Greek Spiritualist Captures Images of Spirit in a Vacuum: The Bellosean Sphere
by Keith Clark ~ inspired by an article by Thanassis Vembos
During the Greek-Italian War of 1940-1941, Greek Spiritualist Alexandros Bellos was serving on the front lines in the mountainous regions in Albania. At these higher altitudes, Bellos and his fellow soldiers reported seeing manifestations of ethereal entities and what appeared to be shadows of people, but not in complete physical form.
After the war, Bellos began to research the cause of the phenomenon he had experienced. While reading about the “invisible companions” of those who scaled Mount Everest, the wheels of creativity began turning in his mind.
Following the classic age-old lesson of “use what you know”, Bellos thought of glass bell vacuum experiments he had witnessed in high school. As most inspired people do, he applied a previous experience or memory and wondered what would happen if he recreated the condition of high altitude in a laboratory environment. And so he did. He envisioned, manifested, experimented, and was successful.
He observed “etheric people” inside his bell jar, or sphere. What happened then can be found in the original article by Thanassis Vembos HERE. Note that at the time of this writing, Vembos’ website is the sole source on the internet regarding this topic, we thank him for sharing his discovery with the world, and with us.
The Spark
The world is a smaller place. I heard about this article because I saw it shared on a facebook friend’s page, where it had originated from another friends page in Russia, with the original source clearly being Vembos’ website. What a wonderful way social media has provided the ability to learn new information!
Being clearly fascinated by the idea of scientific experimenting and simultaneously desiring to work with spirit, I became very excited and intrigued. This was a rare find, something I had unheard of, and Google searches came up completely empty, aside from Vembos’ website. Then the creative spark lit inside me and grew in intensity.
I wondered “what sort of experiments with spirit can I do in a Bell Jar?” In a rather radical yet not unprecedented move, I determined that I would attempt to replicate this work by Bellos, and was already convinced that it had value and potential – but in what way? I decided to dig deeper.
Linking to Physical Mediumship and ITC (Instrumental Transcommunication)
In the article, several things immediately struck me as being akin to physical mediumship. Being acquainted with the precautions and conditions necessary for practicing physical mediumship, I found the following items of special note: The use of a “hypnotized medium”, a “human chain”, and “slight infrared light or complete darkness” were the first clues. One could read this as a “physical medium”, a “séance circle”, and “low red light or no light” – the exact conditions most typically found in the few physical mediumship demonstrations occurring in the world today.
My suspicions were later confirmed in the article when it was mentioned that Bellos “never stopped organizing public experiments of spirit photography, eventually hoping to find the suitable physical medium in the audience.” As a Spiritualist, Bellos would likely have been familiar with, and perhaps even participated in physical mediumship séances.
The article states Bellos was “involved in Spiritualism around 1937”, during which he would have approximately been around the age of 25. Calculating information given in this article Bellos was born in 1912, presented his “vacuum bell” to the board of the Scientific Institute for Metapsychic Research (SIMR) in 1953 at the approximate age of 41, and passed away in 1958 at the approximate age of 46. This means he most likely spent the last 5 years of his physical life dedicated to promoting this specific method of experimentation.
The Mystery of Controversy
At some point this work by Bellos and successive reproductions by other participants became controversial. So much so, that the story of The Bellosean Sphere flows first into amazement, incredulity, then scrutiny, followed by accusations of fraud, attempts at duplication with some reports of success, death/transition of the experimenter, with the story of the equipment ending up abandoned and the work forgotten in the sands of time. Sound familiar? It should, because in many ways it bears the earmarks of the early days of ITC (Instrumental Trans-communication), Spiricom, and many other situations where controversial visionaries or experimenters experienced the same ultimate fate.
This leads us to believe that once again, as stated many times by others, the experimenter and harmony are essential ingredients of successful communication with spirit, or other work in these areas. It also poses an interesting question: If you read the article you will find that when a gifted physical medium was present the images are somewhat spectacular, yet when the work was reproduced years later, it is somewhat challenging to even see any image within the sphere at all. 
It would seem that the visible images were likely a product of ectoplasm generated through physical mediumship, with a physical medium present; whereas the controversial images that are displayed later on in the article seem to be descriptive of typical ITC results – challenging, malformed, and open to intense scrutiny and perception of the viewer. I hereby propose that Bellos had worked with what we now classify as two distinct areas – physical mediumship and ITC.
Additional Info from Thanassis Feeling rather curious, I emailed Thanassis and thanked him for sharing his findings with us. He graciously mentioned that other people had recently written him about this same article and proceeded to describe how he accidentally stumbled upon this story while doing research for his latest book.
In the article, “1 million” Drachmas was given as the approximate cost of building this vacuum setup, which according to Thanassis, is equivalent to approximately $1,500 today. He also noted how rare the information concerning this was, and mentioned that he found references to the use of a “vacuum spirit tube” used by the British Society for Psychical Research, of which no additional information is known at this time.
Call Out to The Universe – Do You Have Information on The Bellosean Sphere or Vacuum Experiments with Spirit (or otherwise)?
Vembos noted that this article was based on translated excerpts from old newspapers and magazines, listed in the footnotes of his article. I’ve written to the American and British Societies for Psychical Research to see if any additional information is available on related experiments. If you have information, please feel free to contact us at [email protected]
Conclusion Special thanks to Thanassis Vembos of Vembos.GR, Full Greek Website or English Version for his research and sharing of information.
Alexandros Bellos (pictured left – appearing in a sphere after his death in 1958), given what we know about you, we salute your expression of true spirit by making an observation, envisioning creative potential, and then taking action as an experimenter. You were persistent and followed your convictions. You are a creator.
You, as we currently aspire to do, expressed your spirituality through creativity. Bravo, we salute you.
Given the nature of Bellos’ work as described, it becomes apparent that he may likely one day be recognized and added to the list as one of the original experimenters of visual forms of ITC (Instrumental Trans-communication).
P.S. Dear Alexandros, we are working on reproducing your experiments, and you are more than welcome to appear in our “sphere!” Experiments have already been conducted – results, specific info, and experiences will be presented in forthcoming articles.
Keith J. Clark, Creator, iDigitalMedium
Future Item ~ iDigitalMedium Original Series Episode 1:
Recreating the Bellosean Sphere