Down the Scole Hole

It's gettin' dark, too dark for me to see
I feel like I'm knockin' on heaven's door. - Bob Dylan

In the post "You can't go home again" we looked at borderland experiences described by veterans of military and intelligence sponsored remote viewing programs. In passing I mentioned the Scole Experiment: a five-year exercise in contact with disincarnate entities, based in the cellar of an English farmhouse (coined the "Scole Hole"), that saw similar psi phenomenon under exceptionally controlled circumstances. Just as scientists at Lawrence Livermore saw seemingly holographic and "almost comically stereotypical," images of eight-inch UFOs flit about their laboratory, so the Scole team "witnessed a miniature UFO flying around the cellar where we held our sessions." Reading Grant and Jane Solomon's The Scole Experiment, I see there's more. One of the independent researchers who sat in on the Scole sessions was Russell Targ, co-founder of Stanford Research Institute's remote viewing program.

The phenomena recorded in the Scole sittings was unusually rich and obtained under protocols anticipating the objections of skeptics. There was channelling of course, as well as spirit voices, noises, dancing lights, levitations and physical manifestations of alleged spirits. Also "apports" - the inexplicable materialization of dozens objects onto the session table, including an original pristine copy of the Daily Mail from January 4, 1944 and a tiny gold disc with hieroglyphics, "the source of which has not yet been identified." And remarkable captures on audio tape, photographic film and video.

Photographic experiments included independent investigators initialling and placing unopened and unexposed film in a sealed tub, sitting with the tub at a session, and then overseeing its development. Results included the imprinting of poetry, esoteric symbols and diagrammatic instructions to improve the transmissions.

The video experiments began in May 1997, and were dubbed "Project Alice" because they involved an arrangement of mirrors before a camera "to capture moving images sent from the spirit world," write the Solomon's. (Mirrors have long been used as an aid to receiving visions from other realms. John Dee's obsidian mirror, used by his scryer Edward Kelly in his Enochian work, is on display in the British Museum.)

For most of the experiments, the camera sat on its tripod in the dark positioned before two mirrors. At the end of the sessions the team often saw that the camera had repeatedly and impossibly zoomed in and out on its own accord, and the tapes contained weird scenes, smiling faces, vibrant colours and hints of body parts moving across the screen in a red light. One tape showed a pink and gold line running horizontally down the screen, which pivoted to reveal it was a square shape on edge. As it rotated, it was seen to contain an image. According to the Scole team, "this was a very clear view of an animated inter-dimensional friend, whose features, to say the least, were not exactly as our own." They called their new friend "Blue." His screen capture is the classic "grey alien" on the top left of this post. The pyramids on the right is from another spirit transmission, presumably some etheric vista.

Speaking of pyramids, some of what the alleged spirits of Scole had to say sounds remarkably similar to what "the Nine" - the supposed Great Ennead of Ancient Egypt - have been saying through various CIA-sponsored mediumships since 1952. That the purpose of our material lives is "to come to Earth for the experience," for instance. "Manu," described as a "powerful and extremely spiritual guide" who was always the first to speak, and who claimed to have "enjoyed many incarnations" including one in "what you now call South America," anticipates a "great awakening in many ways":

What we do is part of that plan. There are cosmic, pulsating energies coming to the Earth all the time. Everything is evolving, nothing stays still. At this time in his evolution, man is ready for these energies to come upon him and give him what he is thirsting for. So we shall give him the refreshing rain of knowledge, that he may drink from these waters, that he may know of his own spiritual self....

First we must reach out to man's higher aspect and then filter down to his everyday life and the choices he makes. Only that way will change come about.... As you think of the people of this Earth, and the very Earth itself, so you help to activate these ancient vibrations that are coming forward at the moment. The age is right for this to happen.

The Scole Experimental Group assumed that the entities with which they made contact were spirits of the dead, curious themselves to make contact, who formed a complementary team on the other side. The researchers assumed they were who they said they were, because of the benign nature of the contact, and the fact that some channelled voices would transmit messages from loved ones containing information only the contactee could possibly know.

That's a lot to assume. I can think of two other explanations, besides a hoax, for the same phenomenon. For instance, perhaps the contactee influenced events by subconsciously transmitting the private knowledge to the medium. (It's difficult to describe the margins of innate human psi and the occult, because even occult workings demand a willing human partnership. Perhaps a genuine medium would also be sensitive to incarnate spirits.) Also, many UFO contactees describe having their minds read. Maybe something similar is going on when a "spirit" claims to be someone familiar to the contactee and backs it up by sharing private information.

The Scole team travelled to California and demonstrated their results in nine separate sessions. One was a "scientists session" for NASA and representatives of Stanford University. The Scole team did not know who was going to attend or where the session would be held, and before the demonstration began the scientists searched the room, a basement gymnasium. A Native American materialized during the session, dancing and chanting, and drums which were mounted high on the wall began to beat. Then familiar spirits appeared, calling some of the scientists by name though their identities were unknown to the Scole team, and explained to the group that the area was an ancient sacred site, and the peoples who had lived there long ago were influencing the session.

"Interestingly," the Solomons write, "some of the astrophysicists later started a group of their own."

In its report on its five-year project, the Scole Group commented that

Our understanding of what Manu told us is that humanity has consciously or unconsciously been sending out a signal asking for help for our world for some time and that many loving beings have heard our plea. They are now coming in response to our request to aid us in any way they possibly can. It seems that the many dimensions are bound together with the common thread of love. This love transcends all other things. What a truly wonderful notion that is.

Well, that's one way to look at it. Another is that there are supra-mundane entities as interested in opening gateways into our reality as there are humans keen on opening channels into theirs, and willing to say and do anything to achieve it. I suppose it would be wrong to presume them all to be Lovecraftian nightmares, but it may be more prudent then throwing open the door and saying "Welcome, brother."

I like this advice from Emmanuel Swedenborg, so I'll quote it again:

When Spirits begin to speak with a man, he must beware that he believes nothing they say. For nearly everything they say is fabricated by them, and they lie: for they are permitted to narrate anything, as what heaven is and how things in the heavens are to be understood, they would tell so many lies that a man would be astonished.

The Scole spirits say the crossing is getting easier, and more people will begin to see them and understand their own spiritual lives. Maybe. Or maybe, it's a cookbook.