May 2 -September 7
Access is included with your admission.
New this season, Hammond Castle Museum presents two dynamic, temporary exhibitions that explore the inventive spirit and personal passions of John Hays Hammond Jr. Inside the Faraday Cage: “The Science of Things That Aren’t So.”
Does extrasensory perception exist? Does consciousness transcend death? Is communication possible with incorporeal beings? John Hays Hammond Jr. wondered about these questions and joined forces with physician and parapsychologist Andrija Puharich and psychic medium Eileen Garrett to try to answer them. Experiments conducted at Hammond Castle Museum in 1951 involved a Faraday cage to test Garrett’s claimed abilities. These were among the first seeds of investigations whose tendrils spread throughout the shadowy corners and fringes of society, eventually reaching the most secretive departments of the U.S. government.
…But was any of it actually real? This exhibit explores that question and provides visitors with the opportunity to step into a replica cage and see the remaining artifacts from this scientific experiment, which took place right here, 75 years ago!