling himself Kchoo.
He posted material claiming to be his personal encounters with aliens. It was to promote his books which, rather like Ken Webster's Vertical Plane, are also for sale on Amazon.
Kchoo disappeared after a couple of us noticed that he seemed to be recycling some Billy Meier material, notably about an alien calling herself Semjase.
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
It reminds me a bit of a forumist here a few years back calling himself Kchoo.
He posted material claiming to be his personal encounters with aliens. It was to promote his books which, rather like Ken Webster's Vertical Plane, are also for sale on Amazon.
Kchoo disappeared after a couple of us noticed that he seemed to be recycling some Billy Meier material, notably about an alien calling herself Semjase.
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I remember Kchoo. A wee bit... single minded, if I remember correctly.
 
Has anybody read a copy of the second edition of the Vertical Plane? On Amazon somebody says "this edition has interesting appendices and a little bit of a twist in the tail which perk the interest again." I enjoyed reading the original years ago and just wondered what the extra material and the "twist" might be...
 
OrsonSwells said:
Has anybody read a copy of the second edition of the Vertical Plane? On Amazon somebody says "this edition has interesting appendices and a little bit of a twist in the tail which perk the interest again." I enjoyed reading the original years ago and just wondered what the extra material and the "twist" might be...
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Apparently there is something in the revised edition in relation to Scott and Forrest from the Astonishing Legends podcast. I've just looked at the price on Amazon and it's quite pricy for a paperback.

In a strange bit of synchronicity, on Tuesday I was listening to the Astonishing Legends episode on Mantis Men as I was driving to Ruabon in Wales. Literally, as I was driving past Doddleston, The Vertical Plane was mentioned in a completely unrelated podcast.
 
Mr. Banooka said:
Apparently there is something in the revised edition in relation to Scott and Forrest from the Astonishing Legends podcast. I've just looked at the price on Amazon and it's quite pricy for a paperback.

In a strange bit of synchronicity, on Tuesday I was listening to the Astonishing Legends episode on Mantis Men as I was driving to Ruabon in Wales. Literally, as I was driving past Doddleston, The Vertical Plane was mentioned in a completely unrelated podcast.
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This reminds me of something I've read about, where there's an incident or phenomenon that spreads outwards like ripples
and seems to cause strangeness in people's lives.

Am I thinking of the Mothman? :thought:
 
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