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By Doctor J B Rhine: Extra Sensory Perception. I think that was the first time this phrase now normally abbreviated to ESP ever appeared in print. In his work Doctor Rhine claimed to have established scientifically the existence of Telepathy – that is direct mind to mind communication. Arthur C Clarke’s World of Strange Powers, ITV 1985
Besides, if Telepathy exists, why isn’t it there when we really need it? ibid.
In 1979 the Fresno police scoured hundreds of square miles in their search for an abducted child. They failed to find her. And the desperate parents of eight-year-old Victoria de Santiago asked a psychic detective for help. On the psychic’s instructions the Fresno police were directed deep into the backwoods to a lonely chicken farm. Arthur C Clarke’s Mysterious Universe s1e6: The Psychic Detectives, ITV 1994
A compelling vision drove Etta Louise Smith to a remote canyon high in the hills above Los Angeles. She’d heard on the news that police were searching for a missing nurse ... Etta Smith told the police of her gruesome discovery. Amazed by her story they promptly arrested her. Etta was charged with murder and jailed for five days. She was only freed when three youths were overheard discussing the crime and arrested. ibid.
December 17th 1980: that day changed my life ... As soon as the announcer [on the radio] said they were making a house to house search I had some kind of a visual image ... I can see where she was. I know it’s a canyon area. I see a dirt path going up to the right and I see a hill, and at the end of the dirt path I see white through shrubbery, and I thought that’s odd ... I could see tyre marks and for some reason I felt compelled to touch them ... This object had white nurse’s shoes ... They [LAPD detectives] assured they would bring me back ... We went through it again and again and again. Finally about ten o’clock I start to realise something isn’t right here. I said if you’re having a problem believing me then let me volunteer for a lie-detector, polygraph ... Oh no, there’s a mistake ... What! But my mind is spinning. How can you fail a polygraph when you’re telling the truth? Etta Louise Smith
It was as if I heard a voice or someone tell me she’s not in the house. And as soon as I registered that thought, she’s not in the house, it was as if I saw a picture – it was as clear as a photograph in front of me. I could see where she was. Etta Louise Smith
She made several statements at the time; she didn’t want to be considered a cook or a nut; she wasn’t crazy ... To be able to pinpoint an area was absolutely incredible ... I thanked her for coming in in her own time ... I was infuriated. I wanted to know why; I was told why: the detectives now handing the case believed she was more involved than she told you ... I was very upset. I had promised her she would not be taken into custody. She was a friendly witness ... I was a disbeliever until I spoke to Etta Smith. Detective Lee Ryan, LAPD
Gee – I could have told them that for a dollar seventy-five ... Twenty million dollars of our tax money and ten years of research by the CIA. And the conclusion they came to at the end of this – it didn’t do anything for us. James Randi, president James Randi Educational Foundation
Astral trips – I call them half-ass trips. If they are made, I would like to see some evidence of them. These people use their imaginations and people who believe them use their gullibility to accept it. James Randi
These are things not based on reality at all. James Randi
Spoon-bending parties – it’s the latest craze to capitalise on the offshoots of the bullshit known as ESP, or Extra-Sensory Perception. Penn & Teller, Bullshit! s1e10: Extra Sensory Perception, Showtime 2003
Science debunked ESP as soon as it became popular. ibid.
The Stanford Remote Viewing Program was financially supported by the CIA. Proving these guys are as gullible as the rest of us ... The Remote Viewing Program was closed down permanently. ibid.
Telepathy is the so-called ESP ability to communicate with people with only your mind ... Reinvented with – we’re not kidding here – pets. ibid.
There seems to be no shortage of willing victims. ibid.
She waved goodbye to me and skipped up the street. It wasn’t long before all of a sudden I felt a terrible chill that went all through me. I dropped the plate I was washing and raised my eyes to Heaven and said, ‘Oh God, don’t let her get killed.’ At that moment I knew something awful had happened to my daughter. I immediately went to the telephone. I could hardly dial because I was shaking so. I picked up the receiver. I did get the Rivoli Theatre and a young girl answered the phone. I said, ‘This is Mrs Hurth. My daughter was on the way to the Theatre and she’s had an accident – is she badly hurt?’ The girl stammered, ‘Mrs Hurth, the accident just happened.’ Mary Ellen Hurth, Cedarburg Wisconsin
There was no way anybody could have got down and talked to Mrs Hurth about her daughter because the phone rang – it couldn’t have been a few seconds after her daughter was hurt. Ray Nichols
Now what you would have expected according to Chance was 20%. So in other words they [3-year-olds] were scoring more than twice the amount they should have obtained. And this was absolutely outrageous as far as ESP tests went. In the next group the 5-year-olds were scoring at about 35% accuracy ... And the last group 6-8-year olds were down to about 26%. Dr Ernesto Spinelli, random selection over two-thousand children of five possible pictures to match simultaneous selection of random picture by another child
The small town of Oakhurst in northern California is the home and workplace of one of America’s most celebrated psychics ... Dixie Yeterian. Strange But True? s3e7, Psychic Detectives, ITV 1996
Etta Smith claimed no special psychic powers, no history of clairvoyance, but she succeeded where the whole of the Los Angeles police department failed. ibid.
Etta’s decision to go to the Canyon marked a deepening of her involvement with the case; she was now being drawn into the investigation in a way she could no longer foresee or control. As Etta drove back down the Canyon she regretted ever having involved her children in the search. ibid.
Detective Ryan was now working on another case; he was told that Etta had been taken into custody. By offering to take a polygraph test Etta thought at last she’d found the perfect way to convince the detectives she was telling the truth. It was now three in the morning. Etta had been in custody nine hours. With Etta under arrest the hunt for the real killers had come to a standstill. The pursuit of her premonition had plunged her into a nightmare. Etta was suddenly free. At a party three men had been heard boasting of killing Melanie Yuribi. The police had no further interest in Etta Smith ... The trauma of her imprisonment had left its scars. ibid.
In 1988 David Morehouse, a Major in the United States Army, was assigned to a new post at a top-secret unit of military intelligence. Discretely housed in two wooden sheds on an Army Base at Fort Mead in Maryland the unit was so clandestine that Morehouse didn’t discover what went on there until he met his commanding officer ... But four months prior to reporting to Fort Mead Morehouse’s glittering career nearly ended. During a training exercise in the Jordanian desert a stray round struck him in the head. The bullet should have killed him but miraculously it lodged in his helmet. As he lay unconscious on the desert floor Morehouse claimed he had a vision of an angel bearing a message ... After the accident Morehouse began to be haunted by a series of terrifying hallucinations and out-of-body experiences ... To his amazement Morehouse discovered that far from being invalided out of the Army he was being recruited as a psychic spy. The psychologist suspected that the blow from the bullet had released a latent psychic ability ... For twenty years the US government had invested millions of dollars into a series of ultra-classified projects like Operation Grill-Flame. Psychics were recruited to gather military intelligence through a process called Remote Viewing ... Having entered an altered state, the remote viewer is ready to begin his assignment. Strange But True? s4e3: Remote Viewing, ITV 1997
Saddam Hussein actually accused the United States openly in the media of using or employing psychics against him ... When I realised we were reaching out to kill with it, I felt I had a moral and ethical responsibility to violate my security oath and tell the story of this to the American people ... It cost me a family and it cost me a career to tell the truth. David Morehouse
And I would drop through this tunnel. And the sensation was so physically overwhelming to me that often I began to get nausea ... You begin to drop into this target area and things become perceivable by you. You’re seeing the colours, you’re smelling the smells and tasting things. The Monitor begins steering you round in this particular target area and you actually move about in the target area in this ghost-like phantom form that’s projected in Time and Space. David Morehouse
And we kept watching this aircraft explode, and then we would be asked to go back again to re-live it again, to go right back to the moment just before it exploded again to try to pinpoint where this explosion took place. What we were looking at was Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which we were forced to re-live over and over again. And it was literally within hours of that aircraft exploding in mid-air that the remote viewers were providing information to the defence intelligence agency that stated that there was an explosion that took place on the front left quadrant of this aircraft, below the passenger line and in front of the wings. David Morehouse
The bullet lodged in Morehouse’s helmet knocking him down cold. It was then that he claimed he experienced visions of overwhelming power ... He began having nightmares so horrifying that they drove him to an army psychologist. The psychologist suspected conclusion had somehow released in Morehouse a latent psychic ability. His commanding officers invited Morehouse to join a secret CIA unit studying psychic powers. Unsolved Mysteries