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How a Psychical Research Group Brought Philip the Ghost to 'Life'

Consider these familiar experiences:

• A group of teenagers gathered around a Ouija board receives mysterious messages from a person's spirit who claims to have died 40 years ago.
• A paranormal society conducts a séance where they contact a ghost that communicates by rapping on a table.
• The residents of a century-old home see the spirit of a young child playing in the hallway.

What are these manifestations? Are they truly the ghosts of departed people? Or are they creations of the minds of the people who see them?

Many researchers of the paranormal suspect that some ghostly manifestations and poltergeist phenomena (objects flying through the air, unexplained footsteps and door slammings) are products of the human mind. To test that idea, a fascinating experiment was conducted in the early 1970s by the Toronto Society for Psychical Research (TSPR) to see if they could create a ghost. The idea was to assemble a group of people who would make up a completely fictional character and then, through séances, see if they could contact him and receive messages and other physical phenomena - perhaps even an apparition.

The Birth of Philip

The TSPR, under the guidance of Dr. A.R.G. Owen, assembled a group of eight people culled from its membership, none of whom claimed to have any psychic gifts. The group, which became known as the Owen group, consisted of Dr. Owen's wife, a woman who was the former chairperson of MENSA , an industrial designer, an accountant, a housewife, a bookkeeper and a sociology student. A psychologist named Dr. Joel Whitton also attended many of the group's sessions as an observer.

The group's first task was to create their fictional historical character. Together they wrote a short biography of the person they named Philip Aylesford. Here, in part, is that biography:

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 Owen group even enlisted the artistic talents of one of its members to sketch a portrait of Philip. With their creation's life and appearance now firmly established in their minds, the group began the second phase of the experiment: contact.

The Seances Begin

In September 1972, the group began their "sittings"—informal gatherings in which they would discuss Philip and his life, meditate on him and try to visualize their "collective hallucination" in more detail. These settings, conducted in a fully lit room, went on for about a year with no results. Some members of the group occasionally claimed they felt a presence in the room, but there was no result they could consider any kind of communication from Philip.

So they changed their tactics. The group decided they might have better luck if they attempted to duplicate the atmosphere of a classic spiritualist séance . They dimmed the room's lights, sat around a table, sang songs and surrounded themselves with pictures of the type of castle they imagined Philip would have lived in, as well as objects from that time period.

It worked. During one evening's séance, the group received its first communication from Philip in the form of a distinct rap on the table. Soon Philip was answering questions asked by the group—one rap for yes, two for no. They knew it was Philip because, well, they asked him.

The sessions took off from there, producing a range of phenomena that could not be explained scientifically. Through the table-rapping communication, the group was able to learn finer details about Philip's life. He even seemed to exhibit a personality, conveying his likes and dislikes, and his strong views on various subjects​ made plain by the enthusiasm or hesitancy of his knockings. His "spirit" was also able to move the table, sliding it from side to side despite the fact that the floor was covered with thick carpeting. At times it would even "dance" on one leg.

Philip's Limitations and His Power

That Philip was a creation of the group's collective imagination was evident in his limitations. Although he could accurately answer questions about events and people of his time period, it did not appear to be information that the group was unaware of. In other words, Philip's responses were coming from their subconscious—their own minds. Some members thought they heard whispers in response to questions, but no voice was ever captured on tape.

Philip's psychokinetic powers, however, were amazing and completely unexplained. If the group asked Philip to dim the lights, they would dim instantly. When asked to restore the lights, he would oblige. The table around which the group sat was almost always the focal point of peculiar phenomena. After feeling a cool breeze blow across the table, they asked Philip if he could cause it to start and stop at will. He could and he did. The group noticed that the table itself felt different to the touch whenever Philip was present, having a subtle electric or "alive" quality. On a few occasions, a fine mist formed over the center of the table. Most astonishing, the group reported that the table would sometimes be so animated that it would rush over to meet latecomers to the session, or even trap members in the corner of the room.

The climax of the experiment was a séance conducted before a live audience of 50 people. The session was also filmed as part of a television documentary. Fortunately, Philip was not stage shy and performed above expectations. Besides table rappings, other noises around the room and making lights blink off and on, the group actually attained a full levitation of the table. It rose only a half inch above the floor, but this incredible feat was witnessed by the group and the film crew. Unfortunately, the dim lighting prevented the levitation from being captured on the film.

(You can see footage of the actual experiment here .)

Although the Philip experiment gave the Owen group far more than they ever imagined possible, it was never able to attain one of their original goals—to have the spirit of Philip actually materialize.

The Aftermath

The Philip experiment was so successful that the Toronto organization decided to try it again with a completely different group of people and a new fictional character. After just five weeks, the new group established "contact" with their new "ghost," Lilith, a French Canadian spy. Other similar experiments conjured up such entities as Sebastian, a medieval alchemist and even Axel, a man from the future. All of them were completely fictional, yet all produced unexplained communication through their unique raps.

A Sydney, Australia group attempted a similar test with " the Skippy Experiment . " The six participants created the story of Skippy Cartman, a 14-year-old Australian girl. The group reports that Skippy communicated with them through raps and scratching sounds.

Conclusions

What are we to make of these incredible experiments? While some would conclude that they prove that ghosts don't exist, that such things are in our minds only, others say that our unconscious could be responsible for this kind of the phenomena some of the time. They do not (in fact, cannot) prove that there are no ghosts.

Another point of view is that even though Philip was completely fictional, the Owen group really did contact the spirit world. A playful (or perhaps demonic, some would argue) spirit took the opportunity of these séances to "act" as Philip and produce the extraordinary psychokinetic phenomena recorded.

In any case, the experiments proved that paranormal phenomena are quite real. And like most such investigations, they leave us with more questions than answers about the world in which we live. The only certain conclusion is that there is much to our existence that is still unexplained.

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The Philip Experiment: We Want Ghosts To Be Real

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The belief in ghosts dates back to the earliest days of the oral tradition. From the first recorded moments of human history there has been an inexorable and longstanding desire to believe that those who are gone aren’t really gone. It’s almost as if the human brain is compelled, beyond rational understanding, to believe in them.

A 2019 poll , for instance, concluded that nearly half of Americans believe that both ghosts and demons exist, despite overwhelming evidence that belief in orthodox religions– those whose scriptures and doctrines ecclesiastically contend that life persists after death– is declining. It’s congenital to the human condition, and grief more profoundly, to maintain that death is a transition, not an end. Millennials are even maintaining Facebook connections with the deceased to cope with their loss– in many ways, it helps them to feel that the deceased is still alive. 

Outside of popular culture, however, there doesn’t seem to be much interest. Parapsychology, a staple in supernatural horror films (see: Poltergeist , The Entity , The Conjuring franchise), is a pseudoscientific field of study, said to be an incredulous inquiry into gobbledygook– a spiral into hocus pocus.

If you’ve seen 2012’s The Apparition or 2014’s The Quiet Ones , however, you might be familiar with The Philip Experiment. The experiment, conducted by Toronto parapsychologist Dr. A.R. George Owen and psychologist Dr. Joel Whitton, sought to create a fictional character– a ghost– through a deliberate methodology and subsequently communicate with them through a séance.

The research team consisted of Dr. Owen’s wife, Iris, an industrial designer and his wife, a heating engineer, an accountant, a bookkeeper, and a sociology student. Granted, neither movie hued all that closely to the truth– and based on your own beliefs, the parapsychological impetus for the experiment might itself be beyond the pale– but nonetheless, the experiment itself is a compelling slice of paranormal history, a microcosm of our communal desire for there to be something– anything– after death.

The research collective settled on a character named Philip Aylesford, referred to as Philip throughout the bulk of the experiment. His fictional history was a smorgasbord of real history and mendacious fabrications. Per the experiment, Philip was born in England in 1624, served in the military throughout young adulthood, and was subsequently knighted at sixteen. Philip was serving in the English Civil War– where the Parliamentarians and royalists went to war over issues of England’s governance and record on religious freedom– when he met and later became a close ally for Charles II, king of Scotland, England, and Ireland until his deposition in 1651, and later King from the 1660 Restoration until his death in 1685. Philip, though, never had a chance to see much of Charles’s rule, having fallen in love with a Romani girl. She was accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake. Despondent, Philip died by suicide in 1654. He would have been thirty years old.

The group worked tirelessly to contact their invention, their fictional Philip, hoping that by sheer belief in him, they could, in effect, will Philip to exist, will and make contact with some kind of spiritual entity. These attempts proved unsuccessful. Dr. Owen then changed the experiment conditions, altering several key environmental variables– dimming the lights, for instance– to more closely resemble a conventional séance, an attempt to communicate with spirits whose earliest roots are perhaps best dated to the early French metaphysical tradition. After Dr. Owen made these changes, participants reported phantom breezes, vibrations, vocal echoes, and a rap, rap, rap sound whenever questions were posed to Philip. The table was said to tilt and move about the room without human contact. Aggregate audio, visual, and participant accounts documented the phenomena, though Philip was never said to have appeared to the participants.

The study, naturally, was immediately criticized for its tenuous adherence to the scientific method, including (but not limited to) a lack of a control variable, ambiguous data analysis, and the methodological veracity of a séance itself. Similar experiments were thus conducted, a sort of paranormal replication, with ghosts named Lilith and Humphrey. And while participants in those conditions similarly reported supernatural phenomena in the room, the results were nonetheless inconclusive. Principally, critics point to both confirmation bias– the participants interpreted phenomena as evidence of Philip to confirm existing beliefs that Philip was real– and the ideomotor effect– the phenomenon used to explain Ouija boards whereupon the human body makes subconscious, involuntary movements, much like a hypnic jerk, suggesting the movement of the Ouija’s planchette when it’s really not the case– to explain witness accounts of a presence in the room.

Whether the data is true or not– whether the parapsychologists really were able to create a ghost– largely rests on preexisting spiritual beliefs. If you’re inclined to believe in ghosts, you’re inclined to believe in the Philips phenomenon. If you’re not inclined to believe in ghosts, well, you’re likely not inclined to believe in the Philips phenomenon. As a kid, my mom always urged me to stay away from games in cemeteries, Ouija, or even proclamations made to the deceased in jest, erring on the side of, “It’s probably not true, but in the slim chance that it is, don’t do it.” What’s fascinating about The Philips Experiment, though– beyond the sheer audacity of the experiment and its resounding effect on several contemporary horror titles– is that it speaks to a fundamental truth most all of us hold– we want ghosts to be real.

If there are ghosts, it means that our loved ones aren’t really gone. Ghosts mean that life persists long after death. Death, it would seem, is only the beginning. Ghosts, too, are the mental ghosts of the process of grief. Like Philip, the bereaved can sometimes cling so dearly to memories of those they’ve lost that, in a way, they will them back to life. While this holds important curative properties as the healing process is inaugurated, it can also yield adverse effects as the process continues, stymieing the formation of new relationships and, in effect, trapping the bereaved in the cycle of grief into perpetuity.

Patricia Pearson, writing for The Walrus , describes the idea of Freud’s “wishful psychosis,” the idea that we descend into madness temporarily during periods of grief willing visions of the dead in our own world. We might see their face or hear their voice, or just simply feel their presence nearby. The guiding theory among most is that it’s just that– madness. But what if it wasn’t? What if we really did see or hear something, and it was simply something we just haven’t found a way to measure or quantify? What if those who say they see the dead are telling the truth, not bound by the poles between madness and lucidity?

Participants in the Philip Experiment were said to be quite adept, quite lucid in their attempts, at carrying on conversations with their imaginary guest. New fictional entries in those most pivotal moments of Philip’s ostensible life manifested throughout dialogues, the participants actively involved in– and sometimes actively grieving– the horrors of Philip’s life.  Philip revealed abuse, trauma, and even cruel treatment at the hands of his first wife, emblematic, perhaps, not of Philip’s own mythos, but the congenital anguish of the participants themselves and the way that ghosts are both conduits and effigies of our own pain.

When I was in elementary school, my youngest sister– one at the time– was struck by a car in our neighborhood, having run across the street from a neighbor’s house upon seeing my mom come home. She was rushed to the hospital, and while my mom waited right outside, the doctors told her it didn’t look good– by all clinical accounts, she was going to be dead soon. She sat down and made a single prayer to both her grandmother and grandfather– Mary and Cord Boger. She prayed that my youngest sister might live, and like so many others, she felt a shift in the room and started to perceive the faint scent of both lilac and Old Spice, my great grandparents’ signature scents. Minutes later, the doctor returned with news– my younger sister was just one out of 10,000 children whose cervical and lumbar spine had not yet formed entirely, and because of that, she was going to be okay. Had it been fully formed, the trauma from the accident would have killed her.

I don’t know that my mom’s story is true, in much the same way that I don’t truly know whether the participants of The Philip Experiment really saw and experienced what they say they did. I do know, though, that like Patricia Pearson, condescension and reductionist denial are no way to respond to stories of the paranormal. The world is mercurial and wild, and there are so many, many things we just don’t understand yet. It’s possible that ghosts don’t exist, but it’s also so very, very possible that, well, they do. 

Categorized: Editorials News Real Dread

The Philip Experiment: Conjuring Life From Nothing

In September 1972, the Toronto Society for Psychical Research, along with poltergeist expert Dr. A.R.G. Owen, set out to accomplish one singular objective: To create a ghost.

Not conjure, or contact. They wanted to explore the Tibetan Buddhist concept of tulpas, or thoughtforms, the practice of “willing” tangible forms into existence using our own innate mental energies.

Designing Philip Aylesford

The group was composed of eight individuals, men and women of a variety of occupations and interests. Although Dr. Owen himself was an expert on poltergeists, none of the other members claimed to have any “psychic” abilities or other paranormal affluence.

They began their experiment, in September 1972, by creating a fictional character. They named him Philip Aylesford. As though he were an actual person, they gave him a history , likes and dislikes, and a tragic end leading to his own suicide. They even drew a picture of Philip’s appearance.

His original biography, which the group wrote out to better envision Philip’s identity in their minds, contained some interesting details.

Philip’s History

He was a Catholic Englishman aristocrat, they wrote, who lived in the mid-1600s. He lived a well-off life at Diddington Manor, married to a “beautiful but cold” woman named Dorothea, the daughter of a nobleman. But things were hardly perfect.

While out riding one day, Philip came upon a gypsy encampment and met a woman named Margo, with whom he fell madly in love. He invited her to his home, and kept her secret from his wife, allowing her to live in the gatehouse at his estate.

But Dorothea eventually discovered the truth, and accused Margo of using evil witchcraft to seduce her husband. Philip, terrified of damaging his reputation, said nothing in Margo’s defense, and the village ultimately tried her for witchcraft. They burned her at the stake.

Philip then became depressed. He hadn’t saved Margo from the strange accusations, and she had died because of his betrayal. For some time he would be seen wandering quietly, pacing, his mind filled with regret. They later found his lifeless body at the bottom of one of the manor walls. He had committed suicide.

Taking all of this information — the made-up history, the pictures, the stories — the group meditated on Philip. They visualized him appearing in their minds, concentrated as hard as they could, willing him to be.

Sometimes, they would even “feel” him in the air.

But for about a year, nothing happened, and the entire project began to seem like a foolish endeavor.

The Séances

The Philip experiment needed a change.

At the suggestion of Kenneth J. Barcheldor, a psychologist, they threw out the clinical, “experimental” nature of the project and opted for something more traditional: A séance.

It was thought that, perhaps, some of the members were having difficulty focusing on Philip because they knew he wasn’t real. Holding something like a séance, with dimmed lights, a table surrounded by chairs, and Philip’s “personal artifacts,” would hopefully create a mood more conducive to conjuring a tulpa.

Strange things occurred as soon as the group began their “séance.” As they sat around the table, focusing their will on conjuring Philip, an unseen force began to tap on the table.

Was it Philip? A single  thud  told them that yes, it was.

They asked him questions about his past, and he would answer — one knock for true, two knocks for false — communicating with them through raps on the table’s wooden surface.

Of course, the group already knew the answers to their questions. They’d created him, after all, and everything about his life. But the answers were consistent, and eventually he began to reveal new details from his “past,” which contained oddly accurate information regarding actual historical events.

He even developed his own personality and, occasionally, the lights in the room would flicker, and the table would levitate. Unexplainable noises were often heard throughout the room.

He was becoming something more. Something independent.

Something real .

Eventually, the group opened their doors to the public, inviting others to bare witness to their strange séance. Footage of one of the events was actually captured on film (note: the linked video is just a dramatic recreation, not the actual footage).

What really happened during the Philip experiments?

Do tulpas exist? Can you truly “will” something into reality?

Although the original experimenters couldn’t explain the supernatural activity surrounding the séance table, there are several possible explanations for what happened during the Philip experiments.

Supposedly, subsequent experiments involving other groups and other fictional characters even yielded similar results.

But Philip never physically manifested as an apparition, only as strange noises and rappings while the group huddled together around a table.

This may indicate that it was all a product of the human mind; perhaps a manifestation of their collective unconscious . The accurate answers that Philip gave to so many questions, for example, may have arisen from the group’s own collective, subconscious thoughts and knowledge.

It could have also been an odd form of confirmation bias or groupthink, or an extreme example of the power of suggestion. Or, perhaps, their shared belief created a shared delusion. A group-wide hallucination.

Others think the group may have “opened a door,” so to speak, that Philip was in fact a ghost or, worse, a demon playing along with the participants’ desires to “create” a thoughtform. In that case, they didn’t design a tulpa; they conjured an actual spirit.

Ultimately, if we’re to be honest, it was never what you could call an “experiment” — there was no control group or real, scientific methodology involved. But whether they conjured a spirit, manifested their own unconscious will, or participated in a shared hallucination, the results of their endeavor are still a profound example of the power of the human mind.

Rob Schwarz

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‘merteuil:’ french max series starring anamaria vartolomei, diane kruger & ‘emily in paris’ actor lucas bravo starts production , breaking news.

‘The Experiment’: Rhona Mitra, Famke Janssen & Stefanie Martini Lead Sci-Fi Horror Filming At UK’s Rebellion Studios

By Andreas Wiseman

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EXCLUSIVE : Rhona Mitra ( Underworld: Rise Of The Lycans ), Famke Janssen ( X-Men ) and Stefanie Martini ( The Last Kingdom ) have been set to star in sci-fi action horror movie The Experiment , which is underway at Rebellion Studios in the UK.

Set in 2080 in a world recovering from catastrophic nuclear war, The Experiment follows an elite spec-ops team, led by Captain Ava Stone (Mitra), sent on a rescue mission into a top secret military research facility after a rogue employee takes a group of scientists hostage.

The project marks the first for action label Action Xtreme, the genre division of UK arthouse producer-distributor Sovereign Media ( Triangle Of Sadness ).

Chee Keong Cheung ( Redcon-1 ) is directing. Producers are Andreas Roald, Chee Keong Cheung and Ioanna Karavela and executive producer is Derek Rogers. Script comes from Alistair Cave, Matthew Thomas Edwards and Oliver Morran ( Every Last One of Them ) from a story by Chee Keong Cheung.

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Crew includes Director of Photography Derek Rogers ( Resident Evil: Apocalypse ) and editor Martin Hunter ( Full Metal Jacket ). Creature design is by Josef Rarach ( Solomon Kane ) and his company FX Creator. Casting is by Dan Hubbard and Rory Okey.

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Rounding out cast are Raz Adoti ( Resident Evil: Apocalypse ), Roxanne McKee ( Game of Thrones ), Michael Parr ( Ocean Deep ), Ryan Oliva ( Angel Has Fallen ), Tim Fellingham ( Final Destination 5 ) and Simon Dutton ( The Saint ).

Sovereign recently helped produce Palme d’Or winner Triangle Of Sadness . The company also produced and distributed Memoria  from Palme d’Or winner Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Previous credits include The Tree Of Life while upcoming productions include Inside starring Willem Dafoe and Eureka  with Viggo Mortensen.

Mitra’s recent credits include the action feature Hounds of War with Frank Grillo and The Other Me with Jim Sturgess. Janssen’s recent credits include the upcoming Boy Kills World with Bill Skarsgård and Sharlto Copley, action adventure Knights of the Zodiac with Sean Bean and Now You Run , the limited series for Sky from executive producer Ben Chanan. Martini starred in the lead role in Prime Suspect: Tennison and more recently starred in series  The Last Kingdom .

The UK’s Rebellion Studios in Didcot is a dedicated 12-acre complex which includes a 25,000 square-foot soundstage. Co-founded by brothers Jason and Chris Kingsley in 1992, the venue has hosted video game projects including Sniper Elite , Zombie Army and Alien vs. Predator . Rebellion is the publisher of the comic book catalogue 2000 AD, home of Judge Dredd and Rogue Trooper.

Chee Keong Cheung, director-producer, said: “I am proud and excited to begin production on The Experiment with Action Xtreme, thanks to the support of Sovereign and Andreas Roald. With an incredible cast, strong characters, captivating story, heart-pounding action and an amazingly talented team, I cannot wait for audiences to experience this epic thrill ride. I am delighted to also have the opportunity to work with Jason Kingsley and film at the truly unique Rebellion Studios as the principal location for The Experiment and to utilize the superb facilities on offer. I’m grateful to Jason who is an incredible supporter of independent talent and who was pivotal in making the filming at Rebellion possible.”

Andreas Roald, Producer and CEO of Sovereign, added: “ The Experiment is Action Xtreme’s inaugural feature film project and Sovereign are thrilled to support director Chee Keong Cheung’s atmospheric and unique action-packed vision and bring his film to a worldwide audience.”

Derek Rogers, Director of Photography and executive producer, noted: “Chee Keong Cheung is one of the UK’s brilliant new horror/action directors. His work is visually expressive, artful and filled with purpose. It’s what draws DPs like me to his productions. The Experiment , with its delightful and unique blend of horror and action, promises a visual feast to the senses and a sheer audience pleaser.”

Jason Kingsley, CEO of Rebellion Studios, commented: “Chee is one of the UK’s most talented and exciting action film directors, and Rebellion is delighted to be working with him and Action Xtreme on The Experiment . We’ve been talking for a while to find the right project to collaborate together on and I’m very pleased we could make this one work, with hopefully many more to come. Our expansive and varied locations are the perfect setting for projects such as this. We have no doubt that it’s going to be a thrilling action-packed experience for audiences and we look forward to showcasing our unique location and extensive facilities to the world through The Experiment .”

Rhona Mitra is repped by Buchwald, Untitled Entertainment and Accelerate Management. Famke Janssen is repped by The Artists Partnership, Agency for the Performing Arts and Link Entertainment; and Stefanie Martini is repped by 42 and Luber Roklin Entertainment. Raz Adoti by Daniel Hoff Agency and Elixir Entertainment; Roxanne McKee by Curtis Brown Group and Brave Artists Management; Michael Parr by Revolution Talent; Ryan Oliva by Patrick Hambleton Management; Tim Fellingham by Revolution Talent; and Simon Dutton by Gardner Herrity.

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A Haunted Chamber, a Quivering Blade, and Other Spooky Science Experiments

Could infrasound, electromagnetic blips, gas leaks, and mold explain why some places just give us the creeps.

London is a ghost hunter’s dream, dotted with potentially haunted sites like mass graves of plague victims and the pub where Jack the Ripper’s final victim was last seen alive. But in the early 2000s, one of its most reliably spooky locations was the front room of a ground floor flat in north London . People reported feeling a supernatural presence, dizzying sensations, and even abject terror. The apartment wasn’t the site of anything grisly or nefarious that could explain these experiences, though: It was part of a scientific experiment on external, physical causes of ghostly encounters.

For decades, skeptics have attempted to find scientific explanations for hauntings. Several of their theories have shown promise. In 1921, the American Journal of Ophthalmology detailed two cases of carbon monoxide poisoning in which the victims experienced psychological symptoms, including delusions and hallucinations. “The paper reads like a ghost story in places, and certainly throws light on the question of haunted houses,” reported the British Medical Journal that same year. More recently, the writer Carrie Poppy experienced a haunting that turned out to be a near-fatal carbon monoxide leak.

Gas leaks are far from the only potential culprit in hauntings. In the 1980s, engineer and computer scientist Vic Tandy found himself feeling dread and even seeing shadowy figures in his laboratory. In addition to being a scientist, he was a fencer. One day he brought his fencing foil into the lab and noticed that it was vibrating. He learned that a new ventilation fan had been installed; when the fan was turned off, the vibrations stopped, along with the spooky experiences. In 1998, Tandy published his hypothesis: Under the right circumstances, low-frequency sound waves below the bounds of human hearing, called infrasound, can cause people to feel and see ghostly presences .

In the early 2000s, Chris French, a psychology professor at Goldsmiths University (now retired), and Usman Haque, an artist and architect, had been discussing the possibility that hauntings are caused by infrasound, along with a hypothesis suggesting that some spooky experiences are the result of fluctuations in the Earth’s magnetic field , affecting the brain’s electromagnetic activity. French and Haque began to hatch a plan.

“The idea was, wouldn’t it be fun if these ideas are true? If we built an artificial haunted room where we induced these kinds of situations, playing around with infrasound and electromagnetic fields?” says French. “Long story short, we decided to do that.”

For several weeks, French and Haque took over the front room in Haque’s mother’s north London home. “We produced this kind of specially constructed circular chamber,” says French. The empty white room contained hidden devices to produce electromagnetic fields and infrasound. The researchers recruited 79 people to visit the room and see if they experienced anything strange.

Ethically, the researchers couldn’t just set people loose in a spooky place without any warning. To get informed consent, they told their subjects that they might be exposed to unusual patterns of electromagnetic activity, infrasound, both, or neither. As a result, they might have some “anomalous experiences.”

“Sure enough, quite a lot of people did,” says French. “Over a fifth of people reported a sense of presence. A lot of people reported feeling dizzy.” He adds that the long list of participant reactions included about eight percent who reported “terror, which we hadn’t really anticipated.”

The “haunted chamber” seemed to prove that electromagnetic fluctuations and infrasound made people feel frightened. “We were quite excited at first,” says French—then they noticed something spooky about the data. After analyzing the results, the team found it didn’t matter whether the electromagnetic field or infrared was on or off. Instead, people’s anomalous experiences correlated with how suggestible they were, based on their responses to a survey that was part of the experiment.

“The most parsimonious explanation is, if you say to some people, ‘If you go into this space, you might have some weird experiences,’ the more suggestible ones will report that will happen,” says French. According to the study , infrasound and electromagnetic weirdness are less likely to cause ghost sightings than simply telling someone that they might see a ghost. “Which is interesting from a psychological point of view, but it would have been much more exciting to have got results relating to magnetic fields,” says French.

While the “haunted chamber” is a strike against infrasound and electromagnetic fluctuations as the causes of ghost sightings and eerie sensations, potential environmental factors in hauntings continue to draw the interest of researchers.

Shane Rogers, a professor of environmental engineering at Clarkson University, was inspired to study haunted places by his family’s experience with mold. When exposed to allergens, including mold, his children seemed to become irrationally angry or fearful.

Rogers seemed to be onto something. Anecdotal evidence, including a 2019 study on workers in a Finnish hospital with a mold problem, shows there may be a correlation between exposure to the greenish black mold Stachybotrys chartarum and neurological impairment . A 2021 study showed that mold inhalation caused neural, cognitive, and emotional problems in mice .

“I always thought it’d be really interesting to just test in haunted places and see what’s going on with the mold, and see if we can find a link there,” says Rogers.

Rogers and his students turned to ghost hunting TV shows for a list of haunted places to investigate. In the 2010s, they investigated around two dozen sites: a combination of places that were purportedly haunted and not. They sampled the air in each of their research sites to ascertain the size and quantity of particles present in the air. “It doesn’t identify, specifically, mold spores, but at least tells you what might be present that’s inhalable,” says Rogers.

Rogers’s study has not yet undergone peer review, but his initial results are intriguing. “There is definitely a significant difference between mold presence in haunted places versus not-haunted places,” says Rogers. Based on analyzing particulate sizes in the samples, he says, “We have roughly five to six times more mold spores showing up in places that are reported haunted.”

While environmental factors such as toxic mold, infrasound, carbon monoxide poisoning, and electromagnetic fluctuations are tantalizingly concrete explanations for paranormal experiences, French remains skeptical. He suspects such external influences account for a very small number of cases, if any; more likely explanations include sleep paralysis , false memories , and even hallucinations, which French notes “are much more common amongst the non-clinical population than is generally appreciated.”

This explanation, that “hauntings” are quirks of neurology and psychology, is perhaps even more unsettling than the idea that they’re caused by the environment around us. While toxic mold or a carbon monoxide leak are certainly cause for concern, if they’re the culprits behind strange things we experience, we can rest easy in the knowledge that something “real” is happening, that we’re not “crazy.”

But sometimes, environmental causes like those explored in the “haunted chamber” and neuroscience-driven hypotheses both fail to explain supernatural encounters. Some scary stories simply defy explanation, French says. “We’ve got to just be humble enough to admit that we can’t explain every single case.”

Explore the Insidious Secrets of This Haunted Dollhouse

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The Ghost Mountain Experiment

The true story of the original hippie family who chose to live a back-to-nature dream on a remote, waterless mountaintop for 17 years during the Depression and World War II. But isolation an... Read all The true story of the original hippie family who chose to live a back-to-nature dream on a remote, waterless mountaintop for 17 years during the Depression and World War II. But isolation and betrayal take their toll and ultimately destroy the desert paradise and the marriage. The true story of the original hippie family who chose to live a back-to-nature dream on a remote, waterless mountaintop for 17 years during the Depression and World War II. But isolation and betrayal take their toll and ultimately destroy the desert paradise and the marriage.

• John McDonald
• Lydia McDonald
• Will Bigham
• Sarah Fairfax

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• July 26, 2009 (United States)
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• $160,000 (estimated)

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• Runtime 57 minutes

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The Experiment is a Roblox game created on September 8, 2019, by a user named Deponist36 . Players are thrown into a single room in a facility deep underground, where they become "lab rats" to the random Events that can happen. Players are tasked with trying to escape their cell and discover what happened to the facility, as well as finding useful items, strange rooms, and terrifying secrets along the way. But be careful... You're not alone down here...

WARNING: THIS WIKI CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE GAME. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.

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‘Doctor Odyssey’: New Trailer Hints at Jaw-Dropping Twist

Doctor Odyssey

• Meet the Crew of ‘Doctor Odyssey’
• Inside New Medical Drama ‘Doctor Odyssey’ With Its Star-Studded Crew

Amid Sunday (September 15) night’s Primetime Emmy Awards broadcast, there were quite a few sneak peeks at ABC’s fall programming slate in the commercials run, including a brand-new teaser trailer for the network’s highly anticipated new medical drama, Doctor Odyssey . While that Joshua Jackson – and Don Johnson -led series has been a bit of a mystery so far ( as the cast described it to us, this is Ryan Murphy’s “fantasy about a cruise ship” ), the newest sneak peek might’ve finally given us a glimpse of the show’s big twist… if there is one.

In the trailer (embedded below), Johnson’s character says over Belinda Carlisle’s “Heaven Is a Place on Earth,” “Doctor, welcome aboard the Odyssey. This ship is heaven. Think of yourself as a guardian angel.”

In a previous teaser, the quote was extended to include, “Our mission is to preserve the dream. And that’s why you’re here… keep these dreamers safe.”

The references to heaven and dreaming in these trailers are simply too extensive to ignore at this point, so what could these teasers be hinting at? Here are a few early theories about what  Doctor Odyssey ‘s twist might really be.

1. It’s actual Heaven.

It would be a  little on the nose, but since the trailer music does conjure up memories of “San Junipero” using the same song as a pun about a digital afterlife, we have to at least  consider the possibility that this is all some kind of illusion or afterlife scenario… especially since the entire reason Max has joined the medical crew of this ship is he had a near-death experience with Covid.

2. The captain is a ghost. 

Given all of his references to paradise in the teasers for the new series and the fact that he only seems to directly communicate with Doctor Max in the look-aheads, some have speculated that this might be a Last Christmas sort of deal where Capt. Robert Massey is actually an apparition-slash-mentor for Max. Hey, stranger things have happened, especially on network procedurals.

Inside New Medical Drama 'Doctor Odyssey' With Its Star-Studded Crew

3. this is all based on  the odyssey ..

The name of the ship simply cannot be ignored. The concept of a man on a journey of self-discovery across the ocean rings a little too familiar to readers of Homer’s epic, no? If so, we can look forward to all kinds of fun characters coming along, from sirens in the sea to one-eyed giants to gods and beyond.

4. This is some kind of oceanic virtual reality   adventure with real-life dangers.

The captain calling the passengers “dreamers” so often could be some kind of hint that this is no ordinary cruise ship, and it is instead a fictional adventure of some kind for its passengers. Think Westworld meets  Fantasy Island , and if the passengers get hurt in the game, they could get hurt in real life… hence, why they’d need Max to stick around.

5. It could just be a straightforward procedural.

TV trailers having a red herring or two isn’t anything new, so there’s definitely a possibility that this show, which will premiere between  9-1-1 Season 8 and  Grey’s Anatomy Season 21, is just another rote medical drama. So, we’ll have to wait and see whether these teasers are actually hinting at something twisty when the series premieres this fall, but for now, what we do know is that there are two episode synopses available for the show so far:

• Pilot : “Max Bankman is The Odyssey’s new onboard doctor, where the staff works hard and plays harder. It’s all-hands-on-deck as he gets acquainted with Capt. Massey and his medical team, Avery and Tristan, while treating crises miles from shore.”
• Episode 2, “Singles Week” : “It’s Singles Week on The Odyssey, and lust is in the air. As Max, Tristan and Avery navigate their relationship, the crew fends off advances from passengers. With rising desire and quickly spreading ailments, Max and the team rush to restore order.”

Doctor Odyssey,  Series Premiere, Thursday, September 26, 9/8c, ABC

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