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LIFE SPECIAL BY KENNETH MILLER I PHOTOGRAPHY,BY HARRY BENSONThey are trying to beam thoughtsinto my brain.

I swear I'm not crazy.I suppose I look a little

gaga, with these Ping-Pong ballhalves cupping my eyes. Redlight fills the closet-size room,diffused by the blinders into apinkish haze. Through head:phones, a recorded voice intonesmaternally, "Your hands arewarm and heavy. Your foreheadis cool. You are completelyrelaxed." Then white noise

switches on, a mesmeric hiss ofartificial surf. Cradled in a plushrecliner, I feel-or so I imagine-like a fetus in the womb.

I am, in fact, the subjectof a ganzfeld experiment.Ganzfeld, German for "wholefield," refers to the boundlessvoid in which I seem to be afloat.The procedure is based on theobservation that psychic experi-ences (assuming they are gen-uine) occur most often whenpeople are asleep or nearly so.Psychic signals, researchers the-orize, may be drowned out by theclamor of the waking mind and

the daytime world; quieting bothmight make reception easier.

Across the hall, a DukeUniversity freshman with a Bot-ticelli face is staring at a pictureon a video screen. Alixe Stein-metz is a work-study student,and her job today is to try tomake me see what she sees. Herboss, parapsychologist CherylAlexander, is sitting at a controlpanel in another room. Alexan-der has asked me to describe anyimages or repeat any words thatdrift through my head; a micro-phone will relay my ramblings toher and to Steinmetz, who will

use the feedback to help her clar-ify her transmissions. But so farI see nothing more than blobs,the sort that squirm acrossclosed eyelids on a sunny day

The Rhine ResearchCenter occupies a big white clap-board house in Durham, N.C., afew steps from Duke's oak-shad-ed campus. Established in 1927by parapsychology's foundingfather, J.B. Rhine, it is the oldestinstitution of its kind. The cen-ter's four staff scientists spendtheir days investigating whatlaypeople refer to as psychicstuff. Parapsychologists call it

F

turies. The tide, however, maywell be turning.

Never in living memoryhas a fascination with the para-normal been so epidemic. Psy-chic hot lines have mushroomedinto a billion-dollar industrysince their debut in the mid-'80s.Fictional psychics haunt TV'sMillennium, Profiler and The X-Files. Purportedly authenticones pursue criminals on Leeza,baffle the experts on The Unex-plained, predict apocalypse inthe tabloids and on talk radio.Mainstream publishers churnout scores of books with titles

like The Executive Mystic, tout-ing the usefulness ofpsi in officepolitics or mate hunting. Thisyear's hottest nonfiction best-seller is Talking to Heaven, by aman who claims to converse tele-pathically with the dead. Websites advertise courses in clair-voyance-the cyber-age term is"remote viewing"-at hundredsof dollars a pop. Although pollshave shown for decades that upto two thirds of the populationbelieve in psychic phenomena,unprecedented millions are nowwilling to validate their faithwith a Visa card. This upsurge

surely derives momentum fromthe New Age movement, with itsshifting search for esoteric anti-dotes to premillennial anxieties.But it also reflects some star-tling developments in parapsy-chology-developments thatpresent the scoffers with theirtoughest challenges ever.

I have come to theRhine Center neither a scoffernor a believer. Call me an agnos-tic-even though, like 60 per-cent ofmy fellowAmericans, I've

"Not a scoffer. nothad what may have been a psy- ,

chic experience. It happened b I- I -:i~:~IId::=~eOd~~::sm~~'o~s~: a e lever, comeJulius-a quadriplegic whopainted landscapes using at- "=:U:~:!;~;::::~~:inas an agnos IC.a convertible, leaped from thecar and embraced us. That morn-ing, as I recounted the dream tomy parents, the phone rang:Julius was dead.

Was it precognition orcoincidence? Will I find clueshere, in a red-lit closet?

Exploring the ganzfeld: In this experi-

ment, chance would dictate a hit rate of25 percent. Did LIFE's reporter (above)

get lucky? Or could it have been psi?

By now, the blobs ooz-ing across my field ofvision havebegun to take on definition. Onestarts out tarantula-ish, thenmorphs into something like amammalian face; drowsily, I saythe words "hairy" and "spider"and "monkey" The blob becomesa pair of blobs, which give offamiable vibes. "Pleasant," I mur-mur. "Nature. Two." I keep see-ing fur, and also eyes, thoughmaybe not a monkey's. Morewords come. "Bat or a mouse.Carrot. Clean. Cling."

After half an hour,Alexander speaks through theheadphones. "You can uncoveryour eyes now,"she says. From a

series of images on a video mon-itor, I am to choose the one Ithink Steinmetz was trying tosend me. The first picture showsa golden Aztecmask. The secondshows a man and a woman toast-ing each other in a garden. Thethird shows a big-eyed cat snug-gling improbably with a rat; myheart beats faster, but I wait. Thefourth picture shows two men inlederhosen playing horns. I askto see the cat and rat again. ''I'mprobably wrong," I say,but whenAlexander asks me to indicatemy level of certainty on a dial, Iturn it to 90 percent. And whenSteinmetz bursts into the room,waving a drawing of the furrycouple that she made to amplifyher transmissions, I am notexactly surprised. I feel-or so Iimagine-like Dorothy when shefirst landed in Oz.

"I don't believe in psi," says theRhine Center's chief parapsy-chologist, Richard Broughton,holding court in his scrupulous-ly tidy office.Atall, irascible manwith the beard of a Victorian

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patriarCh, Broughton is given tocontrarian statements, and helets that one sink in before con-tinuing: "It's not a matter ofbelief. It's a matter of data."

Scientists have beengathering data on psi since1882, when a handful of Britishscholars formed the Society forPsychical Research. The SPRconducted field experiments andexposed as frauds a number ofalleged spirit mediums, includ-ing the famous Madame Bla-vat sky. Then, in 1922 in Chica-go, a lecture on spiritualism by

Sherlock Holmes's creator, SirArthur Conan Doyle, inspiredJoseph Banks Rhine and hiswife, Louisa, to give up theircareers in botany. The Rhinestransformed the study ofpsi intoa laboratory science, completewith controlled experiments,statistical charts and peer-reviewed journals. They coinedthe term "parapsychology" todescribe their discipline.

Gradually,parapsychol-ogists refined and expandedtheir methods, often in responseto skeptics' criticisms. Toreducethe possibility of errors or fudg-ing, computers were broughtinto play-selecting the imagesin ganzfeld experiments, replac-ing dice in psychokinesis experi-ments, recording data. Yetpara-psychology never quite lost acertain gypsy-tent aura, and-automation notwithstanding-cheating scandals periodicallyshook the field. A particularlyembarrassing episode occurredin 1983 when James Randi, themagician who is parapsycholo-gy's most flamboyant debunker,revealed that two of his associ-ates had infiltrated a St. Louispsi lab, where they were receivedas gifted psychics. By the end ofthe decade, funding for researchhad all but vanished.

What helped launchparapsychology's current resur-gence, oddly enough, was itsmost spectacular scandal todate. In November 1995 the U.S.government admitted that for 20years the Pentagon and variousintelligence agencies had beenconducting psi experiments-and using psychics as spies. A

study commissioned by Con-gress concluded that the $20million program had failed toprovide consistently reliableinformation, and the plug waspulled. The headlines providedfodder for Letterman and Leno.To those who actually read thecongressional report, however,there was less cause for laughter.The review committee, headedby one of the nation's leadingstatisticians, Jessica utts, andone of its most eminent profes-sional skeptics, psychologistRay Hyman, had determined ~

PHONE PSYCHICSThere are times when the staunchest

skeptic wishes he had psychicpowers, or at least a clairvoyant friend.

These days, thanks to 900 numbers,

it appears such friends are easy to

find-albeit at a price per minute that's

otten steeper than psychotherapy.

But experts counsel against picking

up the phone. Most hot-line psychics

use a technique whose "mechanicsgo back to Victorian times," says

parapsychologist Richard Broughton.

Known as cold reading, it involves

making seemingly insightful

statements that could apply toanyone-"You tend to be critical

of yourself"-and picking up clues

to the subject's personality and

circumstances by listening carefully

to the responses. In many cases, a

caller in emotional distress will forget

having revealed a piece of information

and will be amazed when the psychic

"senses" it later in the session. In a

neat turnabout, investigators have

used their cold-reading skillS to get

jobs at hot lines, then have gone

on to expose the scam.

thatWlriletheSPyaperation~' Parapsychologyan overall bust, the govern- • t· w ,rment's lab experiments had •achieved "hit" rates that could main alns . e renot be ascribed to dumb luck.

"Using the standards applied to lIb· t h·"any other area of science," Uttswrote,',"ecasefmp,ychicfun~ a a I psyc IC.tioning has been scientificallyproven." Hyman disagreed butconceded that "the case for psy-chic functioning seems betterthan it has ever been.".This wasas close as parapsychology hadever come to vindication.

As more complete ac-counts emerged, the espionageside of the program also cameto seem less snicker-worthy.When they were hot, the govern-ment's remote viewers had siz-zled. Working from a bungalow'at Fort Meade in Maryland and alab, in Menlo Park, Calif., theydescribed a nuclear test in LopNur and a submarine being builtin Severodvinsk. They located adowned Soviet fighter in theZairean jungle and smoked outan eavesdropping post near theU.S.embassy in Moscow.

On the heels of the con-gressional report came a bookthat made the statistical casefor psi more thoroughly thanany previous volume. In lastyear's The Conscious Universe,parapsychologist Dean Radincharted the results of thousandsofexperiments over the past sev-en decades. Although skepticsclaim that hit rates have dwin-dled as researchers have tight-ened up their act, that tendencywas nowhere in evidence. Inganzfeld experiments, for exam-ple, chance would account for acorrect answer 25 percent of thetime, yet hit rates averaged 33.2percent, according to Radin. Inpsychokinesis experiments,where subjects try to influenceeither-or events (say, getting acomputer-simulated coin-flipperto generate more heads thantails), the margin above chance

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Psi spy: Joe McMoneagle performed psychic espionage for the Defense Intelligence

Agency. He says he discovered his abilities after a near-death experience,

was narrower but still signifi-cant. Taken together, the statsclearly showed that somethingstrange was happening at placeslike the Rhine Center. The ques-tion was, was it psi?

The morning after my ganzfeldtriumph, I participate in aremote-viewing experiment inanother of the center's labs. Mytask is to write and sketch what-ever passes through my mindwhile an image of a landscapeappears on an unattended com-puter screen across the hall. Idraw a peninsula ringed withbeach, but the target turns out tobe a semicircular scattering of

tombs in the Egyptian desert.Still, I am delighted at havingperceived the sand and the shapeof the layout. Then Broughton,the experiment's judge, com-pares my scribblings with fiveimages-four decoypictures andthe desert scene-displayed onhis own computer. He not onlyfails to make the match but givesmy effort the lowest possiblescore. When I protest, he snaps,"Youcan't make a silk purse outofa sow's ear."

I should take Brough-ton's tough-mindedness as evi-dence ofparapsychology's scien-tific integrity. Yet I'm deeplymiffed. Yesterday's apparent ~

PSYCHIC SLEUTHSA striking 37 percent of America's

urban police departments admit to

having tried psychics. How much good

do psi-detectives do? The jury is still

out, says sociologist Marcello Truzzi,

an expert on police psychics. "We

don't have a hit-miss ratio for these

people. You can't make a rational

judgment." Others take a harder line.

According to Joe Nickell, editor of

the book Psychic Sleuths, no'crime

on record has ever been solved

psychically. And though psychicsoften take credit for leading police to a

missing person or piece of evidence,

those claims tend to fall apart under

close scrutiny. Ostensible hits fall into

two main categories: lucky guesses

(try often enough and you're bound to

get something right) and predictions

so vague they make sense only in

retrospect. "After the crime has beensolved by standard police work,"

Nickell explains, "the psychic says,

'Well, I mentioned the number seven'

and then interprets'it as Highway 7.

Another time it's seven people in thesearch party." Occasionally, however,

something happens to make cops

true believers. In 1991, New Jersey

grandmother Dorothy Allison, one

of the best-known (and most

controversial) police psychics, wasasked by Ontario detectives to find

a murdered girl near Niagara Falls.

Allison predicted that her

dismembered body would be found,encased in cement, in a local reservoir.

A body was indeed found-that of a

different yet almost identical victim.

Says Sgt. Larry Maracle, who worked

on the case: "Dorothy must havesomething." Allison says she's getting

vibes about Jon Benet

Ramsey. Stay tuned.

mind-meldconvincedme th~' Iknow bull.dookYpsi was real, that the brain was h I II -t Iindeed able to transcend the .boundaries of space and time, W en sme I_that I myself possessed abilities

I'dbarelysusp~cte~.Ilookedfor- sm'elll-there "ward to cultlvatmg my new-found talent-using it to plumb -humanity's fate, to make a mil-lion in soybean futures, tochoose the fastest checkout lineat the grocer's. Now it seems Imisjudged my powers. Could Ihave been mistaken about psy-chic stuff in general? Perhaps it'sonly sour grapes, but I have asudden urge to hear from ananti-parapsychologist.

On the phone from Ore-gon, Ray Hyman compares psi toN-rays, polywater and otherunfortunate fads from science'spast. He recites a dozen subtleobjections, all overshadowed byone looming problem: "Psi is aphenomenon that is defined neg-atively." In other words, sinceparapsychologists have no realtheory of what causes psi, theycan prove that what they'reobserving is psi only by showingit can't be something else. Aganzfeld 'hit, for instance, mayresult from telepathy, or it maybe that an ordinary clue helpedthe subject guess correctly. (Ear-ly trials used photographsinstead of videos, and the targetphoto may have shown signs ofprolonged handling.) 'Howevercarefully an experiment isdesigned, such "informationleaks" can never be ruled out.

I'm almost convinced.But then I think back to my ownpatently clean ganzfeld session.Wavering, I relay Hyman's argu-ment to his frequent sparringpartner, Jessica Utts, at the Uni-versity of California, Davis. uttsretorts that science is often driv-en by statistics unattached to atheory: No one could say why

aspirin should prevent heartattacks, for example, but thenumbers proved that it was so. Itwasn't just stats, however, thatmade utts a psi proponent-itwas a ganzfeld experiment inwhich she was the sender andthe receiver was someone utter-ly above suspicion. ''I'm lookingat the Kremlin on the screen,"she recalls, "and my father says,'It's the Kremlin.' I know my ownfather wasn't cheating."

To make up my mind, Imust try to find an equally un-equivocal demonstration.

Myquest begins in a cedar-sidedhouse in Virginia's Blue Ridgemountains, built by the man whotracked down that Soviet sub. AVietnam vet who spent 20 yearsin the military, Joe McMoneaglebears less resemblance to thestereotypical psychic-high-strung, otherworldly-than to aneatly bearded Brahma bull. Butas a chief warrant officer at FortMeade, McMoneagle was knownas the government's most reli-able remote viewer. His hit ratein controlled experiments (withfive possible targets to choosefrom) was 50 percent, an amaz-ing 30 points above chance; hisintelligence intercepts earnedhim a Legion ofMerit. NowadaysMcMoneagle freelances for civil-ian clients, sending his mind onfar-flung errands for $1,500 aday "Iget very good customers,"he says in a gruff basso profun-do. "They don't care if it's psy-chic. They just care ifit works."

This afternoon's as-signment was mailed in by aclient in Chicago, a historian. A

Raising the dead: James Van Praagh planned to be a television sitcom writer before

he became a spirit medium-and author of the psychic best-seller Talking to Heaven.

serious remote viewer is neverbriefed on what his target is, lesthis preconceptions underminehis accuracy, so McMoneagle'scheerful wife, Scooter, translatesthe client's query into a simpli-fied "search term," seals this inan envelope and takes it to thedining room, where McMonea-gle is ready to sketch. A grid ofstreets appears, a square labeled"hotel," a Mercedes symbol andthe words "European plates." Tomy disappointment, it becomesevident that the job at hand isto investigate the last, mysteri-ous hours of Princess Diana. Itwill take several more sessions,McMoneagle tells me, to arrive

at clear conclusions. Even if hisanswers satisfy his customer,whether they will accuratelydescribe what happened in thetunnel-and who's to blame-will likely never be known. Awheel-spinning start.

I head for Los Angeles.On the grounds of a Self-Realiza-tion Fellowship temple, beside aswan-dotted pond, an Australiantourist stops to stare at a faceshe has seen on TV: "You're thefellow who gets messages fromthe dead!" she cries. For JamesVan Praagh, author of Talkingto Heaven (13 weeks at No.1;700,000 copies sold), such en-counters have become rou- ~

"If the moon weretine. Van Praagh is America's '

psychic of the moment, a newly I Ii II Idminted talk-show star. He is also '::~d=~::/~~!~:=:a ways U ,COUman's mustache and a sweetly Vi ' b t9" .I

:~~t~;',:~~;e:~d~:n~:"a~ egas go US •ease, making a chat with adeparted family member seem asunthreatening as a long-dis-tance phone call. The words hedelivers from the other side, fulloflove and forgiveness, are oftenreceived with grateful tears."People come to me in emotionalpain," he says. "This work helpspromote healing and closure."

I'm not in pain, but I'dbe thrilled to make contact witha loved one I lost two years ago."Your father?" Van Praagh ven-tures. Nope-Dad jogs fivemilesa day. "Your mother," he says,and points over my right shoul-der. "She's standing here." VanPraagh asks if she died ofcancer.Yes, I answer, shuddering at the

memory of chemo drips and oxy-gen tanks. But the medium'smain impression is olfactory: "Iget a nasty smell. I don't know ifit's a hospital smell, but it smellsnot great." I register puzzlementand he changes subjects. "Who'sJon?" he asks. Like most people,I know someone by that name:my younger brother. VanPraaghdeclares, correctly, that Jon hastwo children, and asks if mymother had a sister. When I sayno, he asks if Jon's wife has a sis-ter. Although she does, the pointescapes me. He scores on mygrandmother's name, but I knowofthree other cases in which VanPraagh trotted out "Rose" for a

Parapsychologist at the Tropicana: Dean Radin, an engineer

with a Ph.D. in psychology, has recently been hired by a major Silicon

Valley think tank to develop a variety of pSi-controlled gadgets.

grandma, and he was right eachtime. Why go against the odds?

He plows on. "Did yourmother have trouble with herhead?" Not really. "Is someonehaving headaches now?" Mywife-but isn't someone alwayshaving headaches? He hearsMomtalking about a Kathleen orKatherine who's up there withher, and also a Joe: all blanks. Heasks whose name begins with M.My mother's, I say, but he getsthe second letter wrong. Hedivines that she died at home,but my noncommittal reactionwhen he mentioned hospitalsmight have clued him in. He saysthere was a woman at Mom'sbedside when she breathed herlast. There wasn't. "Was theresomeone Catholic? Was there aCatholic church nearby?" Noand no. A few questions on, VanPraagh deduces that I'm Jewish.He asks if! have spirit-world rel-

atives named Max or Bernie. Idon't. He sees a floral-patternedchair or blanket belonging toMom, and a set of gold candle-sticks: wrong, wrong, wrong. Hesays she watches me slavingaway in my home office; I neverwork the;re. "You have goodenergy," he tells me, and says mymother was proud of me. Shewas-in part because I inheritedher nose for bull-dooky. And Ihave definitely identified thatnasty smell.

I meet Ed Dames, thenation's best-known teacher ofremote viewing, at the slightlyseedy Beverly Hills office of PsiTech, his psychic investigationfirm. With his golden bangs, theretired military intelligence offi-cer could pass for an agingsurfer-until he opens hismouth. Another veteran of thepsi spy program, Dames is ashucksterish as McMoneagle is ~

PSI AND THE GAMBLER As director of the Consciousness Research

Laboratory, formerly based at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and now in

California, Dean Radin is well qualified to answer a question frequently posed by

skeptics: Why don't psychics break the bank? One reason, says Radin, applies to

ordinary folks as well: "Casinos are designed to keep you disoriented-to get you

drunk, distract you with flashing lights and free food and short skirts." The

meditative state conducive to psi is hard to achieve under such circumstances.

Besides, psychics have trouble accessing strings of numbers (which could also

explain why they don't win lotteries), and even the best clairvoyants are often

wrong. But some moments may be more psi-friendly than others. Researcher

James Spottiswoode has discovered a fouriold increase in laboratory psi hits ataround 13 hours of local sidereal time-a time of day measured relative to the fixed

stars. And Radin has found a monthly 2 percent increase in casino payouts, as well

as smaller daily fluctuations, all corresponding to changes in the earth's magnetic

field. The field is calmest, he says, and winnings highest, when the moon is full.Radin's hunch: Decreased geomagnetic interierence is conducive to psi. Not that it

makes a huge difference at the blackjack table. "On the night of the full moon,"Radin explains, "instead of giving the house a dollar and getting seventy-five cents

back, you'll get seventy-seven cents back. You'll still lose-you'll just lose slower."

"She read my wifeto a T.As for my

Buddhist pal ... "reserved. Dames was not a psy-chic, but as a supervisor at FortMeade he designed a protocol,Technical Remote Viewing(TRV),which he is now offeringto the public, claiming it cantransform anyone into a seersuperior to "the greatest naturalpsychics in history." Using thesystem, he says, Psi Tech's sixremote viewers have done con-tract work for Fortune 500 cor-porations (no names, please).Until recently, Dames taughtTRVin a 10-day course costing$4,500. Today he sells it onvideo: $300 for a five-tape set. "Iwould have given my left you-know-what to learn this stuff,"he says. "Should I deny it to theworld?" Besides, he adds, "I gottired of hearing, 'If you're sogood, why aren't you rich?'"

Dames calls in one ofhis star students to demonstratehis rigidly structured teChnique.A kind-faced, coffee-coloredgiant, Carl Totton is a schoolpsychologist, martial-arts mas-ter and Taoist priest. Unknownto Totton-he was downstairswhen Dames wrote 'Julie/Pres-ent Time" on a manila folder andsealed it in an envelope-his taskis to remote-view my wife.For 90minutes he sketches symbolsand diagrams, mutters discon-nected adjectives, huffs andgrunts with strain. In the end hehas produced a drawing thatlooks remarkably like a map ofmy living room, complete withkidney-shaped coffeetable. "Thesite seems to be a structure," hesays. He points to three circles:"Life forms, huddled around anobject." He detects a sense of

Psi shrink: Psychiatrist, author and academic Judith Orloff says she uses psi to tune

in to her patients-and to help them tune in to themselves. Her techniques for emo-

tional healing include the laying on of hands to adjust "subtle energies."

mission, of muted anger, ofcuriosity mixed with revulsion.The main target, Totton con-cludes, is a middle-aged male.

I phone Julie to see ifshe has any visitors or if she isgrading undergraduate papers(which would explain the emo-tional tone). But no-she's alonewith the cat, reading a relaxingnovel. Dames guarantees 100percent accuracy on Psi Tech'steam efforts, and 80 percent onremote viewings by individuals.I don't. know how to gauge thepercentage on this one, but I doperceive a silver lining: On thebasis of TRV;Dames predictsnuclear war between the Koreasthis year-and he may be wrong.

Across town, in anoffice dominated by a 14th cen-tury Spanish desk, Judith Orloffpins me to the patient's seat withher luminous hazel eyes. Orloffis a psychiatrist-an assistant

professor at UCLA, affiliatedwith three hospitals-and, asshe explains in self-help tapes,seminars and her book SecondSight, a psychic. A striking red-head with an empathic air, Orloffhas been using her intuitivegifts in her practice' ever sinceshe unwisely ignored a premoni-tion that a patient would attemptsuicide. She speaks of psi as away of "connecting with a per-son's being, with their spirit.The information part of it ismuch less important than thecompassion part." Still, informa-tion has its uses. Once, she,says,a woman asked her to tune in toa new boyfriend. Orloff senseddishonesty, saw flashes of drugabuse, courtrooms, anguishedarguments. But the patientdidn't listen, and it all cametrue. "My role was to help herthrough this relationship. Obvi-ously, she had to learn from it."

PSYCHOKINESISBending spoons with brain power-

Uri Geller may do it onstage, but such

large-scale psychokinesis (macro-

PK, as parapsychologists call it) has

never been demonstrated under strict

laboratory conditions. Micro-PK is

a different story. Using random-event

generators (REGs)-computers

that produce an unpredictable stream

of ones and zeros, as if flipping a

coin-scientists have recorded

thousands of apparent instances of

mind subtly influencing matter. And

not only the human mind. In one

experiment, newborn chicks learned to

follow a motorized robot whose wheels

were controlled by an REG; when the

robot was placed outside their pen,

its wanderings were less far-flung than

was explicable by chance. Did the

chicks will their artificial mother to stayclose? Such questions are not just

whimsical. Scientists at the Princeton

Engineering Anomalies Research

(PEAR) lab, the world's foremost

PK-research facility, believe some

computer glitches are triggered

psychokinetically. Entrepreneurs are

exploring PK's commercial potential

as weLMinnesotan John Haaland

recently demonstrated a prototype

for a PK-controlled electric switch in

New York City, with varied results. At

a busy real estate firm, the green lights

on the box wouldn't turn off; Haaland

attributed this'to mental background

noise. At LIFE's offices, they refused to

turn on until he made a conspicuous

effort to focus his concentration.

I ask Orloff to focus onthe name 'Julie," and she pro-ceeds to give me an unnervinglyacute reading of my wife'sstrengths, weaknesses, fears,joys and secret quirks. "She'spretty psychic, actually," Orloffsays. "Is she your daughter?"No, I say, but she's 10 yearsyounger than I am. I give her thename "Mike," again withoutrevealing anything more. Orloffpicks up my widowed father's ~

loneline,.;aswenasthedep:'I gaze at the .vat ions of his Depression-era dra ·ng and th nit~~~~~~~O~~:Ou;i~~e:::~~~~ ::; WI I~!~~f~~:~::'~'~:a::;~~~!:C:Could thl·s be pSI· 9'laugh." She descnbes a busy, •bubbly gal obsessed with her ,clothes and hair. "She wearshigh-heeled shoes. Pastels."Actually, I say, Stacey is a quietZen Buddhist who prefers blackclothing and flats. "Oh,my God,"Orloffexclaims. Later, however, Iremember that Stacey was farless mellow before I knew her;maybe Orloff sensed how sheused to be. I suspend judgment.

In Palo Alto, I get achance to try my own psychicpowers again, in the comfort ofEd May's lilac-painted Victoriancottage. A jovial, white-beardedphysicist, May spent a decaderunning the scientific end of thepsi spy program. Todayhis homeofficeis the headquarters ofCog-nitive Sciences Laboratory, akind of parapsychologists' coop-erative. May E-mails a colleaguein L.A., asking him to post aremote-viewing target on theInternet. At his dining-roomtable, I sketch a humpbackedmountain, with fir trees in theforeground. I write the words"blue round boulders." We gointo May's study and ... bingo!On the computer screen is a pho-to of Yosemite's Half Dome, firsand boulders in abundance.

For a moment, I'm in Ozagain. Then it occurs to me thatthis hit may reflect nothingmore than my taste in land-scapes: Asked to sketch an out-door scene, I'd probably draw amountain every time. So Maysets up a different kind of exper-iment. Back home in Brooklyn, Isit for 15 minutes at Grand ArmyPlaza, a traffic circle surround-ing a triumphal arch. At thesame time, in Palo Alto, NevinLantz-a psychologist whoscores high on May's psi tests-

o~

Extrasensory entrepreneurs: Retired Army Major Ed Dames and his wife, Joni

Dourif, retail their psi training videos-and doomsday prophecies-on the Web.

PSYCHIC PHYSICSAccording to conventional science,

psi should not exist. But in the weird

realm of quantum physics-where

wavelike particles travel back and forth

in time and communicate instantly

over galactic distances-there may

be room for psychic phenomena. The

problem is that quantum mechanics,

according to most physicists, works

only with subatomic specks. No one

has a fully developed theory of how psi

might get around this, but a Nobel

laureate, Englishman Brian Josephson,

is among those struggling toward a"

solution. "We think it's related to the

Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox,"

he says, then launches into a dizzyingly

arcane explanation. Robert Jahn,

director of Princeton's PEAR lab andis remote-viewing me. An hour

/later, Lantz faxes me his sketch:a circle labeled "plaza" with avertical object near the centerand dashes labeled "seating" atthe edge. The drawing tremblesin my hand. If not for the slimpossibility that May, a longtimeCIAcontractor, had me followed,I'd be ready to declare my searcha success.

The clincher comeswhen I return to L.A., pursuingyet another lead. One night I callJulie from my hotel. "I'm tiredof you having all the fun," shesays. "I want to try this remote-viewing stuff." I look around theroom and settle on a print of awizened Chinese sage. The slantofhis eyes is exaggerated; he has

a long, pointed beard with anunlikely reddish tinge, and he'scradling a miniature deer in hislap. ':Allright, smarty," I say. "Tellme what I'm looking at."

A minute passes beforeshe replies. "I'm seeing a face,"she says. "There seems to be atriangle coming off of it, like aflame. There's something oddabout the eyes. And I'm gettingan animal. Is it a cat?"

If I weren't such a faith-ful husband, I would worryabout my privacy on businesstrips from this moment on. As itis, I am moved to sing my wife anold love song, with the lyricslightly altered: If this isn't psi,it'll have to do/Until the realthing comesalong. [Jill

dean emeritus of the university's

engineering department, offers a partialtranslation: "The first premise is that

consciousness can insert information

into its environment." The second is

that consciousness, which we usually

think of in terms of particles-individual

minds, localized in time and space-

may also act like a wave. In quantum

physics, intersecting waves of

e'nergy form resonating patterns. One

consciousness may likewise resonate

with another, forming a telepathic link;clairvoyance or psychokinesis may

result from a resonance between a

mind and an object. Atoms themselves

are only constructs of the mind, says

Jahn. "And our heads are TV sets thattransduce the consciousness waves

out of which our

universe is built."