A Benedictine monk with training in quantum physics, Gregorian chants, and exorcism claimed to have built a device that could see into the past.

This man was Father Pellegrino Ernetti, and he assembled his Chronovisor with a secret team high-profile scientists that allegedly included Enrico Fermi and Wernher von Braun. Fifty years ago, they told everyone they took pictures of Christ’s crucifixion.

Unsurprisingly, the evidence didn’t hold up. But that didn’t stop the story from getting stranger. The Vatican itself refused to confirm or deny rumors that it had ordered the device dismantled, and Ernetti died without fully recanting.

Maybe the problem with any supposed means of looking into the past is that you have to answer the question of who’s holding the camera, and how.

Regardless of whether the thing ever actually existed, the Chronovisor did successfully get us talking about the Scole Experiment, Edison’s spirit telephone, and why the past might be genuinely incomprehensible even if you had the means to look.

Welcome to episode 50, everyone.

Highlights:

An introduction to Father Pellegrino Ernetti (1925–1994), a “Renaissance monk”

Ernetti’s music scholarship—reconstructing ancient sounds—led him to believe every event leaves behind energy traces, reminding us of the Akashic Record

A secret team of 12 scientists (that makes a quorum, folks) began work around 1952 at the Catholic University of Milan

The “chronovisor” was reportedly an array of specialized antennas tuned to “historical frequencies,” combined with cathode ray tubes and oscilloscopes

Ernetti even claimed it could pick up thoughts

What they allegedly saw

Story went public in 1972 in Italy

Ernetti presented a grainy black-and-white image he said showed Christ’s face during the crucifixion

But the image matched a wooden crucifix sculpted under the direction of a mystic named Mother Speranza

When confronted by his friend Father François Brune, Ernetti admitted the published photo was of the sculpture, but never explained why he let it circulate

Also claimed he was forbidden to talk about it

In a letter before his death, he said “everything about the device and Christ’s passion was the sacred truth”

The Vatican has never confirmed or denied the Chronovisor’s existence

Comparisons to this now-mythical device and remote viewing

Perception is never objective (see: our conversation with Mark Turner in Episode 30)

Is this why the sculpture of Christ inspired by Mother Speranza looks like a guy from 1960 instead of a first-century Jew?

The tension between mystic technology and material technology: two different means of achieving the same ends, maybe?

Tom wonders, offhandedly, Why the crucifixion? Why not the resurrection, or better yet, the Beatitudes?

The Cottingley Fairies

The Scole Experiment in the 90s (wild)

Thomas Edison believed similar things to Ernetti, and also proposed a device

“Physics is broken”

This is not going to work the way you think it’s going to work

An old filmmaker who had his actors wave their arms around nonsensically to represent the incomprehensibility of the past

We end with some behavior calculated to baffle far-future audiences

And in the epilogue…

We’re joined by listener Brendan McKinney to talk about his experiences with synchronicities, which he wrote about here:

https://ggupodcast.substack.com/p/authorial-intrusions

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