Casadega Florida - This small town in central Florida bills itself as having more mediums and psychics in its population than any other town in America. It was founded upon the advice of a spirit known as Seneca who told George Colby that "A Congress of Spirits have selected Florida for the establishment of a great spiritualist center. You have been chosen to lead in it's creation." That was in 1875 and since then the small town has flourished and is enjoying life today as tourist attraction and center of metaphysical learning.

This young lady exhibits a healthy aura according to Velope

Among the residents of the town is Adrian Velope, 58, who moved to Casadega in 1984 from Chicago where she had worked as a medium with her now deceased sister. Upon arriving in the town and discovering an abundance of mediums, she decided to branch out into aura photography.

Aura or Kirlian photography was invented by Semyon Kirlian a handyman from the Ukraine in 1939. Semyon was repairing a hospital diathermy machine when he noticed a electrical spark pass from his fingertip onto the electrode pad. Interested, he placed photographic paper onto the pad and recreated the spark. When he developed the photograph he was amazed to see that his hand had been outlined by a field of electrical energy.

Other photographers refined the process, and help create the belief that the photographs show the aura or energy field of the item being photographed. Since the object to be photographed has to be in contact with the electrode pad, the most popular items to be filmed were hands, arms and the leaves of plants. Indeed leaves which had been recently pulled from a plant exhibit a ghostly energy field which shows where they were torn away from the main stem. The different colors exhibited in aura photographs also lead to significance being applied to them. Red would mean that the subject was angry. Blue would be indicative of a calm state and so on. Over time many different interpretations of the color scheme arose.

The faint ghost aura of this woman's missing arm is visible

Velope has bought several Kirlian cameras over the years as minor modifications came along. The downside with all of them was that the object being photographed had to be in contact with the electrical pad. This lead her to begin investigating the possibilities of building a larger size pad or even a way to leave the pad out altogether. In 1997 she developed the first Kirlian camera that allowed free standing objects or an entire human body to be photographed. She calls this camera the Velope-Kirlian and has established a center for Aura photography in her residence in Casadega.

The Velope-Kirlian appears to be a standard 35 mm camera with a curious electronic attachment where the flash would be. This attachment has a cable which leads to a gray metal plate that stands vertically. This plate is approx. 7 feet in height and 4 feet wide. Persons wanting a full body photograph are placed in front of the metal plate which is plugged into a standard electrical outlet. The images are taken on regular film which Velope can process in her own darkroom.

Velope was hesitant to tell me how the process works. "As far as I know I'm the only one to come up with this and I don't want it stolen from me. Basically the plate takes the place of the electrical sensor on the old style Kirlians and allows a field of energy to encompass the object being photographed. This energy field interacts with the aura and tweaks it up the spectrum. The camera has been modified so it can photograph the aura as it appears."

This man has both legs amputed below the knee. His dependence on artificial legs has caused his ghost auras to disappear

Velope showed me some examples of her work and I was surprised at how vivid the auras appear. She pointed to one picture of a woman. "This lady had her right arm amputed several years before I photographed her but you can still see the faint aura of the arm and hand which was left behind."

Velope believes that these "ghost auras" are what allow some amputees to keep experiencing feelings from the missing arm or leg long after it has been removed. "Sometimes people will even be able to make a fist with a hand that's not there any more." Velope told me. "I bet that if you took a aura photograph of them, you would see that the ghost aura was still there and trying to do what the brain was telling it to."

Velope has no plans to share her invention with the rest of the world beyond selling photographs to interested parties that visit her studio. "If I started making a big to do about it, I'd have the idea stolen from me." states Velope, "And I've still got some ideas with it that I want to try."

sources

interview with Adrian Velope, April 10th, 1999

"Casadega, Spiritual Town", brochure published by the Casadega City Council, no copyright given

-"Kirlian Photography" Strange Facts of the Unknown World published in 1978 by Register Press

photos courtesy of Adrian Velope