The Marsh Chapel Experiment

The Marsh Chapel Experiment (a.k.a. "the Good Friday Experiment") was run by Walter Pahnke, a graduate student in theology at Harvard Divinity School. The goal was to see if in religiously predisposed subjects, psilocybin (the psychoactive principle in psilocybin mushrooms) would act as reliable catalyst in facilitating religious experience. The experiment was conducted on, Good Friday, 1962 at Boston University's Marsh Chapel. Prior to the Good Friday service, graduate divinity student volunteers were randomly divided into two groups. In a double-blind, placebo-controlled experiment, half of the students received psilocybin, while a control group received niacin as a placebo. Almost all of the members of the experimental group reported experiencing profound religious experiences–providing empirical support for the notion that psychedelic drugs can facilitate religious experiences. In 2006, a more rigorously controlled version of this experiment was conducted at Johns Hopkins University yielding very similar results.

Pahnke, Walter N., Drugs and Mysticism: An Analysis of the Relationship between Psychedelic Drugs and the Mystical Consciousness. A thesis presented to the Committee on Higher Degrees in History and Philosophy of Religion, Harvard University, June 1963.

Griffiths RR, Richards WA, Johnson HW, McCann UD, Jesse R: Mystical-type experiences occasioned by psilocybin mediate the attribution of personal meaning and spiritual significance, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006.