Observations placeholder

Researchers weren't the only people intrigued by the possibility of psi, of course. The concept was especially attractive to a tight circle of adherents in the intelligence community and on Capitol Hill. Hoping to gain advantage on the world stage, they cobbled together a million dollars a year over the course of 20 years for a classified program eventually revealed as the Stargate project. Given my background, I was asked to consult along with reputed psychic superstars Hella Hammid and Ingo Swann.

Almost every day, we were taken to a stark white room at the renowned Menlo Park, California, think tank, Stanford Research Institute International (SRI). There, acting as veritable psychic spies, we used the free response technique called "remote viewing" to train and focus on targets from foreign government offices to clandestine weapons projects until impressions flowed through our minds.

It was in July 1980, in the middle of the Iran hostage crisis, that 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.

"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.

"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.

"On an airplane," I said.

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.

Were my impressions psychic?

The hostages had been flooding the news for months.

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.