Submitted by Constantine on
With the popularity of the 2014 movie The Quiet Ones, interest in an historic event known as The Philip Experiment (which the movie is reportedly based on) has peaked. What many do not know is that The Philip Experiment was an actual historic research project conducted by a Toronto organization in 1972 in an effort to prove that paranormal entities such as demons, spirits, ghost, and poltergeists were manifestations produced by human will through expectation, imagination, and visualization. A prominent group of citizens, three men and five women with no interest in the occult, participated in the study, the results of which not only shocked the group but stunned the world. The how and why of The Philip Experiment has never been answered and left many wondering – did the group accidentally summon a demonic or spiritual entity or did they actually create a ghost?
The idea that paranormal entities could be manifestations of the human mind was not new. Paranormal researchers often noted that poltergeist activity, the movement of objects without an apparent visible cause, often seemed to center around a teenager in the affected household, most often a young female. Could such activity somehow be the product of human will or the emanation of a person’s “negative energy”? If so, through intense and prolonged concentration, could a group of people purposefully create a collective thought-form? Indeed, researchers at the Toronto Society for Psychical Research (TSPR) believed they could prove that ghostly manifestations and poltergeist phenomena were the product of the human mind. Their research conducted by the Owen Group would become one of the most important parapsychological studies in history, producing a result that to this day, has left many scratching their heads.
TSPR’s goal was quite simple. Could they create a ghost out of their own minds? To reach their goal, they first assembled a team of prominent, respectable participants. The group’s members were not teenagers, crackpots, or believers in the paranormal but rather, consisted of a housewife, a bookkeeper, a sociology student, an accountant, an industrial designer, a psychologist, and a former chairperson of MENSA (an organization consisting of the top 1% of the county’s intellectual elite). The group was led by Dr. A.R.G. Owen, a member of the Department For Preventative Medicine and Biostatistics at the University of Toronto. Together they became known as the Owen Group.
The objective of the Owen Group was to create a fictional character, whom they named “Philip”, and then, through a purposeful methodology, attempt to contact the fictional entity and receive readily-apparent communications from it in return. To begin, they created a biography of their fictional character, Philip Aylesford, that described the tragic events that Philip had suffered. The biography that they created was based partly on fact but also included fictional elements inserted into the biography in an attempt to “trip up” the group. According to Owen:
“It was essential to their purpose that Philip be a totally fictious character. Not merely a figment of the imagination but clearly and obviously so, with a biography full of historical errors.”
The invented biographical data included contradictions, such as Philip being reincarnated several times, and historical inaccuracies (e.g. Diddington Hall really does exist but the description given in the biographical account is fake). Below, in part, is the biography that Owen Group member, “Sue”, penned for The Philip Experiment.
“Philip was an aristocratic Englishman, living in the middle 1600s at the time of Oliver Cromwell. He had been a supporter of the King, and was a Catholic. He was married to a beautiful but cold and frigid wife, Dorothea, the daughter of a neighboring nobleman.
One day when out riding on the boundaries of his estates Philip came across a gypsy encampment and saw there a beautiful dark-eyed girl raven-haired gypsy girl, Margo, and fell instantly in love with her. He brought her back secretly to live in the gatehouse, near the stables of Diddington Manor – his family home.
For some time he kept his love-nest secret, but eventually Dorothea, realizing he was keeping someone else there, found Margo, and accused her of witchcraft and stealing her husband. Philip was too scared of losing his reputation and his possessions to protest at the trial of Margo, and she was convicted of witchcraft and burned at the stake.
Philip was subsequently stricken with remorse that he had not tried to defend Margo and used to pace the battlements of Diddington in despair. Finally, one morning his body was found at the bottom of the battlements, whence he had cast himself in a fit of agony and remorse.”
The group next petitioned a sketch of Philip, a physical caricature used to put a face on their fictional being. Work to contact “Philip” then began in earnest, the result of which provided the group with, let’s say, a bit more than they had expected.
In September 1972, the Owen Group began formal weekly sittings in the “Philip room” during which they sat together and discussed Philip and his life, meditated on his being, and attempted to create a “collective hallucination” of his spirit. During the early sessions, the group sought to create a common mental picture of Philip and his surroundings, focusing on his appearance, day-to-day activities, and his feelings towards his wife Dorothea and gypsy lover Margo. Although some members occasionally claimed to “feel a presence” at times, and others reported seeing vivid images of Philip in their mind, after several months no communication, no manifestations, no phenomenon of any kind could be created through their attempts – that is, until they decided to turn off the lights.
With no satisfactory result from their efforts, it was suggested (by British psychologist Kenneth J. Barcheldor) that the group change tactic, surmising that some group members harbored skepticism and hence, they should conduct their sessions in an atmosphere that was less academic and more conducive to the summoning of ghostly spirits. They began mimicking the procedures used in a traditional séance session – the lights were dimmed and the group gathered around a table, surrounded with objects from Philip’s fictional time period. As popularized in traditional Spiritualism séances, group members sat around the table, placing their fingers lightly on the surface, and called for Philip to appear.
Shortly after the “traditional” séance settings began, suddenly, out of the blue, a loud rap echoed through the room. Members of the team noted later that the rap was distinctive, clear, and so violent that the table itself vibrated (members said that the sound they heard was “felt” more than heard). This was followed by a number of distinctive knocks. After these first communications from “Philip”, the group began querying the entity, agreeing on a “one rap for yes, two for no” means of expressing themselves. Through this new means of communiqué, the group learned finer details of Philip’s life. However, they noted that the only details Philip initially provided were historical details that any member of the group could have known beforehand. Hence, the Owen Group theorized that the information coming from “Philip” was information being fed into the conversation through their own collective unconsciousness.
From this point forward however, the phenomena experienced by the group began to accelerate, producing a wide range of paranormal events that the group was never able to explain scientifically. Auditory study of the loud raps, showed a unique sound envelope, one that could not be reproduced by researchers and the group soon recognized that the entity they had conjured had a distinct personality. He had likes, dislikes, and strong views on various subjects made clear to the group members by the enthusiasm, or hesitancy, in his responses. Loud knocks were received in response to mundane questions but if the group asked Philip about his wife Dorothea, loud scratching noises would emanate from table or chairs instead.
Soon after the “verbal” communications began, Philip began producing extraordinary visible physical manifestations. In response to questions, group members began to hear whispers in their ears. In one of the early sessions, the group was stunned when the table suddenly, and violently, jumped and slid across the floor, this despite the fact that the table rested on thick carpeting. At one point, it was documented that the table began to “dance”, tilting onto a single leg and spinning about.
Researchers now had serious questions about the results they were witnessing. In order to rule out a possible hoaxer in the group, paper doilies were placed on the table, under the fingertips of participants, in an effort to foil any conscious attempts by members to make the table move. Cameras were brought in to film the proceedings, some placed strategically to capture any purposeful attempt to move the table using the participant’s knees. Still, the table would jump about, rock, and shake of its own accord.
The Owen Group members were both astounded, and terrified of what they were experiencing. Room lights would dim, and when the group politely asked Philip to return them to their normal brightness, they would instantly turn back on. After feeling a distinct cool breeze blow across the table, the group asked if he could start and stop the wind at will. On command, Philip would send a whirlwind of air across the table and into the participants’ faces. On one occasion, it was reported that a fine cloud of mist formed and hovered over the center of the table. Soon, the table began to move around the room, rushing across the room to greet latecomers and on several occasions, pushing, and trapping, a team member into a corner of the room.
Word of the experiment’s extraordinary results spread and quickly captured the attention of the public. A 16mm movie was produced by the group in 1974 (reportedly titled Philip: the Imaginary Ghost) which documented the experiment’s conception, what actually happened, and showed the table’s movements and loud, booming, raps. Media outlets responded and CBS Television even sent a crew to film the events for a TV documentary, Man Alive. During the filming, before a live audience of more than fifty people, Philip produced booming raps on the table, turned lights throughout the room on and off, and in front of all witnesses present, levitated the table off the floor.
The film crew of course, was astounded but nevertheless, the Owen Group could not produce a scientific explanation for what they were witnessing. As far as anyone could tell, a physical entity had been summoned, and nobody knew how nor why the manifestations took place.
Several books were penned about the events witnessed during The Philip Experiment. Iris Owen and Margaret Sparrows documented the events in their 1976 work, Conjuring up Philip, and several other paranormal-related books of the day included the incident in their works.
Some believe the group made contact while others believe their experience was not with the other-side but rather, a form of psychokinetic phenomena, the ability to mentally affect the physical environment without any physical contact. Regardless, The Philip Experiment produced results that continue to confound researchers to this day.
The success of The Philip Experiment prompted the group to launch additional studies. Five weeks after the conclusion of The Philip Experiment, researchers assembled a new group of people and began again with a new “ghost”, named Lilith (a French Canadian spy during World War II). Similar experiments were conducted using entities such as Sebastian (a medieval alchemist), and Axel (a man from the future). According to the researchers, all of the subsequent experiments also product unexplainable communications and physical manifestations.
Several of the Owen Group members operated anonymously and to date, we do not know the full identify of all participants. Below is what little detail we know of the people who participated in The Philip Experiment.
A.R.G. Owen – mathematician
Iris Owen – wife of A.R.G. Owen
Margaret Sparrows – former chairperson of MENSA
Andy H. – Housewife
Lorne H. – industrial designer
Al Peacock – heating engineer
Bernice M. – accountant
Dorothy O’ Donnel – bookkeeper
Sidney K. – sociology student
Dr. Joel Whitton – psychologist
Sue – former nurse with Canadian Armed Forces (penned the original biographical account of “Philip”)
Film of The Philip Experiment is widely available on the Internet. However, the film currently floating around the public domain is a *recreation* of the events and not the actual film shot during The Philip Experiment sessions. Thus far, Altered Dimensions had been unable to locate the raw footage shot during the sessions.
Below is a collection of video snippets from the original sessions (a big thanks to Steven Peacock, son of one of the participants).
- 1408 reads