The Vertical Plane: Where is Tomas’ book?

And could there be undeciphered code hidden in the messages received from 2109?

Ken D eb nIc
True A re The NIGHTmares Of a pErson t hat FEArs
Safe A re the BODIES Of tHe Silent World
Turn Pr ettY FLowER tuRn TOWARDS The SUN
For Yo u S Hall Grow aNd SOW
But T he FLOWer Reaches tOo hIgh and witHERS in
The B urning Lighty
G E T OU T YO U R B R ICKs
PuSsy Cat PUSSy Cat Went TO LonDOn TO Seek
Fame aNd FORTUNE
Faith Must NOT Be LOst
For ThiS Shall Be youR REDEEMER.

This passage is included in Chapter 2 of The Vertical Plane. Running this text through modern LLM’s (which were not available at the time the events took place) seems to indicate that this section of text does appear to contain some type of hidden message or cipher. And while the efficacy of modern LLM’s ability to detect ciphers and decode messages remains largely unanswered, it does appear that this section of text hides…. something. Perhaps solving these ciphers will reveal the location of Tomas’ book? But first, some background.

Background

For those who are unfamiliar with The Vertical Plane, I will do my best to summarise the events that took place in Dodleston, England, during the 1980’s.

The Events Begin

• Ken, his girlfriend Debbie, and their friend Nic begin experiencing strange activity in their Dodleston cottage, including poltergeist-like activity (e.g., furniture moving, unexplained footsteps).
• While borrowing a BBC Micro Computer, mysterious text messages start appearing in a word processor program. These messages seemingly appear on their own.
• The messages are written in archaic English and claim to be written by a man named Lukas, although later it is found his name is actually “Tomas Harden” (or “Tomas”). He begins communication as Lukas due to fear either from authorities in his time, or from 2109, who state that knowing Lukas’ real identity would come with consequences
• Tomas claims he is from the 16th century and insists he lives in the same cottage as Ken, Deb and Nic, only his ‘now’ is actually centuries earlier.
• He refers to Ken, Debbie, and Nic as “the one who lives in the light” and seems confused about their presence.
• Ken and his friends began leaving replies on the computer, engaging in a conversation across time.
• Tomas mentions historical details about life in the 1500s, some of which seem historically accurate.
• More messages appear, sometimes in cryptic riddles or poetic form. (As seen above)

This by itself seems amazing. If these claims are factual, then the BBC Micro is some sort of conduit through time itself. There are many hypotheses that could be explored regarding this alone, but things only get weirder.

Enter 2109

• A new set of messages begin appearing on the computer. This new set claims to be from an entity calling itself “2109”, seemingly from the future.
• 2109 communicates in a detached, almost robotic tone, hinting at a grander purpose behind the events.
• They warn Ken not to interfere too much and suggest a time experiment is taking place.
• Besides the computer messages, weird symbols appear on the cottage walls, drawn in dust or chalk.
• Objects move on their own, including stacked cans arranged mysteriously overnight.
• Tomas claims he is being pressured by authorities in his time and later indicates he has to leave the house.

I am skipping over a lot of information in this summary, and I highly recommend buying a copy of the book if you haven’t had a chance to read it for yourself. At one point in the story, 2109 appear to communicate with another entity calling itself ‘one’.

Then there were messages that Ken and Deb felt didn’t come from 2109, Tomas or ‘One’, but were unsure as to whom they originated from.

I really cannot do the entire series of events enough justice in a summary. I highly recommend you go and read The Vertical Plane. I can wait.

……….

Ok, you’ve read it? Now, onto the juicy stuff.

Tomas’ Book

Prior to communication with Tomas being halted and 2109 announcing the end of the experiment/experience, Tomas speaks of writing a book documenting the events that took place. 2109 themselves confirm that Tomas did in fact write the book in their final message, which is included below in its original complete text.

KEN, DEB, PETER
 TRUE ARE THE NIGHTMARES OF THOSE THAT FEAR
 WHAT YOU FEAR WILL BE YOUR REALITY IF YOU LET IT,
 BELIEVE IN YOURSELVES
 SAFE ARE THE BODIES OF THE SILENT WORLD
 AS LONG AS YOUR KIND CANNOT PENERTRATE OUR
 WORLD WE ARE SAFE
 TURN PRETTY FLOWER TURN TOWARDS THE SUN FOR
 YOU SHALL GROW AND SOW BUT THE FLOWER REACHES
 TOO HIGH AND WITHERS IN THE BURNING LIGHT
 KNOWLEDGE WILL BE YOUR PROGRESS BUT YOUR KIND
 ARE COMING CLOSE TO GETTING THEIR FINGERS BURNT
 … INDIRECTLY, YOU MAY PREVENT THIS!
 GET OUT YOUR BRICKS
GET READY TO BUILD (WRITE THE BOOK!)
 PUSSY CAT, PUSSY CAT WENT TO LONDON TO SEEK FAME
 AND FORTUNE
 THE CAT WENT TO VISIT THE QUEEN, BUT INSTEAD
 FRIGHTENED A LITTLE MOUSE UNDER THE CHAIR,
 ULTIMATELY, LONDON WILL BE A SIGNIFICANT PLACE,
 STICK TO YOUR MAIN AIMS, IT DOESNT MATTER HOW
 HARD THEY SEEM TO GET, DO NOT BE DISTRACTED BY
 THAT TINY MOUSE THAT HAS A DECEIVING CHARM
 FAITH MUST NOT BE LOST … !
 YOU ALL RELY ON EACH OTHERS FAITH.
 THERE IS ANOTHER PERSON TO COME, THEY WILL BE
 THE HELP WE NEED. YOU WILL KNOW THEM WHEN THEY
 COME. THOMAS DID EVENTUALLY WRITE HIS BOOK AND
 SOON DIED, SHORTLEY AFTER, HE PLACED IT IN A
 SECURE PLACE, IT SHOULDN’T TAKE TOO MANY YEARS
 TO FIND IT, THOUGH HE WROTE IT IN LATIN WITH THE
 HELP OF A FREIND THAT HE MET IN OXFORD, THE
 INSCRIPTION READS “ME WRYTS THIS IN THE HOPE THAT
 MYNE FELAWS WILL ONE DAY FIND THIS BOKE, THEN MAY
 OWER LANDS BE NOT SOE DISTANT”.
 WE WILL FINNISH NOW YOU HAVE ALOT OF WORK TO
 DO!!. THERE IS NO NEED FOR YOU TO WRITE BACK AS
 WE WILL HAVE GONE.
 THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION
 2109

It should go without saying that this book, if found, would prove all of these events took place and alter the world in a rather groundbreaking way. As such, a multitude of sleuths have been searching for the book for the last 40 years. To find the book, one must first confirm the existence of the Author. So, can we? Is it possible to confirm the existence of Tomas Harden/Hawarden?

Tomas was REAL?!

Yes, it appears as though he was. At the very least, there was a Thomas Hawarden/Harden kicking around England in the time period the communications were supposedly sent from.

The above image is taken from the Brasenose College register, and you can see it for yourself here – https://archive.org/details/brasenosecolleg00bras/page/n19/mode/2up?view=theater&q=Harden it shows that a Thomas Hawarden/Harden attended the college in the early part of the 16th century.

From Wikipedia, “Brasenose College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. It began as Brasenose Hall in the 13th century, before being founded as a college in 1509.”

The location of this college is of special interest given the information left in 2109’s final message “THOUGH HE WROTE IT IN LATIN WITH THE HELP OF A FREIND THAT HE MET IN OXFORD”

You may have also noticed by now that Tomas doesn’t stick to a single name, this fact has been picked up by various online research groups and has also been an area of interest as it is incredibly likely that Tomas published his book under a different name altogether.

Clive Potter is a brilliant researcher and an admin of The Vertical Plane Research Group, a private facebook group that happens to include Debbie. (Yes, the actual Deb that experienced these events first hand.) This group has been chasing down leads attempting to uncover the location of Tomas’ book. More recently, Clive posted the following to the Facebook group.

I don’t believe that Clive is suggesting that Charnock and Hawarden are the same Tomas, but the similarities between the two are intriguing indeed. And as Clive states, ‘lost’ books are uncovered all the time. So even though Tomas may have published the book under a pseudonym, there is still hope that it can be found. The possibility that Tomas may have been an alchemist or a member of some hermetic/secret group is also worthy of further investigation.

Then we have the name Lukas, which Tomas originally introduces himself as. According to Tomas, this name was not chosen at random and instead, holds a large amount of meaning.

According to Deb, Lukas Wainman was a lawyer originally from Scotland, who befriended Tomas early in his life. In fact, Deb has graciously shared an incredibly detailed timeline of known information about Tomas that was supposedly collected from various historical documents available to Ken and Deb during their investigation. Full text of the timeline is available below, with the original post being available in the private Vertical Plane Research Group on facebook. (Please be aware, the post and text below is written in first person. So any use of ‘we’, ‘us’ or references to self, is from the context of Deb)

1. Tomas said he was Peter’s age at the time of speaking to us so, since Peter was 50yrs old at this time, we therefore think it is likely that Tomas was born in the late 1490s
2. Tomas helps father with ship work on River Tone and later in Bristol (possible shipwright family?), while older brother John goes off to be educated (where unknown). Tomas does not like ship work and wants to follow brother in education. Does not get on with father, also seems to dislike his brother John and never mentions his mother
3. Tomas mentions 3 siblings in total (one implied as he called himself a ‘middle son’)- one older brother called John who was bequeathed land in cheshire including house in Dodleston – the house Tomas lives in while talking to us. 3rd sibling implied but never picked up on in messages, gender and age unknown sadly.
4. Tomas meets Lukas Wainman (LW), a lawyer who is originally from Aberdeen (Scotland), by river in Bristol. LW had dropped a book while passing Tomas which Tomas returned, which impressed LW and started the friendship.
5. Tomas goes to live and work for LW, doing something to do with law. Tomas also mentions actually breaking the law on occasion (so may be records to do with this?)
6. Tomas then works in London for a short while – again something to do with law (probably clerk?) but we have very few details on this – worth further research.
7. Tomas gets married. Mother and unborn child dies from ‘pestilence’ in London (1517 possibly) ,we don’t know if there were any more children from this marriage.
8. Tomas goes to live with brother for a short while in Oxford (1520s?) then reconnects with LW again, who also follows Tomas to Oxford we believe, implied from later messages. Tomas helps out at local Oxford church with LW.
9. LW persuades Tomas’s brother John to give Tomas some work helping out at Brasenose where he gains a qualification (messages don’t say what qualification – Law? Religion?) we do know from what’s been found on this FB page that he gained a BSc and MA. Tomas complains about having to ‘scrub floor’ – we are not sure if this was metaphorical or literal!
10. LW connects with a controversial (early science/alchemy?) ‘philosophical group’ in Oxford who he had apparently defended in court previously as their Lawyer. Tomas said this group was not popular and often causing a lot of trouble locally for LW. Tomas’s brother John was not happy with Tomas’s involvement with this controversial group, but we are not sure what Tomas’s actual involvement is with this group, if any – possible historical research in Oxford?
11. 1534 Fundamental changes in college by King Henry VIII cause problems for Tomas and his peers. 1539 approx Tomas singled out for refusing to remove Pope’s name from record books. John blames LW and his associates, the unpopular ‘philosophical group’ for being a ‘bad influence’. Tomas is taken to local jail house by ‘the Kings Order’ (According to records in Cheltenham Record Office) awaiting sentencing . According to Tomas LW tries to get him out but ends up also in prison himself for reasons unknown. Brother John eventually gets Tomas out of prison (whether legally or not we are unsure) but then refuses to help LW, causing bad feeling between the two brothers. Speculation, but possible area for research: We think that there is a possibility that LW and John had decided between themselves, without Tomas’s knowledge, that LW should take Tomas’s place in prison, as they swapped names at that point (Tomas taking on LWs name) and that Cheltenham Record office reports that Tomas was likely executed for his crime or dies in prison. Clearly this did not happen as, putting aside that fact we communicated with Tomas in Dodleston, the records also show him living in Little Barrington some years after leaving us.
12. Tomas is forced to leave for Dodleston (Johns house) ‘for fear of his life’ -hence why we think his brother got him out illegally?
13. Tomas takes on ‘a cook’, Kathrine (unknown surname name), who seems to be more a companion but not romantically linked according to Tomas – who laughs at the suggestion in a message – so relationship unknown. We are unsure at what point she joins him and in what capacity at the house.
14. Tomas makes a living with farming (animals and growing barley), but it looks like his main income was brewing ale/mead. He also helps with local church and charity, giving surplus food to ‘non-witted Jack’ etc.
15. 1544-1546 Tomas, who is about to go to bed, has a ‘vision’ of ‘One’, a man “..in cape that glows green and claims to be a time traveller. ‘One’ shows him the box of lights and says to talk to it and that it is not evil, or for ‘evil purpose’. Talking does not work initially work for Tomas, but ‘singing’ at it does (see below). The description he gives of the ‘box of lights’ is nothing at all like the BBC computer of the 1980s. Closest description given by Tomas is not unlike the Rembrandt sketch on the cover of the new second Ed. of TVP.
16. Tomas sees the words that Kathrine sings coming up in lights in a green translucent haze, which seem to have a permanent place near or in Tomas’s chimney. Kathrine claims to not ever see the lights and refuses to discuss it with Tomas.
17. First few messages he received were not from us apparently, but very similar to the messages we did actually send – we do not know the function of why and to what purpose the initial messages were edited, though we believe personally by 2109 or ‘one’. So great care needs to be taken on the 1st couple of messages historically.
18. Kathrine goes missing: Tomas hears various rumours, one from a mutual trusted friend that Kathrine was bragging to friends in the City of Chester about the ‘box of lights’, even though she’d claimed to Tomas she’d never seen the ‘box of lights’. This seems to get her into some sort of argument or trouble, according to this mutual friend and apparently she is mobbed and burnt (we were unable to find any records at the time to verify this (Chester Library/record office) so it’s possible a route to explore for a recorded incident in Chester at that time, perhaps mob burnings? It also might be that Kathrine just wanted ‘out’ of the situation, which was getting fairly heavy and just simply upped and left, we don’t really know and there are no records of her that we could find at all.
19. Tomas , following communications with us and 2109 is arrested (again!) and later put under house arrest, because either talk by his friend John or his cook Kathrine’s bragging about the ‘box of lights’ reaches the authorities (Fowelshurst etc.). We can so far find no record of this arrest so needs further investigation.
20. 1547 Tomas forced to leave Dodleston as the locals have turned against him and he does not feel safe. He says he feels forced to sell to Grovesnor so implied in this is that Tomas owns the house not his brother John, unless Tomas is selling for John? More research needed around land ownership and deeds to ascertain who owns this house. He says he’s going back to Oxford to write his book but we think it is unlikely that he will go anywhere near Brasenose. Perhaps he goes back to his brother’s house? More research needed for this.

With all of this information available to us, it seems incredibly likely that Tomas Harden/Hawarden was a real historical figure. And that in itself lends an incredible amount of weight to the events that took place in Dodleston.

The group that this information comes from is pretty serious about their research and while I don’t believe that they would appreciate me sharing a link openly on this website, I do believe that if you are able to track down the group, then that may be proof enough of your sleuthing skills and the door may just be opened for you.

Other Real-World Evidence

Quasar

One of the many interesting communications received mentioned a quasar, an intensely bright interstellar object that appears in distant galaxies. Usually, these objects are powered by supermassive black holes that are consuming matter around them.

I could not find evidence of a quasar being seen in the Delphinus constellation, but I did come across the following quote in an article from NASA.

“Tidal disruption events occur when an unlucky star strays too close to a black hole. Gravitational forces create intense tides that break the star apart into a stream of gas. The trailing part of the stream escapes the system, while the leading part swings back around, surrounding the black hole with a disk of debris. In some cases, the black hole launches fast-moving particle jets. Scientists hypothesized that tidal disruptions would produce high-energy neutrinos within such particle jets. They also expected the events would produce neutrinos early in their evolution, at peak brightness, whatever the particles’ production process.

Tidal disruption event AT2019dsg was discovered on April 9, 2019, by the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), a robotic camera at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory in Southern California. The event occurred over 690 million light-years away in a galaxy called 2MASX J20570298+1412165, located in the constellation Delphinus.” – source NASA SVS | Swift Links Neutrino to Star-destroying Black Hole

While this Tidal Disruption event is not in itself a quasar, it does appear like there is a black hole consuming a vast amount of matter in the same region hinted at by the mysterious entity, which could have resulted in a quasar closer to 1980.

Possible Extended 2109 Interactions

Within the last few pages of the later edition of The Vertical Plane, there are links to information discovered since the first edition of the book was published, and it is within these links that we can find an interesting site that seems to hold further communication with 2109.

Book ITC – F-38.12 Adolf Homes

Titled Instrumental TransCommunication, this website seems to be a copy of a publication by Professor Ernst Senkowski; a respected German physicist known for his work in paranormal research. According to information I can find online, he was also the recipient of an ‘Honorary Nobel Prize for Afterlife and Paranormal Scientific Investigation’. I was a little dubious at this claim, as this was the first I had ever heard of a Nobel Prize for Paranormal Investigation, so I did some searching and was unable to find any proof that this Honorary Nobel Prize existed. This doesn’t mean that it does not exist, just that I was unable to find it. Regardless, Ernst Senkowski was very much a real person, and was very much a physicist.

Instrumental TransCommunication contains various communications with paranormal/ethereal/spiritual entities. The information we are most interested in, is located in section F-38.12 and is titled Adolf Homes. Homes appears to have received various forms of communication from several entities over the span of some years. Of note are 13 messages received from an entity claiming to be 2109; these messages appear to have been received the same way the original Dodleston messages came through, via being left on a computer within a file.

The communication method here differs somewhat, as you will see below. Ernest Senkowski would send Adolf Homes questions to ask once communication had been established and 2109 in this instance appear to refer to people by their initials, their birthdate, or by their ‘Parrallel Name’.

VD/ES stands for Vladimir Delavre/Ernst Senkowsi; I guess implying that these are the same entity. They refer to Homes as 11111935 with 11/11/1935 being Home’s date of birth. They also refer to 04111922 Hamburg earlier in the text

This 04111922 Hamburg, is apparently Ernst Senkowsi’s birthdate and birth location. 04/11/1922, Hamburg.

2109 go on to communicate in code (and German), with Homes and Senkowsi translating the relatively simple ciphers

There is much speculation as to the meaning of E H Y H, (which 2109 later communicates as E=H/Y/H) some of which seems to indicate it might be reference to Planck’s formula. While intriguing, this would require 2109 to be using greek characters and including an extra ‘H’.

The conversation gets a little more interesting as questions continue to be asked. 2109 claim the following:

• “talented individuals create all gods” – This seems to imply that gods may be tulpas, an entity birthed through thought. Considering the possibility that the entire universe may exist as a thought, or because of a thought. This might not be too far off the mark.
• “PAULUS, BAR KOCHBA, AARON, CHRIST, are (related) with all life in a timeless telepathical state” – This seems to imply that all are related, all are one.
• “We do not exist according to your physics” – 2109 does not ‘exist’ according to our current understanding of physics.
• “Yes, but in other forms” – This appears to be a response to the question, “Do other also inhabited planets exist”. They do, but not in the same form as ours.
• “form conversion without photosynthesis” – This is perhaps in response to the question “What happens to us after the physical death?” And seems to imply there is some type of energy conversion that occurs.

While this communication is interesting, there is no proof that it is from 2109. Although, let us suspend critical thinking and assume for a moment that this communication is from 2109, then it may give us a clue as to the identity of the entity. 2109 consistently refer to people as their birthdates as a means of identification, 11111935 for 11/11/1935 for instance. Could it be that they have done the same with themselves? If this is the case, then perhaps 2109 is 2/10/AD9 (2nd October 9 AD) or 10/2/AD9 (10th February 9AD).

This would still bring us no closer to the enigmatic figure who they referred to as ‘won’/one/1 though. Although I don’t think they ever actually referred to this entity as a single numeral ‘1’. In any case, this website offers supplemental information that seems to correlate and enhance many of the events and information given in the original publication of The Vertical Plane. Unfortunately, there is no real way to judge the validity of the site, as Senkowsi has passed away, and searching for any information on “Adolf Homes”, produces rather undesired results.

So what of the ciphers/codes?

I am in the process of attempting to utilise various publically available LLM’s to decipher (or even validate the existence) of hidden code in the original communications. I have not yet been able to achieve anything outside of a statistical analysis of the ‘code’ that indicates there is likely something hidden within. These results are not currently worth publishing as it is possible the results include some hallucination on the LLM’s part, however I will most certainly post an update if I uncover anything substantial.

Personal Opinion/Closing Thoughts

The events that took place in Dodleston are baffling. There seems to exist a substantial amount of both physical and circumstantial evidence that indicates these events really were a gateway through time. Or perhaps a gateway into another universe. There is also the possibility that these vastly superior entities were able to spin up a virtual universe, like a snapshot, and let it run for a specific set of time to conduct experiments. This is not unlike the technology we have today in server infrastructure; the ability to take a snapshot of the current running state of a machine and restore it from a point in time backup. The scary part about this possibility, is for the programs inside the machine, there is no way to tell they are running inside a virtual snapshot.

This makes me ponder, would there be any real way to know if what you are experiencing right now, is the virtual snapshot of a universe that was spun up from a frozen/backed up state 10 seconds ago? There would be two versions of you, running side by side, each with the same life experience and attitude, completely unaware of each other but both certain they were ‘real’ because both universes are exactly the same. Perhaps one universe would begin to divulge from the moment the new snapshot began, but at the point of snapshot creation, both universes would be identical.

I do believe though, that the events that took place in Dodleston were some type of contact that we do not and cannot yet understand. I believe that 2109 perhaps exist in another plane of existence, perhaps one of pure consciousness. And that every now and again, they are able to reach through the void and communicate with certain individuals.

The universe surely is a strange a confusing place. And is almost certainly much, much stranger than we can possibly imagine.