Seth and The Telepathy Tapes: The Coming of Seth
Even during these initial few sessions with Frank Watts, Jane had begun to sense something else. As the planchette moved to spell out messages, she started to hear the words in her mind before they were spelled. This internal echo – a faint voice, or perhaps an inner knowing – began to grow stronger, signaling a shift from external manipulation of the pointer to internal telepathic reception. It was a pivotal moment, one that echoed the experiences of some of the parents and teachers of the autistic children described in The Telepathy Tapes, who often reported “hearing” or “knowing” the children’s words before they were spelled out on the spelling board.
Jane grappled with something else that would be reported later by those same parents and teachers – a worry that she could not be sure if the messages she seemed to be receiving in her head were genuine, or merely her own stray thoughts. The parents and teachers dealt with this uncertainty by requesting that the children confirm their message on the spelling board, at least until they had gained a degree of familiarity and comfort with the telepathic process. In a strikingly similar vein, Rob noted that “by this time [the third session], Jane was usually getting the answers to the questions mentally before the board had time to spell them out. She did not trust this method, however, and insisted that we continue to receive the answers also through the board.”
In hindsight, Frank Watts functioned as a threshold figure – an intermediary personality who helped ease Jane and Rob into a psychic orientation without overwhelming them. Seth would later describe Frank as a “rather colourless” personality, a fragment of his own entity who Jane and Rob could accept more easily than himself, given their beliefs and psychological readiness at the time. “He was a personality from my entity,” Seth said, “entirely independent from me and from my control… Ruburt’s [Seth’s name for Jane] abilities were only beginning to show themselves, and had what we may refer to as a low-range frequency. There was an affinity to begin with, but Ruburt simply could not reach far enough, or within and through the inner senses enough, to contact me directly… Frank Watts was closer, and acted as an unconscious relay station…”
Throughout this period, Rob played a crucial role. His meticulous documentation of every session reveals a temperament that balanced skepticism with deep respect for the process. Rob recorded each exchange in detail – letter by letter at first, then word by word – as the messages gained momentum. He included not only the transcribed communications but also the date, time, and Jane’s state of mind. His records were clean, disciplined, and comprehensive – an invaluable resource that gave the work a sense of continuity and objectivity, helping to anchor Jane’s increasingly exotic experiences. His devotion to the process was never passive; he asked questions, clarified meanings, and even challenged inconsistencies. Yet he did so with genuine curiosity and a growing recognition that something real – something extraordinary – was taking place.
Frank Watts may not have stayed long, but his role was indispensable, helping Jane and Rob remain with the process long enough for deeper contact to occur. He prepared the psychic and emotional ground upon which Seth could later appear. He gave Jane a stable and unassuming voice to listen to while she adjusted to the strange new frequency of inner communication. The Ouija board had opened. The doorway had been unlocked. But it was still only the beginning. Something far vaster was preparing to emerge.
Seth Emerges – “Strange to the Strange”
On the evening of December 8, 1963, a presence unlike any Jane Roberts or Rob Butts had yet encountered made itself known. They were at their usual place – seated together, fingertips on the Ouija board’s planchette, still exploring psychic contact for the ESP book Jane had begun writing. Until that point, their messages had come from Frank Watts, the English teacher from beyond the veil who had guided their earliest sessions. But this night was different. The energy in the room seemed to carry an extra charge. The tone of the messages changed. The presence that came through was more direct, more forceful, and carried a distinctly different personality – one that seemed both deeply familiar and utterly alien.
“Frank Watts,” Rob asked, “can we refer back to you on any specific questions in the future, for further elaboration?” The board spelled out a brief but electrifying message. “I prefer not to be called Frank Watts.” “What would you prefer to be called?’” asked Rob. “You may call me whatever you choose. I call myself Seth.” SETH. No surname, no earthly identity. Just Seth. Jane and Rob were struck by the authority of the contact. There was no hesitation in the phrasing, no meandering prose. The sentences formed with clarity, precision, and a kind of intellectual warmth that neither of them had experienced before.
One of Seth’s first remarks was about Jane’s spiritual identity. He referred to her as Ruburt, a name Jane had never encountered, and explained that this was her entity’s name, as closely as it could be translated. When Rob said that Jane didn’t like it, and that it seemed like a strange name to them, Seth replied with what would become his typical wry humour, “strange to the strange.”
The moment felt momentous. Seth was not simply delivering information; he was forming a relationship. Jane was not afraid of Seth’s presence, but she was awed by it. The quality of the communication was entirely unlike that of Frank Watts. Seth’s language was more abstract, yet more precise. He spoke of multidimensional selves, the construction of reality, and the deeper architecture of identity. There was humour and a kind of compassionate firmness that suggested he knew far more than he was yet revealing. At times, it was as if Seth were easing Jane into her own forgotten knowledge, coaxing the latent parts of her consciousness back into focus.
Rob, observing the session and documenting every movement of the pointer, could sense the difference as well. He later recalled that “the character of the answers we had been receiving for some little while before this point had been reached had changed from the type of answer Frank Watts had been giving; I recall that even then we had wondered whether some other entity than Frank Watts had become involved.” They had made contact. A dialogue had begun – one that would continue for two decades.
In hindsight, this first encounter with Seth was less a rupture than a remembering. It was not the arrival of something foreign, but the reawakening of something known from the inside out. Like the children in The Telepathy Tapes, Jane was stepping into a realm where identity and knowledge flowed in unfamiliar channels – where the strange was, in truth, the deepest kind of home.