# Harry Stump Harry Stump was a Dutch sculptor and channeler who gained the attention of [[Andrija Puharich]] and his wealthy benefactors due to his purported psychic abilities, particularly his capacity to enter trance states and produce automatic writings and drawings[^1]. Stump was a [[World War II]] resistance fighter in his native Holland, honored by the Dutch government for his work against the [[Nazi Germany|Nazis]]. He was captured, beaten, and tortured by the [[Gestapo]] during the war[^1]. Puharich met Stump at a dinner party hosted by [[Alice Astor Bouverie]]. In June 1954, Bouverie contacted Puharich about an incident where Stump, after handling a 3,400-year-old scarab-shaped necklace, entered a trance state and began drawing Egyptian hieroglyphs and speaking in a guttural voice, seemingly channeling an entity from ancient Egypt. During this trance, Stump spoke of "a drug that would stimulate one's psychic faculties" and drew a picture of a mushroom, which Puharich later identified as *Amanita muscaria*[^1]. This event was significant as it provided the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] with a key lead in their year-long, unsuccessful quest to locate the *teonanáctl* mushroom for [[Project MKUltra|MKULTRA Subproject 58]][^1]. Puharich became obsessed with Stump's channeling abilities and the hallucinogenic mushroom. He brought Stump to the [[Round Table Foundation]] and, in August 1955, attempted to drug him with *teonanáctl* to test its divinatory powers, with [[Aldous Huxley]] as a witness. The experiment did not yield the desired results, with Stump appearing drunk and confused[^1]. Stump's psychic powers began to wane, and the "Egyptian persona" rarely appeared. He became depressed as his trance powers vanished, and his traditional sculpture and painting work suffered[^1]. ### Footnotes [^1]: Jacobsen, Annie. *Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis*. Little, Brown and Company, 2017.