This paper explores the experiences of a detailed security check that the first author of this paper had do subject himself to in order to gain research access to a high-security facility where he is to perform an ethnographic study. In doing so, the paper accounts for a stressful experience, the intensities, i.e. the affective dimensions, of gaining research access. These are tied to wider discussions concerning the role of imagination -and how imagination exists in relation to a reseach group.