The Phillip Experiment
In 1972 Dr. George Owen, a university lecturer, geneticist, mathematician and member of the Toronto Society for Psychical Research, recruited eight other members of the TSPR for an experiment. The experiment, designed to determine if ghosts were real or mental projections of the living, tasked the participants with creating a character with a vaguely historical persona, but not based on any single known person from the past. The eight participants would then attempt to summon one fictional Philip Aylesford, as he was named, with widely known séance techniques used to communicate with the dead. A series of unexplained and disturbing events quickly followed, with many witnessing the participants seemingly interacting with the fictional entity. Can we truly communicate with forms of disembodied consciousness? Can a group of people, working together, project psychic energy capable of manipulating the physical world?