tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20767740957576764702024-03-12T23:34:51.882+00:00ersbyErsbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08012602968152264418noreply@blogger.comBlogger603125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2076774095757676470.post-60600977059075716282023-06-20T06:49:00.000+01:002023-06-20T06:49:10.022+01:00Excerpt from "Staring At A Red Sky"<div style="text-align: left;">To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the first published psi ganzfeld experiment, I wrote a book on the subject. Usually, literature on the ganzfeld is full of statistics and debates over meta-analyses so I decided to focus more on the people involved and the things they acheived.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">It's available on <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Staring-Red-Sky-Research-ganzfeld-ebook/dp/B0C8GJK9JX/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1687239458&sr=8-1">Kindle and paperback from Amazon</a>.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Below, you can read the opening few pages from the chapter on Carl Sargent's work at the University of Cambridge. Hope you enjoy it.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">- - - - - - - - - - - -</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">On a dark, cold, wet Sunday evening in late January 1977, a student got off a bus and walked towards a residential road, past the terraced houses with their front doors opening directly onto the pavement until he arrived at number 22 and knocked. Once inside, he was taken downstairs into a windowless basement room hosting a meeting of the Cambridge University Society for Psychical Research.</div><div> </div><div>This was Trevor Harley, in his first year at Cambridge, and here Trevor would be introduced to Hugh Ashton, who was studying philosophy. Then Trevor would inevitably meet, lounging on the couch, a student with flowing red hair and shirt open to reveal thick chest hair. Undeniably good looking and always wearing enough Aramis aftershave that it would be possible to retrace his path around a building long after he'd left, this was Carl Sargent.</div><div> </div><div>Carl was an anomaly: studying for Cambridge University’s first (and only) doctorate in Parapsychology. He was as confident as his appearance suggested, hugely intelligent and with a sharp sense of humour. He also cared little for anyone he had no respect for and was quick to offer his dismissive verdicts on their works. This made him quite a lot of enemies during his short time as an active parapsychologist.</div><div> </div><div>Born on 11 December 1952, he’d graduated from Churchill College, Cambridge with a degree in natural sciences before turning his attention to psi research. Despite the controversial nature of the subject, he found that two professors in the Experimental Psychology department were amenable to him completing his thesis in this field. This remarkable stroke of good luck was brushed over somewhat in an interview that Carl gave in the magazine, Omni. When asked about overcoming Cambridge University’s hostility towards psi research, Carl attributes his unlikely success entirely to his own efforts.</div><div> </div><div>“I didn’t encounter any significant opposition. Quite the reverse. [...] If it’s properly conducted, if the methods are correct, then I don’t see that there can be any objections to a PhD in any subject whatsoever, let alone parapsychology.”</div><div> </div><div>As a recipient of a grant, he was able to travel to New York in 1978 and took part in the ganzfeld work at the Maimonides Research Center with Charles Honorton. Although Carl and Charles didn’t get on and Sargent wasn’t keen on the experimental set-up in New York, he definitely saw potential in this new protocol.</div><div> </div><div>On his return to Cambridge, he teamed up with three students from the CUSPR: Trevor Harley, Hugh Ashton and Trevor’s old school friend, then in his last year at Cambridge, Peter Dear. They built their own ganzfeld set-up using a mattress for the receiver to lie on and an angle-poise lamp above their face as a source of red light. One experimenter would sit in a neighbouring room behind a one-way mirror and write down whatever the receiver reported during the session. Further down the corridor was the office where the random choice of target was made and then the room for the sender to view the target was in an entirely different building, contactable only by telephone and only once the session was over.</div><div> </div><div>If the physical layout was simple, the randomisation method was anything but. With no computers available, Sargent devised a complicated system using a random number table and an array of opaque brown envelopes. The large ones contained a set of four images (each one in its own envelope) or an identical duplicate set to be used for judging purposes. Meanwhile, the smaller ones, twenty of them, contained cards with the letters A, B, C or D which were to be randomly chosen in order to decide which item in the target set would be the specific target for that session.</div><div> </div><div>Then, in the following six months, Sargent, Harley, Ashton and Dear tore through six experiments totalling 164 half-hour sessions. The ethos was mostly to keep things fun and lively although Sargent, always competitive, became frustrated on those occasions that an easy hit was spoiled by (in his eyes) an irrational focus on another picture. After a few of these, they devised a scoring system to try and make the judging method more objective. But despite these misses, the number of hits were far in excess of the one in four that you’d expect by chance. Equally, everyone was surprised at some of the successes they had.</div><div> </div><div>One notable hit had Hugh Ashton as the receiver and Carl Sargent as the sender and he was focusing on an art print of a Breughel painting. After the session, Hugh viewed the set of four pictures and chose the Breughel but seemed dissatisfied.</div><div> </div><div>“I keep wanting to say the Bosch, but there isn’t one,” he maintained.</div><div> </div><div>After the judging, Carl burst into the room and excitedly asked “Did you get it? Did you get the Bosch?”</div><div> </div><div>A little perplexed, Hugh said</div><div> </div><div>“There wasn’t a Bosch. Do you mean the Breughel?”</div><div> </div><div>Carl clicked his fingers in annoyance.</div><div> </div><div>“I always get those two mixed up!” he berated himself. Apparently, having misidentified the artist of the piece, Sargent had spent his time as the sender thinking the name “Bosch” over and over.</div>Ersbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08012602968152264418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2076774095757676470.post-1370096278012467642022-11-13T16:04:00.003+00:002022-11-13T16:10:38.042+00:00Walking with a Victorian through Meiji Japan<div style="text-align: left;"><i>The following is an excerpt from the chapter </i>"Looking for Lafcadio"<i> in my book </i>"Matsue, Seven Walks Through Seventeen Centuries,"<i> which is <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Matsue-Japan-through-seventeen-centuries-ebook/dp/B09NK3FPSZ">available through Amazon</a>.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Lafcadio Hearn was a journalist at the end of the nineteenth century who was born on the Greek island Lefkada to a Greek mother and an Anglo-Irish father. He moved constantly throughout his life, living most of his adult life in the United States, until he arrived in Japan in 1890 in the middle of the Meiji Period (1868-1912). He lived in Matsue for a little over a year, but it was to have a profound effect on him. The local culture and folktales enchanted him and, long after he left the city, he remained steadfast in his love for this pocket of old Japan that he stumbled upon just before westernized ideas swept it away. </i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div>His book Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan contains an account of a walk through Matsue that fascinates with its details about the daily social events at temples, the passing pilgrims dressed in yellow straw overcoats and mushroom-shaped straw hats or the various cries of the late-night street pedlars. In these moments, when Lafacdio takes us through Matsue seeing Japan through his enraptured eyes, it’s easy to be transported back to mid-nineteenth century Japan.</div><div><br /></div><div>Let us take Lafcadio’s walk now, keeping his text close to hand, to see how things have changed.</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj03DQRUbAU1Lbi3gYGMwe0osJM34at8SSjEx9miWlf76iE1-v95YUl0J_YgXgVMt_X7-BRJyjvIpNnOypLfZ4ZRFlIuROj4LgqO7Dyf2WT3vabcgqzttYJPwGSpzR27ipQDkjin8SngAeuZELnX7MkaD4zBIYjlrBeby9wMhmlCiD1eJ_uuJJwEY76Lg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1806" data-original-width="900" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj03DQRUbAU1Lbi3gYGMwe0osJM34at8SSjEx9miWlf76iE1-v95YUl0J_YgXgVMt_X7-BRJyjvIpNnOypLfZ4ZRFlIuROj4LgqO7Dyf2WT3vabcgqzttYJPwGSpzR27ipQDkjin8SngAeuZELnX7MkaD4zBIYjlrBeby9wMhmlCiD1eJ_uuJJwEY76Lg" width="120" /></a></div><br /><div>He begins on the north shore of The Ohashi River, at the inn where he originally stayed named Tomitaya Inn. There’s still a hotel there called OhashiKan and, while there is an information board about Hearn by its entrance, it has precious few links to the old inn.</div><div><br /></div><div>He goes into some length about the songs of birds, the emergence of schoolchildren and the comically loud horn on a new ship docked at the quay that used to sit on the river’s southern shore.</div><div><br /></div><div>He guides us through a road that he calls <i>“The Street of New Timber”</i> which is the narrow road running parallel to the river on the other side of the inn. Hearn describes nets hung up on poles higher than the houses because, despite its name, the street housed fisherman. These days, the only poles here hold up Japan’s complicated network of air-borne wires and cables. These do have an air of Lafcadio’s “prodigious cobwebs against the sky,” but I suspect the atmosphere has changed considerably over the years.</div><div><br /></div><div>Then he crosses the Ohashi bridge, admiring the mountain Dai-san in the distance to the east as he does (this part, at least, has not changed since Lafcadio’s time) and he describes a very small Jizo temple at the end of the bridge which has now gone.</div><div><br /></div><div>He writes at length about this bridge. During his stay it was rebuilt, changing from a bridge that "curved over the flood, supported on multitudinous feet like a centipede of the innocuous kind" to an iron construction whose girders formed triangles along the bridge.</div><div><br /></div><div>Lafcadio describes a well-known fable relating to the bridge. It states that the construction was beset by difficulties and the pillars of the bridge would repeatedly be swept away no matter how many stones they sunk into the river bed. Finally, the daimyo who was overseeing the construction of the new city, decided the only course of action was to have a human sacrifice: a hitobashira, or human pillar, who would be buried alive in the structure of the bridge.</div><div><br /></div><div>The choice was made at random: the first person to cross the bridge wearing hakama (a kind of trouser) without a machi (a rigid board that covers the knots of the hakama at the back) would be the victim. One man, named Gensuke, crossed in this manner of attire and was swiftly made a sacrifice. According to Hearn, this lead to the bridge standing firm for another three hundred years. The middle pillar of the bridge was called Gensuke’s Pillar, and a flickering red light was sometimes seen over the bridge. Hearn recounts this legend in a newspaper article where he describes in some detail the opening ceremony of the 15th Ohashi Bridge.</div><div><br /></div><div>Hearn explains how the widespread belief in the Gensuke legend persisted to his present day: how the building of the new bridge caused rumours to circulate that a similar fate could await some unsuspecting citizen: not the first to cross it, but the thousandth. Hearn writes how the question “Has the victim been caught yet?” was commonplace among visitors as they arrived. Despite the superstition, people still flocked to the opening ceremony. Hearn guesses the crowds numbered twenty thousand and said the river was so full of boats of spectators that “one could easily have passed the Ohashi by stepping from one to the other”. When the ceremony was over and the bridge became open to all, there was a huge roar and the citizens of the town swarmed across it, all suspicions apparently forgotten.</div><div><br /></div><div>Then Hearn guides us towards Tenjinmachi which, he reminds us, is also called the Street of the Rich Merchants. As we approach the end of the bridge looking south, it is directly ahead of us. The dark blue hangings with <i>“white wondrous ideographs”</i> that adorned the shops on both sides have gone. As has much of the energy of the area. Hearn said it contained <i>“the richest and busiest life of the city”</i> where you could find many curious temples as well as <i>“the theatres, and the place where wrestling-matches are held, and most of the resorts of pleasure.”</i> This all changed with the opening of the train station in 1911 which meant goods would no longer arrive in Matsue via Lake Shinji, so instead the area around the station became more prosperous and Tenjinmachi slid into decline. Now this area is best known for its aging population.</div><div><br /></div><div>We won’t go this way since Lafcadio doesn’t go into any real detail about Tenjinmachi in his book. Instead, we’re going to take a left once we step off the bridge, past a small memorial to an engineer who died in the construction of the current bridge. There is also a long, flat roughly hewn stone here with an information board beside it. This is a musical stone of Oba which, according to the legend recorded by Lafcadio, can only be transported a certain distance. Apparently, one of the Matsudaira feudal lords (Hearn doesn’t specify which one) wanted one in the castle grounds but as they approached Ohashi Bridge the stone became so heavy that not even a thousand men could move it so they left it by the bridge, where it remains to this day.</div></div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhyLrJCmvKnPf2qeGM3tfu1Nu4i3Tm5wto3xhTf_op7f9hCDhSbmyso7MDmf_O6bT-e7XvM25lN_blqGcLbzHzY-i3jvbjSj0iMhGUHUM4v_FjAjpgVvPGiOP1xu2NW5rTUm7DMVDAYrib1WNOF6vi2aUZFvPSTrJSxfshchV54bQBh-16GQtSR5hSQhw" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="900" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhyLrJCmvKnPf2qeGM3tfu1Nu4i3Tm5wto3xhTf_op7f9hCDhSbmyso7MDmf_O6bT-e7XvM25lN_blqGcLbzHzY-i3jvbjSj0iMhGUHUM4v_FjAjpgVvPGiOP1xu2NW5rTUm7DMVDAYrib1WNOF6vi2aUZFvPSTrJSxfshchV54bQBh-16GQtSR5hSQhw" width="180" /></a></div><br /><div>Walk past this stone and follow the road as it bends south. Now we’re heading into the neighbourhood called Wadamicho (多見町) towards Teramachi (寺町 lit, “Temple Town”) which is a neighbourhood where temples cluster together. When the city was created in 1611, this area also served a military purpose in that the walls of the various temples would offer at least some defence against any attacking forces coming from the south-east. Hearn describes this area as “masses of Buddhist architecture mixed with shreds of gardens and miniature homesteads, a huge labyrinth of mouldering courts and fragments of streets”. When Hearn wrote about these temples, he was struck by how children use the forecourts as playgrounds and how many of them have wrestling rings in the grounds where people can wrestle or watch for free during the summer months.</div><div><br /></div><div>Things are a little different now, of course. While a district of temples with a history dating back to the 1600s sounds a chance to stroll through avenues of ancient architecture redolent of a vanished age, then one needs to be reminded that these temples are all still in use. The religious sites in Teramachi are pristine and, often, quite similar with black tiled buildings, a courtyard, and little else to distinguish it from its near neighbours. Additionally, Teramachi is no longer on the outskirts but is in the centre of the city, barely ten minutes’ walk from the station, such that any sense of quiet contemplation can't really be sustained while walking from one temple to the next. But we’ll head this way and I’ll try to give a little history of the place with whatever stories I happened to have heard.</div><div><br /></div><div>The first temple we come to is on our left and is called Honryu Temple (本竜寺 Honryuji) this temple is more notable for what it lacks than what it has. In 2018, its 175 year old gate had to be demolished because it had become so weak that it would be a hazard in an earthquake. Now, in it’s place, is a clean white wall with pillars either side of the entrance where the gate once stood.</div><div><br /></div><div>As we continue we soon come to, on our left, Ryukaku Temple (龍覚寺 Ryukakuji) whose gate is still intact – a gleaming white edifice of smooth concrete (I assume). This temple houses a Buddha statue that was found floating in Lake Shinji by a sailor. Next is Joei Temple (常栄寺 Joeiji), which is so close that it shares the same external wall as Ryukaku Temple but whose history eludes me.</div><div><br /></div><div>Carry on following the white wall until we come to a staggered crossroads, with the road heading south a little to our left. At this junction is Shusen Temple (宗泉寺 Shusenji). I mentioned before how temples would hold wrestling matches, and this temple hosted a fight between two martial artists. One was a monk, Takeda Matsugai, who was famous for his feats of strength. People would ask him to punch wooden pillars in their house, leaving behind the imprint of his fist, as a mark of friendship. He stayed at this temple in 1850 and during that time and he fought against Ogura Rokuzo, later to become the 11th master of the Jinshinryu school of Judo. Matsugai won by throwing his opponent into some tea plants.</div><div><br /></div><div>We’ll continue south, now walking through Teramachi itself, and we’ll soon arrive at Ryusho Temple (龍昌寺 Ryushoji) with an information board relating to Lafcadio Hearn. It tells us that he would often walk around the graveyard here and once happened upon a Jizo statue. Struck by its beauty, he asked if it were the work of a master craftsman which, indeed, it turned out to be. This confirmed Hearn’s reputation as a connoisseur of art.</div><div><br /></div><div>The next temple along is Zenryu Temple (全龍寺 Zenryuji). It’s records were lost in a fire, but it does have one notable feature from more modern times. In the cemetery here is the grave of Yamauchi Kakugawa, a poet who was born in the adjacent neighbourhood Tenjinmachi in 1817. Tenjinmachi would have been at its height of its powers as a hub of trade and entertainment at this time. He became an antiques dealer which kindled his interest in the tea ceremony and, from that, haiku poetry. He corresponded with a poet in Kyoto and became more determined to follow poetry as a vocation.</div><div><br /></div><div>One day, he performed a tea ceremony for his wife as a symbolic way of saying goodbye and, three days later, left Matsue during a snowstorm. He studied in Kyoto and then Edo, before travelling north. Finally, aged 41, he returned to Matsue where he built a hermitage and taught about poetry and the tea ceremony until his death in 1894. His gravestone here carries the inscription 何ひとつ見えねど露の明りかな <i>“I can see nothing but the light of the dew”</i>.</div><div><br /></div><div>On reaching the crossroads and we can already see the next temple sitting on the junction, just ahead and to our left. This is Jokyo Temple (常教寺 Jokyoji) a temple of the Nichiren Buddhist sect with a statue of Nichiren beside the gate as you enter.</div></div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhAv9aSGxTswf-Sj3RHSxD6FXza0rREkl532pRuPVvSxds8bmJsNxIgSnE6sSpEs6q5bfHcK2UwtXl_ak8dDuLIJwezVzDxJKjdkrfGIOPZJgZil_ogBhG60bNxtg4BiR0Vlx4XIenY-fjdxvrpHPcthp-UXfsSpmcvV5aC-yHBOV_TsiB2FwwQTu94tg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1595" data-original-width="900" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhAv9aSGxTswf-Sj3RHSxD6FXza0rREkl532pRuPVvSxds8bmJsNxIgSnE6sSpEs6q5bfHcK2UwtXl_ak8dDuLIJwezVzDxJKjdkrfGIOPZJgZil_ogBhG60bNxtg4BiR0Vlx4XIenY-fjdxvrpHPcthp-UXfsSpmcvV5aC-yHBOV_TsiB2FwwQTu94tg" width="135" /></a></div><br /><div>The cemetery here houses the grave of Kobayashi Jodei, a local woodworker who died in 1813. He worked for the 7th lord of Matsue, Matsudaira Harusato, and was famous in his day for his skill. He was also an alcoholic, apparently always drunk, and even invented a wooden sake cup that wouldn’t leak. One story about him details how a young carpenter, indignant that such an old soak should enjoy the patronage of the feudal lord, challenged him to a wood-carving competition...</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Kobayashi agreed on the grounds that they both carve mice. The next day, in front of several people, they presented their works. The mouse of the younger carpenter was exquisite. The fur, the tail, the ears, everything was done to perfection. The mouse carved by Kobayashi, well, it looked like a mouse, but was a little sloppy. The young challenger was announced as the winner when Kobayashi raised an objection.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>“Surely the best judge of which is more realistic should be a cat,” he insisted and his opponent, thinking it would make no difference, happily agreed.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>So a cat was brought in and the two wooden mice put in front of him. The cat immediately pounced on Kobayashi’s mouse and the contest was definitively decided in his favour, leaving the challenger ruing his insolence and amazed at the talent that could fool a cat.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Later that evening, Kobayashi was out drinking when the bartender asked him why he thought the cat preferred his.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>“Well,” said Kobayashi, “his mouse was better than mine but, the thing is, he’d carved his from wood, while mine was made from dried fish.”</i></div><div><br /></div><div>Following on from this are a number of temples about which I can find little. The first two have impressive gates while the ones further south are tucked away behind shops and houses, accessible down paved alleyways.</div><div><br /></div><div>Finally we arrive at a junction where the railway line passes overhead. Looking to our left we can see the green roof of another temple gate. This one, the southernmost in Teramachi, is Seigan Temple (誓願寺 Seiganji) and was once a favourite of the Matsudaira family, famous for its opulence.</div><div><br /></div><div>After this, Lafcadio Hearn passes over the Tenjin Bridge which as far as we’re concerned is under the railway and down the road as it veers right. In Lafcadio’s day this passed over the Shinedote River, but this is now called Tenjin River, and this road lead into what was then a more run down densely populated area with<i> “many a tenantless and mouldering feudal homestead.”</i> These days it’s a residential area whose roads are shaped by the railway line running through it, but it isn’t particularly decrepit or abandoned.</div><div><br /></div><div>He heads south-west to a soba Noodle shop named Kuribara where he can watch the sunset over the lake but gives scant details that we can follow. However, further south of this neighbourhood there is another location that he wrote about: Toko Temple. He visited here in unfortunate circumstances – for the funeral of one of his students. Hearn described the interior of the main hall, with its candelabras with brass dragons and vessels shaped like deer, tortoise, and stork, but most profoundly he recounted the bell and the sound it made on this onerous day. <i>“Peal on peal of its rich bronze thunder shakes over the lake, surges over the roofs of the town, and breaks in deep sobs of sound against the green circle of the hills.”</i></div><div><br /></div><div>After his visit to the soba shop, Lafcadio briefly describes his journey as he retraces his steps. On his way back over the Tenjin Bridge in twilight he passes a woman praying for her dead child, dropping strips of paper into the water below, each one with the image of a Jizo Buddha and perhaps an inscription upon it. Once back at the inn, Lafcadio describes the final sounds of the day and the “soft Buddhist thunder” of the bell at Toko Temple in the distance, a few streets from the Soba shop he’d visited earlier.</div><div><br /></div><div>This passage, which takes up Chapter seven of Glimpses of an Unfamilar Japan, is endearing in its lapses into rhapsodic utterances over minor details. He diligently transcribes the calls of the street vendors, describes students marching past and lists any number of minutiae so banal that most people wouldn’t even think to write about them but Lafcadio captures them in style so we can revisit his Matsue, sharing in his joy at every new discovery.</div><div><br /></div><div>Hearn’s life in Matsue was by no means perfect. The winter, in particular, disagreed with him. Unable to face a second winter Hearn left Matsue in the summer of 1891 for Kumamoto in the south and, initially, the change was not a happy one. He found the locals too reserved and even the local superstitions which had so delighted him before now seemed hopelessly backward. But the climate suited him and, in time, he came to appreciate his new home. In 1894 he moved to Kobe to work for a newspaper there. In 1896 he became a Japanese citizen and took the name Koizumi Yakumo. A year after this he took a teaching post in Tokyo and lived in that city for the rest of his life.</div><div><br /></div><div>Lafcadio Hearn passed away in 1904 of a heart attack. The renown he’d built up during his lifetime in the West was slowly undone by Japan’s military expansionism which didn’t sit well with Hearn’s image of a quaint spiritual Japan. Meanwhile, In Japan he initially remained a largely unknown figure, even in the town he most adored. The French author Andre Bellessort visited Matsue in 1919, keen to see Hearn’s home for himself, but he had to go to the local government offices before he found someone who knew where it was.</div><div><br /></div><div>This changed in the 1920s when Hearn’s work was translated into Japanese for the first time. The Japanese ruling elite were keen to spread the word about this author as an example of a Westerner who really understood Japan, and whose emphasis on old traditions and legends was an image of Japan they wished to maintain. Lafcadio would have been appalled at his work being used to support a regime that he’d despaired at during his lifetime. In his later years he became more cantankerous, disappointed at the country Japan had become. <i>“Carpets – pianos – windows – curtains – brass bands – churches! How I hate them!!”</i> he wrote. A friend of his, Yone Noguchi, recalled Hearn had once said <i>“What is there, after all, to love in Japan except what is passing away?”</i></div><div><br /></div><div>These days his reputation sits uncomfortably on two stools. He could be considered as a chronicler of places and stories that most journalists wouldn’t even consider and, as such, he was remarkably ahead of his time. On the other hand, he was a traditionalist, overburdened by nostalgia and spending most of his later life basing his writings on memories or old note books rather than the rapidly-changing world outside. But for all his faults he remains an important and engaging writer from the late Victorian-era who captured something of a now disappeared Japan.</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgeq7tzn9yy9V0l3-3B2M5kJsElOA4NpRDvtkkATY3JcE_h9sm-TF2Ji8cASSgveE0iv_VW2RUmzrCKWlAf9FAC7YsCKJ5FoxYfsnkfLsj7HAE2uxC6FQM5pJRDvBLsM7eAFPRp-R-KejdMfVD7TX7BVLzFbu740CChcoSWqRJ3P6weov5a-7CZzg0P1Q" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1485" data-original-width="900" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgeq7tzn9yy9V0l3-3B2M5kJsElOA4NpRDvtkkATY3JcE_h9sm-TF2Ji8cASSgveE0iv_VW2RUmzrCKWlAf9FAC7YsCKJ5FoxYfsnkfLsj7HAE2uxC6FQM5pJRDvBLsM7eAFPRp-R-KejdMfVD7TX7BVLzFbu740CChcoSWqRJ3P6weov5a-7CZzg0P1Q" width="145" /></a></div><br />Lafcadio Hearn’s last visit to Matsue was in 1897, just before he moved to Tokyo. He wrote about it for the periodical Atlantic Monthly where he explained his trepidation</div><div><br /></div><div><i>“I felt curious in advance as to the nature of the impressions I was going to receive on revisiting, after years of absence, a place known only in the time when I imagined that all Japan was like Izumo.”</i></div><div><br /></div><div>He visited his old house with its much-loved garden and the school where he’d taught and, most importantly, an old friend Sentaro Nishida who was suffering with the later stages of tuberculosis.</div><div><br /></div><div>Hearn’s final departure from Matsue was by steamer, departing from a quayside near Ohashi Bridge where he had first arrived. He was accompanied by Nishida despite the stifling summer weather. This would be the last time that the two friends met and Hearn expressed a pang of regret at his friend’s hospitality in a letter he wrote shortly after.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>“I felt unhappy at the Ohashi, because you waited so long, and I had no power to coax you to go home. I can still see you sitting there so kindly and patiently – in the great heat of that afternoon. Write soon – if only a line in Japanese – to tell us how you are.”</i></div><div><br /></div><div>And he ends the letter with a brief sentence below his signature that reads,</div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>“I still see you sitting at the wharf to watch us go. I think I shall always see you there.”</i></div></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div></div>Ersbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08012602968152264418noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2076774095757676470.post-38727926713453635362022-10-25T14:00:00.002+01:002022-10-25T14:00:56.795+01:00My predictions for Red Dead Redemption 3<div style="text-align: left;"> Red Dead Redeption 2 came out four years ago, and since then articles guessing what direction the franchise will take have been popping up in my news feed. None of them ever seem to agree with my assumptions, so I thought I’d jot them down. This way, in the unlikely event that I am right, I can say “I told you so.” <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/reddeadredemption/comments/adwcjq/a_very_implausible_theory_for_rdr3/">(Not just me, of course)</a></div><div><br /></div><div>Oh, and spoilers ahead for RDR1 and 2.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Prequel or sequel?</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Some writers have suggested that the most obvious choice for RDR3 would be to follow the story of Jack Marston. This would be great, and I'd love to see Rockstar do a game set during the Jazz Age but since RDR2 is a prequel to RDR1 then it would make sense for the third game to follow the pattern.</div><div><br /></div><div>Also, I think that the story for RDR3 is largely already written and some of the footage already shot. In one interview the actor Peter Blomquist, who plays Micah, describes <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmSBPPcrTlg&t=312s">a hidden scene</a> in which Micah and the gang leader Dutch dance together. Since that scene still isn’t found after four years, I suspect it has been removed and is meant for RDR3. And because we know Micah dies at the end of RDR2, it must be a prequel. Similarly, the end of the third trailer for RDR2 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaW0tYpxyp0">shows the town of Limpany on fire</a>, but in the game itself the town is already a burnt out husk and nothing ever happens there at all.</div><div><br /></div><div>All of this implies that RDR3 would be a direct prequel, with events leading up to the beginning of RDR2.</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgiAFRWa_VRIRJ59oUypcmiO5-f0v5AQh1yg-aXsP8bNYqatu0VCL0cvnJYrfOGQXxQbXeAPzCeykd7Ltp0t89P3-Ce4Ww7Y4qglPLCVERzOu98S9opw7q8MRtenT7w34EiKFbd_W25jFCnBEhIDChXHmyvE6jRxOmCgadxDm096nsM6FTvRQvtyeXK6Q" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgiAFRWa_VRIRJ59oUypcmiO5-f0v5AQh1yg-aXsP8bNYqatu0VCL0cvnJYrfOGQXxQbXeAPzCeykd7Ltp0t89P3-Ce4Ww7Y4qglPLCVERzOu98S9opw7q8MRtenT7w34EiKFbd_W25jFCnBEhIDChXHmyvE6jRxOmCgadxDm096nsM6FTvRQvtyeXK6Q" width="320" /></a></div><i><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Gravestones give clues to some characters we might meet,</i></div></i></div><div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>if RDR3 is set immediately before RDR2</i></div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Main Protagonist?</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Since the main protagonist dies at the end of RDR1 (John) and RDR2 (Arthur) then we could reasonably assume the same will happen in RDR3. We have two possible candidates: Davey and Jenny who both recently died when the game begins.</div><div><br /></div><div>I think Jenny is the most likely of the two, simply because we never see her body so we know little about her. She is sometimes mentioned in dialogue between gang members throughout the game which makes me think that her backstory is better understood by the writers than Davey's story.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Storyline?</b></div><div><br /></div><div>If Jenny is the protagonist, then one would assume that feminist issues (the right to vote, domestic abuse) would feature strongly. But I’m inclined to think that because we never see her* that she could well be black or mixed race. This would imply that RDR3 will focus on slavery or, to be more exact, about peony if we bear in mind that RDR3 would probably be set in the mid-1890s. Peony was the method <a href="https://www.pbs.org/tpt/slavery-by-another-name/themes/peonage/">used after the legal abolition of slavery</a> to keep poor workers (largely black) in low-paid work with few rights.</div><div><br /></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>Epilogue?</b></div><div><br /></div><div>At the end of RDR2 there is a lengthy epilogue and the chance for the player (as John Marston) to free roam around the map, occasionally completing any unfinished missions that aren’t story-specific. We know from dialogue in RDR2 that John goes missing at some unspecified time in the past and he isn’t part of the gang at the very start of the game. This would allow, after the story of RDR3 is told, for the player to take up the character of John and free roam for as long as they please.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Map size?</b></div><div><br /></div><div>This is tricky. In RDR2, water acts as its southern border, but it has been discovered that <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/reddeadredemption/comments/gqe0yr/originally_you_could_visit_the_shores_all_around/">there is a “slip zone” south of Flat Iron Lake</a>, indicating that it was once part of the main game too. There are rowing boats, too, on the southern shore even though there is no legitimate way of getting there.</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiQIQUg1Rc3Slc2LfOGQVUXRzXt7cDOLtzXTeHS5acAdkNeBDHOiTvcSRervqiDJQU0PpJJKxQpumRYlFDsXfHyeoz7uQ-tpUEGG3lVA_b6LoRWG5p4fXDh_ojQCZ7qPb-KZ1u8uMXLMSl3lQUt73g1Rh-AECINNDIMXGgbg7QO1Wq3gaIFVF3CYjP6uQ" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiQIQUg1Rc3Slc2LfOGQVUXRzXt7cDOLtzXTeHS5acAdkNeBDHOiTvcSRervqiDJQU0PpJJKxQpumRYlFDsXfHyeoz7uQ-tpUEGG3lVA_b6LoRWG5p4fXDh_ojQCZ7qPb-KZ1u8uMXLMSl3lQUt73g1Rh-AECINNDIMXGgbg7QO1Wq3gaIFVF3CYjP6uQ" width="320" /></a></div></div><div><br /></div><div>I have found two areas across the river from Thieve's Landing which are marked as hideouts, which is obviously the remains of some mission that had been removed. </div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjgY3OP30Oe6EzNNEvKMCteg6haGybgx7Uu2l0HYoRutmwL817pBCGkEyyTG2fPhJwTM5BfXqmviGnepuZ04szHhIlE7p4epHNHWnmmTpQg8Xt3taLDZVOB-qqpjoouak6sLUn73NbsOOxogEJ2Uq9cVpAw51bNzauZ0Ij0gHLzPhQIxSlsI9dEeQiT9g" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjgY3OP30Oe6EzNNEvKMCteg6haGybgx7Uu2l0HYoRutmwL817pBCGkEyyTG2fPhJwTM5BfXqmviGnepuZ04szHhIlE7p4epHNHWnmmTpQg8Xt3taLDZVOB-qqpjoouak6sLUn73NbsOOxogEJ2Uq9cVpAw51bNzauZ0Ij0gHLzPhQIxSlsI9dEeQiT9g" width="320" /></a></div><br />Also, further along the coast, is a right angled patch of discoloured ground which might have been part of a yard, indicating that a settlement was once going to be here. </div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjPRDoMcDfZ0FWU5nefBsNUnhanOVV3EQA6qGLXzM1g_SVTyJCjvN7ERc39pDpJsS0XXdPbiZvc_3hCLXJ8aSHbi-zSI5EX5YYjPCSAxgg5Dg-57Sj6hMOuhrzhCdcRGHjJ3UZIQw6wNvFG2LPtsodmxcB75MO1fRMHWFVTqTHjxmZG3fLk5NqmnqsWSQ" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjPRDoMcDfZ0FWU5nefBsNUnhanOVV3EQA6qGLXzM1g_SVTyJCjvN7ERc39pDpJsS0XXdPbiZvc_3hCLXJ8aSHbi-zSI5EX5YYjPCSAxgg5Dg-57Sj6hMOuhrzhCdcRGHjJ3UZIQw6wNvFG2LPtsodmxcB75MO1fRMHWFVTqTHjxmZG3fLk5NqmnqsWSQ" width="320" /></a></div><br />Finally, there is an area opposite Annesburg with a large number of wolves and cougars which I wonder might have been part of a challenge to kill them off before the gang was able to set up camp there.</div><div><br /></div><div>All of these may be reinstated in RDR3. Or they may not. Either way, I expect RDR3 to have Flat Iron Lake more central in the map.</div><div><br /></div><div>Beyond the “slip zone” the map continues for far longer than is needed. I’ve explored a lot to the south and east and there’s nothing more to suggest that this was ever going to be part of the game, apart from a dirt road that leads from a forest and up a hill but otherwise serves no discernible purpose.</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj0P6QqfpDl3MgpKA9z20sNJA5wEYNm_KtaSRZA_Xw4HrStER6w5kA6NEVjcXN973foml5lJ4lwGG8x8QWLoLEI3S05d4iSHCuBkFl3ETC5-XetWuG8XOTibFbnMgMlBuFrBKcovMA3D7RcwD8KUi2RW8OM-AX8IvDJ3TvN2z30nJYg-RzNHHatZHAKlw" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj0P6QqfpDl3MgpKA9z20sNJA5wEYNm_KtaSRZA_Xw4HrStER6w5kA6NEVjcXN973foml5lJ4lwGG8x8QWLoLEI3S05d4iSHCuBkFl3ETC5-XetWuG8XOTibFbnMgMlBuFrBKcovMA3D7RcwD8KUi2RW8OM-AX8IvDJ3TvN2z30nJYg-RzNHHatZHAKlw" width="320" /></a></div><br /></div><div><b>Release date?</b></div><div><br /></div><div>No idea. Sorry.</div><div><br /></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>* there is <a href="https://reddead.fandom.com/wiki/Jenny_Kirk">a sketch of her in Arthur's notebook</a> which shows she has long dark hair, which would suggest white or Native American or South Asian. But equally, there are mentions of Lenny (who is black) having been in love with Jenny and, in 1899, a mixed-ethnic relationship between races would have attracted more comments about the racial aspect but in the game there are none, which makes me suppose that Jenny had dark skin. Her surname, Kirk, suggests some Scottish family or Scottish owners.</i></div>Ersbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08012602968152264418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2076774095757676470.post-23412713978907821162022-09-08T17:44:00.000+01:002022-09-08T17:44:05.152+01:00Have you been in a ganzfeld experiment?<div style="text-align: left;"> My new project is a book about ganzfeld experiments in psi research. I'm keen to avoid yet another telling of the debate over the various meta-analyses and instead want more about the people involved. As such I'm looking for anyone who's participated in a ganzfeld psi experiment, either as an experimenter or judge, sender or receiver. If you're happy to answer a few questions about it by email, then please drop me a line at in_the_ganzfeld@outlook.com</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Many thanks in advance.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Andrew</div>Ersbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08012602968152264418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2076774095757676470.post-44151965634922230072022-08-14T10:37:00.001+01:002022-08-14T10:37:12.196+01:00The curious case of Charles Brewin and Frank Johnson<div style="text-align: left;"> On 9th November 1903, a civil war veteran and tailor, Charles Brewin walked out of his house in Burlington New Jersey and disappeared. Police searches extended all the way to New York after a hat and note with his name on it were found on a New Jersey ferry but were unsuccessful in solving the mystery.</div><div><br /></div><div>About a year and a half later, a man named Frank Johnson arrived in Plainfield, Vermont from New York and found employment and lodgings. He was a quiet man, a churchgoer and entirely unremarkable.</div><div><br /></div><div>Then on the 24th or 25th June 1907 a trolley conductor named Alfred Woolman was in Plainfield when he saw a man he recognised as Charles Brewin on his trolley car. But when he addressed him, the man insisted he was called Frank Johnson and knew nothing of any Charles Brewin, and swiftly left the trolley.</div><div><br /></div><div>Woolman went to get Brewin’s brother and son and they returned to Plainfield where they found Brewin/Johnson again and tried to persuade him that he was Charles Brewin. But Frank was adamant and they failed to change his mind.</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgq6Om8OxFFgyEXtVkTw7HhmczdJ620izAB0-aDGqZXWS_6BtwE-JrFuLiRKmcJsdZlk0rE5Dgh3p_N53Aw9JCa2oMYLn9BDuco9rx6quguyd01arIU57wlez1ue4z9TLt0LBJH_HNt5R6yc5SeCBLdjyjfApZbApXhU6QaqlXVyu7DaCWKP78xZNC0jQ" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="782" data-original-width="901" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgq6Om8OxFFgyEXtVkTw7HhmczdJ620izAB0-aDGqZXWS_6BtwE-JrFuLiRKmcJsdZlk0rE5Dgh3p_N53Aw9JCa2oMYLn9BDuco9rx6quguyd01arIU57wlez1ue4z9TLt0LBJH_HNt5R6yc5SeCBLdjyjfApZbApXhU6QaqlXVyu7DaCWKP78xZNC0jQ" width="277" /></a></div><br />This encounter was described in a local paper where a friend of Frank Johnson, Dr Buchanan, took particular note of it. His father, Mr Buchanan was a chaplain in Burlington and he thought his father might know Charles Brewin. And then, on June 30th, he got a call from Johnson’s landlady Mrs Dunn to come at once: her tenant had woken up saying his name was Charles Brewin and he didn’t know where he was, apparently under the impression that he’d left Burlington the previous day.</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhLonNaoZqg8yC60nCH141gacm4FYsVjmVae51cYRjTRMW4ySRWg49y-6rWV1TumQjuZBf4GJ8A1Kbnsrakssk2P7Yenp-3PdSLxK6nF_mgszmawsnbRIPC4XzL5fjbfrrZ9ln99RUK63ehm3KgCjDXClU8fHGcW8F99Gk32dI3SXTN3v3fgdgkPC1sbw" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="784" data-original-width="1119" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhLonNaoZqg8yC60nCH141gacm4FYsVjmVae51cYRjTRMW4ySRWg49y-6rWV1TumQjuZBf4GJ8A1Kbnsrakssk2P7Yenp-3PdSLxK6nF_mgszmawsnbRIPC4XzL5fjbfrrZ9ln99RUK63ehm3KgCjDXClU8fHGcW8F99Gk32dI3SXTN3v3fgdgkPC1sbw" width="320" /></a></div><br />He went at once, with his father, and found the gentleman in question pale and weak but otherwise fine, now answering to the name of Brewin and seemingly having no memory of the past four years. Brewin and Mr Buchanan did know each other and he was later reunited with his family and, initially, returned to Burlington. After a little over a week, he and his family moved back to Plainfield and returned to the job he’d held previously when he was Frank Johnson.</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgBY304E1NEADLQkiN16MGp0hWS0bR55ok2jBhcyY8SP-chbp1ASTMVNKAbhbSTFsqW1FzdiRkx_MMer0wOTzT5TmiQf15OA6pDQg808K2EfMDaNrT3zMlcfGRAud1jfiLM2OiMg72Tl9RJq-Pu2KuBkEkHoghjKqkPSO9q-tOfFecqW2pVgjXB9PSYHg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="707" data-original-width="509" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgBY304E1NEADLQkiN16MGp0hWS0bR55ok2jBhcyY8SP-chbp1ASTMVNKAbhbSTFsqW1FzdiRkx_MMer0wOTzT5TmiQf15OA6pDQg808K2EfMDaNrT3zMlcfGRAud1jfiLM2OiMg72Tl9RJq-Pu2KuBkEkHoghjKqkPSO9q-tOfFecqW2pVgjXB9PSYHg" width="173" /></a></div><br />That was a brief summary of the case as described by James Hyslop in 1913, vol 7, no 4 of the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research. There are some contemporary newspaper articles that paint a slightly different picture (ie, that Brewin’s memory returned while he was in hospital) but the number of witnesses Hyslop spoke to lends it the most credibility.</div><div><br /></div><div>It’s a curious and fascinating case but why would a psychiatric case be written up in a psychical journal?</div><div><br /></div><div>Hyslop had a theory that episodes like these (and he’d collected about five or six) weren’t the result of internal mental processes but external psychic influences. He went to great lengths to check those few details of Frank Johnson’s pre-1915 history. Each fact: former employees, pastors of churches he attended, even the existence of Johnson’s sister, Anne, for whom he had life insurance had no basis in reality, and did not even have parallels to Brewin’s life apart from them having the same date of birth (22nd February) albeit on different years.</div><div><br /></div><div>Hyslop had hoped to use hypnosis to try and unlock the secrets of Brewin/Johnson’s missing years but Brewin’s doctor (not Dr Buchanan) wouldn’t allow it. As such, after Hyslop had exhausted his attempts at tracking down Frank Johnson’s life in New York, he finished his research and wrote up his findings.</div><div><br /></div><div>Perhaps the most interesting aspect for me is the strange dreams he had while he was Frank Johnson. He would often tell his manager, Miss Mary Brown, about these dreams and she recalled that some of them had prophetic qualities.</div><div><br /></div><div>Hyslop wrote <i>“He [Brewin] frequently told of his dreams of this kind [ie, predictive], but Miss Brown and her niece could remember clearly only the two mentioned, and one more recalled a little later.”</i> and he summarises two of these such dreams…</div><div><br /></div><div><i>"On the morning of the fire in the dyeing establishment he told Miss Brown of a dream that he had the night previous.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>This he told before the fire occurred. It was that she had a fire in the store and that she was almost burned to death. Such a fire did occur that day and Mr. Johnson rescued Miss Brown who would have otherwise been burned to death. Miss Brown showed me the scars on her arm caused by the fire."</i></div><div><br /></div><div>And…</div><div><br /></div><div><i>"At another time they had sent a fur coat home after repairing it. The owner complained that the lining was in tatters when it came back. Miss Brown and Mr. Johnson did not understand it, and the coat was brought back.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>He then dreamed that he took the coat to New York, went up an elevator, saw a little short man, and was told by him that the skins for the lining were not the right kind.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>He then said he would take the coat to New York, which he did the next day, and met the man he had seen in his dream and went through the scenes of the dream itself."</i></div><div><br /></div><div>It’s an interesting question: What does a man who doesn’t exist dream about? I could be poetic and suggest that, with no past to dream about, Frank Johnson had to dream about the future, but the supporting evidence is scant. Two dreams in two years (in the third dream, Johnson described how his old boss had been injured and then a year later his business went bankrupt – not very compelling) would not be worth much were it not for Miss Brown mentioning that it frequently happened.</div><div><br /></div><div>I’ve been trying to find a more recent case of a sustained second personality with no luck. If anyone knows of one, or if they know what the more modern terminology for a case like this is (“double consciousness” doesn’t seem to be in current usage) please leave a comment.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>References:</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i><a href="https://archive.org/details/sim_journal-of-the-american-society-for-psychical-research_1913-04_7_4/mode/2up">Hyslop, J. (1913), A Case of Secondary Personality</a>, Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, v7, n4, p 201-229</i></div><div><i>“Lost Memory Has Returned,” The Paterson Morning Call, Tuesday, 2nd July 1907, p2</i></div><div><i>“Brewin is Back In Plainfield,” The Paterson Morning Call, Tuesday 9th July 1907, p1</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>newspapers found on <a href="https://fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html">Fulton Post Cards</a></i></div><div><i>I’m not sure but I think you need a US/Canadian IP to access this.</i></div><div><br /></div>Ersbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08012602968152264418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2076774095757676470.post-74318044432058958832022-07-05T14:24:00.000+01:002022-07-05T14:24:16.738+01:00Remote viewing the Iranian Hostage Crisis 1979-81<div style="text-align: left;"><b> <span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Background</span></b></div><span id="docs-internal-guid-82525d25-7fff-842f-03af-ed5a2751b93f"><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Iranian Hostage Crisis began on 4 November 1979 and was initially an anti-US demonstration in the Iranian capital of Tehran. Students, angry at the US agreeing to give medical treatment to the deposed and exiled Shah of Iran, occupied the grounds and buildings of the US Embassy, holding the staff there hostage.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This was not the first such demonstration in Iran that year and, although the US authorities were angry at the situation, it was assumed that it would only last a few days at most. However, when the Ayatollah Khomeni praised the actions of the students, it became something more important and the occupation continued, with 52 hostages being held for 444 days.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The remote viewing project, then called Grill Flame, began work on the hostage crisis within a month and continued to work on it for almost all of the time that Americans were in captivity: the last session is dated 13 January 1981 and the hostages were released one week later.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I wrote a book about the entire crisis called <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00HOIVSMK/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1">America’s Imaginary Hostage Crisis</a> so if you’re interested in a deep dive into the data, then this is definitely recommended…</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><br /></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But for this blog, I’d like to assess the claims of success that you often see reported in articles or books.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The first is Joe’s recalling of the team being called into a special session on the day the occupation began.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>The beginning of the crisis</b></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the early part of November 1979, I received a call at 4:00 A.M. asking me to report directly to the office [...] So, I arrived not knowing that the American Embassy located in Tehran, Iran, had been invaded by Iranian revolutionaries. It was still dark when all six permanent and part-time remote viewers joined the operations officer, Fred, in the office. He said it was going to sound like a strange request, but that a number of Americans had been taken hostage in a location overseas, and they needed our help in identifying them. He then threw a pile of a more than a hundred photographs onto the tabletop—tell us which are the hostages and which are not. He left the room and left us to the problem.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">McMoneagle, Joseph. The Stargate Chronicles: Memoirs of a Psychic Spy: The Remarkable Life of U.S. Government Remote Viewer 001 . Crossroad Press. Kindle Edition. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Occasionally h</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">e recounts this story in talks and presentations, sometimes with the addition that he got it 100% correct.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The story is problematic for a couple of reasons. First, the US authorities knew exactly who was on the US embassy compound at the time the Iranians took over. Indeed, embassy staff in Tehran were calling Washington to keep the US government informed as the Iranians were arriving. Secondly, as mentioned before, this had happened before (in <a href=" https://www.nytimes.com/1979/02/15/archives/armed-iranians-rush-us-embassy-khomeinis-forces-free-staff-of-100-a.html">February 1979 the US Embassy had been occupied</a> in an almost identical event) so the initial reaction to the actions of the students was not one of panic. The US authorities were confident that, after the students had been given some publicity, the Iranian police would move in and clear the compound.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So there’s no reason for an early morning session as described. It doesn’t exist in the declassified articles, nor is it included in lists of sessions or summaries of notable events. So it was either totally unofficial, not even sanctioned by the Grill Flame management, or it didn’t happen at all.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Operation Eagle Claw</b></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Often in articles regarding Grill Flame and the hostage crisis, their role in the operation to rescue the hostages is mentioned. This military plan called Operation Eagle Claw took place in late April 1980, at a time when all of the hostages were still held in the embassy compound.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On 23 April, the remote viewing team were ordered to leave the Fort Meade site, where they were based, and move into three rooms booked in the Best Western Motel. For the next two days they’d run a grueling series of sessions targeted at different parts of the Embassy: twenty sessions in under forty hours.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The army operation taking place in Iran at this time ended in tragedy. Faulty equipment meant the mission was aborted and then, as they were about to return, a sandstorm whipped up and in the ensuing confusion, a helicopter crashed into a plane and eight servicemen died while the rest retreated back to safety.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">During the session at the motel, two remote viewers reported seeing something violent. On 24 April at 4pm, Fern described a “quick raid” while describing the Deputy Chief Mission Residence (area I).</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“[..] Report the activity as two o’clock in the morning.”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“It’s one of complete mayhem.”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Tell me what makes you say that.”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I don’t know.”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Report the raw imagery to me.”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“People scurrying. Guards scurrying from their cots.”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Go on.”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Just a quick impression of a very foreboding quick action.”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“All right. Move in time again one more hour in the future. Three o’clock in the morning. Three o’clock in the morning.”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I can’t get rid of this imagery of a quick raid.”</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Endersby, “America’s Imaginary Hostage Crisis” p98, Kindle</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And the second example is often credited to Nancy Stern although it was actually Hartleigh Trent who conducted session CCC84. In her book “Phenomenon” Annie Jacobson writes:</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Declassified documents indicate that on April 24, 1980, Nancy S. was conducting Remote Viewing (RV) Session CCC84 when she broke down. The tasker noted, “Admin note 0300 Hours in Iran,” or at 3:00 a.m. local time, Nancy S. reported she was having trouble getting the target she’d been sent to, which was a building in Tehran code-named India. Instead, she said she saw “an attacking force of some kind.” She apologized and stated that perhaps she was “hallucinating.” What she saw was “weird and illogical” but “very vivid, horrible. Like a bad dream…” Her descripion was of “Big chest, big big gorillas. Great big chest beating gorilla leading these apes… they had tiny 9 inch long rockets, hundreds of them.” She apologized again and said she’d “never lost control like this before.” </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjjQOzuuZfL92rZ7ML63O1DxSMLaygIyL1QR5yznZgYHIYckN40uVux2DnA3UTpd3d75YMJaPxyXid7qShvTlahP3djMJ126JYNFIGT6bsraAgKMEr_SBEfgWvdP57mz6lHs9HYgk-Fw9G1DOUL0jR1mpIyuyzVFp4W7GKc0TOgRxyRNRRxWqBFn5XGFQ" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="412" data-original-width="1080" height="122" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjjQOzuuZfL92rZ7ML63O1DxSMLaygIyL1QR5yznZgYHIYckN40uVux2DnA3UTpd3d75YMJaPxyXid7qShvTlahP3djMJ126JYNFIGT6bsraAgKMEr_SBEfgWvdP57mz6lHs9HYgk-Fw9G1DOUL0jR1mpIyuyzVFp4W7GKc0TOgRxyRNRRxWqBFn5XGFQ" width="320" /></a></div><br /><br /></span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Putting to one side any confusion between Nancy or Hartleigh, the fact is that the remote viewing sessions had twice described violent or disturbing scenes. But this was because they weren’t blind to the target, nor to the aims of Operation Eagle Claw. They’d been fully briefed on the topic and so it is not surprising that scenes of armed exchanges would be reported. It’s worth noting, however, that the US forces retreated long before any chance at engaging with enemy troops could take place.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The news about the tragic end of Operation Eagle Claw broke during two sessions being run simultaneously. Both were cut short as the remote viewing team were brought together to watch the TV news. According to McMoneagle, Nancy was deeply upset at this and, in fact, she soon left the team and would never complete another remote viewing session.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Richard Queen</b></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The next most famous claim concerns Keith Harary’s description of a session he undertook in July 1980.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I received an urgent morning call asking me to report to SRI. I met with a tall, expressionless man who served me a cup of hot coffee before we retired to the white room and got to work.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"We have a person who needs a description," the monitor said, offering me not a clue. Though I hardly understood the process, the question triggered a cascade of impressions about a person in a debilitated state of health. "He seems to be suffering from nausea," I said. "One side of his body seems damaged or hurt." I wondered whether the person I was describing might be some business person or a head of state.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"Where will he be in the next few days?" the monitor asked, again without inflection. I suddenly felt the sensation of sitting on an airplane that was taking off.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"On an airplane," I said.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The target turned out to be the hostage Richard Queen, held by Iranian militants and now desperately ill with multiple sclerosis that affected his nerves on one side. In part due to my input, I was later informed by contacts at SRI, President Carter dispatched a plane to bring Queen home.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/articles/200411/confessions-star-psychic" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/articles/200411/confessions-star-psychic</span></a></p><br /><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Keith Harary was working for SRI in July 1980 and he had recently run a number of sessions against the Hostage Crisis. But SRI work focused on the hostages is largely missing from the declassified archives. Any contemporary notes from this particular session targeting Richard Queen are absent, possibly because it wasn’t part of the Grill Flame Project. The first time it is mentioned is in 1983, in an overview of the Grill Flame project when it is listed among a number of “successful viewings for the DoD/intelligence community”. But there are no further details. And Harary himself has issues with how psychic his vision had been.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Were my impressions psychic? The hostages had been flooding the news for months.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Reports about Queen's health problems, including the issue of "a lame shoulder," had been in the news as well. I don't know whether such reports infiltrated my unconscious without my realizing it, but it would make sense to consider that possibility before the paranormal alternative.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/articles/200411/confessions-star-psychic" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/articles/200411/confessions-star-psychic</span></a></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Conclusion</b></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ultimately, the efforts of the remote viewing team were not well-received and a report written after the crisis was over stated:</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>“Comparison of the reports with returnee debriefings revealed a very low correlation between actual hostage locations/ conditions and inferences drawn from Grill Reporting. Only seven reports could be positively correlated with actual location or condition. Approximately 59</i></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>reports revealed a possible or partial correlation.</i></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>However, these same reports often included erroneous data. Sixteen reports contained inconclusive data making correlation highly subjective. Eight reports were noted as being poor from an administrative/ procedural standpoint and therefore being of no value. One hundred and twelve reports were found to be entirely incorrect.”</i></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://archive.org/details/CIA-RDP96-00788R001000340002-3</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, how much of the data produced by Grill Flame was used operationally? None. The entire project had been for training purposes, something that the remote viewers were not aware of. But by now, despite the results, Grill Flame had other projects to work on and it seems that simply being involved in the Hostage Crisis had raised its profile and secured its funding for another few years, at least.</span></p><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>Ersbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08012602968152264418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2076774095757676470.post-14604552537570288722022-05-20T20:02:00.003+01:002022-05-24T13:35:43.647+01:00Remote viewing the hostage William F Buckley 1984<div style="text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Those connected with the US government sponsored remote viewing project during the 1980s often speak about their work on hostage crises. General Dozier, The Iranian Hostage Crisis and LTC Higgins are frequently cited as high-profile cases that the US intel agencies asked for help with.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">But one name is rarely mentioned: William Buckley. He was a US Army office and CIA Station Chief who was abducted from Lebanon and the remote viewing team were assigned to it as part of a massive CIA-wide drive to find Buckley and rescue him.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">But Buckley was never found. He was tortured and died after a year in captivity in the most harrowing circumstances. The remote viewing team worked on his case for about one month before dropping it due to insufficient new leads to work from. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span>William Buckley was abducted </span><span>on the morning of 16th March 1984</span><span> from the basement car park of the Al-Manara apartment block where he lived in Beirut. He was hit on the back of the head with suitcase full of rocks and bundled into a white Renault. After this, his exact whereabouts are never properly established.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Given Buckley’s importance and the top secret documents he’d been carrying at the time, the Director of the CIA, William Casey, took a personal interest in the search for him, insisting that every resource be used.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">The remote viewers, working under the project name Center Lane, were assigned to this case. They got the commission on Tuesday 20th March 1984 and the first sessions were run the following day. Joe McMoneagle worked on both sessions that day. The report of the session emphasises that RVer described a kidnapping without knowing the target, as evidence that Joe was on target. However, Joe was told to concentrate on a specific set of geographical coordinates on a specific date, 16 March 1984. This would have been enough to tell Joe who and what the target was, especially since Center Lane had already run a number of informal sessions targeting Buckley. In the Stargate Archive, there are a couple of documents containing handwritten notes dated 16 and 17 March which describe those sessions. On one, the RVer writes William’s Buckley name and date and place of birth. Clearly the team were familiar enough with the abduction that even the slightest reference would be enough to help them recognise the subject matter. Suffice to say that none of the remote viewers taking part in this project was truly blind to the target.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi35EHdIajxO6ZR-pzKYM1U4ilvmNohVAVZlNwSrQKG298MxVnnkSw-cQwHlgEtV5sVItXMxByAU0XsUwux5TnHXwxhOKKH8batJaPI-B7XeFXA4PxMGoBa1B6S5pxdbFMnKdU5sEcCWsiX68W3OhMo3RnIWGL0ZXjCT4ZL3obvCg2u1_JcqQiyt06jPw" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="703" data-original-width="1073" height="210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi35EHdIajxO6ZR-pzKYM1U4ilvmNohVAVZlNwSrQKG298MxVnnkSw-cQwHlgEtV5sVItXMxByAU0XsUwux5TnHXwxhOKKH8batJaPI-B7XeFXA4PxMGoBa1B6S5pxdbFMnKdU5sEcCWsiX68W3OhMo3RnIWGL0ZXjCT4ZL3obvCg2u1_JcqQiyt06jPw" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><i>From a report written on 13 April 1984 emphasising </i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>how the first session was run blind.</i></div></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">McMoneagle’s description of the kidnapping on this day is wrong (he has Buckley getting into a black car parked in the street, not being knocked out in a basement car park) although in the second session, after Joe had been shown a photo of Buckley, McMoneagle says that Buckley’s health is poor.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">The following week, the remote viewer Tom did a session (during which a reference was made to “yesterday’s session,” but I can’t find a copy of that in the archive). He was given a map of Beirut as cueing material. This would have been enough to tell him the target of the session. He drew a building connected to the abduction, but didn’t specify which city the building was in.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Further sessions were undertaken into April, with little progress. Potential locations were described and drawn, but never named or placed on maps.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Then on 20th April, something quite unexpected happened. Something that demonstrates how serious the CIA were in bringing in every possible resource on this project: Uri Geller was hired to do a session. At least, I strongly suspect he was. The name of the RVer is redacted, but it contains six characters. Mind you, this means the interviewer (#66) calls him “Geller” which seems a little abrupt to me. On the other hand, this mystery psychic also mentions that he knows Arabic and he calls the Lebanon “my backyard”. Plus, some of the exchanges between the two seem very Geller-esque.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj67Fk1kfzEk5Cvprf6_tYehdd9O0Zn5k1alDK7x_pwQi8pZlg0MkzEkvtursV-Qs_6tOpDXWWFU9lxgatNLnW4hnu3uq_qaXvsb4LOLgDdnv2_dXPsPmmGX4rh4Dkacaipi271eos0_GdwKv4xCj_d794mUoi5wyqT7PLytxyG1daAVZDXLFNK3n6ULg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="733" data-original-width="1139" height="206" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj67Fk1kfzEk5Cvprf6_tYehdd9O0Zn5k1alDK7x_pwQi8pZlg0MkzEkvtursV-Qs_6tOpDXWWFU9lxgatNLnW4hnu3uq_qaXvsb4LOLgDdnv2_dXPsPmmGX4rh4Dkacaipi271eos0_GdwKv4xCj_d794mUoi5wyqT7PLytxyG1daAVZDXLFNK3n6ULg" width="320" /></a></div><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">The session notes are quite unlike the usual military notes. This remote viewer rambles and asks questions and, midway through, asks if he can be alone in the room while he tries to locate Buckley, communicating with the interviewer via the intercom. The interviewer is quite happy to answer any questions and the RVer gives out words in Arabic, often asking “do you recognise that” without giving a context. The notes last for 71 pages, which is also much longer than a usual session, perhaps because they knew they wouldn’t be able to work with this person again. This is the last session run by Center Lane on William Buckley [1] and a report dated 14 May 1984 summarised the sessions while mentioning that the information from the remote viewers had been passed to the CIA.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh_94y-2FONteDf6X-UhxX_1FfgXIayRnOnQIzmDCF5Jx3I43itanktRaMV5xqQfciyebDLYSttH5V-ckoOOFjCTyAkymuSulk0XYU1S0HTtdiFztJsKkJ6t4Q0XXgmSS9U2RyIuS8RnuMJo6NQDdnibABv_cyy5_ufugEB_XbTN2kvCHPbPntr7Z5wuQ" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="572" data-original-width="1002" height="183" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh_94y-2FONteDf6X-UhxX_1FfgXIayRnOnQIzmDCF5Jx3I43itanktRaMV5xqQfciyebDLYSttH5V-ckoOOFjCTyAkymuSulk0XYU1S0HTtdiFztJsKkJ6t4Q0XXgmSS9U2RyIuS8RnuMJo6NQDdnibABv_cyy5_ufugEB_XbTN2kvCHPbPntr7Z5wuQ" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">On 7 May the US Embassy in Athens was given a video tape of a silent recording showing Buckley, nude, being tortured. He showed signs of being drugged, tied up and he was blinking a lot, suggesting he was usually kept in darkness. This video, however, did not prompt further remote viewing. Then on 30 May, another video was released. This one had sound, and Buckley’s voice was slurred and his hands and legs shook.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Tom did another session one week after the second video. It contains the co-ordinates 33° 51’ 05” N, 30° 20’ 25” E but this is in the Mediterranean Sea, as far as I can tell. This doesn’t seem to have been part of the Center Lane project since there is a note beneath the co-ordinates reading “For Ingo to run” referring to the psychic Ingo Swann who was working for SRI at the time.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEij8Y7y1cLjFRHvM7d5IGjr9_osFw4Zia-zhhgJaf_XLijcfFNIcD_9oirWrGd4eLWoi-NNyuJ1JRg6XRWLWYjA6weRwxlgdDoy0jjXlezggtIApuny697h8i5fZTJpDeb3r2YarMBw5TG-87B2ZmexlR4t11eBBP0GCGFzBbV3RNqggRoq09s7xzjYZA" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><img alt="" data-original-height="542" data-original-width="914" height="190" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEij8Y7y1cLjFRHvM7d5IGjr9_osFw4Zia-zhhgJaf_XLijcfFNIcD_9oirWrGd4eLWoi-NNyuJ1JRg6XRWLWYjA6weRwxlgdDoy0jjXlezggtIApuny697h8i5fZTJpDeb3r2YarMBw5TG-87B2ZmexlR4t11eBBP0GCGFzBbV3RNqggRoq09s7xzjYZA" width="320" /></span></a></div></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">SRI, the non-military side of the remote viewing project, also showed an interest in this topic. In mid-July they ran three sessions. The first session put him 8.7 miles south of Beirut, in good health and not tortured. The second said he’d be released around 22 September. The third used a computer-controlled method of randomly cycling through areas of Lebanon until a user stopped it. This was done 50 times and the two most chosen areas were forwarded to the DIA.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">After this, remote viewing on this case ceased. On 24 October a third video of Buckley was released. By now he was in a pathetic state, gibbering, drooling, and occasionally screaming. After this disturbing glance into his predicament, all info on Buckley ceased. In April 1985 the CIA tried to find out if it was possible to get him back as part of a prisoner swap, only to be told he had died.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">The best guess for Buckley’s date of death is actually two months after that. A freed hostage, David Jacobson, had been held in the infamous “Beirut Hotel” where multiple hostages were kept and he thought Buckley was there too. <i>"The man was an American. Of that I have no doubt. But he was in a very bad way, delirious and coughing. It was hard for me to make out what he was saying because I myself was hooded. Then, in the end there was just this long silence. After a while I heard the guards shouting in Arabic and then what sounded like a body being dragged away."</i> Jacobson dates this event to 3 June 1985.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Looking at the tasks given to Center Lane from 1982-90 (at least, those I can identify), I can’t help but notice that they weren’t asked to remote view David Dodge, the first American to be taken hostage in the Lebanon in 1982, nor any of the hostages after Buckley until 1988 when LTC Higgins was abducted. I wonder if the poor results from the Iranian Hostage Crisis (which they remote viewed extensively) made Center Lane a less attractive proposition until a major push for intelligence gathering was undertaken, such as for Buckley and Higgins, and their advice was sought.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">But the thing that I don’t understand is the reason given for ending the remote viewing project so soon. The aforementioned report from the 14 May, after mentioning how closely they were working with the CIA, concludes <i>“No remote viewing interviews have been conducted on the Buckley case since 20 April because the ICLP </i>[Inscom Center Lane Program]<i> exhausted all current leads. Additional interviews will be conducted when the CIA provides information from other sources which needs to be confirmed or when additional EEI </i>[Essential Elements of Information]<i> are provided.”</i></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">But remote viewing was supposed to excel in just these circumstances: that it could get intel when otherwise there was nothing to work from. For the project to end its own involvement in the search for Buckley for those particular reasons strikes me as very odd, especially given that the information seemed to be treated seriously at the time. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">[1] Confusingly, the declassified archive contains handwritten notes from a session dated 24 April 1984, but the information contained is identical to the session conducted on the 20th.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>References</i></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Papers from the William Buckley project</i></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>https://archive.org/details/stargatefiles?query=8404</i></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Including…</i></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>SRI sessions summary</i></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>https://archive.org/details/CIA-RDP96-00788R001900530024-9/mode/2up</i></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Summary of Center Lane sessions</i></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>https://archive.org/details/CIA-RDP96-00788R001600510002-8/mode/2up</i></span></div><div><br /></div></div>Ersbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08012602968152264418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2076774095757676470.post-81764920887065155802022-05-02T14:34:00.008+01:002022-05-02T19:03:00.270+01:00Remote Viewing the hostage LTC William Higgins 1988-1989<div style="text-align: left;"><div> The Lebanon Hostage Crisis lasted for a ten-year span of time in which foreign officials would be abducted in Lebanon by various Islamic groups for the purposes of ransoms or publicity for a cause or bargaining for a prisoner to be released. It began in 1982 with the disappearance of four Iranian diplomats and ended with the release of two German relief workers in the summer of 1992.</div><div>Of the many US citizens taken hostage, the remote viewing team focused mostly on LTC William Higgins. He was kidnapped on 17th February 1988 neat the city of Tyre in south Lebanon and he died in captivity, killed by his captors at an unspecified time. At no point was his location identified and out of all the hostages, his is the one case with least information to go on.</div><div><br /></div><div>The project to try and locate Higgins continued for months. Over one hundred sessions were targeted at this kidnap victim. Trying to trace some kind of narrative through this is difficult, especially given that we know almost nothing about what actually happened to Higgins: the place he was held or how he died. These details are either still a mystery or classified.</div><div><br /></div><div>Three anecdotes regarding this episode are worth quoting from. Lyn Buchanan relates his memory of remote viewing his murder during a session with Higgins as the target.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>“One of the last hostage crises we dealt with was the abduction of Col Rich Higgins, who was yanked from his United Nations jeep and kidnapped in 1988 by Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon. As a unit, we tracked his condition and situation for months.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>One day, I was in the middle of a session when I was startled by an extremely strong impression: "RASAIN." "Where did that come from?" I asked myself. Knowing that you write down every impression that you get in session, I dutifully scribbled, and continued my session.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Not thinking about the sudden impression, I wrote up my report on the colonel's condition and a description of his immediate surroundings. I turned the session in and went home for the day.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>A few days later, given the same task, I found Colonel Higgins standing in an outdoor location. He was on the slight slope of a sandy embankment. Then, suddenly, he was on the ground, head downwards on the slope, face down in the sand, dead. Some men with guns were walking away from the body, laughing and joking with one another. I reported my findings, and three other viewers were immediately tasked with his condition and situation, in order to confirm or disprove my findings. The other three viewers found him to be quite alive. But I was certain of what I had found. The next day we got the report that the Hezbollah had sent pictures of the colonel's dead body overnight. During that session I had evidently witnessed his execution. There was no joy in being right this time.”</i></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Next is this except from an article “An Interview with Angela Ford” in the remote viewing magazine, <a href="http://www.eightmartinis.com/eight-martinis-issue-14">Eight Martinis, issue 14</a></div><div><br /></div><div><i>“Angela initially placed him physically in a specific spot on the map, and advised that he was being held in a building at that exact location. Unfortunately, photos of that specific location indicated that it was nothing but open and bare ground. No building. So the reaction by Dames and others to Angela’s initial effort was a smirk. Later, a released hostage who spent time with Higgins in captivity reported that Angela was absolutely right on the money. The photos which supported the psychics’ effort was outdated – old. In fact, Higgins had been held in a specially constructed shed in the exact location designated by Angela. Photographs might have revealed the building, if current photos had been used to support the psychics’ efforts.”</i></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Third is this paragraph from Jim Schnabel’s 1997 book “Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America’s Physic Spies”</div><div><br /></div><div><i>“In February 1988, a senior U.S. Marine Officer, Lieutenant Colonel William Higgins, was kidna[[ed from Beirut by the Islamic terrorist group Hezbollah. DT-S was asked to try and find him. Ed Dames, running a team of CRVers, came up with a description of a house where it seemed that Higgins was being held in South Lebanon. Angela Dellafiora, front-loaded with reconnaissance photographs of the area and monitored by Fern Gauvin, picked out instead a certain field near a road; she believed that Higgins was being held underground there, somehow. Several days later, the CRVers began to report that Higgins was dead. Angela reported that he was alive, and would soon be released. Both sets of data were sent downtown, but of course they conflicted, and were probably ignored.”</i></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Going through the archive day by day, a slightly different narrative emerges.</div><div><br /></div><div>On 18th February, the day after the abduction, the five remote viewers (Mel R, Angela D, Paul S, Lyn B and Gabrielle P) record their initial impressions. Oddly, this is the time when Lyn sees the word “Raisan” as described above. But in the story according to his book, a few days later he saw the execution of Higgins whereas in reality that session wouldn’t happen for over a year. Paul said Higgins was “Surrounded by land. Hills, valleys, farming” and Angela got the phrase “Bladd-ish” or “Blabd-ish.”</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEig7hFZmFwlhd2nJDB7tb8YKqflwyzkMzPGco1RYKLcm63dPbfi6iMe9_Y6br32O-irt4HQ75btQ9n_DGM2eer5xRH9x-9sNn65huwqo66stIyJvtzTybLM2GFxJVDGUBPgkIYeu5nX0LueRbjXWQ2FqVuxfqotzOqUVqWZqHlSjTTfsNd63CPkysNaWg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1319" data-original-width="1259" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEig7hFZmFwlhd2nJDB7tb8YKqflwyzkMzPGco1RYKLcm63dPbfi6iMe9_Y6br32O-irt4HQ75btQ9n_DGM2eer5xRH9x-9sNn65huwqo66stIyJvtzTybLM2GFxJVDGUBPgkIYeu5nX0LueRbjXWQ2FqVuxfqotzOqUVqWZqHlSjTTfsNd63CPkysNaWg" width="229" /></a></div><i><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Map showing approx locations of predictions made on 18th February 1988</i></div></i><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div></div><div>These were all in the southern part of Lebanon near the area he went missing. Interestingly, on the 22nd, the Lebanese radio station Voice of the Nation reported that, according to Hezbollah, Higgins had been moved out of the south of the country. Coincidence or not, future sessions placed Higgins’ location further north.</div><div><br /></div><div>On the 25th Paul did a dowsing session, pin-pointing three locations, two of which were in the sea. The following day, he placed Higgins 20 miles SW of Lake Qaraoun. On the 4th of March both Lyn and Mel give sessions that locate him in a quarry. A couple of weeks later, different viewers give his location as South Beirut, Blazdah or Nabatieh.</div><div><br /></div><div>In mid-March Angela made predictions of all of the hostages locations. I believe this session is the source of the “empty field” prediction mentioned twice in the anecdotes above. It appears that these locations were very close to where US intelligence believed Higgins was being held: the village of Arab Salim. </div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhDV3q9yn3Uc6bmKpE6c-H80ITlorABNsBNy38--WfcuxKdt_o_nf_ihqL5h6ngAzgwXV0RcUH8DbuAIX52TAwCZUubuwsuYb9xSYv1w6tCr_WMv81D2QIpkHGwGGny8fY7jOllDuz5_QF1rN1zPB0AR3XeyZ3qQjtPbUnd-YXtCGXYVLQcZGfuZtScqg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="875" data-original-width="941" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhDV3q9yn3Uc6bmKpE6c-H80ITlorABNsBNy38--WfcuxKdt_o_nf_ihqL5h6ngAzgwXV0RcUH8DbuAIX52TAwCZUubuwsuYb9xSYv1w6tCr_WMv81D2QIpkHGwGGny8fY7jOllDuz5_QF1rN1zPB0AR3XeyZ3qQjtPbUnd-YXtCGXYVLQcZGfuZtScqg" width="258" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Angela's predictions of hostage locations (numbers taken from declassified report)</i></div><br />As such, the DIA arranged a follow up session in which Angela (and two other RVers) was told to focus on that area. In the typed notes, the area she chose is labeled “Y” with the note that “(Y appears to be an open field).” However, Angela predicts his imminent move to another area. The next time she specifies an area for Higgins, it is a long way from Arab Salim.</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgoA1yn3S4gnQDkZAP-TgVmmWY61y8Nu4CATjYoIIbH2a3vYFXn5rYaAbKXMFL2U9sS6GzZge5nK93oCjmUIxU8yfazYAQx-FtoAhYjYPp78jM-AV8ND5-PCH82eUKYbzl8VhAVkZhd82gk4XNOQD9c-2CSvXihMZwiaKySXxUIxgxrIK815emR2NM_cg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="671" data-original-width="755" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgoA1yn3S4gnQDkZAP-TgVmmWY61y8Nu4CATjYoIIbH2a3vYFXn5rYaAbKXMFL2U9sS6GzZge5nK93oCjmUIxU8yfazYAQx-FtoAhYjYPp78jM-AV8ND5-PCH82eUKYbzl8VhAVkZhd82gk4XNOQD9c-2CSvXihMZwiaKySXxUIxgxrIK815emR2NM_cg" width="270" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>The grey circle shows the approx location where the DIA thought Higgins might be</i></div></div><div><br /></div><div>It’s also around this time that Angela starts to predict his release: she said 22nd April in mid-April, then in May this changed to “the near future” and “prior to 13 June 1988” and then at the end of June the prediction became late July or early August.</div><div><br /></div><div>In fact, Angela seemed very invested in this case. She continued to target him in sessions long after the rest of the team had stopped. Indeed, apart from a flurry of team activity in January 1989, she is the only one working on Higgins between August 1988 and the news of his death in late July 1989.</div><div><br /></div><div>On 21st April 1988, a photo of Higgins in captivity was released by his captors and after that, what happened to him remains a secret. In May, the DIA asked the RV team if Higgins was still alive. All of the sessions report him as living.</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjmGvHchJspuugcAqBnrs9tnDRyeicJiYZg897Zcxzd0LAJPVikrJXDehNkePLs-aB6En-EpnFAs8wwtdaop6xjG3_un119_lCvCZkwZI4idxsSlB76gXQxBdCZRR6Mh3ypAZ6gQFLMPusdAwr0a5ahssRUt9XTQgVupTiL9LiNtTOZptZI5AE7L5oCxw" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="753" data-original-width="250" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjmGvHchJspuugcAqBnrs9tnDRyeicJiYZg897Zcxzd0LAJPVikrJXDehNkePLs-aB6En-EpnFAs8wwtdaop6xjG3_un119_lCvCZkwZI4idxsSlB76gXQxBdCZRR6Mh3ypAZ6gQFLMPusdAwr0a5ahssRUt9XTQgVupTiL9LiNtTOZptZI5AE7L5oCxw" width="80" /></a></div><i><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Photo of Higgins released 21st April 1989</i></div></i></div><div><br /></div><div>Then, in May, came a number of sessions that all seemed to point to Higgins being in the sea. Looking at media reports on the hostage crisis leading up to this time, I can’t find any reason why this might be. Nevertheless, it’s a curious chapter that’s worth mentioning. On 18th, Lyn tries dowsing and gets two locations: one between Beirut and its airport and the other in the sea. The next day, Angela says Higgins is in a rowboat and on the 21st Gabrielle says he’s on a vessel, Lyn says it's a fishing boat and Angela calls it a skiff.</div><div><br /></div><div>Whatever the reason for this, after a two week break, when the team reconvene, Higgins is no longer at sea. In June and July only Mel and Angela work on this target. Mel puts Higgins in South Beirut while Angela continues to cast her net much further field: Anan, Ayn Nub, Beirut Airport, Bsaba, Khadah are all mentioned.</div><div><br /></div><div>After this, only Angela continues this project. Most of these session notes aren’t in the archive and one wonders if these sessions were officially requested or something Angela felt compelled to do. Looking at the list of sessions completed at a time when the intelligence services had all but given up on Higgins it resembles a vigil, to be honest, and I’m impressed at the dedication shown by Angela during these months.</div><div><br /></div><div>Finally, on 31st July, a video showing Higgins’ dead body was released to CNN. On the week commencing 2nd August, three weeks since Angela’s last session about him, the team as a whole was asked to determine if Higgins was alive or dead.</div><div><br /></div><div>On that day, Angela doesn’t answer that question and still can’t during another session the following day. Another remote viewer, Robin, said Higgins was alive and that wasn’t his body in the video. Lyn’s session is dated 4th August and his tasking is for the location where Higgins was last alive. Oddly, despite his later claim to have seen his execution on the 30th July, here he says Higgins’ date of death was 1st August: the day after the video was released. This clearly contradicts Buchanan's story about remote viewing Higgins’ execution. The final session on this project is dated 15th August 1989 and in it Robin still maintains that Higgins is alive.</div><div><br /></div><div>In truth, although his captors said they’d executed him in revenge for the kidnapping by Israel of the imam Sheik Obied, Higgins had actually died long before his body was used in the video. His body was finally recovered in 1991, found in the streets of Beirut. The reason for death and his physical state have never been made public.</div><div><br /></div><div>The remote viewing team clearly had little success on this project and the anecdotes that claim some kind of accuracy rely on reporting only the best guess, or inventing a best guess entirely, and also by changing the time involved from almost a year to just a few days. Below is a map of the predictions by the team that I can specify a location for, up to the summer of 1988.</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg3bclCCPP_mraxfYNnMKixg-Xz5GsO-S9xmfhzShXZ0Ewezk3L5_oUA7tYZXHQRMn4Uoc5daWOfPGp-Pseh5Qv1ESr_apaCCEt_fb9stc4GUJ0fBm9KwBllEINFzdD63WlfBdg7nlEVSSo9tDbtsXQiUwK4m8jUEc8q-5TqTQbehApl3D2uhyxinfblw" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1550" data-original-width="883" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg3bclCCPP_mraxfYNnMKixg-Xz5GsO-S9xmfhzShXZ0Ewezk3L5_oUA7tYZXHQRMn4Uoc5daWOfPGp-Pseh5Qv1ESr_apaCCEt_fb9stc4GUJ0fBm9KwBllEINFzdD63WlfBdg7nlEVSSo9tDbtsXQiUwK4m8jUEc8q-5TqTQbehApl3D2uhyxinfblw" width="137" /></a></div><br /><br /></div></div>Ersbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08012602968152264418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2076774095757676470.post-69693021376826878892019-10-13T09:27:00.001+01:002019-10-26T11:21:03.728+01:00Remote viewing a crashed aircraft in Zaire/DR Congo 1979One of the earliest examples of an operational success claimed by the US Government sponsored remote viewing team was that of the location of an airplane that had crashed in the African jungle in a country then called Zaire, now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo.<br />
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A recent commentator on this blog asked me about it and I finally decided to sit down and put together what I had on the subject. This is not meant as any definitive summary of events, merely a collection of what I have so far. Hopefully, over time, other people can fill in a few gaps.<br />
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First hand documentation on this is sparse since it dates from the very earliest days of the project, before the military team of remote viewers had been put together. The only contemporary document I can find about this is <a href="https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00787R000200020022-6.pdf">a memo in the Star Gate Archive</a> and it reads:<br />
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<i>The Acting Chief/AF summarized a recent interesting case in which an Air Force “sensitive” individual may have aided in the location of a plane which crashed in Africa after its crew members bailed out. Following intensive and unsuccessful efforts to locate the plane wreckage by other means, the “sensitive” was contacted by the Air Force and after a vision provided coordinates, the name of the country, and a description of the terrain in which the plane crashed. Acting upon this information, the Air Force has located an area corresponding to that described by the “sensitive” and is investigating what appears to be a crash site.</i><br />
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The memo was dated 28 March 1979 and the final sentence seems to imply that the search was still ongoing when the meeting was held. The way the memo talks about a “sensitive” contacted by the Air Force indicates that it wasn’t from the SRI remote viewing program run by Targ and Puthoff but was instead connected to another remote viewing project, Project Have Star, that was being run by Dale Graff in the Air Force. It also implies that the aircraft was American since it states that the crew bailed out before the crash. If it had been a Soviet craft, they probably wouldn't have known the fate of the crew <i>[Note: in the comments below my attention is drawn to a source that identifies the pilot as Libyan]</i>.<br />
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Years later, former US President Jimmy Carter <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/US/Newsbriefs/9509/9-21/am/index.html">told an audience of students about this episode</a> in 1995 in reply to a question about the existence of extraterrestrials. He went into a little more detail in his recent autobiography, A Full Life.<br />
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<i>One morning I had a report from the CIA that a small twin-engine plane had gone down somewhere in Zaire, and that it contained some important secret documents. We were searching for the crash site using satellite photography and some other surreptitious high-altitude overflights, but with no success. With some hesitancy, a CIA agent in California recommended the services of a clairvoyant, who was then consulted. She wrote down a latitude and longitude, which proved to be accurate, and several days later I saw shown a photograph of the plane, totally destroyed and in a remote area. Without notifying Zaire’s President Mobutu, we sent in a small team that recovered the documents and the bodies of the plane’s occupants.</i><br />
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This account suggests that the plane is American (or else how would the CIA know what it contained) and that it was the CIA, not the Air Force, that contacted the psychic.<br />
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Other accounts state that the plane was a Soviet craft, specifically a Tupolev Tu-22 bomber. Schnabel wrote in 1997 that both Gary Langford from the SRI team and “Frances Bryan”, working with Dale Graff, worked on this target and that it was the combination of data from the two that lead the search party to the crash site.<br />
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In Paul Smith’s book, Reading the Enemy’s Mind, the psychic that Dale Graff worked with is identified as Rosemary Smith, and dates the crash to March 1979.<br />
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<i>Though she was only shown a picture of a typical Blinder and told it was down “somewhere in Africa,” her description and hand-sketched map of the crash site closely matched an area where U.S. intelligence assets were not searching. As those assets were being shifted towards the indicated area, she was handed a topographic map and asked to circle the general location, and mark an X where she thought the crash was.</i><br />
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Joe McMoneagle also wrote about this, except in his account it is the military remote viewers and one psychic from SRI who worked on the target.<br />
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<i>Mel, Ken, and I placed the aircraft in a specific area of Zaire, our three locations overlapping a thirteen-kilometer circle. A location given by one of the remote viewers from SRI also put it within that circle. Search teams were sent into the area and the plane was located within a kilometer of the location given by the SRI remote viewer. All locations were within eight kilometers of the crash site. Search teams on the ground said as soon as they entered the circled area on the map they began encountering natives on the trail carrying pieces of the wreck to use in the construction or reinforcement of their village huts.</i><br />
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However, in March 1979, the Grill Flame team had just begun training and were using local targets. They wouldn’t begin on anything resembling an “operational” target until September of that year. It seems likely to me that McMoneagle is misremembering other search missions for airplanes he undertook and has mixed in elements from this particular mission based on other accounts that he had heard.<br />
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Dale Graff himself spoke about this event for the film Third Eye Spies. In it, he shows two documents to the camera that do not appear to be in the declassified Star Gate Archive. The first is apparently the sketch produced by Rosemary Smith but it doesn’t look like a forty year old piece of paper and, with no serial number, date or official stamp, I suspect it may be a reproduction, possibly solely for the purposes of the film.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoADUad17DNbXaCs8zoLpiNFQkDB7dYlj8Fp3Xk7bhWPSO8SM1pZ9OKHLmqw8iwEila7l0hFjILma1leQRya6t4DhkWKFXdJR1wkiKTvBuX745qfsQHpfQ3wKfB8Sy8MqjUZhOcVMlT25W/s1600/vlcsnap-2019-10-12-13h10m54s591.tiff" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoADUad17DNbXaCs8zoLpiNFQkDB7dYlj8Fp3Xk7bhWPSO8SM1pZ9OKHLmqw8iwEila7l0hFjILma1leQRya6t4DhkWKFXdJR1wkiKTvBuX745qfsQHpfQ3wKfB8Sy8MqjUZhOcVMlT25W/s320/vlcsnap-2019-10-12-13h10m54s591.tiff" width="320" /></a></div>
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He also had a photocopy of a map that resembles those in the Star Gate Archives, but I cannot find it among those documents. It has red ink which would indicate that it’s either a colour photocopy (and, as such, would probably not be part of the entirely monochrome Star Gate Archives) or it’s a photocopy that someone has drawn over. Again, we have to be open to the idea that this might be a prop for the film, created for illustrative purposes.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlHPFdZ1s6Bo7GFpVUi942Mg1k3qIXYeQvF_gtjmIbQLHLpQtRa29fChU_0RqJc81P1GbLQRVQ_dgGk_q0ezwtrLrndNzlo6oZEtV7bGR_XXxHNPw-iENjcuoAES1isKblzWP2mFCtAz56/s1600/vlcsnap-2019-10-12-13h12m11s597.tiff" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlHPFdZ1s6Bo7GFpVUi942Mg1k3qIXYeQvF_gtjmIbQLHLpQtRa29fChU_0RqJc81P1GbLQRVQ_dgGk_q0ezwtrLrndNzlo6oZEtV7bGR_XXxHNPw-iENjcuoAES1isKblzWP2mFCtAz56/s320/vlcsnap-2019-10-12-13h12m11s597.tiff" width="320" /></a></div>
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However, if we take this photocopy at face value it tells us that the plane crashed near Lake Kivu in the east of the country. If these documents are genuine or are an accurate reconstruction of genuine documents, then it still poses a few questions: if the circle and dot is the crash site, then what are the arrows? Is that where the psychic said to look, or is it where the search party were already looking?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaA5NbZD2QDdil4DOt9l_zbeHkWG874ZgkCKrfuQR4l9j7bfCU7lq2eCp8zxVTAC8ch7E3euIfiD1FqByLLikm7ZMoJTfNpvWKBKJs7HqPQip0-idlChfSH7O9hnhexuTTlV_UzkkRyvmy/s1600/zaire+congo+site+overlay+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="669" data-original-width="1179" height="181" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaA5NbZD2QDdil4DOt9l_zbeHkWG874ZgkCKrfuQR4l9j7bfCU7lq2eCp8zxVTAC8ch7E3euIfiD1FqByLLikm7ZMoJTfNpvWKBKJs7HqPQip0-idlChfSH7O9hnhexuTTlV_UzkkRyvmy/s320/zaire+congo+site+overlay+copy.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>My attempt at putting the red marks from the photocopy</i></div>
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<i>onto Google Maps for the region</i></div>
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Most frustrating is the lack of any corroborating documents from other sources: no mention of a crash in Zaire in early 1979 in any contemporary newspapers nor lists of aviation crashes. This is perhaps not surprising since the aircraft, whether it was American or Soviet, was clearly a spy plane so these events would have been classified at the time <i>[Note: as per the comments below, it could have been Libyan and not a spy plane at all]</i>. Sadly, it appears that it remains that way today.<br />
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In conclusion, we have a story of a successful remote viewing session backed up by one contemporary document and a statement from a former US President. The details of the psychic prediction and of the circumstances surrounding the plane itself remain unknown.<br />
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<i>References:</i><br />
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<i>Carter, Jimmy. (2015) A Full Life: Reflections At Ninety. Simon & Schuster, New Nork</i><br />
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<i>Third Eye Spies (2019) dir. Lance Mungia. USA, Conscious Universe Films</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>McMoneagle, Joseph. (2013) The Stargate Chronicles: Memoirs of a Psychic Spy: The Remarkable Life of U.S. Government Remote Viewer 001 Crossroad Press. Kindle Edition. </i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Shnabel, Jim. (1997) Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America’s Psychic Spies. Dell Publishing, New York.</i><br />
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<i>Smith, Paul. (2005) Reading the Enemy's Mind: Inside Star Gate: America's Psychic Espionage Program,p. 97. Tom Doherty Associates. Kindle Edition. </i>Ersbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08012602968152264418noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2076774095757676470.post-62467221428496609402019-09-08T10:26:00.002+01:002019-09-08T10:31:39.419+01:00Remote viewing the Stealth Bomber, August 1987It has been claimed that the Remote Viewing project sponsored by the US Government from 1974-1995 scored a notable success when asked to try to perceive the Northrup B-2 Stealth Bomber which was currently in development behind a curtain of absolute secrecy (although its existence was known to the general public, no details were widely circulated).<br />
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In the book <i>Remote Viewers</i> by Jim Schnabel, there is a brief description of Mel Riley’s success with this target. Jim writes about “Riley’s sharply detailed sketches” and that the Air Force were so concerned with the accuracy that they ordered that no one else try to remote view this target. [1]<br />
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Paul Smith goes into more detail in his book <i>Reading The Enemy’s Mind</i>, quoting Fred Atwater, the project manager, on the sessions.<br />
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<i>If I recall correctly, the first targeting was a set of coordinates, and we came back with an aircraft. And Mel’s now-famous drawings. When the first drawings came back, I showed them to the outside analyst, and I said, “Well, it looks like we’re looking at some kind of aircraft, but this is really weird. Please forgive the remote viewers, because sometimes they don’t draw accurately.” And the guy says, “No, I think this is the right aircraft you’re looking at.” </i>[2]<br />
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Paul Smith illustrates this with a comparison of sketches by Mel Riley and himself next to photographs of the target, the B-2 bomber, as well as another combat aircraft, the Lockheed F-117 which was not the target of the sessions. [2] [3]<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmBijIf7tUMNZXYJ9-V7_-hTwocOaZ6WFtM4Vdb12gdWPyJnB_2N-kIhiZbW_rjXM9SrCGnS8WhII3GsEZTa2XL_ygqg-kGiRfV3CIC4yejAtir0bV3p9-dQ53PzD9vi8IbRQohAk4wLU8/s1600/Paul+Smith+sketches+from+book.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="833" data-original-width="1063" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmBijIf7tUMNZXYJ9-V7_-hTwocOaZ6WFtM4Vdb12gdWPyJnB_2N-kIhiZbW_rjXM9SrCGnS8WhII3GsEZTa2XL_ygqg-kGiRfV3CIC4yejAtir0bV3p9-dQ53PzD9vi8IbRQohAk4wLU8/s320/Paul+Smith+sketches+from+book.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>From Paul Smith's book, "Reading the Enemy's Mind"</i></div>
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<i>From an online parapsychology course, 2015</i></div>
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Accounts usually give the impression of a bare minimum of sessions completed in order to get the reported results. However, the project (code number 8709) included four remote viewers supplying 31 sessions. Additionally, the blinding of the viewers to the target was highly suspect and there is evidence in the notes of some pretty overt leading questions. Further complicating matters, at least at the start, was the fact that another project (8711) was still underway. [4] Project 8711 was targeted at Iran and, specifically, an underground missile store. It had been running for two weeks and this may have caused some imagery to cross over. [5]<br />
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Project 8709 began on Thursday 30 July 1987, with a session with Mel Riley that did not get any relevant images. The second session was over a week later (10 August) with Lyn Buchanan and, given only encrypted coordinates, he started talking about an airport and was told he had acquired the target when he described the whine of jet engines.<br />
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Clearly, the interviewer was not blind to the target and gave cues to each of the four remote viewers on this project. For example, Angela Dellafiore began well: With only encrypted coordinates she described something that flies that was very technologically advanced. In her second session, the interviewer asked multiple times what was so secret about this object. She didn’t give a satisfactory answer and when her third session began she was instructed to talk about the “secret aircraft,” effectively telling her the target of the session.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgK1yMbZQWWM2QyO7m83y7qkcquYyelEqn0Vs2FbF5Yw7z33JLQ5b6LaAtafUx1Cx4a-9ltV19XVTZ44vwB96BB_ce8lT00-gaziAixJQ8KTNRoFSb8J3hzDIjaZ2vUwaN24Y-TP0ghglUd/s1600/stealth+sketches.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1280" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgK1yMbZQWWM2QyO7m83y7qkcquYyelEqn0Vs2FbF5Yw7z33JLQ5b6LaAtafUx1Cx4a-9ltV19XVTZ44vwB96BB_ce8lT00-gaziAixJQ8KTNRoFSb8J3hzDIjaZ2vUwaN24Y-TP0ghglUd/s320/stealth+sketches.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>A collection of sketches from various session notes</i></div>
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Mel Riley struggled early on with this project. His first two sessions were not successful but he had mentioned a “pointed object” which the interviewer told him to focus on in the third session. By now (19 August) Lyn Buchanan had been told that the target was a jet plane and Angela knew that the target flew, so Mel’s immediate description of a plane is an interesting development. Had he overheard something about this project in conversation between sessions? Very early in session three Mel mentioned the SR-71 and was then told that he had acquired the target. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYfa0jTpbbFLrBY0D71w4xSfdeVw_oLJQtmeS1EKYpixZZeJMseznZRKhJeUQ5ga60YudXxhzs8chV8uW8yKKSdWI1HDNsMmzsoY3WJ_Z9DpBIpYdMBg30TAF8Oc4lsquFZqJWcxa6qksZ/s1600/mel+17+aug+pointed+object.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="801" data-original-width="1082" height="236" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYfa0jTpbbFLrBY0D71w4xSfdeVw_oLJQtmeS1EKYpixZZeJMseznZRKhJeUQ5ga60YudXxhzs8chV8uW8yKKSdWI1HDNsMmzsoY3WJ_Z9DpBIpYdMBg30TAF8Oc4lsquFZqJWcxa6qksZ/s320/mel+17+aug+pointed+object.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>Mel's "pointed object" that, in the following session, became an aircraft</i></div>
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<i>Mel Riley's sketches from 19 Aug</i></div>
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Paul’s first session was on the 12 August 1987. His initial response was to describe a desert area with bivouacs. Even though he had been told explicitly that this was a new project he hadn’t targeted before, there seems to be some overlap with Project 8711 for which he’d already done three sessions in that month. On the other hand, that description could fit the area of the United States where the B-2 bomber was being tested, so his second session began with instructions to concentrate on the “object of special interest located at the bivouac area described in the previous session.”<br />
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Paul began by describing and sketching a rocket (“<i>reminds me of a cruise missile</i>”). As the session went on, the interviewer became more active in steering Paul in a certain direction. There isn’t a full transcript but the notes list a number of statements given by the interviewer that have the clear purpose of changing Paul’s rocket into a plane: <i>“In an earlier drawing you started to add “side images” or projections and in this drawing you seemed to have started that again.”</i> The interviewer’s interest in these “side images” reached a peak later on where, in succession, he says to Paul:<br />
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<i>“Let’s objectify the term projections. You repeat that phrase frequently.”</i><br />
<i><br />
</i> <i>“Add the wings to your sketch.”</i><br />
<i><br />
</i> <i>“Does it bother you if it turns into an airplane”</i><br />
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This is the most overt example of leading a remote viewer that I’ve seen in the entire Star Gate Archive and, if this weren’t enough, at the beginning of his fourth session Paul is told to focus on the “unusually configured aircraft.”<br />
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This fourth session took place on 20 August 1987 and, by now, each of the four remote viewers knew that the target was a secret jet aircraft. The sketches used to illustrate how accurate Paul Smith was in describing the Stealth bomber (as shown at the start of this blog) date from this session.<br />
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<i>Paul Smith's sketch from his fifth session, on 24 Aug</i></div>
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Finally, although the Northrup B-2 was still shrouded in absolute secrecy at this point, Paul Smith appears to have been influenced by another previous attempt at guessing the appearance of the Lockheed F-117 fighter. In July 1986 a toy company, Testor Corp., released their imagining of the F-117 based on what was known in the public domain and basing it on the Lockheed SR-71. The model, which I recall gained quite a lot of publicity at the time, bears certain similarities to Paul’s later sketches and may have acted as a subconscious cue to the remote viewer.<br />
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<i>Paul Smith's sketch and the Testor Corp. model [6]</i></div>
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In summary, the sketches illustrating the efficacy of remote viewing were selected from a much larger pool of sessions and were drawn after the remote viewer was no longer blind to the target.<br />
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<br />
[1] Shnabel, Jim. (1997) <i>Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America’s Psychic Spies</i> (pp. 51-52) Dell Publishing, New York. (NB, Jim also writes that Joe McMoneagle did a session against this target but, if this is true, it must have been an informal session since Joe McMoneagle had retired from the project several years earlier. No session notes or any mention of sessions with any non-project viewers is present in the declassified documents.)<br />
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[2] Smith, Paul. H. (2005) <i>Reading the Enemy's Mind: Inside Star Gate: America's Psychic Espionage Program</i> (p. 371). Tom Doherty Associates. Kindle Edition. <br />
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[3], Smith, Paul. H. (2015) <i>Remote Viewing: Antecedents, Conditions, People, Protocols, Applications,</i> Parapsychology and Anomalistic Psychology: Research and Education Massive Open Online Course, http://the-azire.wiziq.com/course/86144-parapsychology-and-anomalistic-psychology-research-and-education, Saturday, February 7th, 2015<br />
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[4] Just to complicate matters, Project 8709 had two phases. The first was to remotely view the B-2 bomber and the second was to then attempt to remote view any Soviet counterpart currently being developed. The existence of a Russian stealth bomber had long been considered (and a reduced-radar aircraft, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-160">the Tupolev Tu-160</a>, had just gone into service in April of that year) and the B-2 was used as a kind of calibration target to make sure the remote viewers were "online" before they attempted the Soviet target. However, phase two didn't begin until the later stages of the project and so for the sake of simplicity I have skimmed over this detail, except to note that Mel's sketch (21 Aug) and Paul's second sketch (24 Aug) are both from sessions targeted at the Soviet craft, not the American one.<br />
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[5] Usually, the use of different encrypted coordinates given to the remote viewer at the start of a session would be enough to inform them that they were working on a new target. However, Project 8711 had used two sets of encrypted coordinates and so a new set might not have had the usual effect of removing the remote viewers' preconceived ideas about the target.<br />
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[6] photographs of model taken from Popular Science, September 1986, p79Ersbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08012602968152264418noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2076774095757676470.post-33962049071605583332019-07-18T08:25:00.001+01:002019-07-18T08:25:18.649+01:00I've written a book about JapanAfter a recent trip to Japan I found myself a bit perplexed that there was no book about Matsue on the market (apart from Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan by Lafcadio Hearn, but that’s over a hundred years old). So I sat down and wrote one!<br />
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It’s an introduction to the city, but very much from my experiences there. I did a little research to add a little background, but it is by no means a history of Matsue. I thought I’d mention it here on the off chance it’d interest you. It’s on Amazon only (self-published Kindle, you see).<br />
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It’s subtitled The Storytelling City and, as I explain on Amazon, “Of course, every city can tell you stories, but Matsue is almost overburdened with them, stretching back over a thousand years. From myths described in ancient texts, through the tales of the Edo period and on to a Victorian ghost story collector, it seems as if every street has, over time, acquired some kind of fable. Around all of this is a small city of uncommon beauty and character.”<br />
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<br />Ersbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08012602968152264418noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2076774095757676470.post-55116450793211142052018-10-07T13:43:00.001+01:002019-09-30T21:40:04.663+01:00Russell Targ remote views San Andres Airport, 1974Russell Targ’s only formal remote viewing experiment as a remote viewer is a well-known example of psychic functioning, and was recently featured in the article about him on the <a href="https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/russell-targ">Society for Psychical Research’s Psi Encyclopedia</a>. However, very little is known about it: it was conducted at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) during the time when Targ and Puthoff were being funded by the CIA. As such, there was a considerable amount of secrecy surrounding this work.<br />
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Furthermore, this experiment has never been written up in any real detail, neither for peer-reviewed publication nor internal memo for the CIA. Instead, details about it are scattered across several different sources. I thought it’d be worth putting together as much information as possible to give a little more context to this remarkable event.<br />
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<br />
<b>What was the purpose of the experiment?</b><br />
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This was a long-range remote viewing experiment, with Hal Puthoff acting as the beacon. He went on a business/pleasure trip to Costa Rica in April 1974. The trip lasted ten days and “a week of remote target viewing” was carried out, with each session taking place at 1330 PDT (1430 CST, the time zone in Costa Rica) at which point Hal would take notes of his current location, including taking photographs.<br />
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The experiment was first mentioned in Progress Report No. 2, which is dated 24th April 1974. This is actually a week or so after the sessions were complete, but it’s clear that the report was written some time before publication.<br />
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<br />
<b>How many sessions was the experiment designed to last?</b><br />
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Seven sessions, taking place in consecutive daily sessions.<br />
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<br />
<b>Who were the remote viewers? </b><br />
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There were two remote viewers, Pat Price and Hella Hammid, with Russell Targ filling in for an absent remote viewer on one day.<br />
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In the book Mind Reach, Targ and Puthoff state that one was in Los Angeles and the other in Menlo Park (ie, at SRI). They did not specify which one was which, but it is more likely that Hella Hammid worked from Los Angeles while Pat Price was at SRI.<br />
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However, according to Targ and Puthoff’s 1974 paper “Remote Viewing of Natural Targets,” Hella Hammid was the only remote viewer on this project. Pat Price, despite being mentioned in other parts of the same paper, has been removed entirely from this version of events.<br />
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<br />
<b>Were the remote viewers blind to the target?</b><br />
<br />
Not completely. In Progress Report No. 3 we learn that the two remote viewers were told that the beacon was Hal Puthoff and he was travelling in Costa Rica.<br />
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<br />
<b>Which remote viewer did not arrive for the session?</b><br />
<br />
In Targ and Katra’s book Miracles of Mind, it is Pat Price who is absent. However, it is troubling how much Targ’s 1998 version of events differs from the classified documentation. According to this book, the experiment took place in April 1973 (it should be April 1974. In fact, Pat Price hadn’t even joined the team in April 1973) and each session happened at 9.00am (not half past one in the afternoon).<br />
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And, of course, in the 1974 paper which removed Pat Price from proceedings, Hella Hammid is named as the psychic who did not turn up.<br />
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However, it appears that neither attended. The classified report “Perceptual Augmentation Techniques: Part Two” states that the experimenter <i>“acted as a subject in one experiment on a day in which S4 </i>[ie, Hella Hammid]<i> was not available and the other subject arrived late.”</i> Bearing in mind the quote from Mind Reach telling us that Hella Hammid was based in Los Angeles, if we consider the use of the phrase “not available” it seems to me that Targ already knew Hammid couldn’t submit a session for that day and so when Pat Price did not arrive in time on Friday, Russell Targ submitted his own remote viewing session rather than have one day with no remote viewing data at all.<br />
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<br />
<b>Was the experimenter blind to the target?</b><br />
<br />
Varous accounts talk about keeping Hal Puthoff's itinerary a secret from the subjects, but there's no mention of doing the same for the experimenter Russell Targ. In Progress Report No.2, when the experiment is first described, it says that the experimenter would also attempt to blind match the session transcripts to the beacon’s target pictures after Puthoff had returned. However, no attempt to complete this part of the protocol was made. Does this mean that Russell Targ had become non-blind to the targets before the judging process could take place? How long was the gap between Puthoff’s return and the photographs being developed? Targ and Katra’s book states “several weeks” but, given the many inaccuracies in that version of events, one has to wonder if this is another mistake.<br />
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<br />
<b>What happened on the day that Russell Targ did his remote viewing session?</b><br />
<br />
Friday 12 April 1974 was Good Friday that year. <br />
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In a recent presentation about his work at SRI, Hal Puthoff explained how he “had a chance to trick” the remote viewers by jumping on a plane and flying to a nearby Colombian island in time for the session. An <a href="http://www.timetableimages.com/ttimages/complete/complete.htm">online airline timetable archive</a> has a <a href="http://www.timetableimages.com/ttimages/lr/lr73/">LACSA timetable for 1973</a> which, if we assume that airline timetables don’t change drastically from year to year, confirms that there was a service from Costa Rica to San Andres, Colombia on Fridays (another <a href="https://airline-memorabilia.blogspot.com/2011/07/lacsa-1979.html">LACSA timetable dated 1979</a> has the Friday service still listed). Hal Puthoff would’ve taken the flight from San Jose Airport in Costa Rica to San Andres Airport, but would’ve had to have taken the next flight back or remain there until Monday, meaning he was only on the island for about an hour. <br />
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Despite Targ and Puthoff supplying contradictory reports in different accounts, we can be pretty sure that it was Pat Price who did not arrive on time at SRI that day. During these early days in the project, they were still assuming that remote viewing happened in real-time: moving the remote viewer’s perception through the past or the future had not yet been attempted. As such, Pat Price’s absence at that specific time was a problem. Russell Targ has since described his decision to submit a session himself as being done in a spirit of “the show must go on.” Russell Targ’s sketch is dated 4/12/73 (getting the year wrong) and it lasted from 1:25-1:30.<br />
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<br />
<br />
<b>What were the results of the experiment?</b><br />
<br />
Twelve remote viewing sessions were completed: Six by Pat Price, five by Hella Hammid and one by Russell Targ. On his return, Hal Puthoff correctly matched five of these twelve sessions to his seven daily reports, two for Price, two for Hammid and Targ’s session, at odds of 50 to 1 (we shall assume that the notes were given to him with the dates removed).<br />
<br />
The content of the sessions by Price and Hammid is largely unknown, except for brief mentions of descriptions of Puthoff relaxing by a pool, in his hotel room or in a jungle environment near a flat-topped mountain (this last session has been credited to both Price and Hammid in different accounts).<br />
<br />
The photo that usually accompanies Russell Targ’s sketch is not the same photo that Puthoff took. His two photos were taken from the ground. The aerial photo doesn’t appear until 1977, in the book Mind Reach.<br />
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<br />
<br />
The response to this result was positive, but guarded. An anonymous review of the SRI work to date written in 1975 points out that the full data had still not been submitted, and so any definitive conclusion could not be drawn.<br />
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<br />
<br />
<i>References:<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00791R000200040004-9.pdf">Progress Report No. 2: Perceptual Augmentation Techniques, CIA-RDP96-00791R000200040004-9</a><br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00787R000200150004-2.pdf">Review of Perceptual Augmentation Techniques, CIA-RDP96-00787R000200150004-2</a><br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/cia-rdp96-00791r000300030004-9">Perceptual Augmentation Techniques: Part Two – Research Report, CIA-RDP96-00791R000300030004-9</a><br />
<br />
Karen Wehrstein (2018). ‘Russell Targ’. Psi Encyclopedia.<https: articles="" psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk="" russell-targ="">. Retrieved 6 October 2018. <br />
<br />
Targ, R., Katra, J. (1999) Miracles of Mind: Exploring Nonlocal Consciousness and Spiritual Healing,” New World Library, Ca, USA.<br />
<br />
Targ, R., Puthoff, H. (1974). <a href="https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00787R000500410001-3.pdf">Remote Viewing of Natural Targets</a>. Conference on Quantum Physics and Parapsychology, Geneva, Switzerland, August 26-27, 1974.<br />
</https:></i><br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i>Targ, R., Puthoff, H., (1977) “Mind Reach: Scientists Look at Psychic Ability,” Delacorte Press</i></div>
<i><https: articles="" psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk="" russell-targ=""><br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsRreqmQWN8&t=2506s">Dr. Hal Puthoff, PhD, on CIA History of Top Secret Remote Viewing</a><br />
</https:></i>Ersbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08012602968152264418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2076774095757676470.post-63305697808824051822018-09-02T09:10:00.000+01:002018-09-02T15:25:00.454+01:00A Review of “The Star Gate Archives. Volume 1: Remote Viewing”This book, <i>“The Star Gate Archives. Volume 1: Remote Viewing, 1972-1984: Reports of the United States Government Sponsored Psi Program, 1972-1995”</i> was compiled and edited by Edwin C. May and Sonali Bhatt Marwaha and published by McFarland in 2018. It is the first of four volumes from May and Marwaha covering the US government sponsored program investigating remote viewing as an intelligence gathering tool. Future volumes will cover Remote Viewing from 1984-1995, Psychokinesis and Reports on Operational Remote Viewing.<br />
<br />
This first volume contains reports written by those working at SRI during the first half of the program, predominantly Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ. They are neatly formatted and constitute the least redacted versions of these reports that exist. The most notable example of this is the 1983 report <i>Project Grill Flame: Operational Tasks</i> which I have only ever seen before in a heavily censored form, with entire pages missing, but is now available in all its glory.<br />
<br />
The reports are ordered chronologically, which helps give the reader some sense of progression but one should be aware that this is not a history of the project. There are no engaging characters or dramatised versions of events to capture your imagination. It is all quite dry and matter-of-fact in its presentation but this is to its benefit. As there is no attempt at making things seem astonishing and breathlessly exciting, the reader is left to draw their own conclusions from the undoubtedly similar examples of drawings and target photographs. Without the prompting of a narrator, these conclusions seem all the more impressive.<br />
<br />
But the reader needs to tread carefully and bear in mind that these reports were written not just to show the efficacy of remote viewing, but also to secure funding. As such, there are no dissenting opinions. Every report is from SRI and only SRI, and so the more critical documents that one finds in the Star Gate Archive are entirely absent [1].<br />
<br />
Even taking into account the SRI-only nature of the source, there are still some disappointing gaps in the book. Keith Harary’s apparently successful prediction of the release of hostage Richard Queen is mentioned in passing, but there are no detailed documents on the session. Perhaps they’ve been lost or perhaps they’ll be in Volume 4. The 60-trial experiment done with Uri Geller is also not included, apart from the sparse one-paragraph description of it in the paper published in <i>Nature </i>magazine. (Neither of these are in the online <a href="https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/collection/stargate">Star Gate Archives</a>, but I was hoping that May and Marwaha might have had access to previously unpublished work from SRI.)<br />
<br />
Similarly, the impressive results listed in <i>Project Grill Flame: Operational Tasks</i> are not backed up by contemporary documentation elsewhere in the book. This is important because careful reading of the differing reports in the book can throw up some curious anomalies. For example, on pages 365-366, there is a brief section on a remote viewing of Ramenskoye Airfield that took place in 1976. Here the report from 1983 claims that the information provided to the remote viewer were geographical coordinates and, then, “Viewer having noted an airfield at correct location first scan, viewer asked for additional detail on same for second scan.”<br />
<br />
In this version of events, the remote viewer, was targeted on an airfield, they mentioned an airfield in session one (and drew a map as an overview of the area) and then gave more detail in session two.<br />
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<br />
But on page 173, there’s a subtly different version dated 1977. Here it describes how the first session focused on a dam, and that there was no mention of any airfield at all. The second session was run with the criteria that, should the remote viewer mention an airfield, he’d be asked for more information about it. So there was no “correct location first scan” as maintained in the 1983 version while the session on the dam has been forgotten about. (As an aside, the failure of the remote viewer to get the correct target in 1977 was blamed on incorrect coordinates, but putting those coordinates into Google Maps shows that they are perfectly fine.) <br />
<br />
So, in conclusion, this book is a valuable resource for anyone researching the remote viewing project. Having these reports in this format and in chronological order really helped me get an overview of the early SRI work. But one has to bear in mind that this is not an impartial record of events. This is the evidence at its most positive, polished to the nth degree, whose target audience at the time was people with funding. <br />
<br />
<i>Notes:</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>[1] Two examples of such reports:</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>The <a href="https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00788R001300120002-4.pdf">Grill Flame Scientific Evaluation Committee</a>, also known as The Gale Report</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Snyder’s “Summary and Critical Evaluation of Research in Remote Viewing” <a href="https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00791R000100440001-9.pdf">Part one</a> and <a href="https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00787R000100260003-2.pdf">Part two</a>.</i>Ersbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08012602968152264418noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2076774095757676470.post-10865205756003701762018-07-16T05:00:00.000+01:002018-07-16T05:00:08.047+01:00A Corpse Not Buried For Nineteen YearsOn this day two hundred and fifty years ago (16 July 1768), a woman was finally laid to rest in London after an apparently very literal interpretation of the terms of a will meant that she remained unburied for almost two decades.<br />
<br />
According to the Gentleman's Magazine and the Annual Register for 1768, a close relative of the woman passed away and left a clause in his will that she should receive an annual sum of £25 "as long as she is on the Earth." According to the website Measuring Worth, the value of £25 in the mid-eighteenth century in today’s money is <a href="https://www.measuringworth.com/calculators/ukcompare/result.php?year_source=1768&amount=25&year_result=2017">at least £3,150 and possibly much higher</a>.<br />
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<br />
Hence, when the woman died, her husband did not have her interred but instead rented a room above a stable in South Audley Street where she was placed in a "decent coffin." Thus, fulfilling the terms of the will (at least the meaning if not the intention), he continued to receive the yearly sum. The Annual Register put the rent of the room at £5, giving him a clear profit of £20 a year. <br />
<br />
It wasn't until the husband died that the landlord, wanting to do some work on the building, discovered the body. After this she was laid to rest having served her husband for rather longer than "til death us do part."<br />
<br />
References:<br />
<br />
The Gentleman’s Magazine, vol 38, 1768. p 347<br />
<a href="https://archive.org/details/annualregisteror1768londuoft">Annual Register for the year 1768</a>, p 138Ersbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08012602968152264418noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2076774095757676470.post-33585723832830805302018-04-28T13:55:00.003+01:002018-04-28T13:58:11.634+01:00Best writing in parapsychologyRecently, two papers in the field of parapsychology have impressed me with their clarity of writing and depth of research, applied to an interesting subject. One was Charman, R., Hume, S. (2018) <i>“The Case of Colonel Henderson and The Apparition of Captain Hinchcliffe Revisited – A Crisis Apparition?”</i> Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, Vol 82, No. 1, pp 28-42. The other was Schooler, J.W., Baumgart, S (2018) <i>“<a href="https://labs.psych.ucsb.edu/schooler/jonathan/sites/labs.psych.ucsb.edu.schooler.jonathan/files/pubs/cns-2017-1241js3.pdf">Entertaining Without Endorsing: The Case for the Scientific Investigation of Anomalous Cognition</a>,”</i> Psychology of Consciousness: Theory Research and Practice, American Psychological Association<br />
<br />
Reading these made me want to write about other articles on parapsychology that I thought had reached similar levels of high quality. So here’s my list, with links where possible.<br />
<br />
<br />
<i><b>Akers, C. (1984) "Methodological criticisms of parapsychology."Advances in Parapsychological Research, vol. 4, ed. Krippner, S. McFarland</b></i><br />
<br />
This is an extensive review of the state of parapsychology to date by focusing on fifty-four of the most oft-cited experiments, as taken from Wolman Handbook of Parapsychology. It’s an invaluable resource for anyone interested in post-WW2 parapsychology since it talks about papers that are still referenced today, detailing critiques and defences that were well-known then but have since been forgotten.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b><i>Bierman DJ, Spottiswoode JP, Bijl A (2016) Testing for Questionable Research Practices in a Meta-Analysis: An Example from Experimental Parapsychology. PLoS ONE 11(5): e0153049. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0153049 1</i></b><br />
<br />
Similarly to Akers, <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0153049">this paper examines some of the more famous parapsychological results</a> to see if it withstands current criticisms. In this case, the focus was on the Ganzfeld database, and concluded that Questionable Research Practices may have inflated the reported findings, they could not account for all of the effect being measured.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b><i>Coelho, C., Tierney, I., Lamont, P. (2008) “Contacts by Distressed Individuals to UK Parapsychology and Anomalous Experience Academic Research Units – A Retrospective Survey Looking to the Future,” European Journal of Parapsychology, Volume 23.1, pp 31-59</i></b><br />
<br />
<a href="https://koestlerunit.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/coelho2008.pdf">This fascinating paper</a> looks at a largely ignored aspect of academic research into parapsychology: coming into contact with people who are genuinely distressed by the paranormal phenomena they seem to be subject to. By contacting a parapsychology unit, some people sought to explain their diagnoses, while others were trying to postpone approaching the mental health care services. The paper discusses preferred strategies in these circumstances.<br />
<br />
<br />
<i><b>Collins, H.M, Pinch, J.T. (1982) “Frames of Meaning: The Social Construction of Extraordinary Science,” London: Routledge & Kegan Paul</b></i><br />
<br />
This book is remarkable for its story about a largely forgotten episode in parapsychology: the sudden rise of spoon-bending in the early 1970s, especially regarding children. The book contains a detailed description of the authors’ attempts at investigating this phenomena at Bath University, as well as the influence of Uri Geller on science and popular culture in a wider sense.<br />
<br />
<br />
<i><b>Drake, J. (2015) “Ghosts, Elves, & the Man from Mars: 2 Decades (Skeptically) Investigating the Paranormal”</b></i><br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RW98Xusaozw">This talk by Jerry Drake is a real eye-opener</a>. First, for the insight he brings to the subjects he looks into, and secondly as an introduction to Jerry Drake who, I must admit, I’d never heard of before I saw this video. My favourite part must be the explanation of the haunting at Faust Hotel in Texas, that begins at 54:50.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b><i>Fortean Studies, volumes 1-7, John Brown Publishing, 1994-2001</i></b><br />
<br />
These books are collections of papers written in a more thorough, academic manner than the ones published in the magazine Fortean Times, and they are full of fascinating cases explained in often minute detail. The author, Mike Dash contributes two lengthy articles (The Devil’s Hoofmarks, in volume one and The Vanishing Lighthousemen of Eilan Mor in volume four) which were major influences on me as an example of how to do proper research using first-hand documents. But every other article is worthy of anyone’s attention, ranging from Princess Diana conspiracy theories to UFO sightings in the 1910s.<br />
<br />
<br />
<i><b>Koehler, J.J, (1993) “The Influence of Prior Beliefs on Scientific Judgments of Evidence Quality,” Organizational Behaviour and Human Decision Processes,” 56, pp28-55</b></i><br />
<br />
The opening sentence reads “This paper is concerned with the influence of scientists' prior beliefs on their judgements of evidence quality” and that pretty much sums it up. It makes sobering reading for skeptics of the paranormal, demonstrating that they are far more extreme than proponents in how they judge the quality of experiments with results that agree/disagree with their pre-existing views.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b><i>Lamont , P, Wiseman , R. (2001), “The rise and fall of the Indian rope trick,” Journal of the Society for Psychical Research , vol 65 , no. 3, pp. 175-193</i></b><br />
<br />
Peter Lamont is the only person to have two entries on this list with <a href="http://www.richardwiseman.com/resources/ropeJSPR.pdf">this study into the myth of the Indian Rope Trick</a>. As I grew up in the 1970s, the idea of the rope trick being a genuine thing (be it conjuring trick or paranormal feat) was so ingrained that it never occurred to that the truth would be more nuanced. Dr Lamont continued to work on this topic, publishing it as <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rise-Indian-Rope-Trick-Spectacular/dp/0349118248">a book with the same name</a> in 2005<br />
<br />
<br />
<b><i>Ogbourne, D., (2012) “Encyclopedia of Optography: The Shutter of Death”</i></b><br />
<br />
The idea behind Optography (that the last thing seen before someone dies remains as an image on the retina) is one that had long intrigued me, but I thought had never been taken that seriously by anyone so I didn’t bother researching it. Luckily, Derek Ogbourne did the work that I was too lazy to do and put together <a href="https://archive.org/details/TheEncyclopediaOfOptography">a considerable body of work on the subject</a>.<br />
<br />
<br />Ersbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08012602968152264418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2076774095757676470.post-79389774591646250362018-04-01T13:09:00.000+01:002018-08-20T17:26:46.068+01:00Project Stargate and the Charles Jordan caseThe TV program <i>Sunday Morning</i>, broadcast on the US network CBS, recently carried a story about the US government-sponsored remote viewing project. <a href="https://www.cbs.com/shows/cbs-sunday-morning/video/MtLog4OWhzcSqV080nfiuAMMfr1OSoHc/esp-and-espionage-how-psychics-aided-the-u-s-government/">It can be seen online here</a>.<br />
<br />
It was a fairly typical piece on Project Stargate. In this kind of coverage it's rare to get much further than a few talking heads, old photocopies of declassified documents and a skeptic to provide balance. Talking of which, I’ve no idea what Sean Carroll talking about. Something about putting a receiver next to your head should pick up ESP? He didn't mention remote viewing at all. But in his defence, he might not have been asked about it. It felt like his bit was edited in from an entirely different story.<br />
<br />
The clip from Sunday Morning talks about the Charles Jordan case. Charles Jordan was a customs official who helped smuggle drugs into the US. He went on the run in 1986. On 4 December, 1988 his case was covered on <i>America's Most Wanted</i> (series 2, episode 43). The remote viewers were asked to focus on him in April 1989.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Screenshot from CBS's Sunday Morning</i></div>
<br />
Angela Ford (then called Dellafiore) was one of the remote viewers at that time and in her interview with CBS she describes it:<br />
<br />
<i>“I said the man was in Lowell, Wyoming, and I spelt it L-O-W-E-L-L. [...] Well, when my boss went to Customs and said ‘we’re still getting the Wyoming feeling,’ Customs said ‘As we're speaking we're apprehending Charles Jordan 100 miles west of Lovell, Wyoming’.”</i><br />
<br />
Out of all the claims of success for Project Stargate, this one is perhaps the most striking. Tasked with finding a man on the run who, after three years as a fugitive, could be anywhere on the American continent, and yet succeding in naming a town within a hundred miles of his ultimate place of arrest is very impressive.<br />
<br />
The sessions themselves were pretty typical except that each remote viewer was given the opportunity to use whatever method they preferred. This lead to all the sessions being carried out solo (ie, no monitor to prompt them) and a range of techniques, using written remote viewing, coordinates and dowsing over maps. How blind the remote viewers were to the target is not clear. In the original declassified documents Charlie Jordan is referred to as “the felon” or “the fugitive,” but Lyn Buchanan wrote in his book The Seventh Sense that the team were given a full debriefing on Charles Jordan.<br />
<br />
There were about nineteen sessions on this target and five remote viewers contributed sessions. Angela Ford only did two: the one in which she mentioned an Indian reserve and the name “Lowel” and then a second session two months later but more on that in a bit.<br />
<br />
I can't find the actual notes from Angela's first session <i>[EDIT 20/08/18: someone emailed them to me and, from that, I could find them on the CIA site. Link at the bottom of the page]</i>, but in an undated report (that must be before 17 April 1989 because certain results from an RV session run on that date are missing, described as “pending”) there is a list of the team's findings to date.<br />
<br />
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The other three remote viewers who had completed sessions on this target put the fugitive in Mexico or south Florida. Angela's conclusion, now pinpointed as “Lovell, Wyoming” was definitely the odd one out.<br />
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The others continued to remote view Charlie Jordan but Angela did not. The other findings did not start to converge on Wyoming, but remained in the fairly typical idiom of places where fugitives might hide: farmhouses deep in the country, Central America, the Everglades in Florida. One dowsing session by Mel Riley ended on Minnesota, but that was as close as anyone else got.<br />
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Meanwhile, the FBI had been going through leads generated by the America's Most Wanted episode and had probable cause to search the property of Jordan's parents. There they found a videotape made by Jordan of his wife and their newborn baby in a hospital that they were able to identify as being in Denver.<br />
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They had already begun a search in Colorado around June 1989 when an eyewitness account of Charles Jordan in Yellowstone Park came in. He was found and arrested in Pinedale, WY on 16 June 1989.<br />
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What's interesting is that, in the CBS piece, Angela described how the remote viewers kept getting the Wyoming feeling and when they went back to tell their client they were told “As we're speaking we're apprehending Charles Jordan 100 miles west of Lovell.”<br />
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That's interesting because the project on Charlie Jordan had closed on 28 April with no further mention of Wyoming, so there were no extra findings in June for them to pass on to their client. Instead there is one final session dated 16 June at 9.00am run by Angela Ford. In the tasking document it is made clear that this session was prompted by the recent eyewitness account placing Jordan in Yellowstone Park. Angela is asked to describe his movements for the next two weeks. She reported that he was heading towards Biddle, Montana, via camp sites.<br />
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Charles Jordan was indeed found in a camp site (albeit nowhere near Biddle and actually about 250 miles south-west of Lowell) so that much is a hit but Angela doesn't seem to know that Charles would be arrested that day. I wonder if this could be where the “as we're speaking...” quote she gave comes from: when they passed on the session notes to their client later that same day.<br />
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As to where the original guess of “Lowell” came from, I don't know. Maybe a brief moment of psychic clarity. But I'd also like to know more about what was in that episode of America's Most Wanted.<br />
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<i>References:</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<a href="https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00789R000500210032-9.pdf">Summary of early remote viewing sessions on the Charlie Jordan project</a><br />
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<a href="https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00789R000500210002-2.pdf">Session notes from Angela's first remote viewing session</a><br />
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<a href="https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00789R000500210003-1.pdf">Session notes from Angela's second remote viewing session</a>Ersbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08012602968152264418noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2076774095757676470.post-68891059168153340202017-12-03T16:42:00.003+00:002018-04-05T20:04:15.078+01:00The placement of city names on mapsThis past October, I went on holiday to Japan and, for the first time in about seven years, my trip took me to Tokyo. <br />
<br />
Before I left, I was trying to decide where to go and what to do, when I was struck by the curious placement of the city name Tokyo on Google Maps. It didn’t seem to be over anything in particular: it changed slightly each time I zoomed in but it was usually over a small alleyway in Edogawabashi, a fairly anonymous part of Tokyo.<br />
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I checked around to see where other online maps had positioned their “Tokyo” labels.<br />
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Bing had it over Shinjuku. More or less over the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building. A fairly sensible choice.<br />
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Michelin maps and Openstreet map both chose the grounds of the Imperial Palace. Perhaps an even more sensible choice.<br />
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But I was so puzzled by Google Map’s placement that I actually took the time during my holiday to visit Edogawabashi to see if there was anything there I was missing.<br />
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<i>This is the alleyway from one end</i></div>
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<i>And this is it from the other</i></div>
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Couldn’t see anything, so I’m none the wiser as to why it was chosen. Possibly the result of some algorithm, I expect. When I was there, I stood where I thought the exact place was and looked up. But I didn’t see this.<br />
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Pity.<br />
<br />Ersbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08012602968152264418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2076774095757676470.post-56789672662911854442017-11-19T14:17:00.001+00:002017-11-20T21:21:03.420+00:00Joe McMoneagle and the Typhoon submarine sessionsIn this post, I’d like to focus on Joe McMoneagle’s famous remote viewing of a brand new class of submarine in an apparently land-locked warehouse. While undoubtedly one of the remote viewing project’s successes, it is still prone to exaggerated claims so I thought it worth the time to go over it in detail.<br />
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This post is a bit longer than I’d anticipated, so I’ll begin with the summary (in bold text) and those who want more background can continue reading.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Joe McMoneagle is said to have remote viewed a large warehouse, 100 yards from the White Sea in the USSR, which the US Intelligence were clueless to its contents. Joe described a brand knew type of submarine, far bigger than ever seen before, with slanted missile tubes and a unique double-hull structure. His findings were ridiculed, since why would anyone build a submarine in a land-locked building, let alone the biggest ever made? Joe McMoneagle replied by telling them when it would launch and when the Intelligence agencies got their data from a few days after the date he gave them, they saw a newly-dug channel to the sea and an enormous submarine sitting by the quay.</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>In truth, there were six sessions, over the span of six weeks and the US Intelligence agencies were well aware of the contents of the building. Joe described a submarine being modified, but did not identify it as a new type. Nor did he mention anything about the distance to the sea.</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>The sessions were conducted in non-blind conditions and the interviewer often guided the session quite overtly by repeating the same question. Many of the claims of success for these sessions are wrong (Joe says the Typhoon submarine had slanted missile tubes) or missing entirely (Joe doesn't talk about a double hull structure). Also, the warehouse in question was not 100 yards from the sea at the time of the remote viewing, but instead the loading bay had been extended over a number of years. As such, the part of the narrative about the Intelligence agencies dismissing Joe's findings and a channel being cut to the sea seems very implausible.</b><br />
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Taken from <a href="https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/russia/severodvinsk.htm">https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/russia/severodvinsk.htm</a></span></i></div>
<br />
To better analyze the typical narrative, I’ve split it into sections.<br />
<br />
First, I'm going to relate the version of events according to those connected to or supportive of the remote viewing project.<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">Background</span></b><br />
<br />
In The Stargate Chronicles, Joe McMoneagle wrote: <br />
<br />
<i>One of the first operational targets brought to the program around September of 1979 originated within the National Security Council. A naval lieutenant commander assigned to the council who had seen some of the previous OPSEC reports was enthusiastic about using RV for offensive intelligence-gathering purposes. He brought a photograph of a large building that was obviously an industrial type of building for targeting and development. The building was seen to be near a large body of water, but that was all one could tell about it. Materials were stacked on the exterior of the building, but they were general in nature and did not add clues about what might be going on inside the building. The building was huge, labeled as building number 402, and was located somewhere in Russia. (We were to find out much later that the facility was located at the port of Severodvinsk, on the White Sea, very near the Arctic Circle.) The NSC was very interested in knowing specifically what was going on inside.</i><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">McMoneagle, Joseph. The Stargate Chronicles: Memoirs of a Psychic Spy: The Remarkable Life of U.S. Government Remote Viewer 001 (Kindle Locations 2316-2323). Crossroad Press. Kindle Edition.</span><br />
<br />
In this version of events, the National Security Council were using the remote viewers as a means of getting information on a target that was otherwise a mystery to the intelligence services.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>The Remote Viewing Session</b></span><br />
<br />
Joe McMoneagle carried out a session where the targeting material was a photo (or a piece of the photo) in an opaque envelope. During this session he described a giant submarine. <br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xs5IU-BSvgI">Dr Edwin May described the session</a> as having a 137-page transcript “about the construction of a very very large submarine that had two hulls like a catamaran” <br />
<br />
In <i>The Stargate Chronicles</i>, McMoneagle makes reference to multiple sessions. He wrote:<br />
<br />
<i>Two or three days later, Fred asked me to visit the building again.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>On my second visit, I got up very close to the larger vessel and was amazed at its size [...] I moved up over the deck and was surprised to see that it had canted missile tubes running side by side. This was critically important because this indicated that it had the capacity to fire while on the move rather than having to stand still in the water, which made it a very dangerous type of submarine.</i><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">McMoneagle, Joseph. The Stargate Chronicles: Memoirs of a Psychic Spy: The Remarkable Life of U.S. Government Remote Viewer 001 Crossroad Press. Kindle Edition.</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Repercussions</span></b><br />
<br />
According to Joe McMoneagle, his findings were roundly ridiculed by people in the intelligence services. Annie Jacobsen, in her book <i>Phenomena</i>, explains:<br />
<br />
<i>The report was interesting to some, including Commander Jake Stewart of the Office of Naval Intelligence, and dismissed by others including Robert Gates, an analyst on loan to the NSC from CIA. That the Soviets would build a submarine inside this building, and not in a dry dock located at the water’s edge, seemed to defy logic. The building McMoneagle had been asked to view was located roughly one hundred yards inland from the shore at the naval yard. At one point in McMoneagle’s session he had described “a concrete structure, like in Holland in a canal. For you know, controlling the flow of water.” But the KH-9 spy satellite photographs from September 1979 showed no canal between the mysterious building and the navy docks— only flat, frozen earth.</i><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Jacobsen, Annie. Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis (p. 235). Little, Brown and Company. Kindle Edition.</span><br />
<br />
<i>“[...] and I said they were going to launch in 120 days. And this was all disagreed with by the senior officer from the CIA [...] He made arrangements to look at the area 114 days later and they in fact had launched the largest submarine ever built in history. It’s called the TK-089, the Typhoon class submarine. The only response we got from that individual was “it was a lucky guess”. And that individual was Robert Gates.”</i><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Joe McMoneagle interview, Third Eye Spies, 2016, dir Lance Mungia</span><br />
<br />
That is the version of events usually presented. Trying to corroborate this against third-party statements was a little tricky, but here is what I’ve found.<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">Background</span></b><br />
<br />
The session targeted at Severodsvink was one of the first “operational” (i.e., real world, classified) targets to be used by the remote viewing team. I can find no correspondence in the CIA archives explaining why this particular target was chosen but it is clear that, far from being in the dark about the construction of a new class of submarine, the Intelligence agencies (in this case, the request came from OASCI – The Office for the Assistant Chief of Staff, Intelligence) were well aware of what the building contained.<br />
<br />
A document titled “<i><a href="https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/cia-rdp80t00556a000100100001-4">Typhoon SSBN Construction at Severodsvink Shipyard 402 USSR (TSR)</a></i>” and dated January 1980 is a heavily redacted history of what is known about the submarine being constructed there. It reads “since September 1977, however, evidence supporting the construction of a Typhoon-class SSBN has continued to accumulate.”<br />
<br />
So in this version of events, the contents of Shipyard 402 is not a mystery when the OASCI tasks the remote viewing project with this target. In this context, it is a more typical training exercise with a known target that the remote viewing results can easily be compared against.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">Remote Viewing</span></b><br />
<br />
The remote viewing sessions against this target actually lasted six sessions. You can read the transcripts of all six on the CIA Crest site <a href="https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/cia-rdp96-00788r000100020001-9">here</a>, <a href="https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/cia-rdp96-00788r000100030001-8">here</a> and <a href="https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/cia-rdp96-00788r000100120001-8">here</a>.<br />
<br />
<b>Session One, C-47</b><br />
<br />
The first was on 7 September 1979. The targeting material was not a photograph (or scrap of one) in an envelope. It was the geographical co ordinates of the location.<br />
<br />
<i>“In my first session against the building, I was given a set of geographic coordinates, clearly somewhere in the north, probably in the Finland or Eastern bloc region.” </i><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">McMoneagle, Joseph. The Stargate Chronicles: Memoirs of a Psychic Spy: The Remarkable Life of U.S. Government Remote Viewer 001 (Kindle Locations 2323-2324). Crossroad Press. Kindle Edition.</span><br />
<br />
NB: The co-ordinates are given in other CIA documents as being 64-34-39N, 39-48-29E<br />
<br />
Joe immediately talked about a large circular building and structures shaped like “tips of cigar tubes [...] standing in the air [...] 2 ½ to 3 stories.” He described the general geography as being a valley between two rows of hills.<br />
<br />
He spoke about steel spheres constructed underground, a lot of power being used (this has a tick beside it in the session transcript) and powerful magnetic fields.<br />
<br />
After around 13 minutes, the interviewer #66 asked if there’d been any recent new construction or recent change in mission, and written in the margin of the session transcript is a note that reads: “Careful! Leading him.”<br />
<br />
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<br />
Joe went on to talk about spheres that were very large and designed for a violent atmosphere. <br />
<br />
There is nothing particularly relevant to a submarine or shipyard. The closest we get is during the latter part of the session when Joe is sketching what he saw. He mentioned that there was a “dam close by this. A dammed waterway [...] it’s very distant.” (later, he adds “to the north east”) and later still, while talking about the spheres he noted that “I did some... metallurgical studying on nautical engineering” and he talked about “new technology” and “has to be some welded plates”.<br />
<br />
<b>Session Two, C-53</b><br />
<br />
The second, third and fourth sessions were one week later on the 14 September. Joe himself had done no operational remote viewing sessions since then and the second session began with the interviewer #66 repeating the coordinates again and telling him he’d viewed the vicinity before.<br />
<br />
#66 asked Joe to centre himself over the round building and then move a certain number of kilometres in certain directions and then describe what he could see. In this session, there is very little about submarines or shipyards. Perhaps the closest to a potential hit was when Joe is asked to draw a map of the area and he placed some steel and concrete buildings near a body of water.<br />
<br />
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<br />
<b>Session Three, C-54</b><br />
<br />
The third session took place in the afternoon of the 14 September. It began with #66 saying that he was “Interested in finding out about a building located at [redacted]”<br />
<br />
Joe said he saw a low silhouette building with an L-shape and a pitched roof and an antenna with supports. After this, Joe was far more on target. He said the building is open at one end and he describes cranes and fins “like shark fins. Dull, gray color.”<br />
<br />
This session is full of descriptors that seemed to fit the target location. Joe described fencing and an open area, curved pieces of metal, and lot of water there. He also talked about a large concrete structure. Reading the session notes, I found myself confused as to whether the structure was inside the building or was the actual building, but that could’ve been my lack of understanding. #66 appears to have assumed it was the building itself.<br />
<br />
#66 ask Joe to move inside concrete structure. Joe reported seeing water in there, metal railings, a tubular thing, an immense rack type object, a brilliantly lit work bay, an oblong bay of water, and a bracket type apparatus with circular gripping arms. Also a dark shadow type object, very large. Tall but longer than tall.<br />
<br />
He described a burning metal smell, acrid, like arc welding.<br />
<br />
He spoke about a very large body of water, two sections of land that curve out and then back in for some reason. Like a protected bay.<br />
<br />
He had a very strong impression of props (ie, propellers) for some kind of ship. But he specified that the ship wasn’t constructed here, but just modified. This is, perhaps, the least accurate thing Joe said during the session, yet it had two ticks beside it as if the assessor was especially happy with this statement.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, the sketches for this remarkably on-target session were in coloured pencil, and have not reproduced well.<br />
<br />
<b>Session Four, C-55</b><br />
<br />
The fourth session was conducted on the same afternoon as the third. #66 began by asking Joe to bring his attention to the concrete building just north of the geographical coordinates.<br />
<br />
Joe continued to describe a similar scene as before, adding that the building is connected to a dry dock building. He also, for the first time, started to talk about submarines in some detail.<br />
<br />
“I’m seeing what looks like part of a submarine in the building [...] almost likely a mock-up”<br />
<br />
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<br />
#66: How did this submarine come to be in the building?<br />
Joe: There’s not a whole submarine. [...] They created this part of a submarine to fasten this coffin-shaped modification to. The modification in question is described as a sort of hump that fits on top of the submarine.<br />
<br />
Joe talked about another, neighbouring building where he saw “a lot of black sails” (this is underlined) and “Fins, I see fins” (also underlined)<br />
<br />
#66 asked what’s to the left of the building. This seems to be an attempt at getting Joe to describe how the building is connected to the bay. But Joe was confused as to which building he means, and the subject was briefly dropped until #66 tries again later.<br />
<br />
“Facing the quays, tell me about just over the edge of the building between the building and the quays, tell me about that area.” He asked. But Joe could only see stacked crates.<br />
<br />
<b>Session Five, C-73</b><br />
<br />
The next time that Joe tackled this target was about one month later, on 18 October. Although a month had past, Joe had not actually conducted any operational remote viewing sessions so the October sessions are, in a sense, immediately after the 14 September session in terms of tasking.<br />
<br />
#66 began the session by asking Joe to “go to a large concrete building in the vicinity of [coordinates redacted]” so Joe straight away had enough information to help him understand that this session follows on from his previous one.<br />
<br />
Although Joe did not go straight to describing submarines, the overall picture is the same. He talked about girders and flashes of light like someone cutting metal.<br />
<br />
After a while, Joe mentioned the coffin-type things that go on top of submarines. #66 immediately asked “How do the objects leave this room? By what method do they leave the room?” Once again he seems to be trying to get Joe to think about the area between building and the sea.<br />
<br />
Joe tried to explain the process, but despite #66’s prompting, Joe never answered the question.<br />
<br />
#66 then asked Joe to go to an area of interest in the building. However, mid-way through Joe describing an area of his choosing, #66 cut him off and asked him to focus again. The role of #66 in this session seems much more controlling than before. He even told Joe, mid-session, that he was focusing on the wrong part of the building and needed to take an overview.<br />
<br />
After some guidance from #66, Joe takes a look at the whole building from a corner, and he describes the incomplete submarine as before.<br />
<br />
#66, apparently very keen on the area between the building and the sea, tells Joe to hover over the building and look down over different sides of the building. During this part, Joe was describing other buildings and a storage yard, when he broke off: He said he was looking at water, but not seeing water. “I don’t know how to explain that.” After the session, Joe drew a map of what he saw, which had certain similarities to the target area.<br />
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<br />
He then began talking about small submarines. “You know I mentally want to see big submarines, but there are none. I’m seeing a much smaller class of submarine that I am normally used to, for some reason.” The session ended soon after.<br />
<br />
<b>Session Six, C-74</b><br />
<br />
Session six began the same day and, judging by the lack of introduction, could have started immediately after the previous session.<br />
<br />
#66 immediately asked Joe to hover over the building and look over the edge, once again trying to get a description of the area between the building and the sea. When this didn't initially work, #66 tries to reposition Joe's point of view several times and asks again.<br />
<br />
Joe is also asked to remote view the location for the 1 January 1980. Joe says that the water in the building has gone, or is very low, and that they're fitting tubes to the backs of the submarines. These are the canted missile tubes that Joe mentioned in The Stargate Chronicles as one of the features that demonstrate how accurate his remote viewing was.<br />
<br />
He talked about there being four submarines in bays, and he tried to read the numbers written on the side of them. He described the submarines as being “high-class submarines. These are biggies” but specifies that “These aren't new... they are old ones.” #66 asked how the submarines got out of there, and after Joe replied “You open the wall,” #66 drew the session to an end.<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">Conclusion</span></b><br />
<br />
The overall picture of the six sessions gives a very different impression to the one given in more recent versions of events.<br />
<br />
One thing is clear: Joe was given a submarine shipyard as a target and he described a place where work was being done on submarines.<br />
<br />
However, most of the remarkable aspects of the remote viewing are missing. Neither Interviewer #66 nor Joe were completely blind to the target. #66 asks many leading questions and you have to wonder how much detail he knew about the target. Meanwhile Joe was given geographical coordinates that he recognised as being “somewhere in the north, probably in the Finland or Eastern bloc region.”<br />
<br />
The claim that Joe saw a brand new class of submarine being constructed is undermined by the transcript telling us that Joe saw a modification to an existing class of submarine.<br />
<br />
Other aspects, such as Joe's correct description of a two-hull structure, or correctly guessing the launch date appear to be entirely absent.<br />
<br />
But the most important part – that the OASCI dismissed Joe's findings as impossible – now make no sense at all. Since the OASCI knew there was a submarine being built there, they wouldn't have poured scorn on Joe's description of a submarine. <br />
<br />
Also, the part of the story about the construction hall being 100 yards from the sea and needing a channel built at the last minute in order to launch the submarine is not backed up by other documents or photographs regarding Severodsvink. In fact, the CIA document quoted near the start of this blog post decisively contradicts it:<br />
<br />
<i>“Expansion of the launch basin in front of construction hall 3 has been ongoing since early 1973. The major construction on the basin expansion was complete by late 1978; however, work on the launch rails from construction hall 3 and the ledges that will support the launch dock continued throughout 1979.”</i><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Typhoon SSBN Construction at Severodvinsk Shipyard 402 USSR (TSR), page 1, CIA-RDP80T00556A000100100001-4</span><br />
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<br />
So we are left with a series of six remote viewing sessions that successfully describe the target that was set for the remote viewer, but was conducted under non-blind conditions and has been exaggerated ever since.Ersbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08012602968152264418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2076774095757676470.post-43646704658343264942017-09-17T09:07:00.000+01:002017-09-17T09:07:37.923+01:00Scientific evidence for the existence of EntsOne thing I have learnt is that if you have a database large enough and a knowledge of that database that's extensive enough, that it’s possible to come up with some pretty peculiar findings which are seemingly backed up by hard data.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>An Ent, yesterday</i></div>
<br />
A few years ago I was a volunteer at the <a href="http://www.brerc.org.uk/">Bristol Regional Environmental Records Centre</a>, and after a few months I became pretty familiar with the extensive database they have and the sort of information it included.<br />
<br />
One day it occurred to me that if you look for veteran trees (ie, over a hundred years old) whose location data had changed, then that would be evidence for Ents, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ent">tree-people from Lord Of The Rings</a>.<br />
<br />
Bringing up the data for veteran trees was easy enough, but I found I had to go through the spreadsheet myself to find an occasion where the location data had changed.<br />
<br />
I found plenty of examples of trees with vague location data, but I also found three occasions where the previous data didn’t match aerial photography. I decided those were the best case for the existence of Ents, so I extracted the data, popped them on a map, and here they are!<br />
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<br />
I showed it to my manager at the time, and he said it was interesting that they seemed to be guarding the border.Ersbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08012602968152264418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2076774095757676470.post-35112764024284478552017-08-27T19:04:00.000+01:002017-11-19T18:31:57.511+00:00Joe McMoneagle and the Abrams M1 tankA few months ago, <a href="http://ersby.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/pat-prices-remote-viewing-of-urdf-3.html">a commenter on this blog</a> asked if I was going to look into Joe McMoneagle’s successful remote viewing of a prototype tank (then called the XM-1, later to be named the M-1) in 1980. Well, I finally got round to going through the various papers relating to that project today, so here are my findings.<br />
<br />
The session is often listed among the US military’s best remote viewing work and it has been described as a test for the remote viewers, where Joe McMoneagle was given a photograph of a hangar surrounded by aircraft and told to remote view what was inside. For example, Paul Smith writes:<br />
<br />
<i>“Parked inside the closed hangar at the time of the remote viewing session was an XM-1 tank. It had been moved there explicitly for the purposes of putting the remote viewers to the test. A good viewer would have to set aside any preconceived notions of what should be inside an airplane hangar to get at the real target.” [1]</i><br />
<br />
However, the original documentation doesn’t back up this version of events. Also, it is misleading to present this session as a one-off event. Rather, it was part of Project 8003 which contained twenty-four sessions conducted between January and September 1980. Project 8003 was primarily targeted at an enemy facility related to tanks. The session in question (D-29) differed in that it was a request to remote view an American tank.<br />
<br />
Most of the sessions in Project 8003 were conducted by the same interviewer (#66 in the transcripts, which would be Fred Atwater) who, over time, became more knowledgeable of the target as different targeting data was used as the project progressed.<br />
<br />
Joe himself completed six sessions in Project 8003. The first two had geographical co-ordinates as his targeting method and did not raise anything particularly pertinent. In the next two sessions he was given a photograph of the building in question and it was in the second of those two where he first talked about and drew tanks. This session took place on 9 May 1980.<br />
<br />
The next session Joe completed was on 25 June 1980. In this, Joe was given geographical co-ordinates and asked to go back in time and view the target area at one-week intervals beginning 7 May 1980 and continuing to the present day. Most of his session notes and sketches are of tanks, specifically the production and distribution of tanks. But by then Joe may have been aware of two sessions that took place with other remote viewers on the 17 June where the targeting material was a photograph of a tank. By now, any idea that the remote viewers were still blind to the nature of the target for Project 8003 is difficult to justify, and it certainly isn’t the case for the interviewer who would have seen all of the targeting material.<br />
<br />
The famous session, D-29, took place on 5 September 1980. D-29 was to have been held simultaneously with D-28 on the same target, using a sealed envelope containing a photo as the targeting data. This would explain why Joe had a different interviewer, since Fred Atwater was conducting the other session. However, D-28 was cancelled due to too much noise.<br />
<br />
In the report for D-29, this change of interviewer is highlighted as precluding the chance of cuing from a knowledgable source, but the interviewer is labelled #14 and the notes identify him as “Mel” (in all probability, Mel Riley).<br />
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<br />
However, remote viewer #14 conducted several sessions in project 8003, including one where the targeting material was a photo of a tank. In other words, if Mel recognised the Project number 8003, he would no longer be blind to the target.<br />
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<i>Interviewer instructions for session D-28, which I assume</i></div>
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<i>would be the same for D-29</i></div>
<br />
All of which is academic since Joe McMoneagle doesn’t actually talk about a tank during session D-29. This surprised me when I sat down to read the transcript since every retelling of this story involves Joe remotely viewing a tank. For example, Paul Smith writes:<br />
<br />
“His sketches were unmistakably of a tracked armored vehicle.”<br />
<br />
But I can’t understand which sketches he’s referring to. The only exterior sketches from D-29 are these:<br />
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<br />
Which do not resemble a tracked armored vehicle to me. While Joe describes a multi-personnel vehicle, he doesn’t call it a tank. In fact, he clearly says he doesn’t know what it is. Some of the descriptors he gives can be related to a tank, but others cannot. <br />
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What is most interesting are the sketches of the interior. These resemble a tank-like environment inasmuch as they are cramped and the walls are lined with buttons and screens. <br />
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<br />
Any attempt at trying to find an interior photo of the prototype XM-1 has been difficult, with this being the best I could get. And even then, I don’t know how old this photo is.<br />
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<br />
It is difficult to assess how this session was received at the time. The Grill Flame members were certainly very pleased with it. The typed session notes have a lengthy memo at the end of it explaining how remarkable this kind of correspondence was, using these protocols. Also, a handwritten list of sessions for Project 8003 has the words “big hit on OPSEC” written next to this entry.<br />
<br />
But the initial response from external judges seemed cooler. There is a document in the archive where the analyst’s response is censored, but there is a comment afterwards that suggests it wasn’t too positive.<br />
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<i>“Although supposed to be an eval of potential usefulness, it was performed by indiv. having no appreciation for the RV phenomena. Second AMSAA eval is expected to be forthcoming.”</i><br />
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The second analysis took a while coming. D-29 was not considered as important as the then-ongoing Iranian hostage crisis, and kept being passed over for other matters. In April 1981, in reply to a request, Grill Flame received a letter from Capt Kenneth Bell of the Special Actions Branch promising that Mr Kramer, the analyst, would be finished by the end of that month. But after this, I can find no further information on this matter.<br />
<br />
Nevertheless, D-29 was considered by the Grill Flame management to be good enough to be one of the sessions shown to Vice President George Bush in 1983 when he had a briefing on the remote viewing project.<br />
<br />
<i>References</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>[1] Smith, Paul. Reading the Enemy's Mind: Inside Star Gate: America's Psychic Espionage Program (p. 131). Tom Doherty Associates. Kindle Edition.</i>Ersbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08012602968152264418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2076774095757676470.post-60596553535236104402017-04-29T06:23:00.001+01:002017-04-29T06:23:45.481+01:00An accidental logic puzzleAs is usual for me on a weekend morning, I was browsing through an old newspaper that shared the same date as my current self. Today I was reading one from thirty years ago, 29th April 1987, when I noticed that the division for Group Four in the European Under-21 Championship formed a little logic puzzle: it was possible to look at it and work out all of the results of the tournament to date.<br />
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<br />
It isn't a difficult puzzle nor, I'd imagine, that unique but it kept me entertained for a few minutes. Plus, it reminded me of that example of <a href="http://ersby.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/accidental-poetry.html">Accidental Poetry</a> I found several years ago.Ersbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08012602968152264418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2076774095757676470.post-25704899709771756402017-03-05T10:53:00.001+00:002021-08-29T07:04:27.416+01:00Pat Price’s remote viewing of URDF-3, Semipalatinsk, USSR in 1974One of the biggest successes of the US government-sponsored remote viewing project came very early on in its history. In 1974, in only its second full year of existence, the CIA requested that SRI use Pat Price to remote view a Soviet target: URDF-3 (Unidentified Research and Development Facility No. 3). In popular psi literature, it is usually described in the most dramatic terms possible: that no one knew anything about the site and that on commencing the remote viewing session Pat Price immediately closed his eyes and saw a huge crane passing over his head.<br />
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<br />
Given its importance as an example of psychic functioning, I thought it was worth looking as this event in some detail, using documents from the declassified archive.<br />
<br />
The earliest mention of this experiment I can find is an appendix to a meeting held on 31 May 1974, where basic protocols were laid down: that the sessions would be “guided” by someone knowledgable about the site; but giving as little cueing as possible and then, over a period of a few days, introduce more information about the site to Pat Price <i>“recognizing that the additional information supplied to the viewer at this point is at the cost of calibration within the experiment.” </i>[1]<br />
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The initial data given to him at the start of the experiment would be a map with the site marked on it and some drawings to help Price identify the location when he remote views it.<br />
<br />
On the 17 June 1974, the NPIC (the National Photographic Intelligence Center, who’d be supplying the data against which Price’s statements would be compared) and the NED (can’t find this acronym!) were both contacted for help in evaluating the data. It seems that the source was to be disguised before judging, and instead of overtly being from a psychic, it was going to be attributed to a janitor: someone with little technical knowledge but open access to URDF-3.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Semipalatinsk URDF-3, from top of gantry crane.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Source: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/martintrolle/12286235835">https://www.flickr.com/photos/martintrolle/12286235835</a></i></div>
<br />
Also at this time, a member of ORD (Office of Research & Development) visited SRI for two days, 17-18 June. During this time it was alluded that the SRI program was in danger of being closed, unless certain targets were met. <br />
<br />
This was followed by another visit from the ORD on the 28 June, and the report on this visit stated that <i>“the progress was disappointing”</i> and <i>“it appears that a pot pourri of small experiments were to have been conducted on an ad hoc basis on whatever subjects were around.”</i><br />
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<br />
I mention these two visits to put the URDF-3 session into some kind of context: the SRI project was falling behind schedule and Targ and Puthoff must've been keenly aware of the pressure from their sponsors.<br />
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On 27 and 28 June two meetings were held, the second one by telephone, to fine tune the experimental methods. The conclusions to this meeting were written up in notes on the appendix from the meeting held in May. [1]<br />
<br />
Now the protocol specified that the person who knew about the target would not be physically present during the sessions, nor would Price be given any drawings before the sessions began.<br />
<br />
More details regarding the protocol were given in a memo dated 3 July 1974 (ie, five days before the sessions were to begin). This memo stated that there would be three stages to the protocol. It also mentioned that, during stage two, Price would be told that the sponsor for this experiment was a government agency.<br />
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<br />
The experiment itself ran from 9-12 July 1974. The majority of information about the details of this period of time comes from a report dated 4 December 1975 <i>“An Analysis Of A Remote-Viewing Experiment of URDF-3”</i> by D. Stillman, a nuclear analyst from the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, working from sketches and tape recordings. [2] It’s worth noting that the plan to disguise the psychic nature of the data had been dropped but Stillman says in his introduction that, if anything, he would like psychic functioning to be true.<br />
<br />
At the start of the experiment, Price was given the map co-ordinates (<a href="https://www.google.com/maps/place/50%C2%B009'59.0%22N+78%C2%B022'22.0%22E/@50.1680626,78.3785591,710m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x0!8m2!3d50.1663889!4d78.3727778?hl=en">50°09'59"N 78°22'22"E</a>), was shown the site’s position on a number of maps, and told that it was 60 miles WSW of Semipalatinsk and 25 to 30 SW of a river and he was told it is a scientific military research and test area. Once he began remote viewing, he found the river and then the location. Stillman reports:<br />
<br />
<i>“He says the area he’s looking at has low one-story buildings that are partially dug into the ground giving the effect (as seen at ground level) of very short, squatty buildings, whereas they are actually fairly roomy on this inside. This description could very well describe a first look at the Operations Area at URDF-3.”</i><br />
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Source: <a href="http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/russia/semipalatinsk-16_nuc.htm">http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/russia/semipalatinsk-16_nuc.htm</a></span></i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8pQsJVl75BRJTlLxNyxBmDJoaAAO4AirAyG-ulJ3sTJCZ1UoCBTNo2hbz7hQ603b6nYSQdm2M6-evDLynJ2Vl1pmMXzyvN46dsIHD-bxKYucvI8ydu1d9jUzluFA8Ig1AZus8eGVQUEAi/s1600/urdf-3+from+google+maps+copy.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8pQsJVl75BRJTlLxNyxBmDJoaAAO4AirAyG-ulJ3sTJCZ1UoCBTNo2hbz7hQ603b6nYSQdm2M6-evDLynJ2Vl1pmMXzyvN46dsIHD-bxKYucvI8ydu1d9jUzluFA8Ig1AZus8eGVQUEAi/s320/urdf-3+from+google+maps+copy.jpg" width="195" /></a></div>
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<i>From Google Maps, imagery dated 2005</i></div>
<br />
Price then started describing tests being run that were related to the space program, followed by drawing a map of the research facility and the area which was incorrect, apart from the information already given to him.<br />
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Most of the data from Price in day one is wrong, and he shows an inclination to be led by the questioner, such as when the scientist in the room with Price during the session (probably Russell Targ) makes a suggestion as to what something he’s describing might be, Price says “You could be right,” before the scientist quickly reminds Price that he knows nothing about the target.<br />
<br />
The famous crane hit did not happen during day one, but in the evening. Midway through the first afternoon session, Price mentioned a crane and some low boy trucks. Later that day, the person knowledgeable about URDF-3 (possibly Ken Kress) must have spoken to SRI because Hal Puthoff called Pat Price with instructions to draw crane and the security fence around the perimeter, which Pat Price had also mentioned in passing on day one.<br />
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The drawing of the crane was handed in on the evening of day one, and the tapes from day two (10 July) begin with a discussion of them, mentioning the size of the crane: 150 feet in height. Stillman wrote: <i>“He [Price] said he didn’t realize how large the gantry crane was until he saw a man walking by one of the crane wheels.”</i> And Stillman followed this with the observation <i>“It seems inconceivable to imagine how he could draw such a likeness to the actual crane at URDF-3 unless: 1) he actually saw it through remote viewing, or 2) he was informed of what to draw by someone knowledgeable of URDF-3”</i><br />
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However, Stillman did not seem to have noticed that, until then, Price had frequently described features of a considerable size, such as an array of telegraph poles, a village, an airstrip, etc. It looks as if Price was working from the assumption that his work would be compared to aerial photography and the only data available would be something visible from a distance. As such, when he was given a clue that he had described something US intelligence knew to exist, he changed its description to one of great size.<br />
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Price’s sketch of the perimeter fence is only of a small section, and he doesn’t mention that there are actually four fences at URDF-3. However, Stillman drew in a perimeter fence on one of Price’s sketches because he could see that the shape was broadly similar to the fences around URDF-3.<br />
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Despite the success of the crane sketch, the rest of Price’s work on day two is largely unremarkable. Since his description of the huge crane did not match his earlier description of the building it interacts with, he spent a lot of time devising a complicated system including a second, smaller gantry crane, as well as drawing a large domed building and cement silo that Stillman says don’t exist at URDF-3.<br />
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Apart from the crane, there is another hit often attributed to the session: a large steel sphere under construction. It is not in the report by Stillman, which only covers the first two days in any detail. The third and fourth days supplied a lot of data but nothing that could be checked at that time.<br />
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So it must be from these two days, 11 and 12 July, when Pat Price described and drew large steel spheres mid-manufacture, in the form of individual gores, to be welded together. It is claimed that <i>“Pat Price had been right, and he had described the spheres and the special welding techniques before anyone in the United States knew they existed.” </i>[3]<br />
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The existence of these spheres was made public in a dramatic fashion in May 1977. Major General George J. Keegan, head of Air Force Intelligence had been trying (unsuccessfully) to convince the US military that the Soviets were building a particle beam weapon at Semipalatinsk for some years. When he retired, he went public with his suspicions and spoke to a writer from Aviation Weekly. [4] This sparked a public debate on the issue, with President Carter, the Defense Secretary, the CIA and the DIA all speaking out against the retired Major General’s conclusions.<br />
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While other research (and, eventually, complete disclosure from the Soviets) <a href="https://fas.org/spp/eprint/keegan.htm">discredited the particle beam weapon theory</a>, what was important to SRI was the detail about the steel spheres, constructed piece by piece, using a special welding method. Just as Pat Price had described.<br />
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It’s a shame that Stillman did not mention this or include any of day three’s six sketches in his report. Regrettably, the other analysis of Price’s work (W.T.Strand, <i>“Memorandum for the Director, Office of Technical Service; Subject: Evaluation of Data on Semipalatinsk Unidentified R&D Facility No. 3, USSR; 20 August 1974”</i>) is unavailable.<br />
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This means the earliest mention we have of this success is in Winter 1977, in a paper called <i>“Parapsychology in Intelligence: A Personal Review and Conclusions”</i> by Ken Kress, the CIA agent managing this particular experiment. He only mentions it in passing, though.<br />
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<i>“In general, most of Price’s data were wrong or could not be evaluated. He did, nevertheless, produce some amazing description, like buildings then under construction, spherical tank sections, and the crane.”</i> [5]<br />
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Price’s sketch of these sphere was published in 1983 in the heavily censored report <i>Grill Flame Operational Tasks</i>. On page seven, there is a sketch of metallic strips in the shape of a sphere segment, labelled “Sphere Fabrication”. [6]<br />
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There are a few issues with this as a piece of evidence. The first and most obvious is the date on the sketch. The handwritten date reads “6-18-74” which, if accurate, would mean it was drawn about one month before the URDF-3 work began. The other date, the rubber-stamped one, reads “7-18-74” which places it six days after the URDF-3 sessions were completed. Either way, this drawing does not appear to come from the four-day experiment. Additionally, throughout the sketches reproduced in Stillman’s report, whenever Price makes lengthy notes about a feature he does so in cursive writing, but in this sketch he has switched to writing in upper case.<br />
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There are the words “from prior” next to the handwritten date, so it’s possible that this is a redrawing of a sketch that SRI no longer had. This is likely since the session notes and tapes were not kept at SRI but sent off to be analysed. There is a letter from SRI to the CIA in 1986 asking for these to be returned but the reply stated that, apart from Stillman’s report, they couldn’t locate the other material. If this sketch is a reconstruction, one has to wonder how accurate it is and what was it based on.<br />
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The final problem with this sketch is related to the one immediately above it. Two sketches are labelled “Cyclinder clusters,” I assume to resemble the cluster of cylindrical tanks seen in photos of Semipalatinsk. <br />
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However, in Stillman’s report, this sketch is described as a “cement silo-like building” and not related to a cluster of cylinders at all. The details of Price’s descriptions have been removed in order to emphasise the similarity of the overall shape. If this sketch has been mis-labelled to increase the apparent level of success, has the sketch of the sphere sections also undergone a similar process?<br />
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Pat Price’s remote viewing of URDF-3 is frequently cited as a great success of psychic functioning. The dramatic similarity of Price’s drawing of a gantry crane with the sketch based on photographic intel makes it a popular choice when listing evidence for ESP. But this needs to be put into some kind of context: Price generated a great deal of data. Stillman was given about four hours of taped conversation from days one and two, seventy-nine pages of transcripts from days three and four, and a total of thirty sketches. <br />
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Furthermore, Price was not completely blind to the nature of the target and also someone knowledgeable about the location specifically asked him to draw the crane. Given this, it is hardly surprising that, on occasion, Price described features that could reasonably be compared to the actual location.<br />
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The final word on the issue should go to Stillman who, in his conclusion, wrote:<br />
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<i>“In trying to determine the validity of this remote viewing experiment, the worth of the data to the eventual user has to be considered. If the user had no way of checking, how could he differentiate the fact from the fiction? In the case of URDF-3, the only positive evidence of the rail-mounted gantry was far outweighed by the large amount of negative evidence noted in the body of this analysis.”</i><br />
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References:<br />
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[1] <a href="https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00787R000200130008-0.pdf">Appendix I: Suggested Protocol for Operational Remote-Viewing Exercise</a> dated 31 May 1974 with handwritten notes added on or after 28 June<br />
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[2] <a href="https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00791R000200040002-1.pdf">D. Stillman (1975) <i>An Analysis Of A Remote-Viewing Experiment of URDF-3</i></a><br />
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[3] Schnabel, J. (2011)Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America’s Psychic Spies, Random House Publushing Group<br />
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[4] <a href="http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/1977/eirv04n19-19770510/eirv04n19-19770510_040-aviation_week_magazine_soviets_p.pdf">Detailed summary of Aviation Weekly article</a>.<br />
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[5] <a href="https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00791R000200030040-0.pdf">Kress, K.A. (1977) Parapsychology in Intelligence: A personal review and conclusions”</a><br />
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[6] <a href="https://archive.org/details/CIA-RDP96-00788R001100340001-3">Puthoff, H.E., Lavelle, L.A. (1983) "Project Grill Flame Operational Tasks"</a><br />
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<br />Ersbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08012602968152264418noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2076774095757676470.post-73281239458866576192016-07-07T19:41:00.000+01:002017-11-20T21:27:25.393+00:00Ingo Swann’s remote viewing of JupiterWith <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasas-juno-spacecraft-in-orbit-around-mighty-jupiter">Juno in orbit around the planet Jupiter</a>, I felt like going back and looking at another space probe that visited Jupiter, only this time, it was the mind of a psychic that travelled, not a piece of high-tech equipment.<br />
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By the Spring of 1973 the SRI research into remote viewing, funded by the CIA and lead by physicists Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ, had been going for around half a year.<br />
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Ingo Swann, a psychic who worked extensively on the project, was tired of Earth-bound co-ordinates and wanted to see if it were possible to remote view extra-terrestrial locations. With that in mind, Ingo arranged with another psychic, Harold Sherman, to remote view Jupiter and then compare their findings to the data from the probe Pioneer 10 which would fly by that planet in November/December of that year.<br />
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Although it wasn’t part of the CIA-funded work, Targ and Puthoff agreed to carry out the session with Swann according to SRI protocols. Sherman carried out his session in Arkansas, many hundreds of miles from SRI in California. The sessions took place simultaneously at 6.00pm PST on 27 April 1973.<br />
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This session has been reported as a great success for Ingo Swann as he saw a ring of rocks circling the planet: something that no one had even imagined at that time. As far as astronomy was concerned, Saturn was the only planet with a ring system.<br />
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There are many different versions of this story. Most get confused between Pioneer 10 (which did not detect Jupiter's ring in 1973) and Voyager 1 (which was the first to detect them, but that wouldn't happen for another six years, in 1979). Also, some versions of events specifically state that Ingo describes a ring of rocks, and that after the session was over they took this information to astronomers who all dismissed it as nonsense.<br />
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The original transcript is <a href="http://u2.lege.net/biomindsuperpowers.com/site_retrieved_by_wget-20130206/Pages/1973JupiterRVProbe.html">available online at this site linked to in this sentence</a>. Although this is dated 1995, the section containing the transcript is very close to the version given in Mind Reach (1977) by Targ and Puthoff, and is also broadly similar to the version as told in Swann's book To Kiss Earth Good-bye (1975), so I think that part is pretty reliable.<br />
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<i>EDIT 29/01/17: <a href="https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/NSA-RDP96X00790R000100040010-3.pdf">this contemporary transcript</a> is now available on the CIA site (links to a pdf).</i><br />
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The passage that is usually quoted with reference to rings around Jupiter is:<br />
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<i>"Very high in the atmosphere there are crystals... they glitter. Maybe the stripes are like bands of crystals, maybe like rings of Saturn, though not far out like that. Very close within the atmosphere."</i><br />
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This phrase “maybe like rings of Saturn” together with a sketch of a ringed planet, is considered evidence that Ingo Swann saw Jupiter's rings before they were scientifically detected.<br />
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However, this is not a “ring of rocks” as some versions state. It's a band of crystals. And this raises the question if this “band of crystals” was actually recognised as a ring of rocks at the time, or if that interpretation was only arrived at after the data from Voyager 1 was known in 1979.<br />
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It is instructive to look for reports on Swann's remote viewing session before 1979, to see if it mentions Jupiter's ring system.<br />
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The first I found was an article in the National Enquirer, 9 September 1975. In the paragraph where it talks about Swann's findings, it reads:<br />
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<i>“Swann said Jupiter possessed a poisonous “bitter cold” atmosphere “of myriad colors – yellow, red, violet, some greens, like a giant fireworks display.” He said that he saw what looked like a “tornado” and also observed “winds of terrific velocity”. He detected “powerful magnetic forces.”</i><br />
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No mention of any rings around Jupiter, even though the story claims that science later confirmed all of his findings.<br />
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The next one I found was from the San Fransisco Sunday Examiner and Chronicle for 10 April 1977. It read:<br />
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<i>“Each </i>[ie, Swann and Sherman]<i> spoke of glittering ice crystals, winds of terrific velocity, great mountain ranges and powerful magnetic forces.”</i><br />
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Again, no mention of any rings.<br />
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Also in 1977, Targ and Puthoof's book “Mind Reach” was published. This described some of their (non-classified) work into remote viewing. One of the episodes they wrote about was Swann's mission to Jupiter, but they don't mention any ring system, either. In fact, quite the opposite. They wrote:<br />
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<i>“The descriptions sounded reasonable; nothing was particularly at variance with any known facts.”</i><br />
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I doubt they'd say that if Swann had just told them that Jupiter had a ring system. So this source, too, doesn't include Swann's prediction.<br />
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Swann wrote about this session himself in 1975 in his book To Kiss Earth Goodbye. His version of the famous sentence comparing Jupiter to Saturn reads: <i>"maybe the stripes of Jupiter are like bands of crystals, like rings of Saturn" </i>which doesn't sound like a description of a ring system.<br />
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It's difficult to find an exact point where the claim begins to be made. The best I can make is in 1982-83. In 1982 James Randi wrote about Swann and Sharmer's session in his book Flim-Flam, but there is no mention of any rings. Meanwhile, in 1984 in the Skeptical Inquirer, we find a quote:<br />
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<i>“Earlier, they had discovered the rings around Jupiter years before their existence was scientifically established by satellite photographs.”</i><br />
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This sentence is referenced to the November 1984 issue of a sci-fi magazine named Analog. This appears to be the earliest I can find of the claim. Unfortunately, SI is only in snippet view on Google Books, and I can't find Analog magazine for 1984 at all, so I can't check out their references.<br />
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I think this inability at recognising Ingo's “band of crystals” as a “rings of rocks” tells us that this is an example of a bit of creative interpretation. Also, it's worth mentioning that later in the transcript from 1973 Ingo Swann talks about “those cloud layers, those crystal layers” so I think it's safe to assume the “bands of crystals” were referring to the bands of colours already seen across Jupiter's visible surface from Earth and had nothing to do with any as-yet-undiscovered ring system.<br />
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Jupiter, from a 1961 illustration (From <i>Astronomy </i>by Patrick Moore)</div>
Ersbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08012602968152264418noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2076774095757676470.post-71189430315824942832016-05-28T20:06:00.003+01:002016-05-28T20:08:49.136+01:00Ersby’s Triangle: An UpdateA few weeks ago, I decided to revisit <a href="http://ersby.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/ersbys-triangle.html">my post about Ersby’s Triangle</a> – a semi-serious look at the multiples of square numbers needed to create Pascal’s Triangle.<br />
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I wanted to see if there were any formulae to describe the numbers along a particular diagonal. At first, I tried my original method of pen and paper and simply messing around with sequences of different powers of numbers, but nothing seemed to work. I put it to one side and forgot about it.<br />
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Then today I discovered <a href="https://oeis.org/wiki/Welcome">The On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences</a>. So I typed in a few of the diagonals (from top left to bottom right) from Ersby’s Triangle.<br />
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I soon came up with some interesting results as the first two diagonals I looked at (after the diagonal with 1, 2, 3...) both linked to the largest number of pieces you could get from a shape with each cut. The <a href="http://oeis.org/A000124">first diagonal</a> referred to two-dimensional shapes and <a href="http://oeis.org/A003600">the next one</a> referred to three-dimensional shapes.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOWBwdGKQe7aw3KImBBQy2xB672Ow0-k6b1n4OgnF2h1w7wgJKPtBvuKSRDM3Z4nEHUhmpEmUOdwief4_mZ3dEfFlYCuwb48MYwKMtDSJy9zyr170Gy-wN0Z0fQbP3CqfTHupE8e2ClMUX/s1600/ersbys+triangle+slices+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOWBwdGKQe7aw3KImBBQy2xB672Ow0-k6b1n4OgnF2h1w7wgJKPtBvuKSRDM3Z4nEHUhmpEmUOdwief4_mZ3dEfFlYCuwb48MYwKMtDSJy9zyr170Gy-wN0Z0fQbP3CqfTHupE8e2ClMUX/s320/ersbys+triangle+slices+copy.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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So I was excited to see if that continued, and if the next diagonal referred to four-dimensional shapes.<br />
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It didn’t. But, undeterred, I kept searching.<br />
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Then I noticed that a particular paper kept being cited in the search results I was getting. I followed the link to <i>Catalan Triangle Numbers and Binomial Coefficients</i> by Kyu-Hwan Lee and Se-Jin Oh from the University of Connecticut. And there, tucked away on page 14, was the closest I’ve ever come to being referenced in a mathematics paper.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijAZmAouwcG2ZEm2KHJOmuyySrsYf5ErS5QEkwVTCCnmVMp_Kl662EBX8Bd2MLxswMwS30JiyXgvbNhvFEc1yFjo95YNAioM4limr0GEb92O8TJzRD5zHJlkzQLeQbCG0x4qRr7vgzeXIU/s1600/ersbys+triangle+in+print+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="82" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijAZmAouwcG2ZEm2KHJOmuyySrsYf5ErS5QEkwVTCCnmVMp_Kl662EBX8Bd2MLxswMwS30JiyXgvbNhvFEc1yFjo95YNAioM4limr0GEb92O8TJzRD5zHJlkzQLeQbCG0x4qRr7vgzeXIU/s320/ersbys+triangle+in+print+copy.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQy4J12a9asyiEG1rY6B9Oe3vQmY_D8rpkw5pN4xB9XbkghaMPQOrqPM2FqUyQRhXP79wTk8MNTYOpXuUVJx2G5bU3QT6XyPk5-xF4KpwStvn_4LhXeIl3EPu2IyLF90JOuXacljOVRBlH/s1600/featured+diagonals+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="269" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQy4J12a9asyiEG1rY6B9Oe3vQmY_D8rpkw5pN4xB9XbkghaMPQOrqPM2FqUyQRhXP79wTk8MNTYOpXuUVJx2G5bU3QT6XyPk5-xF4KpwStvn_4LhXeIl3EPu2IyLF90JOuXacljOVRBlH/s320/featured+diagonals+copy.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Amazing. If only I knew what the paper actually meant.<br />
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<i>References:</i><br />
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<a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1601.06685"><i>Lee, K.H., Oh, S.J., (2016) "Catalan Triangle Numbers and Binomial Coefficients," arXiv:1601.06685v</i></a>Ersbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08012602968152264418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2076774095757676470.post-27716560443371330462015-08-25T20:46:00.001+01:002017-02-05T15:35:07.658+00:00Fewer train reservations before disastersIn 1956, E.W. Cox wrote an article for the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research in which he looked for evidence of precognition of fatal train crashes (10 fatalities or more) in the numbers of reservations bought for that particular train, with the hypothesis that any form of precognition would be visible in a drop in reservations for that train on that day.<br />
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I do not have a copy of the original paper by E.W.Cox, but I did find a page on the internet which had his data, as well as an examination of his methods. The page is currently (25th Aug '15) unavailable, but I have put a link at the bottom of this article.<br />
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He examined the data in two ways: one was to look at the data day by day. In this, he compared the reservations for the crash day with the previous seven days. The second way was to compare the crash day reservations with the same day on the previous four weeks.<br />
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His measure of success was if the number of reservations was the lowest of all the other days. This he called a hit, and its chances of success are calculated as 1 in 8 for the daily data and 1 in 5 for the weekly data.<br />
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He did this for 28 crashes.<br />
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For the monthly data, he found ten days when the lowest number of reservations fell on the day of the crash. In other words, ten hits out of twenty-eight trials, with a 1/5 chance of success. This is statistically significant at p=0.04, z=1.76 (one-tailed) or odds of 1 in 25.<br />
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For the daily data, there are nine hits for the twenty-eight days, with a 1/8 success rate. This gives use p=0.005, z=2.54 (one-tailed) or odds of 1 in 185.<br />
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The data are as follows:<br />
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<i>(It's worth noting that Cox could not get all the data he needed, so when he had a gap, he inserted the average number for that set of data. I've highlighted those figures in brown. Figures in yellow are the lowest figures for that particular journey.)</i><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikTOtbtjRdp475qT3ujrUSBgEVb6x8LpiR0AMLrp3-JIuuBK6R9bsdYhXxNrnvuw2q4cKY7FwA_asjWL3Pt7FrNGuN23VW77WYl7JSEkH9eKYKu53x5DbLCjYtkoa7PsiAuSEgarK9MUXF/s1600/spreadsheet+daily+for+W.E.Cox+1956.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="191" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikTOtbtjRdp475qT3ujrUSBgEVb6x8LpiR0AMLrp3-JIuuBK6R9bsdYhXxNrnvuw2q4cKY7FwA_asjWL3Pt7FrNGuN23VW77WYl7JSEkH9eKYKu53x5DbLCjYtkoa7PsiAuSEgarK9MUXF/s400/spreadsheet+daily+for+W.E.Cox+1956.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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However, as the psuedo-scepticisme article points out, the data sample is too small to support a binomial distribution. Taking the rule of thumb that np>=5 (n=number of trials, p=probability of success) there aren't enough data points to justify a binomial sample. In the case of the daily data np equals 28 * 0.125 = 3.5. Additionally, Cox allowed tied hits to stand, suggesting to me that the binomial method wasn't the right one to use.<br />
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I decided to take a look at the data myself, but this time I looked at whether the reservations for a particular day were significantly above or below the average for that set of weeks or days. I thought that this would be a more sensitive measure of success, especially given that some of the hits were by a margin of three or less reservations in difference.<br />
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I found that for the daily data, the day of the crash was significantly below the average (ie, fewer sales) seven times. This is the highest figure for this category, which supports the idea that precognition lead people to make fewer reservations on that day. However, there were also three occasions where the sales of reservations was significantly above the average. This makes it comparable to D-4 when there were five below average and one above.<br />
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On the weekly data, the day of the crash had seven occasions when it was significantly below average and four times above. This is actually worse than D-28 which also had seven below average but only two occasions when it was above. In fact, using Cox's original method, D-28 has ten hits out of twenty-eight, just like the day of the crash does.<br />
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I'm no statistician, so I encourage anyone to look at the spreadsheet I used, and perhaps suggest improvements. This can be downloaded here.<br />
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<a href="https://www.mediafire.com/?mwnxfrztogdt836">https://www.mediafire.com/?mwnxfrztogdt836</a><br />
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<i>References:<br />
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Cox, W. E. (1956). "Precognition: An analysis. II. Subliminal precognition." Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 50, 99–109. as cited in the article “Précognition subliminale lors d’accidents de train : relecture critique d’une recherche de W.E. Cox” http://www.pseudo-scepticisme.com/Precognition-subliminale-lors-d.html</i>Ersbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08012602968152264418noreply@blogger.com0