The KASE Weekly | 4 November 2026
Developments from 28 October to 3 November 2026
A phone produces a ghostly picture. Researchers prepare to test claims of contact with something beyond us. And witnesses turn their strange experiences into art beneath an Edinburgh church. This week asks what we can learn from an image, an experience and an experiment. There is also a little news closer to home: KASE has featured in KentOnline.
AI ghosts: what has the phone actually detected?
An October 30 Guardian report examines AI in paranormal investigation.
To understand one of the tools involved, we checked the developer’s own explanation of GhostTube SEER. It describes a process in which phone sensors register environmental changes, corresponding words are selected from a built-in dictionary, and an AI system creates pictures from those words. A compatible phone’s magnetometer can measure changes in the magnetic field; other sensors may register movement.
The resulting picture can feel strikingly relevant to a location. But it has passed through several stages of software interpretation. It is not a camera photograph of something standing in the room.
The developer also says paranormal communication has not been scientifically established and cautions against using the app to contact deceased loved ones or cope with loss. This is the maker’s description of its own product, not independent validation.
The KASE take
We understand the appeal of trying something different. The useful question is what a result lets us test.
If an image seems to match a building’s history, record the exact output before discussing possible connections. Keep the misses as well as the apparent hits, and ask someone who has not been told the location to assess the match. Comparing results with an ordinary setting would also help.
A compelling picture may provide an idea to investigate. Establishing that it contains information the participants could not otherwise have obtained would require a much stronger test. Until then, we should describe exactly what the app produced and how we interpreted it.
A $100,000 study will put reported UAP contact to the test
The Institute of Noetic Sciences used its 30 October event to announce the winner of its 2026 Linda G. O’Bryant research prize. The $100,000 grant goes to a team including Peter Skafish, Brian Lord and Garry Nolan for a planned year-long field study of reported contact experiences.
The project’s title, Instrumenting the Contact Experience, describes a pre-registered study of physiological responses and unusual perception in CE5. In this proposal, the contact-seeking practice involves meditation with an invitation for contact.
The published study outline compares nights of directed contact-seeking meditation with nights of grounding meditation without that intention. Instruments will also run without people present. The plan uses one established group of four to eight practitioners at one field site in the south-western US.
Participants will give private accounts before group discussion. Physiological recordings, sky imaging and aircraft and weather records will share a timeline. Reviewers assessing unresolved aerial events will not know which meditation practice was assigned.
The KASE take
This is a useful question to put into a testable form. Private reporting can help preserve differences between witnesses’ accounts, while comparison nights provide something against which to judge the results.
There are limits worth watching. Participants learn their assigned practice before meditating, so expectation could influence how strongly they report feeling contact. One small group at one location will also give a limited basis for wider conclusions.
The design separates reported feelings from recorded aerial events. That distinction matters. A strong experience does not identify what caused it, and an object remaining unresolved does not establish its origin. This is funding for a study to be carried out. The results are still ahead of us.
Ghostly encounters become art beneath an Edinburgh church
There is another way to document a strange experience: try drawing it.
In a 2 November account, psychologist Richard Wiseman described an exhibition he staged with Caroline Watt, inviting people to turn paranormal experiences into art. Around 25 artists contributed, ranging from professionals to people painting for the first time. Wiseman says all 200 tickets were taken within a couple of hours.
The event was arranged for 30 and 31 October at the Undercroft beneath St Vincent’s Church in Edinburgh. Visitors explored with torches, alongside research archive material and a deliberately eerie atmosphere. Wiseman’s account identifies the wandering monks as performers.
The KASE take
A drawing can help someone explain an experience that is difficult to put into words. Where was the figure? How much of it could they see? Which parts are clear in their memory, and which are uncertain?
For an investigation, we would want that account recorded before suggesting an identity or showing the witness other people’s descriptions. An exhibition has a different purpose: sharing and exploring how those experiences felt.
The artwork cannot establish what caused an encounter, but it can make a witness’s perspective easier to understand. There is room for that kind of curiosity alongside careful testing.
KASE in the News: KentOnline explores Kent’s haunted history
We have a headline of our own this week. KASE and our Haunted Directory featured in KentOnline’s Halloween coverage on 31 October: From phantom bulls to ghostly monks: The spooky side of Kent’s history.
Thank you to KentOnline for including us, and to everyone who has read and shared the feature. It is lovely to see Kent’s lesser-known stories reaching more people.
If it has left you curious about somewhere nearby, explore our Haunted Directory. We bring together reported hauntings, local folklore and places investigated by KASE, with attention to where each story comes from and what is actually known.
What would help you understand an encounter?
This week gives us three different approaches: software generating a picture, a study preparing to compare experiences with measurements, and people making art from their memories. Each can prompt a useful conversation, provided we are clear about what it can tell us.
When someone reports a paranormal experience, what would you want first: their uninterrupted account, a sketch of what they saw, or the original recording?
The hero is an AI-assisted editorial illustration of this week’s themes. It does not show evidence, actual study participants or the Edinburgh exhibition.