The main characters of the From Beyond are Crawford Tillinghast and his friend, who tells the story in the first person, what horrible changes prof. Tillinghast suffered. The prof. builds an eclectic machine, with the help of which he makes our feeble or primitive senses work, enabling us to look into the deepness of Creation, ignoring time, space and dimensions. He madly builds his machinery, isolating himself from the world outside, keeping in touch with no-one, even his servants leave him. His friend feels he must help him.
"We see things only as we are constructed to see them, and can gain no idea of their absolute nature. With five feeble senses we pretend to comprehend the boundlessly complex cosmos, yet other beings with a wider, stronger, or different range of senses might not only see very differently the things we see, but might see and study whole worlds of matter, energy, and life which lie close at hand yet can never be detected with the senses we have." – Crawford Tillinghast