Owen, Iris M
Owen, Iris M.
Nurse and psychical researcher. As a registered nurse and volunteer in social work, Owen became a member of the governing board of schools and chairperson of governors of an approved school for delinquent boys. In 1962, she married parapsychologist Alan Robert George Owen. They shared an interest in poltergeist phenomena. She moved to Canada in the 1960s and became secretary of the Toronto Society for Psychical Research. Owen also assisted her husband's work at the New Horizons Research Foundation, Toronto.
In the early 1970s, she led the "Philip" experiment. A group of people sitting as a séance circle created a fictitious figure whom they named Philip and who then began to manifest physical phenomena. The result destroyed the "spirit" hypothesis by demonstrating that spirits were unnecessary in the production of phenomena—it could be produced by the sitters.
Sources:
Berger, Arthur S., and Joyce Berger. The Encyclopedia of Parapsychology and Psychical Research. New York: Paragon House, 1991.
Owen, Iris M., and P. Mitchell. "The Alleged Haunting of Borley Rectory." Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 50 (1979).
Owen, Iris M., and Margaret Sparrow. Conjuring Up Philip; An Adventure in Psychokinesis. New York: Harper and Row, 1976.