LIFE AFTER DEATH
Born in Blackpool, his family moved to Lincolnshire when he was young. He attended Grimsby Grammar School.
He wanted to be a vicar but joined the RAF instead and trained as a pilot. He qualified and was commissioned in 1962. He was stationed at RAF Hornchurch.
He loved the social life in the forces. He had a “jolly time frequenting local pubs.”
One Sunday afternoon he had a life changing experience. He was, he claimed, “completely sober.”
Robin was in the Officer’s Mess, resting on his bed. He heard a woman’s voice floating in mid-air, 3 feet away. She said, “You can heal with your hands.” He looked around and there was nobody else in the room.
He ran into the neighbouring rooms and started laying his hands on other airmen. But being young, fit and on active duty, none of them needed healing so his actions were totally ineffective. He remained uncertain as to whether he genuinely had the gift of healing with his hands.
Soon afterwards, Robin left the RAF and started running a country club restaurant.
Then he moved into trade, working as a sales executive in paper manufacturing. It was then he met and married Sandra (his second wife) and they moved to Essex. They had two children.
He went to his first séance in 1973 at a fellow businessman’s house and visited his first medium the year afterwards.
The couple used to visit the Norfolk village of Scole on a frequent basis, staying at the Scole Inn. They noticed a seventeenth century farmhouse nearby and admired it.
Then it came on the market, and they snapped it up, and moved to Norfolk.
Robin was a big reader of ghost stories and had been visiting mediums and participating in seances since he was thirty. He claimed he had been visited once by his dead father.
He started healing with his hands and read up on psychical research.
He claimed his farmhouse was haunted. When they bought it, they found an ancient carving over the fireplace of the sitting room. It said, “Welcome Ever Smiles”, and Robin was convinced this was the spirits of the house welcoming him.
In 1990, along with Allen and Diana Bennett (who were mediums), Sandra and Robin set up the Scole Experiment Team. They started a 5-year experiment in the farmhouse cellar to prove there was life after death.
They claimed they saw unexplained lights, levitating tables and objects on photographs that weren’t there when the image was taken. They heard voices in the air and saw videos of mysterious alien worlds and objects teleporting.
The dead Winston Churchill was a regular visitor to their cellar and became good friends. Robin called him ‘Winnie’. He described Churchill as, “A source of constant inspiration”, encouraging the Foys to continue with their research.
Another visitor was the late Aleister Crowley.
The seances took place once a month. Visiting mediums were welcomed. But he would not let anybody into the cellar either before or after a séance – and no cameras were allowed. He also banned luminous wristbands.
One medium, Colin Fry, was accidentally exposed as a fraud at Scole. The lights were unexpectedly switched on and Fry was standing on a chair with a trumpet in his hands.
But Robin could not understand sceptics. He wrote a book, ‘The Scole Experiment’, which was well received in psychic circles – followed by another two books.
The Scole Experiment Group (SEG) received international attention and journalists, scientists and researchers clamoured to attend the seances. There they faced strict rules.
In 1990 Robin was accepted into the ‘Noah’s Ark Society’ for physical mediums, due to his work in ‘spiritual science’. He was also admitted to the French ‘Yellow Cloud Circle’.
He was well liked in the village of Scole and was described as a kind and friendly man.
But in 2006, a spirit told him to move to Spain – which is what he and Sandra did.
There, he set up the Spanish Medium Centre in Andalucia, trying to buy his favourite restaurant and convert it. The price was £500,000. He set up a ‘Just Giving’ page which raised £3,547 – although he vowed never to give up.
He also published another successful book, ‘Witnessing the Impossible’.
He also appeared in the 2012 television series ‘Weird or What?’
He had a long running feud with the medium Kai Muegge, who claimed he was a fraud…and yet, there has never been any proof that anything he did was fraudulent.
The Scole Experiment is currently being made into a film.
RIP – Return If Possible
