PHILIP EXPERIMENT

1. Public Record

Toronto, 1972. Members of the Toronto Society for Psychical Research, around A. R. G. Owen and Iris Owen, invented a man. Philip Aylesford. Seventeenth-century. A mistress burned. A suicide at thirty. Sue wrote the life. They sat. Meditation gave nothing. They changed the room to look like a sitting: dimmer, lighter talk. On the third or fourth of those sessions the table vibrated, then slid. Dorothy asked if Philip was doing it. A rap answered. After that the raps kept the invented biography and laughed, as they heard it, at jokes. The table took a leg and crossed the floor with hands visible.

Joel Whitton sat as psychologist. Iris Owen and Margaret Sparrow wrote Conjuring Up Philip in 1976. A second Toronto group later got movement with a different fiction. The point of the file is not that a cavalier existed. The point is that a table moved after a group agreed he did.

I wonder if Philip is doing this?

2. Date of Incident

Sessions from 1972. Book 1976.

3. Location

Toronto. Approximate 43°42 N 079°24 W.

4. Official Narrative

No church or court. Official narrative is an experiment the sitters published themselves.

5. Witness Layer

Iris and George Owen. Margaret Sparrow. The eight. Whitton as observer.

They invented him first.

6. Recovery Logistics

Session notes. A book. Film of a table, uneven as evidence. No cavalier.

7. Assessment

A made-man file. Keep the fiction in the first paragraph so no reader thinks a 1654 suicide was found. The value is the change of method: silence failed, parlour talk did not. A second group with a second name matters. Do not promote Philip into a spirit. Do not write the table off as only a shove the eight refused to see.

8. Materials & Remains

Conjuring Up Philip. Session logs. No relic of Aylesford.

9. Key Personnel

Iris Owen : The room.

A. R. G. Owen : The frame.

Margaret Sparrow : The book.

Sue : The life story.

10. Aftermath

Philip became a teaching case in psychical research. The table did not tour. The method did.

11. Current Archive Status

Status: Toronto sittings, 1972. Invented biography. Table moved. Book 1976.

Confidence: High that the group invented Philip and later reported raps and movement. Moderate that hands were clear of the table. Low that a 17th-century man answered. Low that the second group proves a mechanism.

Filing note

Eight people, a fake cavalier, quiet rooms that did nothing, lighter talk, a vibration, a question, a rap that kept the story they had written. They said the hands were visible.

They invented him first. Not a confession after the fact. The method, written down before the table took a step.