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Skippy experiment

The Skippy Experiment

The Skippy Experiment has been modeled on the highly successful Philip
Experiment, which was conducted by the Toronto Society for Psychical
Research in the 1970s.

Philip was an articifical ‘ghost’ created by the collective minds of eight
researchers who dedicated themselves to creating a false history for their
subject through a series of weekly meetings. They used meditation,
sketches and various ‘artefacts’ to focus and generate a collective
hallucination of an imaginary person.

“Philip was an aristocratic Englishman, living in the middle 1600’s 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 neighbouring 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.” 1
But no apparition resulted. So after a year of sittings a new approach was
adopted following the discovery of the work of Batcheldor, Brookes-Smith
and Hunt, which led to immediate results in the regular production of
paranormal physical phenomena.
Communication with Philip was established and he regularly answered
questions with coded raps, all the while remaining true to his character
(as determined by the group) - and even more amazingly, all phenomena
occurred in full light.
Batcheldor, Brookes-Smith and Hunt believed the production of physical
phenomena by a group “not specially selected for psychic talent” was a
repeatable experiment which could be performed by any dedicated circle of
sitters. The Philip Experiment showed that conscious thought could be
translated paranormally into actual physical force.

So with this background six Sydney-based participants committed themselves
to meeting on a fortnightly basis (the modern lifestyle being somewhat
more hectic than that of our 70s counterparts!) to round out the character
of one Skippy Cartman, schoolgirl femme fatale:
“A sweet and attractive 14 year old, Skippy Cartman lived out all of
her short life on her parentвЂ™s property near Dubbo, NSW. Her overbearing
and overprotective parents kept her on a short leash and she was very
inexperienced with the joys and dangers of life when she got her first
schoolgirl crush - on her Catholic school teacher Brother Monk. Flattered
by the attention, Brother Monk embarked on a foolhardy affair with the
young girl, with nature running its course and Skippy finding herself
pregnant.
“Full of schoolgirl naievity, Brother Monk reacted vastly differently
to the news than an idealistic Skippy had expected. Not for her white
dresses and smiling children. After all, he had his career to safeguard,
not to mention the reputation of the Church! He swiftly murdered his young
student, strangling her and burying her corpse under the floorboards of an
abandoned shearing shed on her family’s property.
“Her body was hidden quickly and quietly, not discovered for nearly a
year afterwards вЂ” despite her familyвЂ™s continued searching. By that time
her body was found it was so badly decomposed that no one ever discovered
that she had been pregnant. And Brother Monk had moved to another town,
and another parish, his dark secret going with him.”
With this darkly disturbing background it’s no wonder her ghost is still
lingering! We’re rather pleased to say she’s deigned to join in on our
regular sessions and communicate through soft raps and scratchings - on
one occasion our hands were’nt even touching the table! In a perfect world
we’ll soon be wheeling out our audio visual equipment to capture this on
film and tape, and perhaps invite some observers to witness this curious
experiment in action.
References:
1. Paper: Generation of Paranormal Physical Phenomena in connection with
an Imaginary “Communicator”, authored by Iris M.Owen & Maragret H.
Sparrow, Toronto Society for Psychical Research, 17.10.1973.

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