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The Philip Experiment is described as one of the most fascinating, bizarre, and
controversial studies in the history of parapsychology and the investigation of
the anomalous. Conducted in Canada in the 1970s, the experiment sought to
determine whether an “entity” or “ghost” could be created from scratch by the
human mind.
Background.
Conception.
Conducted between 1972 and 1974 in Toronto, Canada, by the Toronto Society
for Psychical Research (TSPR) under the direction of mathematical geneticist
Dr. George Owen and his wife Iris Owen, the Philip Experiment was one of the
most unusual studies in parapsychology. The central purpose of the project
was to determine whether a group of ordinary people, using concentration,
imagination, and collective suggestion, could create from scratch an
artificial conscious entity, a deliberately fabricated ghost capable of
manifesting real physical phenomena, a concept closely related to the occult
idea of tulpas.
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| Dr. George Owen and Iris Owen. |
Tulpas.
The concept of tulpas has its main origins in Tibetan mysticism and the
practices of Tibetan Buddhism, where it was originally conceived as a
mental manifestation or spiritual emanation created through intense
discipline in meditation, concentration, and visualization. For lamas and
advanced practitioners, a tulpa was an entity or thought-form temporarily
endowed with a tangible appearance and apparent autonomy through
concentrated mental effort.
In the early 20th century, this mystical concept began to gain popularity
in the West thanks to explorers and writers such as Alexandra David-Neel,
who claimed to have created her own tulpa, a cheerful Tibetan monk who
eventually became so real and difficult to control that she had to dispel
him through reverse concentration. From then on, the idea ceased to belong
solely to Eastern mysticism and began to be studied by parapsychology and
Western psychology as a phenomenon of extreme suggestion.
Philip Aylesford.
To avoid any bias or connection to the souls of real deceased people, the
researchers and the eight participants in the group devised a completely
fictional biography. The character they created was named Philip Aylesford,
a 17th-century English aristocrat born in 1624 who supported Charles II
during the English Civil War. According to the fictional story, Philip was
married to a cold-hearted woman named Dorothea; he tragically fell in love
with a young Gypsy woman; he was betrayed by his wife; he witnessed his
lover’s execution at the stake for witchcraft; and, consumed by remorse, he
committed suicide in 1654 at the age of thirty. He even commissioned a drawn
portrait of his face so that the group could visualize him with absolute
precision during the sessions.
The Experiment.
Composed of Lorne and Andy Henwood, Al Peacock, Bernice Melbourne, Dorothy
O'Donnell, Sidney Kirkpatrick, and Margaret Sparrow, and coordinated by Dr.
George Owen and Iris Owen, the group held its first meetings during the
initial weeks with an academic and strictly rational approach, gathered
around a table, without achieving any results. Everything changed when the
researchers altered the overall atmosphere to mimic a traditional séance:
they turned off the lights, played soft music, created a relaxed atmosphere,
and encouraged casual conversation about Philip before attempting to make
contact. Following this change in the environment, phenomena began to
manifest consistently and surprisingly within the room.
Recorded events.
The recorded events included communication via knocks on the table, where
one knock meant “yes” and two meant “no”, always in response to questions
about a life they themselves had invented. Furthermore, the table began to
perform complex autonomous movements, tilting on a single leg, levitating
slightly, or moving fluidly across the room, even going so far as to
deliberately get stuck in the doorframe. The participants also experienced
physical changes in their surroundings, such as localized cold drafts,
temperature fluctuations, and lights that flickered or dimmed in response to
requests directed at the supposed spirit.
Results.
This entire investigation was rigorously documented through audio and video
recordings by Dr. George Owen. However, upon analyzing the visual archives
from that time, the scientific community and skeptics pointed out that,
although the table moved in a strange way, the hands of the group members
always remained resting on its surface. According to the researchers, the
strange occurrences were due to two entirely real phenomena that were by no
means “paranormal”:
The ideomotor effect: The most plausible explanation suggests that the table's
movements were caused by involuntary and unconscious muscle movements on the
part of the participants themselves, amplified by collective suggestion.
Confirmation bias and group hysteria: Psychologist Joel Whitton suggested
that those involved experienced a kind of collective regression or
self-induced trance due to their intense concentration.
Replies.
In the wake of the Philip case, the Toronto Society for Psychical Research
(TSPR) and other independent researchers decided to determine whether the
phenomenon was truly reproducible or merely an isolated incident. To this
end, they launched new experiments designed from scratch, in which they
created other fictional characters with entirely different backstories;
Lilith and Humphrey are the most famous examples of these replication
attempts. Each of these new entities had its own dramatic backstory,
historical era, and personality traits invented by the participants to test
the flexibility of the technique.
During these subsequent sessions, the initial results seemed to validate the
parapsychologists’ expectations. By recreating the same relaxed atmosphere,
with dim lighting and intense group concentration focused on the biographies
of Lilith or Humphrey, the physical phenomena once again manifested
systematically. The tables began to tilt, levitate slightly, and respond
with audible knocks to questions related to the fictional lives of these new
characters, which at the time led enthusiasts to believe that any group of
people was capable of summoning a thought-form through collective
suggestion.
However, these attempts ran into exactly the same methodological obstacles
as the original experiment, perpetuating its ambiguous nature and limited
empirical validity. The entities created exhibited the same cognitive
limitations: they never revealed historical data or information outside the
psyche and cultural heritage of the group members themselves. Furthermore,
because constant physical contact was maintained between the participants’
hands and the furniture, the scientific community continued to attribute the
movements to the ideomotor effect and confirmation biases, preventing these
replications from being accepted as rigorous scientific evidence and
confining them to the realm of psychological curiosity.
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