The Brocken goat experiment
On 17 June 1932, psychic researcher Harry Price staged a ritual on the Brocken in Germany's Harz Mountains. The aim was a goat transformed into a young man, and reporters were invited.
Atlas Obscura reports that on 17 June 1932 Harry Price set out to make a boy of a goat. He asked several reporters to come and watch. Wikipedia says he went up Mount Brocken accompanied by C. E. M. Joad and several National Laboratory colleagues, and calls the event the "Bloksberg Tryst".
Senate House Library describes the ritual. It had to take place at the granite altar on the Brocken, in the Harz Mountains. It called for magic circles, incense, Latin incantations, a virgin he-goat and an unguent of bats' blood, scrapings of church bells, soot and honey, with a pure maiden present. Atlas Obscura says the maiden was Urta Bohn, whose father was an attorney, and that she wore a white dress. Wikipedia gives her name as Uta Bohn and identifies her with the film actress Gloria Gordon.
Wikipedia records that the event produced a great deal of publicity and no transformation. Price said he carried out the experiment to prove the fallacy of transcendental magic.
"In 1932, Price travelled to Mount Brocken in Germany with C. E. M. Joad and members of the National Laboratory to conduct a 'black magic' experiment in connection with the centenary of Goethe.[30][60] The "Bloksberg Tryst", involving the transformation of a goat into a young man by the invocation of a maiden, Uta Bohn (better known as the film actress Gloria Gordon, 1881–1962), produced a great deal of publicity but not the magical transformation.[60] Price claimed he carried out the experiment "if only to prove the fallacy of transcendental magic."[61][62]"
- Could magic have turned this goat into a human boy?, Atlas Obscura
- Magic in the Mountains with Harry Price at Senate House Library, Senate House Library, University of London (2017)