CAUGHT

By William Gazecki

When I arrived in Hoeven, Netherlands on Wednesday, August 15 th 2018, Robbert van den Broeke and I agreed that “now is the time”. It had been 16 years. I was ready to take him to the next level, gathering the core elements of a pilot for a TV series on Netflix, or Oprah’s network (OWN). The appropriate connections had been made, and Robbert was confident “the other dimensions” were ready to deliver. It was time to get “the money shots”. To finally capture on video the raw images of the most favorite stories- balls of light making crop formations, a craft
landing and creatures appearing…

I was so excited during the trip over that by the time I arrived I was bleary-eyed with intense jet-lag. Wednesday night I slept. Thursday night I went through the brand new camera Robbert’s friend Stan had bought for this excursion. Friday night- the 17 th – was our first night out in the fields. Robbert guided us to the Palingstraat, the same general area where the 2 largest crop circles ever to appear in the Netherlands had landed only several weeks prior. It
was around midnight. We parked, got out and walked a bit down the dike to the magical tree where Robbert had recently “made pictures”… apparition photos of Mary, the mother of Jesus.

He asked for my cell phone to use its camera, so people would know there was “no funny business”. I handed it to him, helping to make sure the flash was working. He wanted to use it in “selfie mode”, as he usually did (with everything on automatic). I found a nice comfy spot next to this huge, beautiful tree, sat down on the soft welcome earth, and sort-of nuzzled up to it with my as-yet to be resolved jet-lag, leaving Robbert to do as he would in the surrounding complete darkness. Everything felt good. I drifted off into a pleasant siesta. Not quite asleep, but not fully conscious either. It was a very sweet, safe and warm space. Lovely energy. He said later that the location of the tree was a portal. It certainly felt like it that night.

After awhile, he was done. He asked me to turn on the new video camera we’d also brought with us, and put it into “night-vision” mode so I could tape him doing what he was doing in the pitch black darkness. The camera we’d been using the previous trip had a button on the front, next to the lens, that when pressed put the camera into night-vision mode- that greenish/white palette of infra-red. On this new camera there was no such button to be found, and I’d not yet
delved that deep into the menus to know how to easily shift into night-vision. I feigned ignorance, saying I’d get it next time.

As we walked to the car he gave me my phone back, and I could see a screen full of thumbnails with many images of Mary and the classic lightball UFO, both against a pitch black background.
“Wow, that looks great!”, I said. He was like, “yeah, that’s the Billy Meier UFO” (which it was). “Please send me all the photos when you get back to your room tonight…” and, “I’m not sure if I want to release these yet or not”. I replied with, “sure, whatever you want. Just let me know”.

Easy peasy. I dropped him off at his place in Hoeven, and drove on to my room at the Golden Tulip in Bosschenhoofd. By then it was about 3 in the morning. I connected my iPhone to my MacBook Pro. It automatically opened an app called “Photos”, with the option of Sharing or Downloading from the phone to the laptop. For each shot, there were 2 files: a single jpeg still image, and a .mov file (moving image). I was not familiar with this, but soon became so. Turns out that beginning with the iPhone 6, the default setting when shooting stills is to also generate a short image sequence. Apple calls this the “Live” mode. It’s a nice feature that produces a 60-frame image sequence in addition to the one still image as usual. My first thought was, “nice… perhaps we’ll be able to see more of how “the other dimensions” work”. As I began to examine each shot taken by Robbert, my heart began to sink. I could see that he had been passing an image in front of the camera lens. Nothing paranormal about that.

Robbert left about 40 shots on the camera. He also deleted many before handing the phone back to me. The little .mov files show- without ambiguity- that he had been faking these “apparition” images. I placed all of them onto a timeline in my editing program (Adobe Premiere), so I could watch them in a continuous sequence. In that manner it was obvious that for every shot a similar movement could be observed. It’s easy to see the motion of a card or cutout passing in front of the lens.

I was dumbfounded and terribly disturbed by this. After 16 years of trusting Robbert, I now no longer could. I did not know what to do. I slept for a few hours, and then left him a message that I was not feeling well. I could not face him. I certainly could not pretend that everything was OK. I’m not capable of that sort of deception. So, I chose to retreat from the situation entirely. I called his sister Madelon, who with her husband Maarten came to visit and view the
material. They agreed that what was shown was Robbert manipulating prepared images in front of the camera lens. I also invited Danny and Dina of The Bigger Picture Event. At the time, they also agreed that the short videos show Robbert hoaxing. Apparently they have re- considered their opinion since then.

I have said and shown what I need to have considered. Thank you for reading.
William Gazecki