Poltergeist

He licked mustard off his thumb as he rooted through the stacks and boxes until he found a black, cloth-covered book. He handed it to me. The lime green print on the spine identified it as Conjuring Up Philip: An Adventure in Psychokinesis, by Iris M. Owen and Margaret Sparrow.

"That's the book about the experiments. Unfortunately, it was written for laymen and neither of the authors seems to have thought of including their original newsletter reports or any technical data in an appendix. That may be part of the reason there's been so little success re-creating the experiment.”

Ben threw himself down in the chair behind the desk and sprawled there, limp. Albert drizzled into view in a corner behind him.

I turned the book over in my hands, but didn't open it. "I don't understand Tuckman's angle," I said. "He's not interested in ghosts and he doesn't believe in them. He claims to be looking at the group's behavior in reaction to 'impossible' phenomena—something about the effect of group stresses and internal factors, how far they would give themselves permission to go while they believe they can make these things happen.”

Ben raised his eyebrows. "That's an interesting angle. The New Horizons group—the original experiment group—noted in passing that there were a lot of tensions among them, including some sexual tension. The group was very diverse—married and single, couples and non-couples, ages from twenty- to fifty-something. The more tension there was, the more phenomena they got. The book claims that the group was harmonious and happy most of the time, but Owen and Sparrow admit that things got more exciting when there were unresolved issues among the participants.”

I frowned. If Tuckman's group had internal tensions—and I thought I might have glimpsed a few in the recorded sessions—maybe it wasn't so far-fetched to imagine a co

"OK. What about this poltergeist personality? The file copies Tuckman gave me include a six-page biography of this ghost who doesn't exist and the participants seem to accept it as an actual. . person, I guess.”

Ben perked up a bit. "Ahh, yes. That was where the Owen group was unique in the study of PK up to that time. They created the personality to which they would ascribe the poltergeist activity first, rather than attributing activity to a random personality only after it happened—which is what you see in classic poltergeist cases. Since their premise was that they controlled the entity, they gave it a distinct background, complete with mistakes, fictionalizations, and historical errors. Then, if the answers to their questions during the séances matched the flawed biography, they were obviously drawing on their own story only—not an actual ghost or collective psychic knowledge of a real person. Philip was a collective endeavor and only existed through the group and under their control. The most interesting sidelight was that Philip's tastes and answers would change depending on which participants were in the séance circle at the time.”

"But they all knew the bio," I objected, "so how could that happen?”

"There're always details you don't think of at first, like 'What's your favorite color? or 'Do you like ice cream? Philip's personality developed over time as those details were filled in and was colored by the preferences of the sitters. Those with the strongest opinions tended to have a stronger influence, but if one of those people was missing, Philip's preferences would change. For instance, one of them didn't like a certain song, so when she was there, Philip didn't like that song, either—but when she was gone, he liked it fine." I'd seen that with Tuckman's group a bit, too.

"So Philip could manifest even if the whole group wasn't present?" I asked, thinking of Celia's appearances without Ken or Mark.

"Oh, yes. They discovered that they could get Philip to perform with as few as four of the eight group members—and it could be any four." I was becoming disappointed in Tuckman's group for lack of originality. I wondered when I'd see them break Philip's mold, since I couldn't understand why Tuckman would be so sure someone was messing with him so long as his study continued on the same tracks.

Albert started to rove around the room, eyeing us both as if he found the conversation distasteful but couldn't quite tear himself away. Ben carried on without even noticing I'd started to glaze over. "Later, they noticed that they individually experienced incidents of minor PK when they were alone, too.”

"What happened?" I prompted.

"Nothing spectacular—and this was all near the end of the experiment—just object movements, flickering lights that seemed to respond to questions, the sensation of being watched. It might have been suggestion and conflation, but the group attributed the incidents to Philip, even when they happened in multiple locations simultaneously. Unfortunately, none of the at-home incidents was recorded in any objective way "The other telling thing was that they couldn't get anything to happen collectively or individually if they were consciously trying. Phenomena only occurred when the members were expectant, but otherwise relaxed and making no effort to create phenomena. They thought that would change eventually. They said they had hoped to create a visible apparition or an apport, but the group broke up before any greater advances were recorded.”

"Hang on—what's an apport?”

"Oh, sorry," Ben said, then cleared his throat and continued. "An apport is a real, extant object that appears from empty air. Usually it's something significant.”

I leaned back in my seat on the book-laden sofa and looked at the volume in my hand. It wasn't very thick or heavy. Quite unimpressive. I thought of Tuckman's manipulations and fancy equipment. "Did the Philip group do this in a lab?”

"No, mores the pity. They did it in a house with very little recording equipment, no monitoring, and no control.”

"Then how is anyone sure it wasn't a hoax?”

Ben squirmed around and found room to prop his feet on his cluttered desk, tipping the chair far back. Albert dimmed and vanished, giving up on the conversation at last.

"That's the million-dollar question," Ben said. "Most of what the group claimed they could do has been shown to be possible, but only on small scales and inconsistently. Recent psychological studies into false memory and expectation claim it's all conflation, but they've only addressed the traditional séance, not the Philip experiments themselves, which—for all their flaws—were at least held in a lighted room with an attempt at neutral scientific inquiry. As I said, no one's been able to reproduce the level of phenomena the Owen group got. Most who've tried get little or nothing. That tends to bolster the hoax idea—or self-delusion.

"But there are broadcast records of a TV episode and a short documentary film about the experiment. The tape and the film have since disappeared. But the book came out in 1976—the original paperback, that is." He pointed to the hardback in my hand. "That one, there, is a later version from 1978 with some additional chapters. A lot of people still remembered those TV episodes in 78. If the book were published in the last ten years and had the same lack of documentation for events that happened thirty years ago, I'd be skeptical, but it's contemporary with the events claimed and though it's been doubted, it's never been debunked. Even the psychological experiments into conflation and false memory don't disprove the events claimed by the Philip group. The fact that some members have since died or disappeared and the rest now refuse to discuss the experiment doesn't help to clear up any questions.”