The hollowgast-creating experiment

The hollowgast-creating experiment is the failed transformation that made Golan and his allies into monsters—and the catastrophe they intend to repeat in pursuit of immortality. Its first failure produced the hollows; the planned second attempt would enlist abducted ymbrynes and a much larger reaction, threatening destruction on a scale far beyond the original disaster in Siberia.

Origins and Failed Transformation

Golan describes the experiment as unfinished work: he and his allies, he says, want only to complete what they started. Emma identifies the first attempt as the cause of their transformation into monsters. The experiment is therefore both the origin of the hollows and the failure that the conspirators refuse to accept as final.

Golan’s answer makes that refusal explicit. Rather than treat the result as a warning, he regards getting it wrong on the first attempt as no reason not to try again. He says that the wights have spent a hundred years working out what went wrong and have concluded that the reaction simply needs to be bigger. The long interval has not diminished the ambition behind the experiment; it has given the plotters time to refine their theory and renew their effort.

The Planned Second Attempt

The renewed experiment depends on ymbrynes. Emma explains that the wights have been abducting them so they can be forced to recreate the reaction that first produced the hollows. Golan describes the captives as the world’s best time manipulators and expects their talents to make the new attempt succeed. The kidnapping crisis is thus not incidental to the experiment: the abducted ymbrynes are meant to be its coerced instruments.

The scale of the planned reaction changes the stakes. Jacob recalls that the first attempt blew up half of Siberia, and connects the memory to Horace’s prophetic dream of ash clouds and scorched earth. If the new attempt fails, he realizes, the devastation would extend far beyond the five hundred miles of empty forest destroyed before. If it succeeds, the wights would become the deathless demigods they have long wanted to be, ruling over others as a living hell. The two possible outcomes—catastrophic failure and successful domination—make the experiment dangerous either way.

Revelation and Stakes

The explanation emerges in the aftermath of a wight’s death. Emma says that, before dying, he disclosed why so many ymbrynes had been taken: they were to be made to reproduce the reaction that created the hollows, only on a much greater scale. Her account shifts the group’s understanding of the abductions from a series of attacks to a coordinated plan with a specific experimental purpose. Enoch’s insistence that wights kill peculiars by nature does not disprove the plan; Emma’s testimony reveals that the immediate violence serves a larger design.

The revelation produces a sharp change in the scene. Someone gasps, the others fall silent, and Hugh states the urgent consequence: they must find where the ymbrynes are being taken. Meanwhile, Miss Peregrine sits forlornly on the edge of Adam’s crater. The experiment’s significance lies not only in the old disaster it explains, but in how it converts the children’s rescue effort into a race to prevent another reaction—one whose promised success could be as terrifying as its failure.

Ambition and Recurrence

Golan’s grand claim that one should fail spectacularly turns scientific failure into a boast. His lightness about the first catastrophe contrasts with Jacob’s recollection of the Siberian devastation and his dread of a vastly larger one. The language of experimentation disguises the human cost: the ymbrynes are not collaborators but captives, and the promised transformation is not merely personal survival but power over everyone else.

The intended repetition also gives the experiment a recursive shape. The conspirators seek to repair a failed attempt by intensifying the very reaction that made it disastrous. Their century of reflection yields not restraint but escalation: the old failure becomes a blueprint for a larger risk. In this way, the experiment binds the hollows’ creation to the present kidnapping plot and makes the past catastrophe an active threat rather than a closed episode.