Philip the ghost experiment

Record summary

Members of the Toronto Society for Psychical Research created a fictional historical figure named Philip and conducted group séances intended to test whether an apparent communicative personality would emerge. Participants reported table movements, raps and related effects, but the experiment is generally discussed as a study of group suggestion, ideomotor processes and séance production rather than evidence of a surviving spirit. It matters as an instrumented or semi-controlled comparison to spontaneous apparition reports. Documentation, controls and interpretation should be evaluated through the investigators’ publications and later parapsychological commentary.