COMMENTARY: THE SCOLE EXPERIMENT The Scole Experiment (1993-1998) was a long-running, and rigorously documented demonstration of the possibilities of physical mediumship.
It began in Scole, a village in Norfolk, England, where a small group of people with decades of experience in mental and trance mediumship began sitting together at the invitation of Robin Foy, who had a decades-long interest in physical mediumship. There were several attempts to form a stable circle, and eventually by 2003 a core group of Diana and Alan Bennett (the trance mediums for the group) and Sandra and Robin Foy began to get results.
Working together, they conducted dozens of highly evidential experiments, including messages and images from the other side impressed onto photographic film, audio and video tape, as well as physical apports in such a huge number and variety that they felt scientists would have to sit up and take notice.
The Group traveled widely, conducting over 1,000 hours of sittings in England, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain (Ibiza), Switzerland, and the USA. Hundreds of visitors, including a variety of scientists and engineers— as well as the four top investigators from the Society for Psychical Research— attested to witnessing an unprecedented demonstration of communications and physical manifestations across the veil.
In the United States sessions were also attended
by a number of scientists including a number of senior scientists
from the space agency NASA and others from the Institute
of Noetic Sciences near San Francisco as well as representatives
from Stanford University. One critical thing that the reader is asked
to consider is that during these experiments, the ‘spirit
team’ working from the afterlife stated that it was
they who were causing the phenomena.
A TEN-MINUTE OVERVIEW
In the video below, Daniel Drasin, coproducer, writer, and director with Tim Coleman of the definitive film "Scole: The Afterlife Experiment", presents a 10-minute overview of the Scole Experiment. Then, paranormal investigators Nick and Sarah Kyle talk about their own experiences with the Scole team and their ongoing experiences with physical mediumship.
SOME OF THE PHENOMENA RECORDED
Voices, touch and materialization
of objects
The group began with two mediums delivering
messages from a non-physical group. Many of these messages
contained personal information that nobody else could have
known about.
Soon the messages came in the form of voices
which could be heard by all in the room. Many of the experimenters
experienced physical touch and the levitation of a table
took place. Then came the actual materialization of the
people and objects from the non-physical side.
More than fifty small objects were materialized
including: a silver necklace; a Churchill coin; a small
rose quartz crystal ball; a 1940 British penny; a 1928 one
franc piece token; a Silver charm of the 'Grim Reaper';
an original copy of Daily Mail dated 1st April 1944; an
original copy of Daily Express dated 28th May 1945 and many
others.
Images imprinted on film and video
Interesting experiments were undertaken
with photography. Images were imprinted on unopened rolls
of film inside a locked box. These images included actual
photos of people and places, sometimes from the past, and
various obscure verses and drawings that took some effort
to identify. There were also pictures of other dimensions
and the beings that inhabit them. Eventually video cameras
were able to record disincarnate images.
Psychic lights
One of the most spectacular phenomena of
the Scole Experiment was the materialised psychic lights
that whirled around the room performing various manoeuvres.
Occasionally, these lights would throw out beams, as well
as pass through solid objects. When they touched people,
there was a definite sensation, and when they entered a
person's body a healing.
The speed and the different configurations
and other phenomena performed behind the lights were just
overwhelming especially when all witnesses attested it was
impossible that the lights could have been in any way fraudulently
physically manipulated. All of these phenomena were accompanied
by sudden and dramatic drops in temperature.
This is how Piers Eggett, one of the eye
witnesses described the light:
This was a small ball of white light which
moved around the room in all directions, sometimes at great
speed, leaving a trail like a firework by persistence of
vision... At times the light hovered in mid-air, and then
touched some of the sitters, giving them a small electric
shock.
According to other eye witnesses the normally
single light point would:
• dart around at great speed and perform
elaborately patterned dances...including perfect, sustained
circles executed at high velocity and with a precision which
appeared inconsistent with physical manipulation
• settle on outstretched hands and
jump from one to the other
• enter a crystal and remain as a
small point of light moving around within the crystal
• strike the top of the table with
a sharp rap or the glass of the dome or dish with an appropriate
‘ping’ and do this repeatedly while remaining
visible as a sharp pinpoint of light
• respond to requests, such as alighting
on and irradiating parts of the witnesses' bodies
• move in time to tape-recorded music
• produce 'lightning flashes' in an
area of a large room some three to three and a half meters
distant from the group sitting round a table (in Spain)
• undertake several aerial 'bombing
raids' on the table top, hitting it very audibly and visibly,
and appearing to emerge from an area immediately below the
table (USA Los Angeles)
• change shape from a pinpoint of
light to a generalized irradiation
• move at very high speed describing
at times perfect geometric shapes within a foot or two of
visitors' faces, but without making any sound or creating
any perceptible air movement.
GRANT AND JANE SOLOMON'S SCOLE BOOK AND WEBSITE Grant and Jane Solomon are the collators and curators of The Scole Files since 1998, administrators of The Scole Experiment Afterlife Research Association (SEARA or 'The Scole Association'), psi investigators and journalists, members of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR), writers, editors of The Scole Experiment diary ebook, and authors of the internationally best-selling book... THE SCOLE EXPERIMENT: Scientific Evidence for Life After Death
MONTAGUE KEEN PRINCIPAL SCOLE INVESTIGATOR
Montague Keen was a brilliant psychic researcher, journalist, agricultural administrator, magazine editor, and farmer. He had been a member of the Council of the Society for Psychical Research for 55 years, chairman of its Image and Publicity Committee, and secretary of its Survival Research Committee. He was the principal investigator of the Scole Group of physical mediums, and author of The Scole Report, published in the Proceedings of the SPR (Vol 54 Pt 220) in 1999 with his co-investigators, Professors Arthur Ellison and David Fontana.
MONTAGUE KEEN WAS DEEPLY DISAPPOINTED BY THE SKEPTICS' REACTION TO THE SCOLE REPORT The Scole Report, written by investigators Montague Keen, David Fontana and Arthus Ellis was published in the Proceding of the Society For Psychical Research in 1999.
Montague was scathing with the critics of the Report. He wrote: "What is depressing about the critics is their willingness to construct an upturned pyramid of hypotheses and speculations, all balanced on one improbable assumption after another. What is so remarkable is their unwillingness to accept the oft-repeated challenge to take the scientifically warranted course of viewing all the evidence together, rather than attempting to pick theoretical holes in every individual item".
Read his article "What Will the Critics Accept as Evidence?"
MONTAGUE KEEN ENDORSED THE SCOLE EXPERIMENT - FROM THE AFTERLIFE
Three weeks after he died in 2004, Montague Keen materialized through the physical mediumship of David Thompson. He had previously investigated David's mediumship and had written a very favourable report. He was someone who from 57 years of research knew what to expect after death - but his words were: "It’s everything that I thought it would be, and so much more." He also confirmed that the Scole experiments were everything he had thought they were and asked that his communication be reported. Listen to the audio of Monty's first contact.
[ 3 mins 37secs] Read the transcript
Four months after his transition, Monty materialised again through David Thompson. This time he talked with Scole Experimenters Robin and Sandra Foy and long-time afterlife researcher Guy Playfair. He then dictated a 20 minute speech to be read at his upcoming memorial service. Tape 2 - Montague's speech
[20 minutes 47 secs] Transcript
PROFESSOR DAVID FONTANA
David Fontana was a prolific writer and teacher in the area of parapsychology in England. He was also president of the Society for Psychical Research for three years. His magnificent 496 page book Is There An Afterlife published in 2005 contains a substantial first-hand account and analysis of the Scole phenomena (pp. 324-351)
Interview with David Fontana
RESOURCES ON PHYSICAL MEDIUMSHIP
Today, physical mediumship is very rare and mainly confined to home circles. Below are some resources for those wishing to run a home circle.
1) The Noah's Ark Society was a society for the safe development and promotion of physical mediumship, that ran between 1990 and 2004. The archives of its journals contain much valuable information about the Scole Experiment.
2) Professor Eckhard Cruse has been developing new ways to research modern physical mediumship for the last ten years.
A master magician’s testimony
Skeptics may argue that such effects could
be produced by stage magicians using long hollow strands
of fibreglass with laser lights projected through them.
This option was certainly considered by James Webster, a
professional stage-magician and former member of the Magic
Circle, who has more than fifty years experience in psychic
research. On three occasions he attended sittings with the
Scole group and published reports.
His conclusion was clearly set out in a
recent letter to the English newspaper, Psychic World (June
2001):
I discovered no signs of trickery, and in
my opinion such conjuring tricks were not possible, for
the type of phenomena witnessed, under the conditions applied….
The Scole Experiment (1993-1998) was a long-running, and rigorously documented demonstration of the possibilities of physical mediumship.
Grant and Jane Solomon 