Do You Remember the Philip Experiment?
You may remember that a while back I posted in the Metetherial Encyclopaedia section of my website about the Philip Experiment. This was a well known experiment that took place in the 1970’s by the Toronto Society for Psychical Research where as the group attempted to create a ghost or spirit of their. This was to be achieved by deciding on the details of the ghosts character, looks, background, etc.
Using the classical Seance approach the group attempt to communicate with their made up character ‘Philip’, which oddly eventually worked. Perhaps showing that the belief of the group and intention to communicate actuated the ghost of Philip into reality or at least into a form which the group could communicate.
This particular experiment should in my mind be one that is always on the mind of investigators, simply because it places into question the very source of the information that paranormal investigators often associate with spirits. It’s something that has equally been highlighted recently by the psychic projection experiment, again if we can focus our mental ability to transfer information onto a digital recorder, then could we be responsible for EVP’s ourselves?
So, here’s a thought and one I would be interested to try once I get five minutes. If we recreated the Philip Experiment today then I think we have a number of resources available to us that could enable us to create something a little different. If the concept is to create a character of a person with so much detail that would almost make that person seem like they really existed, then surely if that information was known by more people then our new age Philip would become even more real.
If you really want to get a character out there, then these days they will need some social media connections..
Philip Gets Twitter and Facebook
Facebook is an excellent place to start because it literally lays out in a standard format all the features of our modern day Philips personality. All we would have to do is simply come up with reasonable answers to the character questions. We could even pull a picture from somewhere to give our modern day Philip a visual representation. Although applying a random picture from the internet could be unwise and it maybe better to mix up a few elements of a few pictures. A little like a police photo-fit.
Okay for those of you that may have stumbled on a particular program on MTV you probably thinking this is a little like that Catfish show where certain individuals create fake profiles and then use them to start online relationships with people. Just to be clear our modern day Philip wouldn’t be engaging in such acts, heck he wont even be communicating with others. We would literally just create his profile and place it online to be viewed. Granted we may add a few events in Phil’s timeline to give him a little extra background, but that’s it.
Similarly we could create a Twitter account with the same idea. Tweeting a few life moments for old Phil or young Phil as he appears to be rather techy savvy now! Unlike he’s 17th century counterpart.
With social media full of juicy information describing not only our modern day Philip, but also detailing a few life events for him, our character is almost complete. Many of us are aware of fake profiles or profiles created to con us, so we would have to ensure that our Phil didn’t carry any elements which could make people think this. Question is how; the simplest form is to use the idea of a ‘movement’. A ‘movement’ can be something that’s described as starting with a single person, but then gathers momentum as others join in and express their investment in said ‘movement’. In the case of our Phil, this could be simply achieved by adding a few friends to Phil’s friends list on social media, then by expressing some kind of thanks and link to a personal situation that Phil shared with the individual.
This could then encourage others to add Phil as a friend too. This then elevates Phil to appear like an actual person and others would then continue to connect with him following the ‘movement’ as it gathers pace.
Does Social Media Presence Make Phil Conscious
If all this creation of our modern day Phil pays off then if we were to follow the approach of the Philip Experiment then by using say the classical seance room approach a group maybe able to connect with the spirit of Phil; or at least his created consciousness. There again if we think it through is that really quite right? If we create Phil and generated the information that makes Phil ourselves then surely we are not connecting with a consciousness, we are just connecting to the information that has grown through the social media connections.
Obviously those attempting to communicate with our Phil would need to be kept out of the loop regarding he’s back story and only given enough information to connect with him. That way they could be considered blind to the experiment more so.
In the original Philip Experiment something that was mentioned quite a bit was that the group managed to have a table move quite violently. Was this movement down to the connection made to Philip or through the intention and belief of connection was the movement due to psychokinesis?
Getting back to our modern Phil, it would be interesting to see if creating the character on a social media platform would generate a ghost that was more accessible by sensitives or mediums? Has the information out there in the cloud been enough to create something real or perhaps as the information is so accessible we are knowledgeable of our Phil without really knowing it. Its a fascinating concept that places the source of information received during spiritual communication in probable question. In order to prove survival after death we must seek the source rather than continuing to look at the effect.
Is it the information of our lives that defines our consciousness or our consciousness that defines the information of our lives?
Either way this could be an interesting experiment worth a go I think, so if you have time please give it a go. I would be interested in your results.
Ashley Knibb 