INVESTIGATIONS / INTELLIGENCE REPORT 1
THE FACE PEOPLE - PART ONE
Many of us, when a young child, have glimpsed strange figures in the gloom, and a lot of adults who have imbibed hallucinogens (and could be said to be once again in a similar state to unfettered childhood consciousness) will have experienced a wallpaper pattern or carpet design, etc., morphing into a fascinating undulating pool or amazing next-level abstract art. Whether straight or stoned, stare long and deep enough into the flickering flames of an open fire or swirling incense smoke and recognisable forms will make themselves known.
I suggest that, instead of being dismissed as "Just the imagination", these happenings should demonstrate to the experiencer that the IMAGINATION IS INFINITE, of incredible potential utilisation, and that although the so-called 'mundane' world (i.e. reality) seems to be more-or-less fixed, at the same instant it's not. Other things from Otherwhere fleetingly interpenetrate our familiar dimension, and sometimes creep in for a longer stay, whether we notice them or not.
It's no good looking too hard, with a "lust for result", as such an anomalous 'glitch' manifestation usually happens when you're not looking for or expecting it. For example, one day I was in a darkened loft searching for a book, when suddenly I saw a crouching leopard ready to attack me. After screaming, I realised that the previously very there leopard was actually a half-empty bag of plaster, or was by then anyway. I've also had repeated run-ins with several different stones in various places, that for whatever reason would always resemble rabbits, until I looked too normally and changed them back into stones again.
Addressing his pupil, Carlos Castaneda, about this uncanny business, the real or unreal Yaqui sorcerer, Don Juan Matus, had this to share about it:
"What you have done is no triumph," he said. "You've wasted a beautiful power, a power that blew life into that dry twig ... that branch was a real animal and it was alive at the moment the power touched it. Since what kept it alive was power, the trick was, like in dreaming, to sustain the sight of it."[1]
Before smug debunkers bleat, I understand that boredom leads to daydream, stress and/or tiredness provokes reverie, and so on, and I am aware of the phenomenon of apophenia and simulacra, aka pareidolia, that has been defined as "the tendency to perceive a specific, often meaningful image in a random or ambiguous visual pattern," but the Face People - who I shall soon demonstrate - are often very obviously there, with a stark individuality and obvious sentience and character. There is nothing "random or ambiguous" about them. They can be instantly recognised, without a doubt; it is not a human-engineered forced fantasy process, for in many instances the Face People arrive unbidden, and are not observed when their photograph is taken, but some time afterwards.
Besides, what about visionary states, the vision quest, signs and wonders? All valid. I am not interested in scientific explanations of the Face People, or the opinions about them professed by the more open-but-closed-minded sceptic crowd. Either is just one way of looking at it. Everything is open to interpretation, and the very act of interpreting what we experience is, to a great degree, the crux of the matter. Questions pose more questions, and answers likewise. I'd rather stare at a cobweb in the forest, for I prefer an artistic-magical approach, as delineated by the extraordinary British art-mage, Austin Osman Spare:
Life is haunted - I see the faces of the so-called dead everywhere, etched and glyphographed on things, on the roads, while their restless ghosts wander in space; as if Charon demanded payment of the facial imprint, as coined, and then scattered rough-cast, sown by the wind. They become sigillated, instigmated on time, and vaguely vanish as their flesh returns. They are "the awaiting," and would warn and foretell us. Perhaps they are less dead than ourselves... the unburied.
But of living faces and portraiture--forget the exceptions--what can we judge or realise from faces? Not very much these days. Few facially show their potencies, wisdom or character - rather they show their pretences, and so, to see a face is either to see a fiction or a facade, hiding....?[2] (Bold emphases are in the original.)
I believe in the Face People, who are ghosts or faeries or akin to these, and I have photographed them. The Face People do not resemble human visages, living or dead, and they may be trying to gradually take over the world, or guard it at certain important magic teluric energy points. They manifest fleetingly, forming themselves from leaves on a tree, in water or smoke, or more permanently in wood or stone, etc. To conserve energy and effort, and make other things generally easier, as they dimensionally shift then manifest in the physical dimension (i.e. 'step down' from their more subtle higher frequency dimension to our more gross and lower vibration dimension), these beings appear not as they really are, but only as a face or head.
Like the otherworldly EVP voices, that manipulate existing raw material such as running water or radio static into words we can hear audibly, the Face People manipulate or warp reality, temporarily or even momentarily forming themselves from the elements of the environment, or effecting the viewer's mind (thoughts) to hallucinate the Face People's form from pre-existing natural structures. Thus the Face People are often seen in trees, bushes, rocks, etc. (There have also been cases of people falling asleep in front of their television sets, later awakening in the early hours to the 'white snow' on the screen after the programming has ended and seeing in the swirling dots of light the faces of deceased loved ones or pets, even prehistoric scenes with dinosaurs and cavemen. Also note that in ritual magick praxis, entities are assisted to manifest via the liberated energy of the sacrifice, or even the heat of the room, as is evidenced by the well-known phenomenon of a sharp drop in temperature that occurs at the onset of paranormal manifestations.)
EVIDENCE
I first became aware of the Face People during childhood in the early-1970s, as I stared in wonder at the transmuted wood-grain of the wardrobe door. At twilight, dusk or night they were there; in daylight they were not.
Around 2000, during the filming of OKOK Video One (an experimental work involving lots of the Brion Gysin-William S. Burroughs Cut/Up technique in the editing, which is known to produce weird effects on time and provoke otherdimensional contact) in Bethesda, Gwynedd, North Wales, my colleague, Jason Williams, took a series of still photographs of myself. This one contains three Face People:
In the top-right corner of the above photograph, formed in the loose bricks of a derelict wall, there can be clearly seen one of the Face People (shown left) who seems to be glaring down upon my robed and ritualising self.
Directly below this aforementioned Face Person is a different, gnome-like, Face Person (shown left) who is also looking at me, and directly below this particular gnome-like Face Person there is yet another Face Person, who resembles a classic grey alien or a skull-like head, and is gazing straight at the camera lens.
Some time afterwards, I came across a large black plastic storage vessel on a local farm in Bethesda, Gwynedd, North Wales. For some reason this object interested me, so I photographed it, and later included it in a collage, a detail of which is shown below:
I noticed nothing unusual in the storage vessel when it was the right way up, but when turned upside-down (as shown in the above reproduction), there was revealed to myself and all onlookers the definite outline and features of a Face Person (shown left) on the right-hand side of the object.
In 2002, I experienced an UFO sighting in Bethesda, Gwynedd, North Wales. Upon revisiting the site of this event, looking for clues, I took a number of photographs. This one has a violet light anomaly at the bottom of the scene, that was not present when the photograph was taken:
On closer inspection, the violet light anomaly is shown to be a somewhat vague but nevertheless recognisable Face Person (shown below) who is looking directly at the camera:
Since then, I have irregularly noticed empty packets of the Space Raiders snack (that features a fictitious alien Face Person) lying on the ground, sometimes in very unexpected places. In this photograph of one such packet (bought from a shop for the purposes of another article I was writing), taken in August 2014, there is a horned black shadow Face Person that has superimposed itself around the alien head:
In June 2004, I and two friends went on a psychogeographical expedition to the Isle of Anglesey in North Wales. On our approach to the sacred well at Penmon, where Saint Seiriol baptised converts to Christianity, we entered through the ancient stone doorway in a wall overgrown with copious ivy and I discovered one of the Face People on the pebble-laden pathway. It was made of sheep's wool and other elements, and did not resemble any known creature. It was as if it had formed itself from the available natural resources and substance, and was pushing out of the earth in an uncanny birthing:
(In this context, note that its discovery occurred less than an hour after we had visited Bryn Celli Ddu, the Mound in the Dark Grove, a 5000-year-old earthen dome concealing a long passage to a polygonal stone chamber, its opening the only one on the island that is aligned to the rising Summer Solstice Sun. Bryn Celli Ddu is obviously shaped as the female genitals and womb in earth and stone. Thus was this birthing of one of the Face People a sign from the Goddess?)
In 2019, I saw some Face People that I had unknowingly recorded in my video The Scary Steps - Part 2/6 - Psychic Questing / Psychogeography (filmed on 14 December 2018, near Tregarth, Gwynedd, North Wales):
Then Patrick Wood of the Sheffield Patrol Group (SPG) found more in the same video, then I found even more:
(They were originally reproduced in Episode 3 and Episode 5 of The Scary Steps video series, but are also presented here above for easier study.)
On 12 March 2020, in the area of Tal-y-Bont near Bangor, Gwynedd in North Wales, I stopped my perambulation to ponder the Portal that runs parallel to the railway line, and decided to take a photograph of it. On examining the photograph back at home, I noticed two distinct Face People (ringed):
Here they are in close-up, with a wide black border I was inspired to place around them:
The nearby Beacon seemed especially potent that day, whilst around it stood the lesser beacons vying for power. So I decided to make an artistic montage of the scene:
On perusing this photograph, the aforementioned Patrick Wood of the Sheffield Patrol Group (SPG) found one of the Face People lurking in it, in profile, looking to your right:
On 8 September 2022, I had an encounter with several Face People on the outskirts of Bethesda in Gwynedd, North Wales. I noticed an unusual and unique fence-post that looked like the head of a sentient entity, so decided to photograph it:
As usual, I was not consciously trying to record the Face People, and as I took the photograph I did not register the Face People who were present until much later, when I was back at home and in an altogether different state of awareness. The first of the Face People (shown above-left) is situated at the very top of the fence-post on the left. There is no doubt.
This next photograph is of the same aforementioned fence-post at a slightly different angle:
Here is the first of the Face People again (left), and to the close right of the former, before the split, is another of the Face People (middle), and to the close right of that one, after the split, is another of the Face People (right):
Below these three, to the left of the first U-shaped nail, is another of the Face People in a left-side profile (see the main photograph as it is best registered at that scale).
Later that same day, whilst pondering what had gone on before, I was suddenly confronted with this unsolicited and rather Ballardian view of the upper-storey of the permanently closed Debenhams department store in Bangor, Gwynedd, North Wales:
Whether this pair of humanoid figures are normal shop mannequins placed there as a joke, or are shop mannequins come to life via the occults or even non-physical spirits assuming the form of shop mannequins who are on some inscrutable mission, is debatable. Whatever however, it was a fittingly bizarre end to a bizarre excursion.
On 9 March 2023, I took this photograph by accident as I was filming video near Tal-y-Bont near Bangor, Gwynedd in North Wales. A clear Face Person is present just below the middle of the trunk of the central foreground tree. The Face Person has two pronounced eyes and mouth, plus two arms, with hands held together, and is looking towards the left:
In this still from a video I filmed for a poetry project in July 2023 near Llanllechid, Gwynedd, Wales, a clearly prominent Face Person in the centre of the image is looking straight at the viewer, or perhaps two different Face People in profile are looking at each other, from inside a natural circular frame on the trunk of a tree. As often happens, I was not aware of the Face Person(s) when I was making the recording:
These two details of the same Face Person(s) have been made darker via image processing software for easier viewing:
This Face Person, who is looking straight at the camera, appeared in the shadows on a large grounded rock in Rachub, Gwynedd, North Wales, on 3 May 2025:
Multiple Face People formed in an underlayer of a torn poster in Bangor, Gwynedd, North Wales, on 25 January 2024:
A Face Person looks straight at the camera whilst another Face Person (at the bottom of the branch on the right in the first two photos) looks at the first Face Person, and a third Face Person (at the branch on the left in first photo) laughs. All being part of a well-established tree near Bethesda, Gwynedd, North Wales. Photos taken on 8 August 2024:
As often occurs, the Face People were not consciously seen at the time the photographs were made.
EPILOGUE
To date, I have not attempted any communication with the Face People, for as I have said, they usually appear unbidden, thus I am not aware of their presence whilst in the field. Further research involving willed traffick with these entities is at present being considered, using the technique of psychically sensing a suitable place of portal and taking three photographs in quick succession of the same point using a digital camera, then analysing the results on the larger screen of a laptop computer to see if any Face People are present, then asking them if they wish to engage in further contact.
ENDNOTES
[1] Carlos Castaneda, Journey to Ixtlan. Simon & Schuster, 1972, pp.132-133. I also recommend Ramsey Dukes' book How to See Fairies: Discover Your Psychic Powers in Six Weeks (Aeon Books, 2011), that teaches one how to see more than usual.
[2] Austin Osman Spare quoted from the catalogue for his 1953 exhibition at The White Bear, London, in AR Naylor (ed.), From The Inferno to Zos: The Writings and Images of Austin Osman Spare, Volume 1. First Impressions, 1993, (no pagination).