By Grant Solomon & Jane Solomon
Curator Post Reference: DIA-226
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Archive file
Scole-06-DIA-1996-08-10-226.txt [Drive]
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Below is the plaintext HTML extraction of the Session 226 Diary Entry.
Features methodological friction between the Scole Group and SPR investigators over experimental protocols. A traditional "book test" for Montague Keen is covered. David Fontana's detailed observation of a marble-sized ball of light illuminating a tangible spirit hand is included in Archival Notes for context.
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FILE ID: Scole-06-DIA-1996-08-10-226.txt
LOCATION: 06-DIA-Diary/Session-226-1996-08-10/
ARCHIVE-ID: Scole-06-DIA-226
PURPOSE: Personal diary entry regarding Scole Session 226.
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ARCHIVE-ID: Scole-06-DIA-226
LOCATION: 06-DIA-Diary/Session-226-1996-08-10/
SESSION-ID: S-226
DATE: 10/08/1996
SUBJECT: Diary Entry for Session 226
SOURCE: Witnessing the Impossible (Foy, 2008 and 2023) / Original Diary
TAGS: #DiaryEntry #ScoleSession #S-226 #ScientificReview #Polachrome #Albert
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VENUE:
Scole Experimental Room (SER); the converted cellar of Street Farmhouse, Scole, Norfolk, England.
GROUP PARTICIPANTS (Alphabetical by Surname):
1. Bennett, Alan
2. Bennett, Diana
3. Foy, Robin
4. Foy, Sandra
GUEST PARTICIPANTS (Alphabetical by Surname):
1. Ellison, Arthur
2. Fontana, David
3. Keen, Montague
COMMUNICATORS (Alphabetical by Name):
1. Albert (Trance Voice)
2. Bradshaw, Emily (Trance Voice)
3. Manu (Trance Voice)
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DIARY TEXT:
Session 226.
Saturday 10th August 1996.
For this researcher session, we sat with Monty Keen, and professors David Fontana and Arthur Ellison. David Fontana held the film in its plastic pot throughout the session but, disappointingly, when it was being developed afterwards, the pack of chemicals (supplied with each film) in the Polaroid developing machine was faulty, and we had to open the machine up during the developing process. This inevitably caused light to get in, thereby ruining the as-yet-undeveloped film. Regrettably therefore, we had no positive photographic results at this sitting.
My diary further records that this session was generally a disappointing one. Before we began, the three scientists conducted their customary thorough search of the cellar. For the first time, Arthur Ellison wanted to pull up the carpet. Whilst - in principle - we had no objection to this, they finally decided against pulling up the carpet because it had been professionally fitted on to wooden "Smooth Edge" (the thin wooden strips around the edge of the room with nails/tacks protruding upwards to keep a carpet in position), and we pointed out that it would have to be re-fitted at their expense if they wanted to do that. In any case, the floor under the carpet was solid concrete and it would not have been vaguely possible for us to have hidden anything beneath the carpet. It did seem, however, that the three SPR scientists appeared to be over-suspicious of the Scole phenomena generally for the very first time.
Just as the session started, after we were all greeted by Emily Bradshaw and Albert, Professor Ellison started asking questions on his pet subject of lucid dreaming - and pushing the spirit team to allow the investigators to introduce infrared viewers into their sessions with us in the Scole cellar. This was always a recurring theme with the scientists. Our spirit team had in the past consistently failed to consent to these suggestions. They felt that to do so would interfere with their own fixed agenda of experiments; thereby preventing them from producing the positive results they wished to demonstrate for the three SPR researchers. Unfortunately, Sandra and I inwardly groaned at this point as we felt that this early dialogue between the scientists and the team at this session had most certainly adversely affected the harmony we usually enjoyed at our sittings. It is a fact in this type of research that a lack of harmony between sitters is detrimental to the results that a spirit team can produce.
The situation was not helped when Arthur, without referring the matter to us, held out a card in front of him in the dark with a number on it; suggesting that the spirit team read it in the dark and tell him what the number was. Emily patiently tried to explain that our spirit communicators no longer had physical eyes, which meant they could not read as such. They got their information from being told by another spirit person. After this additional move by Arthur, Sandra and I could almost physically feel the atmosphere worsen as the harmony between us suffered even further. We were, of course, not aware at that time of the allegations that had been made by SPR member, "WM", following the last public seminar. Interestingly, despite his ringing Monty Keen, the delegate WM had not had the decency to put his allegations to us directly!
The session itself, however, had actually started off fairly well with the energy building up quickly. Sandra was soon touched a couple of times by a solid spirit hand and also had her trouser leg pulled three times by the same hand. There was much joking about leg-pulling! Spirit lights followed, but Monty and Arthur had a myriad of questions to ask the spirit team - all requiring detailed answers and explanations, which caused the spirit scientist Albert to announce that the team would have to abandon the planned phenomena so that all of the energies could be concentrated on their questions.
Monty went on to suggest that the spirit team could provide "book tests" for them (this entailed the spirit team successfully telling them what was on a particular page of a particular book - and giving its location wherever that book happened to be). Regrettably, the scientists would not listen when Mrs Bradshaw declared that "book tests" were "old hat" and that our own spirit team here at Scole was planning evidence that was much more spectacular. Eventually, (after much insistence on their part), Monty was given a "book test" which turned out to be evidential!
Albert tried to explain how the energy they used was akin to a "carrier wave", with phenomena being carried on it. At this point Professor Arthur Ellison really didn't want to know and actually made a sarcastic comment. Albert spoke of the "Albemarle Club", where a number of SPR colleagues used to meet many years ago. At this point I was asked by Albert to turn off the cassette recorder which I was using to record the sitting, whilst he told us of "goings on in St James Square". Monty was given a number of other "clues" as to the identities of those ex-SPR members who were now gathered in the spirit world, desperately trying to bring good evidence of their survival for Monty, Arthur, and David.
Despite being pressed by the scientists, Albert didn't want to say much about himself, however. Apart from Monty's "clues", this sitting certainly did not come up to normal expectations. At the end, the table rotated by about thirty degrees one way and then back again, till it was once again exactly aligned with the North, South, East, and West points.
It was several months before we discovered that their suspicious attitude at this session had been triggered just by the previously mentioned telephone call from the single SPR member (WM) who had sat with us during our last public seminar on Sunday 28 July, and immediately called Monty afterwards with a spurious report of his experiences, claiming that the Scole Group were fraudulent, without providing the least bit of evidence to justify his claims. It was really a shame that Monty, Arthur, and David should have taken such a negative view on board, which had effectively caused this scientist sitting to be wasted when so much more could have been achieved.
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ARCHIVAL NOTES:
This diary entry was recorded shortly after the conclusion of the session to preserve the most accurate immediate recollections of the phenomena and communications received. Three members of the SPR participated. This was Sitting 11 for SPR scientists and Sitting 14 in The Scole Report.
The friction recorded in this entry powerfully highlights the methodological clash between traditional, orthodox psychical research protocols (which prioritise physical environment control, such as pulling up carpets and introducing infrared cameras) and the strict operational parameters demanded by the Scole Spirit Team. The "WM" incident illustrates the external pressures and scepticism the Scole Group faced, which the group thought could actively disrupt the delicate interpersonal harmony required for physical phenomena to manifest. Furthermore, the "book test" requested by Montague Keen is a classic, traditional mediumistic proof-of-survival technique, which contrasts sharply with the pioneering physical manifestations (like the films, illuminations, and other phenomena) that the Scole Spirit Team were attempting to demonstrate.
EXTRACT:
The Scole Report: Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, Vol. 58, Part 220, November 1999 (p.198)
During the previous sitting (R11, p. 7) [Session 226], some time after the ping-pong ball (in DF's words noted immediately afterwards) had been "thrown violently out of the Pyrex bowl" in front of MK and AE, and the bowl had been heard to scrape and slide across the table until it came to rest a few centimetres in front of DF, both his hands were held. In a separate record of this event, DF describes how a ball of light, the size of a large glass marble, appeared on the table and apparently rolled towards him, remaining a few centimetres away on the table:-
"It illuminated my hands, palms uppermost, so brightly that I saw all ten fingers clearly ... My right hand, palm uppermost, was touched. The fingers [of a dark shape he had earlier seen on top of the ball of light] then slid up towards my palm, so that with my thumb and finger I could hold them gently from above. The hand was small and delicate, like a woman's, and felt cool. On other occasions a spirit hand shook our hands on request, again finding us with unerring accuracy in the dark."
END OF EXTRACT
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CROSS-REFERENCES:
- LITERATURE: Scole-12-LIT-0002-The-Scole-Report-1999-Summary.txt
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REVISION HISTORY:
v1.1 - 27/10/2026 - Converted curly quotation marks to standard vertical characters, expanded Archival Notes to contextualise the methodological friction between the SPR and the Scole Group, and standardised the Literature Cross-Reference to the SANS -LIT format.
v1.0 - 27/10/2026 - Migrated from .docx to SANS Plaintext Standard.
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Cross-references
06-DIA-Diary [Page]
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