Jock Brocas is a spiritual author and teacher with books published internationally. Jock is also the president of the charity organization assmpi and works tirelessly to he others develop spiritually and live a more rewarding life. Join Jock Brocas on a spiritual journey.
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A quiet presence in an ordinary room, the kind many crisis apparition experiences begin with. People sometimes describe a moment that only feels strange afterwards. Nothing dramatic at the time. A sense someone is nearby. A quick impression. Occasionally a voice, or the feeling of being watched.
Then life carries on.
The phone rings later. News arrives. A death. An accident. Something serious.
Only then does the earlier moment return and feel different.
Accounts like this turn up everywhere. Different cultures, different periods, very similar descriptions.
What are crisis apparitions?
Researchers eventually began using the phrase "crisis apparitions" for experiences reported around moments of danger, trauma, or death. The definition is simple, but the timing is what draws attention.
Most reports are spontaneous. People are not trying to contact anyone. They are going about their ordinary routines when something interrupts them. Often the person involved is emotionally close. The experience tends to feel unusually clear compared to daydreaming or memory.
Not everyone interprets these moments the same way. Some treat them as coincidence. Others see them as psychological responses. Parapsychology tends to step back and look at the pattern rather than the explanation.
Early Psychical Research
Early psychical researchers began collecting firsthand accounts in an attempt to understand these experiences rather than dismiss them.
By the late nineteenth century, people had started writing these experiences down more deliberately. Instead of passing them along as stories, they were being collected, compared, and discussed.
The aim was cautious. Members were less interested in proving survival after death than in asking a simpler question. Did these reports appear often enough to take seriously?
One ‘but project’, later known as the Census of Hallucinations, asked large numbers of ordinary people whether they had ever experienced a vivid impression of someone who was not physically present, particularly around important events.
Some investigators felt a pattern might exist around moments of crisis. That suggestion has never been fully settled, but the material itself continued to be referenced.
The Admiral Tryon Case
A distant ship fading into mist, echoing the sudden loss at the heart of many crisis apparition reports.
One example often mentioned in this context is the death of Vice Admiral Sir George Tryon in 1893. Tryon led the British Mediterranean Fleet. During naval maneuvers off the Syrian coast, a command resulted in a collision between HMS Victoria and HMS Camperdown.
The ship sank quickly.
In the period afterwards, a number of people connected to Tryon reflected on impressions they had experienced around that time. The accounts themselves were understated. What drew interest was when those impressions were said to have occurred.
Researchers approached the case carefully. It was not treated as evidence on its own, but as a reminder of how these accounts tend to surface and how difficult they are to separate from memory, coincidence, and grief.
Patterns Across Reports
Across many reports, certain tendencies appear. Emotional closeness shows up repeatedly. Experiences involving strangers do occur, but far less often.
Timing is harder to assess. Many accounts are described after the person learns about the crisis. Memory shifts in those moments. Meaning settles in quickly. Researchers have always acknowledged that problem.
Closeness appears again and again in these reports. Experiences involving strangers do occur, but far less often.
The repetition is not dramatic. It is simply persistent, which is part of why researchers keep returning to the subject.
Psychological Explanations
Psychology tends to begin from connection. People remain mentally oriented toward those who matter to them. Worry, expectation, coincidence, and memory can overlap in ways that feel striking afterwards.
Another factor is reinterpretation. Moments that seemed ordinary at the time may be reconsidered once new information arrives. Memory adjusts quickly in those circumstances.
Experiences of presence after loss are widely reported and do not necessarily indicate anything unusual in a clinical sense. For many people they are part of ordinary grieving. Crisis apparitions may represent an earlier point along that same spectrum.
Parapsychological Perspectives
Parapsychology approaches the question from a different angle. Rather than dismissing the experiences outright, it asks whether extreme situations might coincide with unusual forms of information transfer.
Some researchers describe this in terms of spontaneous telepathy or emotional signaling. The idea remains tentative. If anomalous communication exists, moments of crisis would be the most likely place to look.
That position does not resolve the question, but it keeps inquiry open.
Modern Research and Experience Studies
Modern research methods often rely on experience surveys rather than individual case investigation. Large collections allow researchers to look for recurring features even when verification is difficult.
Online reporting has changed the landscape. People share experiences quickly, sometimes before timelines are clear. That creates both opportunity and complication.
Crisis apparitions now sit alongside research into bereavement experiences, deathbed visions, and anomalous perception more broadly. The boundaries overlap but the timing element remains distinctive.
Why the Topic Persists
Reflecting on experiences that resist simple explanation is where crisis apparition research often returns.
These experiences sit in an awkward space. They appear too often to dismiss entirely, yet not with enough consistency to explain comfortably.
For many people, the meaning comes first. Explanation follows later, if it comes at all. Even those who lean toward psychological accounts often note how distinct the experience feels.
Researchers, meanwhile, focus on recurrence. Patterns raise questions even when answers remain uncertain.
A Quiet Mystery
Crisis apparition reports are rarely dramatic in presentation. They are brief interruptions. A sense of presence. A glance. A moment that only becomes significant later.
The Tryon case shows how these reports enter discussion. It is not unusual in structure, which is precisely why it is referenced. The details matter less than the pattern it reflects.
What keeps the subject alive is not spectacle. It is repetition. People continue to describe moments in which someone seems to appear at exactly the point something changes.
The explanation remains unsettled. The pattern does not disappear.
Further Reading
Phantasms of the Living — Edmund Gurney, F. W. H. Myers, Frank Podmore (1886)
There are some critical first steps that all beginners need to embrace if they want to expand their psychic abilities. Simply noticing these experiences won’t help someone to cultivate and gain the control they need to put this useful skill-set into action. It takes dedication and direct effort, but where does one begin?
Step One - Exploring The Scientific Foundations
Many budding psychics aren’t even aware of the existence of scientific research regarding psychic-based phenomena. Without this critical knowledge, it can leave them feeling confused and doubtful about the validity of their experiences. By exploring the scientific basics, one can gain a sense of confidence and understanding that will make the developmental process far easier. So where does one find this scientific information?
Despite the lack of mainstream acknowledgement, the academic study of psychic phenomenon is actually considered to have been formally created on February 20th, 1882 when the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) was founded by a group of distinguished scientists, thinkers, and scholars of the time (Irwin & Watt, 2007). In the 1930’s, J.B. Rhine began psychical research in the U.S. while working at Duke University. However, he replaced the use of the phrase ‘psychical research’ with the term parapsychology - meaning above or beyond psychology — and it is this terminology that still defines the field today.
I have encountered countless people who want answers about their psychic experiences, but when asked what they are doing to solve those issues, they admit to having done nothing. This brings us to the second critical step of taking the initiative. There are, however, a variety of good reasons for why someone is not taking the initiative towards their psychic development. For example, fear and confusion are common reasons for not moving forward, as are a lack of time or discipline. In addition, some people are merely curious, putting psychic development far down on their priority list. There’s nothing wrong with this decision. It’s a personal choice. But in reality, without a burning desire along with effort and dedication, one will rarely get far in any area of life unless there is a willingness to truly set aside the time to make things happen.
Psychic Experience Evaluation
In order to evaluate this step, take some time to make a list of all of those issues that are preventing forward momentum in one’s psychic development. And be sure to be brutally honest when making the list. No one else is going to see it. In other words, if ‘lazy’ and ‘unmotivated’ are reasons for not developing, then that’s perfectly ok. This simply indicates, that at least for now, perhaps one’s psychic development needs to go to the wayside.
With a completed list of those issues that are preventing one from taking the initiative, the next step is to tackle one item at a time. For example, let’s look at confusion as this is a commonly reported issue. With confusion as the theme, make a more extensive list of everything that is confusing about psychic development; how to practice, who to trust for assistance, where to find a community, uncertainty about personal skills and experiences, etc. By breaking down the topic of confusion into smaller bites, these then become action steps that can be addressed one at a time. And by doing this, you are now taking the initiative. Yes, perhaps it seems a slow and maybe even irrelevant process, but by getting to the root of any resistance, one starts the path towards resolution.
Step Three - Documenting Psychic Events
The third critical step for psychic beginners is to pull out a pen and paper and to document any and all potential events. No matter how silly they might seem, if there’s something odd, extraordinary, synchronous, or weird that occurred, then just make note of it. It only takes a few minutes each night to jot down anything that took place during the day. Or, document it as soon as it happens. Either way, do this regularly for a few weeks, ideally a month, until there are a fair number of documented experiences.
Use a Psychic Journal
Remember to list as many details as possible for each event. These can be helpful later – indicating patterns and uncovering tendencies towards certain psi-based experiences and/or skills. By its nature, psi is often incomplete, symbolic, and deeply intimate in nature. This means discerning personal meaning and deciphering one’s unique way of psychic functioning. For example, some individuals are very prone to seeing colors with each of those colors having unique meanings just for them. Others may hear song lyrics or movie titles or see animals or designs. These symbolic psi-based impressions will have different meanings for different people, so finding the clues and patterns as they pertain to YOU is all that matters. This involves documenting and making note and discovering insight over time - as well as patience!
In addition, a willingness to embrace psi enhances its frequency! By documenting and journaling, you are not only noticing psi but also encouraging it to take place. This notion is supported by the work of Gertrude Schmeidler who demonstrated through her research that belief in psi created positive results, while disbelief actually discouraged results – even above statistical chance. She coined this variable as ‘the sheep-goat effect.’ So, by embracing psi, even through something as simple as journaling, you can start to pull in more experiences to help hone-in on your particular psychic skill-sets.
Step Four - Learn The Psychic Language
The fourth critical step towards psychic awareness is to learn some basic terminology and language as it relates to psychic functioning – ideally from reliable resources. As previously discussed in step one, parapsychological organizations are a great place to start. There are, however, two drawbacks to these scientific organizations. First, since they are so academically oriented, some of their material can be rather confusing and overwhelming to the general layperson. Secondly, they observe and study psychic experiences from the outside looking in. This means they provide a very important objective look at psychic experiences but may be lacking in actual personal experience. For these reasons, it can also be very helpful to search out reliable paranormal resources as well as qualified psychics and mediums who have an understanding of parapsychology.
A well-trained paranormal group should understand the scientific basics surrounding parapsychology. This allows them to help someone wade through their confusion, offering clarity, resources, and guidance for further education. I won’t address the various aspects of finding a good paranormal group at this time. Just remember to ask them about their experience and training and how they plan to offer assistance. Far too many groups base their techniques and assistance on methods developed from television and know nothing of parapsychology. However, there are also plenty of quality field investigators out there. These folks can be very helpful in providing education and awareness for those having psychic experiences.
The Use Of Psi
In the same way, a well-qualified and experienced psychic or medium can also be extremely helpful. These folks offer personal experience and insights that academics often just can’t provide. Because psychics and mediums have ‘walked-the-walk,’ they can be a great resource for honing-in on what is psi and what isn’t, what it feels and looks like, explaining fears and resistances, discussing spirit visitations from an experiential perspective, as well as offering a basic vocabulary. It is important to explore not just the science, but also from those who are already utilizing the skill themselves.
While the ability to verbalize and speak the psychic language may not seem relevant to development, try to think of it this way. Let’s say that someone goes to school to learn how to work on cars. Before they can succeed they need to learn the various car parts, the way the parts function, and the tools that are required for working with those parts. This means learning the language and tools of the trade in order to become successful. The same applies to the psychic world as well - learning the language and tools of the trade leads to success.
Put it together
Summary: Put together, these four steps are all designed to help individuals get started on exploring, understanding, and expanding on their psychic experiences. Perhaps they don’t seem very glamourous, but learning the science, taking initiative by identifying resistances and finding solutions, documenting personal psi-based events, and then learning the psychic language and tools of the trade from a variety of reputable resources will all go a long way towards making the process unfold.
In sum, just as the magical traditions have maintained, belief modulates psi performance. In other words, if you don’t believe in magic, then no magic for you.
Real Magic, by Dean Radin
For the first time in the 14 years I’ve been writing about parapsychology, I’m writing about a group of experiments directly from the original studies and only from the original studies with help from the researcher. Why? Because I’m one of the first people outside of the research team and faculty committee members that’s read them. These experiments focus on psi missing (missing targets in excess of chance rates) which has some pretty interesting ramifications.
What usually happens is that by the time I see a particular area of research, it’s already been picked over like a Christmas turkey at a homeless camp. There are typically lengthy technical summaries, news articles, blog posts, skeptical commentary and other explanations that paint a picture of the research through various eyes.
It is quite strange to have no skepticism to wade through, no other articles examining the research and no one else to talk to about it aside from the original researcher. Outside of the original papers, which have been online, hidden in plain sight for a few years, this research is being shared with the world for the very first time in this article.
Most people have very little contact with scientific research into psychic ability outside of the occasional item they might see in a magazine or newspaper about a new study. Very few people, scientists included, know that credible research even exists.
Psi Wars: TED, Wikipedia and the Battle for the Internet, by Craig Weiler
The Professor
Meet Russell Gruber, PhD, who ran a parapsychology lab at Eastern Illinois University (EIU) for 18 years.
Russell Gruber image credit: Russell Gruber
He grew up in White Plains, a suburb north of New York City, with a social worker mom, a father who built animatronic puppets, an older sister and a younger brother. He remembers being an introspective child, and recalls, from a young age, being fascinated by the ability to vividly imagine things in daydreams and the more vivid realities created in dreams at night. These early interests eventually led him to a career in psychology with a focus on the study of consciousness.
Recently retired, Gruber summarizes his professorship at Eastern Illinois University:
After earning a BA from Stony Brook and a PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Cincinnati in 1988, I joined the psychology department at Eastern in 1991. My early research focused on lucid dreaming, nightmares and uncovering styles and functions of dreaming but I shifted in mid-career to the study of parapsychology.
During my 28 years at Eastern I taught primarily as a member of the Clinical Psychology master’s program, including courses on psychotherapy, cognitive assessment, and internship seminars. I also really enjoyed the chance to teach at the undergraduate level. My favorite course, each spring semester, was a capstone seminar titled the psychology of mind that allowed me to integrate my interests in consciousness, dreaming, mind-body health, and parapsychology.
In addition to teaching and conducting my own research, I chaired over 30 Masters theses, supervised over 100 interns and many undergraduate researchers.
Gruber also won 5 awards for teaching excellence from EIU along the way. Like many parapsychologists, his personal psychic experiences initially drew his interest towards psi research, but because controversy follows parapsychology everywhere, he wisely followed the well worn path of waiting until he had tenure to open a parapsychology lab. As he says: “I feel like what I’ve been doing for my job is more entertaining than what a lot of other people do for fun. Once I started finding psychic stuff in the lab, I was hooked.”
Truly Independent
Gruber’s research was done completely independently of the parapsychology community for many years while using his own novel methods, and in the process he replicated many important findings in this field of research. This is huge for parapsychology because it means that these findings confirm that previous research results didn’t occur because of peculiarities or flaws in the original studies.
Innovations in Psi Research
Gruber and his team of undergraduates and graduate students did not set out to prove the existence of psi. Given the many successful experiments dating back to the 1950’s, that would not have contributed much to the field. After examining the literature, they concentrated on finding out more about what it takes to successfully test for psychic ability.
Gruber, along with many other parapsychologists operate from a field theory perspective, which assumes an underlying, unseen interconnectedness between people. He began by placing people in social groups (this creates a social field) to test the theory. The experiments were essentially replications of phenomena that had already been observed in other studies. Gruber and his team, with this one simple methodology, explored multiple phenomena including the effect of belief, psi missing, differentiation and field effects.
The Answer is a Battleship
The team began with an experiment where the group attempted to psychically help the receiver find a target in a series of Where’s Waldo pictures. It didn’t work. The pictures they used had so much information in them that may have overloaded any telepathy that might have occurred. Gruber describes this as “way too much noise.”
Next, the team tried an experiment with unscrambling anagrams, but again, it just wasn’t a good task for psi research.
Then, one evening, during a research meeting, one of the assistants, Mike Steinhour, suggested using the board game Battleship, and it worked.
Pencil and paper version of the game “Battleship.” Image: Actam, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Using the battleship game as a model, the team ran a pilot study using a nine grid square to see how the test subjects would do. They were allowed to keep trying until they got a hit. The results were promising right away and then here’s what happened on the 12th run:
Image: Russell Gruber
This research assistant got six direct hits out of twelve possible. The odds of this happening by chance are less than one in a thousand. Gruber and his team felt pretty sure that they were on to something.
Gruber explained:
We tried a grid of nine targets (allowing repeat calls) and very quickly got strong evidence of psi – but the task was tedious and frustrating. We then tried a rectangle with four targets – one in each corner and this became the forced choice, spatial location task that we used for the majority of experiments. I consider these to be mental telepathy experiments, (as opposed to clairvoyance or precognition) as senders were an integral part of the method.
Nine Theses Tell the Tale
This kicked off 18 years of process oriented research. Many of the findings from the experiments were written up in the form of 9 master theses by his students over the course of several years. An advantage of master theses over published experiments is that they go into far more depth both in the literature review and the explanation of the experiments themselves. The students spent a lot of time and effort on these theses, making them clear and thorough. As a result, they are easier to follow than most experiment write ups.
Gruber ran the studies with a team of research assistants while graduate students performed the task of literature review and write up. (There are actually ten parapsychology theses, but one of them is a telephone telepathy replication.) There are a number of studies that didn’t make it into theses, some successful, some not. While many directions were explored over the years, the nine theses represent the core of the work.
When the masters theses are read in chronological order, they lay out the evolution of an increasingly sophisticated, yet relatively simple experiment that lends very convincing support to many previous researcher’s findings. In addition, the research shows glimpses into how we are all shaping our own realities. More on that later.
Running in Silent Mode
Gruber made the decision early on to run his parapsychology lab with a low profile, which is why the research hasn’t gone the route of formal publishing, which in turn is why it’s only now being widely shared. There were several very good reasons for this.
First, he would have had to spend time publishing instead of doing experiments, so he and his team would have accomplished far less. Once the research got out into the world, he would have to fend off skeptics and defend the experiments rather than improve them.
Second, this is process oriented research, not proof oriented, so the emphasis was on learning from previous experiments as a guide to designing the next, not proving a specific hypothesis. Dealing with criticism while you’re still working things out isn’t helpful. Third, the low profile meant that the lab wasn’t drawing unwanted outside attention, so Gruber and his team were left alone.
Hits and Psi Missing
A key component of this research centers around a well known phenomena in parapsychology known as “psi missing.” In testing, you typically measure for psychic ability by comparing it to purely chance results. Success is typically called a “hit” and a failure is called a “miss.” Since the objective is to produce results that are not the result of pure chance, you can do this either by succeeding in excess of chance rates ormissing in excess of chance rates. The latter is what’s called “psi missing.”
Gruber’s research leaned into examining the psi missing effect and found that it was often easier to trigger than psi hitting in a lab setting.
The experiment evolved over the years, centering around the relatively simple concept of choosing between four locations with one space randomly designated as a hit and one randomly designated as a miss. If you got a hit or a miss, you stopped there, but any other result allowed you to keep trying.
This eventually evolved into a challenge for money. For example, in some studies test subjects got paid for hits, while in others, they competed with each other in teams. This was primarily intended to keep them actively engaged and focused. Even with a monetary incentive for correct answers, psi missing was often the expected outcome.
Speaking of money, the research was self funded by Gruber. On the days he ran experiments he withdrew $100 of his own money in $1 bills occasionally clarified to the tellers that this was for scientific experiments, not a strip club. Parapsychology research is rarely properly funded and he spent thousands of dollars of his own money to support the research.
This is a foam board from one of the earlier studies, before the studies were automated as a computer program. Image: Russell Gruber
Heather Warner-Angel explained the methodology in her thesis:
An example of a typical methodology is as follows: A receiver, picked at random from a group of senders, sits in an isolated room in front of a foam board marked with four target circles (one in each corner). Three red discs with strips of Velcro adhered to the backs are used as target markers.
The receiver is viewed via closed video feed by a group of senders who are facing an identical foam board in a separate room with only two red discs, one marked (+$) and the other marked (-$). Target locations for the (+$) and (-$) discs are selected in the sender room by using random numbers. The receiver is signaled by a bell tone that the target locations have been chosen. The senders try to transmit the (+$) target location to the receiver telepathically and the receiver attempts to locate it marking it on the foam board with one of the discs.
The receiver continues to place discs on the board until either the (+$) or (-$) target is found. If the (+$) is selected by the third attempt, a bell is sounded to indicate that the receiver has scored a "hit." If the (-$) target is chosen, a buzzer is sounded to indicate that the receiver has scored a "miss." Several trials (usually 16) are run. The receiver is returned to the sender room and another receiver is randomly selected from the group. A single response is referred to as a trial, a set of trials constitutes a run, a series of runs constitutes a session, and several sessions comprise an experiment. (Warner-Angel, 2017)
Gruber explained that this methodology uses a number of innovations. He pointed out that a problem with forced choice psi tasks is the strong tendency of participants to avoid repeating previous answers. He explained that by allowing more than one try to locate a target, and using location instead of a picture or a symbol, and adding a “miss” target, this tendency may be significantly diminished.
Another advantage of adding the miss target is that it makes hits and misses equally likely to occur by chance, which in turn may allow better measurements of “psi defensiveness” – the unconscious creation of a defensive state of mind- leading to the rejection of useful psychic information.
Social Groups
In an early study, the experimenters created an artificial social situation by separating people into two groups to test the field theory hypothesis. In-groups (people who were members of a large group of senders) did much better than Out-groups (people who were excluded from the group).
Image: “The Effects of Social Fields on the Telepathic Reception of Information” Yarnell (2003)
The graph shows the In-group beating the Out-group 12 nights in a row. (12 hits on the graph is a chance result.) While In-group participants scored significantly higher than chance, the far stronger effect was the psi-missing of the Out-group members.
Psi Missing or Psi Defensive
The problem is that if all you were to do was simply combine everyone’s results in a psi experiment, the combined results would mostly cancel each other out and the experiment would appear to get chance results.
The concept of psi missing is not new in parapsychology literature and this study replicates previous findings, but it does so in very clever ways.
Certain people have a tendency to score in opposite directions because of personal characteristics or experimental conditions. Gruber’s team manipulated and measured this, whether it was belief, friendliness, group membership or other criteria, and the results were striking.
Image: “Psi Performance, Belief in Psi, and Competition in a Game-Show Format” Warner-Angel (2017)
The high belief group and the low belief group mirror each other. For each belief group, the number of people who scored below chance are blue and the number of people who scored above chance are orange. For high believers 21 scored above chance, while 7 scored below chance. While for low believers, 8 scored above chance, while 15 scored below chance.
Image: “Social Fields, Belief In Psi, And Their Effects On Mental Telepathy” Brandy McWhorter 2005
You can see in the second chart from a different study that this effect was not a one-off. The odds that this kind of lineup would happen by chance is thousands to one.
The phenomena of missing in excess of chance tells us something important here. You can’t consistently miss in excess of chance unless you’re psychic on some level. It means that the low believers must subconsciously know the correct answer and are going out of their way to avoid it (aka psi-defensiveness). At a subconscious level, these test subjects seem to be attempting to confirm their belief that psi doesn’t exist, but paradoxically, the effort requires psychic ability.
There were more tests to do in order to confirm this observation. Gruber and his team did experiments where they asked low and high believers to hit the targets. As expected, the high believers scored above chance and the low believers scored below chance.
Great, Now Please Miss the Target
In two experiments they asked the test subjects to intentionally miss the target. In the first experiment, (Parker, 2006) the participants missed the targets, exceeding expectations. In the second experiment however, high believers performed the task asked of them, but amazingly, the low believers actually started getting hits in excess of chance. It appears that the psychic ability is functioning, but that the low believers are using it to act against the requested intent of the experiment.
High believers and low believers operate with the same information but process it differently, solely due to what they believe is possible. I have suggested that this be called “The Mirror World Effect” and Gruber agrees.
Like the Mirror Universe in Star Trek, where people from the mirror universe have a darker frame of mind, which has led them into a darker, more hostile society, low believers have the same access to their useful psychic abilities, but subconsciously reject the correct information because they don’t believe in it. It isn’t much of a stretch to imagine that this kind of rejection is probably carrying over into other areas of their lives.
Even in their unconscious rejection of their own psychic ability, low believers seem to use it anyway, although at cross purposes with their own intentions.
The Mirror Worlds Effect
Image: Canva
While differences in the belief in psychic ability were the strongest indicator of this mirroring effect, it occurred in other areas as well. In-group vs. out-group, enthusiastic vs. bored, men vs. women, previous experience vs. novice, known vs. unknown senders and friendly vs. unfriendly interactions. What makes the mirror effect stand out is that you have both significantly above and significantly below chance results from the same procedure within the same experiment when you divide the data according to these dichotomies.
This effect is not entirely unknown in parapsychology. Ramakrishna Rao referred to this as the differential effect in his book “The Elements of Parapsychology” (McFarland & Company, Inc. 2017). By assigning equal probabilities to hits and misses, Gruber’s methodology is particularly sensitive to this differential/Mirror Worlds effect.
The experimenters made no attempt to select participants based on any psi ability they had. They did make sure to ask questions in order to distinguish, in various experiments, between high and low believers; they rated friendliness vs. non friendliness and noted enthusiasm vs. boredom. Or they created competing teams or divided participants into in-groups and out-groups using an experiment that measured hits and misses the same way. That’s because they weren’t looking specifically for psi hits or psi misses, but rather the mirror worlds effect, which is the opposing tendencies between the results of these groups.
Gruber and his team did the seemingly impossible: regularly getting significant results from an unselected population. This is rarely accomplished in psi research.
The results of these experiments strongly support “First Sight” theory, which holds that psychic ability is “on” all the time. The theory states:
• Psi is not unusual or non-normal; it is a characteristic of all living organisms. • Psi is not rare; it is continuously ongoing for each organism. • Psi is not an ability; it is a perpetually active aspect of our engagement with reality.
This research also sheds some light on why psychic ability can be so hard to measure. If it’s functioning all the time, then the noise of randomness that is measured in experiments is as much a part of psychic functioning as any of the more obvious displays of it, but we only notice it when it rises above the noise of randomness. “Water? asked the fish, what water?”
Out of curiosity, I asked Gruber how the low believers approached the psychic task. Did they instinctively clear their minds and focus on the task? This led to a broader discussion. Gruber explained:
It’s hard to say for sure how any one participant felt ….in the first place you have to understand that these experiments were taking place at six in the evening in the science building on a college campus for people to receive course credit.
Depending on the time of semester and other characteristics of the individual groups, it was a challenge to get people to participate enthusiastically . . . We had groups of researchers and an interesting study, a chance to win money . . . But, now imagine that you’re a little bit annoyed about having to be here . . . and somebody asks you “on a seven point scale do you believe in mental telepathy“ and you say “one“ very unlikely to exist . . . . My sense is that most people who answered low on the belief scale didn’t really try (consciously) at all and thought that it was silly.
[A] lot of these things are related to why it is easier to get people to miss targets then to hit them in a lab. Sometimes people with high belief scores, possibly because they are psychically sensitive, score well below chance. [There is] a psychic sensitivity that allows them to know where the targets are and the same sensitivity [also] causes them to reject the targets as intrusive information.
. . . The problem was getting students in the sender room to focus – a lot of times they were distracted and we considered this a problem… But again not so much for psi missing.
I think the people with high belief scores took the task much more seriously and tried hard to find the targets. Unfortunately, for low believers, the data appears to show that they actually are missing without thinking… Maybe to maintain [their] belief system… Maybe to be stubborn.
One thing that has become clear to me in my years of running a parapsychology lab focusing on social situations on a college campus, is that creating an atmosphere that is perceived by most participants as psi conducive (warm, friendly, spontaneous, and open) is not easy. Doing this under strictly controlled laboratory conditions with an unselected population (subject pool), is harder. And doing this in a consistent, replicable way, with multiple groups, over multiple evenings, over the course of a semester, is almost impossible.
Another thing that has become clear to me is that significant psi missing is much easier to elicit in a lab than psi hitting. It seems to me that psi defensiveness is omnipresent, unconscious, and is, for many people, a natural reaction to day-to-day life – particularly in the individualistic, competitive society we live in. I have found that this is easily exaggerated in an unselected population by the laboratory conditions in psi experiments.
What these experiments show us, by focusing on psi missing, is that our subconscious appears to be presenting us with the reality that we believe in. This includes active subconscious avoidance of things that we don’t think are true, causing us to reject useful information. We are left to wonder how this might be affecting us in our daily lives.
Practically from the moment that scientists began to look into psychic ability, the main questions were “What is the mechanism? How are they doing it?” Is it radio waves? What about Extremely Low Frequency (ELF) waves?
Does Psychic Ability Use Radio Waves?
Quite expectedly, people assumed that radio waves were responsible for psychic ability. They were first discovered in 1865 by German physicist Heinrich Hertz and Guglielmo Marconi sent the first wireless message in 1895. Radio waves were something relatively new, and it was easy for most people to imagine that they were responsible. Writer Upton Sinclair even coined the term “Mental Radio.”
The body does emit electrical signals and has a rhythm of electrical discharges, making electromagnetic (EM) waves a natural focal point for telepathy research.
The problem, though, was that radio waves and psychic ability didn’t seem to follow the same rules. Radio waves lose strength over distance and don’t pass through everything with ease. In addition, they can be blocked entirely with a Faraday cage. Psychic ability seemed to get around this, but experiments were needed to confirm this.
Parapsychology Behind the Iron Curtain
The first person to tackle this question thoroughly was a Russian scientist named Leonid Vasiliev (1891-1966). Vasiliev was Russia’s best parapsychologist at the time and considered a peer of JB Rhine. Unfortunately, his career was at its peak during the Iron Curtain phase of Russian history, keeping his achievements from being known in the West until his two books Experiments in Mental Suggestion and Mysterious Phenomena of the Human Psychewere translated to English and published in 1963.
Using caves and metal cabinets as Faraday cages, Vasiliev applied remote viewing techniques established by French parapsychologist and Nobel Laureate, Charles Richet. Vasiliev was able to establish that telepathy and remote viewing did not experience a weaker signal or any loss of data even when the place they were in was completely shielded either by putting participants in a cave or in Faraday cages. This methodology ruled out almost every type of EM wave. It left only one type to explore. The ELF wave. These Extremely Low Frequency waves are very big electromagnetic waves and will go through almost anything.
The Problem with ELF Waves
It is very difficult to eliminate ELF waves as a possibility because of this. They can move through seawater to a certain extent and through earth and rock. The waves can follow the curve of the earth and even diffract around mountains. They can travel the earth several times before decaying to the point of being unusable.
They come with a caveat however: sheer size. ELF wavelengths are 6,000 km long at 50 Hz and 5,000 km long at 60 Hz. An ELF antenna needs to be somewhere between 23 and 45 kilometers long. The astute reader will notice that humans do not have antennas. And more to the point, we do not have antennas that stretch across many kilometers. These radio waves also need a lot of power, which is an argument against their use for human telepathy.
Because they are absolutely huge, the information that they can carry is quite limited. Using ELF waves for ordinary communication is quite slow. It can take 15 minutes just to send three letters. For that reason, scientists were pretty sure that they were not responsible for ESP. However, it has been shown that people can be affected by these long EM waves and there is always the possibility that humans are constructing images from limited data; something the human mind is known to do, so they were worth investigating.
There is really only one way to rule out these extremely long radio waves: you need to do your psychic experiment with a submarine. The astute reader will recognize that submarines are not commonly available, and in fact, even simply riding in one is a rare event. It was an experiment that needed to be done, but no one had the resources to do it. Vasiliev had attempted to enlist the help of the Russian Navy, but without success.
A Submarine Is The Only Way
The experiment finally went forward in 1977 using a Taurus research submarine thanks to the efforts of American parapsychologist Stephan Schwartz.
Image attribution: International Hydrodynamics Company Ltd. (HYCO).
To absolutely, definitely rule out ELF waves, the sub would have to be able to dive to about 6,000 feet (1.8 kilometers), something the Taurus could not do. It was good down to a depth of about 1,200 feet (.37 kilometers). However, the remote viewers would be about 500 miles away, meaning that the signal would have to travel a long distance underwater, making it sufficiently weak to rule out ELF waves as a practical matter. Also, the submersible itself is a kind of super Faraday cage.
Sometimes science is like that. Real world considerations prevent ideal conditions and you just have to make do with what’s possible.
The Experiments
The plan was for two experiments to take place in California off the coast of Catalina using known remote viewing protocols and two elite level remote viewers. Ingo Swann and Hella Hammid.
The remote viewers would be at the SRI Institute in Menlo Park, California, which is on the peninsula south of San Francisco.
Image: Canva
In the first experiment, remote viewers on the submersible looked for targets in the San Francisco Bay Area, correctly locating a double blinded target (an oak tree) in Portola Valley (a town located in the foothills above Menlo Park to the West.) An important consideration here is that the information was located quickly and with a wealth of detail, making ELF waves an improbable source.
Finding a Shipwreck
And here is where we merge a scientific mystery with a really cool story. I will quote from an article I wrote on this several years ago.
The remote viewers were given the task of finding a previously unknown shipwreck and the whole thing took place over three days in June of 1977, with the entire process captured on film. The viewers gave a location off of Santa Catalina island and said that it was the site of a ship that had sunk about 90 years ago, and had an early high pressure steam winch that had caught fire and sunk the ship. The viewers said that they would find the winch and the aft helm of the ship. They said that a granite block approx. 6’x4’x4′ would also be found. This information was turned over to an independent observer and notarized. This occurred of course, before the search for the ship’s location took place.
At first they had trouble finding the site, so the ship dropped a buoy to ping the exact location the psychics had specified, and a psychic on board the ship (Ingo Swann) gave them minor course corrections once they got there to find the wreck.
I can’t emphasize enough just how extremely hard it is to find something specific on the ocean floor if you don’t know exactly where it is and what you’re looking for. And this is even harder if the object has been on the ocean floor for a few decades.
It Was All Filmed
It might not be believable except for the fact that the entire process was caught on film, which was quite rare in 1977. The event was filmed by the TV show “In Search Of” narrated by Leonard Nimoy and the episode (S3, E17) aired January 25th, 1979.
“In Search Of” (S3, E17)
The first thing they found was the winch. (11:25 in the video), then they found the aft helm of the ship. Then they found the granite block. (12:40)
A few questions remained. Could the psychics have read about this shipwreck? Schwartz went to the Federal Bureau of Land Management, which tracks all known shipwrecks to find out. (14:18) They had no record of shipwreck in that spot nor of any wreck of that particular type of ship, which means that no one else would have either. There were over 53 shipwrecks in the Catalina area, so this wasn’t anything unusual.
The thickness of the marine growth matched the age of the sinking as predicted by the psychics, and they found charred pieces of wood which confirmed the fire. Nautical experts identified the winch as a type that had been discontinued because they had a habit of blowing up and sinking ships. It was a type of coaster ship that was bringing blocks of granite to San Francisco that were meant to be front door steps for row houses.
If you ever wanted The One Thing that provided proof of psychic ability, this experiment was as close to ideal as you could possibly find. There is very little to no ambiguity and there is almost nothing for skeptics to contest.
Do you find it strange that when people call for a mediumship reading, they expect that “spirits” are the fonts of all knowledge; that they can access all information, that your grandparents, however illiterate they may have been, suddenly have an expansive knowledge of your life and countless other things. (I went to school with those, who, because of continual “bunking off” or skipping school, never learned to read or write.)
Asking Questions Can Give Lots of Information Away
In a client's mind (not all, of course), knowledge can be infinitely tapped for all sorts of answers and by asking all kinds of questions, the client can give lots of information away. In some cases, this can effectively abort a reading. For those of us who are honest in our work, the last thing we need is to be fed with information. It is VERY frustrating.
Giving Misleading Information to Test a Medium
For the readers amongst us who do not mind being fed, I have to say this. People are not as stupid as you may think. There are those who will also give false information, despite needing proper, good and valuable information and confirmations.
Correcting a Client May Prove You're Genuine
I have occasionally had to contradict clients who deliberately "get facts wrong" in an attempt to see if I am genuine. I can assure you that in picking up or being given contradictory information from spirit, the client is often greatly relieved to know that whilst their mind may be at fault – who doesn't suffer at times? - spirit does not tend to make mistakes.
At the time of writing this article, I have been contacted by a possible client pointing out that “all of the mediums she has been to, ask questions”!
Image: Gerd Altmann, Pixabay
A Medium Should Only Question Those in Spirit
Anyone who knows me can verify that one of my pet hates is “mediums” asking questions. Any question a “medium” has, should only be addressed to the spirit or spirits communicating to get answers, not the client.
Incorrect Teaching?
It is, I'm afraid, endemic in the way people are taught mediumship. I can never understand why those who have been taught to ask the client questions, and their teachers, cannot see the wrong in this. People come for information and confirmation. How can you ever get a confirmation on a specific thing when the person you are asking has just asked you for the answer?
One Way to Damage Your Reputation
When questioning is noticed by the client or a group of clients, your reputation is damaged, more so after you have been found out. With that comes a loss of custom, and as any advertiser will tell you “word of mouth is the best form of advertising.” But give an excellent reading and they will probably tell few people – sometimes this is because having found a “gem,” people tend to want to keep it a secret. Having found someone who isn't, “they tell everybody”.
Whatever Their Supposed Standard, Don't Feed the Medium
I would urge everyone to have the mindset of “not giving information” and demand a more spiritual and evidence-based reading whether in public (at a demonstration) or private. Please disregard that a reader is “famous” and must know what they are doing, They, like myself, are “just a reader”- just a medium. We do not have Godlike powers and we should not be held in awe. We are just people exhibiting a gift that everyone has. We are not “special people” - we are those who have developed our gift a little more.
Do not be afraid to press a point with a medium. I urge you to do so. How can you be convinced of the communicator and/or the evidence that is given, if you do not? Your time is valuable. Do make the most of it.
A Medium Should Acknowledge a Person in an Audience Who is Known to Them
Without naming names (of course), I know of one well-known medium giving a demonstration and going to a friend. In an effort to “amaze” the crowd, this medium stated that she would give that person's mobile number, which they did. Amazing trick huh? The "trick" being the operative word. (Incidentally, if I am drawn to someone I know, I do make mention of it. When mediums regularly visit the same churches, some people do, of course, become familiar, but not friends.)
Image: Canva
A Medium of Standing is Honest
Obviously, there is a huge amount of ego with this person. We have to ask ourselves why the medium's “accomplice” (because that's what they become), went along with this. When others find out that they are good friends, which they eventually do, what does that do to the medium's reputation? And so much worse, what does a “medium of that standing” do for the reputations of everyone else, especially those who are trying to honestly learn how to communicate with spirit?
We all need to question these things. If communication is real, and it is, why do so-called “mediums” play games?
There is no comfort in messages that leave us feeling duped. Those who work as mediums should know better.
Allen Kardec
Quote From Allan Kardec
I would like to quote from Allan Kardec's 'The Spirits' Book'. (The Netflix film of the same name is excellent.)
QUESTION: Will mediums who misuse their faculty suffer in consequence?
THE VERY CLEAR ANSWER FROM SPIRIT: "They will be punished doubly because they possess, beyond others, the means of enlightenment. He who, having the use of his eyes, fails to follow the right road, is judged otherwise than the blind man who falls into a ditch."
It could not be clearer.
Mislead and You Have to Pay for it
I have always stated that if I should mislead anyone, and there can be consequences for generations down the line for this, that I will personally have to make recompense when I pass over. That is absolutely clear from what was given to Allan Kardec, the Codifier of Spiritism/Spiritualism.
A Fundamental Spiritual Law
This is an unending and unbending spiritual rule. I personally think that it should be the first thing taught to every student who considers the path of mediumship. It is fundamental. Why don't organizations teach this? Perhaps, their integrity should be questioned?
Truth and Integrity
After all, if the tutoring is true, if integrity is intact, what is there to be afraid of? This spiritual rule is one that is written in stone.
I used to be in the New Age Movement — back in the day. I taught myself psychic healing and taught others how to do it, although I quickly realized that I did not know much about it. Unlike medicine, there isn’t a wealth of scientific information to draw on. In fact, at the time, there was next to none. So I was flying blind. Because of the ubiquitous presence of bad skepticism, I had no idea that there was any science behind psychic ability at all.
Psychic Ability
It’s been like that for psychic mediums, remote viewers, dowsers and pretty much anyone else pushing the limits of their psychic ability. There is a lot that people don’t know and that has been a big problem. It has opened the door to all sorts of speculation by people who have asserted that they understood THE TRUTH. Countless books have been written offering someone’s version of what reality is and those range from rejecting the existence of psychic ability, to viewing it as a gift of God to the work of the Devil.
The problem with all of these random theories, is that they have no explanatory power. These theories tell you nothing about how psychic ability functions or why. They are useless for going forward because they have no knowledge base to build upon.
The Actual Experts
Parapsychologists; those scientists who do scientific experiments and publish papers in journals while carefully building a body of knowledge, have learned a great deal about psychic ability. Their theories come from a solid body of knowledge based on investigations and published experiments.
The most popular theory among parapsychologists; (i.e. the one with the most explanatory power), is that psychic ability is fundamentally a subconscious ability. The subconscious operates with full psychic functioning, and it’s always “on.” We access this psychic information by accessing the subconscious. To get to it, we have to navigate deeper parts of our personalities that we’re not normally aware of. This isn’t normally an easy thing to do and it may open up hidden fears and buried memories, which are also in the subconscious.
The theory speculates that we normally use our ordinary senses to accomplish our goals and it’s only when we enter into an ambiguous situation that cannot be resolved by our other senses that our psychic ability will kick in. So if we’re still trying to accomplish something with our other senses, we’re not likely to utilize our psychic ability.
My Own Thoughts On Psychic Ability
I have theorized that based on some studies, that psychic ability tends to be stronger based on need, and somehow the subconscious knows what that is. The more you need your psychic ability, -combined with a realization that you’re not going to get the help you want any other way,- the more likely you are to access it.
I have also theorized that psychic ability tends to be emotionally based. (This ties into need.) Reading other people’s emotional state, even when they’re not physically present, is what psychic ability is “tuned” for. Especially when people are deliberately hiding their emotions. I think that it’s the thing that it does best.
Psychic Ability Explained?
So how does this explain anything? Well, for starters it answers the question of why we don’t use psychic ability all the time. Our other senses can and do handle our day to day functioning just fine. It explains that a person’s ability to tolerate ambiguity will affect their psychic functioning. People who can stop thinking, stop trying and just relax and let things be, will do better psychically than people who keep hammering away and never give up.
This also describes the creative process, so we would therefore expect people who are better at creative tasks and holistic thinking to perform better at psychic tasks (which require entering into an open, receptive state of mind) than people who excel at linear thinking. It doesn’t take much of a leap to realize that the latter more or less describes skeptics.
The Trouble With Skeptics
The skeptics, who pride themselves on their linear thinking, are revealed to be lacking in the qualities that would make them good at psychic ability. A lack of ability to enter into a receptive state of mind means that they are most likely not good holistic thinkers; this would explain why they have trouble making the necessary connections to understand psychic ability. Another aspect of this is that the more linear your thinking is, the more trouble you have changing your mind.
We would expect psychic people to be inclined towards holistic thinking, to be creative in other areas and to have personalities that capable of having quiet moments and self reflection. This does, in fact, describe psychic people as a group quite well. It’s also been shown that creative people do better than others at psychic tasks.
That’s what explanatory power is. The theory matches what is observed and explains it, and also provides a map towards future knowledge.
The Psychic Process
The psychic process is challenging to describe because it occurs solely within a person’s mind, where it cannot be directly observed by anyone else. Psychic information, because of how it’s obtained, is difficult to distinguish from one’s own thoughts.
To sift through one’s own thoughts, one must first have strong inner awareness to know what one’s own thoughts look like and from there discern what psychic information personally looks and feels like. All of this must occur without trying to hard, which will disrupt the process. It’s a delicate balance that requires discipline, good intellectual awareness and strong holistic thinking skills. Not everyone is capable of this. So when researchers test for psychic ability they should expect to see some people do far better than others. In the scientific lingo, they would not expect to see homogeneous results. (Yes, this is also confirmed in scientific testing.)
Suspension of ordinary thought processes is so crucial to the psychic process that the Ganzfeld experiment is constructed around it. Ordinary sensory input is reduced to the absolute minimum. Unsurprisingly, this experiment also yields some of the most reliable results.
How This Relates To Physics
Of course, eventually we get around to the question of what the mechanism is. How does it work? And that is a damned good question. Psychic ability does not rely on sending or receiving signals. All forms of electromagnetic waves have been ruled out, even including ELF waves. (That is a story for another time.) In order to understand it at all, we need to look at reality differently, and here is where quantum physics comes in.
The question lands us smack in the middle of the mother of all scientific debates of our time: Is the universe fundamentally material, like a giant clock? Or is it fundamentally like a giant mind? If we look at the universe as material, then psychic ability is impossible, end of story. But it plainly IS possible, so that avenue does not match the evidence and we can safely dismiss it. So we conclude that the universe is like a giant mind and consciousness is therefore fundamental to the universe. Consciousness shapes our reality.
Time and Space Reality
Moving on from there, time and space are not absolutes. They utterly relational to one another, (You measure time with distance and without time you are everywhere at once and distance doesn’t exist.) which is why the term “spacetime” was coined. If consciousness is fundamental to reality, -and there are good arguments for this- then the mind has the ability to transcend this aspect of reality. Thoughts do not travel from one person to the other because their minds were never separate in the first place. With telepathy, we’re only making particular connections stronger and bringing them into conscious awareness through our own intent. They were already there.
This is what entanglement shows us: a universe beyond space and time. Bell’s Inequality Theorem states that QM only works if the universe is entangled. A lot of people miss the implications here and act as though entanglement was just another feature of QM instead of realizing that it’s showing us something fundamental about reality.
Space and time must be something created by a more fundamental reality; they cannot be fundamental themselves. If photons can entangle and behave as though space and time don’t exist, then space and time can be treated as though they don’t exist. That’s why psychic ability operates as though it’s time and space independent. Because it is. It seems spooky and weird and in defiance of physics only if you’re stuck in a Newtonian materialist view of the world. Once you understand the implications of quantum physics, and you view consciousness as fundamental to reality, psychic ability is not only possible, but predictable.
