A FORTEAN LIBRARY
NO 48. THE GHOST STORY WITH NO GHOST
“What is a ghost?” muses aged Rosa Diamond in Salman Rushdie’s (in)famous novel, The Satanic Verses. Rosa answers her own question: “Unfinished business, is what.” Which is as neat a definition of something so elusive and enigmatic as one could wish for. But it raises the ever-unanswered question: what starts off the ‘business’ in the first place? In the mid-1970s, members of the Toronto Society for Psychical Research began to wonder just how ‘ghostly’ the spirits really were that mediums contacted in the classic séance room routine. Discounting known hoaxes and frauds, the group thought it possible that genuine séance phenomena might be the product of psychokinesis (PK), generated by a medium or perhaps collectively, rather than by discarnate spirits. So, they decided to test the idea: and proceeded to invent a plausible historical character from scratch, then to invoke his presence, and see what happened. This is the story of ‘Philip’, the ghost who never had an earthly life, and what happened to him and those who raised him.
It’s worth stressing that those involved – a core of eight people from the Toronto SPR – had a perfect faith in the reality of PK, and took at face value the claims of the likes of Uri Geller, Prof John Hasted and his metal-bending children, and ‘Nelya Mikhailova’, alias Nina Kulagina. Such trust in such names might be rather hard to find among psychical researchers today. As we’ll see, however, this outlook was crucial to the success of the Philip enterprise. Another critical aspect of the experiment was the belief that ordinary folk, not just gifted mediums, might have PK powers. The question then was: if such powers were latent in everyone, could people be trained or otherwise encouraged to manifest them? The experiment was thus two-pronged: to bring out PK using people with no known psychic talent, and to use the invented Philip as the agency thereof. In effect, Philip became his own medium.
Who was Philip? Initially, his biography was outlined by Margaret ‘Sue’ Sparrow: “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 neighbouring 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, ravenhaired gypsy girl, Margo, and fell instantly in love with her.
“He brought her back 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, realising he was keeping someone else there, found Margo, and accused her of witchcraft and of 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 subsequently was 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 foot of the battlements where he had cast himself in a fit of agony and remorse.”
With this as a framework, the group then discussed and established further details: precisely what he looked like, his taste in food and clothes, his habits and hobbies, temperament, likes and dislikes, and his feelings toward the two women in his life. One member of the group drew his portrait, and this was always put in the middle of the circle in which they sat when conjuring him up. The group also “read books relating to Philip’s times, found records and songs of the period, and generally familiarised themselves with the sort of environment in which he would have lived.” As time went by, this became much more elaborate. The full story of Philip, as it was eventually developed by the group and, indeed, by Philip himself, occupies an 11-page chapter at the end of the book. Philip’s and Dorothea’s family seats were based on real places – Diddington Hall (which lacks both a tower and battlements) and Packington Hall in Warwickshire. The reasoning was: “We chose real places... specifically because we can then prove that historically Philip did not exist.” One supposes it’s not unusual for séance entities to be fairly posh. What’s not explained is why the group chose to invent a 17th-century English aristocrat rather than a distinguished 19thcentury Canadian, whose background (or what to avoid in it) might have been easier to research.
Who comprised the group? Besides Iris Owen (the main author of Conjuring Philip, formerly a nurse in England; when the book was written she was serving on the board of a home for unwed mothers) there were Margaret ‘Sue’ Sparrow (contributing author, chairman of MENSA Canada, and formerly a nurse with the Canadian armed forces), Andy H (housewife, and the creator of Philip’s portrait), Lorne H (an industrial designer, Andy H’s husband), Al P (a heating engineer), Bernice M (an accountant), Dorothy O’D (a housewife, Cub Scout leader and book-keeper), and Sidney K (a sociology student). From time to time Dr ARG ‘George’ Owen (a mathematician, founder of the Toronto SPR, and Iris Owen’s husband) and psychologist Joel Whitton attended as observers.
Their initial intention was to produce a visible apparition of their fictional
character. They went about this by meeting twice a week or so, sitting in a circle and meditating for a period – periods that became longer as they grew accustomed to the technique. Then, during a break, they would discuss their experiences of meditation, and refine details of Philip’s life and those of the other characters in it. Finally came another session of meditation and further discussion afterwards. All this was done in full light, or using an array of coloured lights, never in darkness; and someone would always be sitting outside the circle as an observer. Owen notes that after a while “some were unconsciously claiming [Philip] for their own, stating that during meditation Philip said this or that to them, or that they had ‘seen’ him in a particular and special circumstance.” They were firmly reminded that this was a group endeavour, and “if he appeared, he must appear in the same way and to everyone at once... The whole object of our experiment was to prove that no such person [as a medium] was necessary. Our objective was to be able to prove that it was something any group of ordinary people could do.” On occasion, observers would see “a certain mistiness” around the circle, but there was little else, and after a year of concentrated effort the group was feeling despondent: “Nothing of any real value had been obtained... it seemed pointless to continue.”
As it turned out, one very valuable thing had been achieved: an excellent rapport among the members, a “close bond of affection and friendship”. And at about the time they were pondering what to do next, Iris Owen came across the work of Colin Brookes-Smith, DW Hunt and Kenneth Batcheldor published in the 1960s. This suggested that PK phenomena could be produced by anyone in the right frame of mind, namely a state of combined relaxation and expectancy. Acquiring this they regarded as a psychological skill, a key aspect of which was belief – or faith – with no room for scepticism. The English researchers considered that reproducing the atmosphere of the Victorian séance room, in which “the participants sat around in a relaxed and jolly atmosphere, singing songs and hymns, making jokes, and carrying on a conversation among themselves”, was one route to success. And so the Toronto group decided to change tack.
It took a few sessions for everyone seated at the table to achieve a comfortable mix of optimism, alertness and bonhomie, but on the fourth session they were all taken aback at feeling a distinct vibration within the table. And then the raps began. Although a collective hallucination was what they had been hoping for, they could hardly ignore the raps, or that “the table started to slide about the floor... quite rapidly, in random fashion, and without any apparent purpose.” They soon established that no one in the group was behind it, but had no idea why it was happening – until one member mused aloud: “I wonder if by chance Philip is doing this?” At once there was one, very loud, rap from the table. Taking their cue from that, they established a code of communication: one rap meant yes, two raps meant no, and the group would pose appropriate questions. It wasn’t what they had been after or expecting but, as Owen put, they were not going to look this gift horse in the mouth.
The binary yes/no rapping code was simpler and faster, obviously, than having Philip spell out an answer (one rap for A, up to 26 for Z), but it precluded any discursive commentary on his part and laid the group open to the risk of asking leading questions and so getting the answers they wanted or expected. But this didn’t happen: Philip proved recalcitrant, got a bit shirty, and refused to reply to queries he didn’t like. For instance, it took the group some time to coax him into revealing much about his relations with his wife, Dorothea, although eventually it transpired that she had refused to consummate their marriage of convenience. One could, of course, and perhaps correctly, ascribe this apparent inhibition to indecision on the part of the sitters, or even their pudeur, conscious or not. If he didn’t know the answer to a question, he would make “extraordinary scratching noises”, particularly if the enquiry implied an adverse reflection on his frigid yet jealous wife.
Philip also had strong opinions about some songs in the group’s repertoire, especially the parody ‘Lloyd George Knew My Father’, which was sung (as usual) to the tune of ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’. Someone suggested Philip didn’t like it because ‘Onward’ “was one of the songs sung by Oliver Cromwell’s Puritan army.” Philip affirmed with one rap. No one in the group seems to have noticed the gaffe. ‘Onward’ was written by the Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould in 1865, and set to music by Sir Arthur Sullivan (he of The Mikado, Pirates of Penzance, etc.) in 1871. Could the group have confused it somehow with John Bunyan’s ‘To Be A Pilgrim’? But that wasn’t written till 1684, when Cromwell (and his New Model Army) had been gone for a quarter of a century or so. The episode is a fine illustration of how interdependent were Philip and his creators. Another time, he said Charles I disliked dogs and horses, but loved cats. Which is historically inaccurate, “but the questioner was an ardent cat lover.”
The group took a useful precaution against anyone physically moving the table through which Philip communicated. Members did not directly touch it, but laid their hands on doilies – despite which, it would not only sound raps (usually under the hands of the individual questioner) but sometimes dance about on one or two legs, and once actually levitated.
Several later chapters discuss the Philip experiment’s implications for psychical research in general; inevitably, much of this is speculative. The book ends with a statement that the group would carry on working toward a visible manifestation of their creation. Sadly, this continued effort seems not to have happened. But at least the group had satisfied themselves that they could produce PK effects of a high order. Rather shockingly, it seems too that there have been very few sustained attempts to replicate their work. One can but wonder, a bit sardonically, why not.
(See also FT61:41-42, 166:37, 212:59, 227:16, 302:69, 305:73, 351:18, 381:19.)
Iris M Owen with Margaret Sparrow, Conjuring Up Philip: An Adventure in Psychokinesis, Harper & Row, 1976.
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