Speaker 1: Welcome to Unexplained Extra with me Richard McLane Smith, where
Speaker 1: for the weeks in between episodes, we look at stories
Speaker 1: and ideas that, for one reason or other, didn't make
Speaker 1: it into the previous show. In last week's episode, Visions
Speaker 1: in the Dark, we traced the incredible life story of
Speaker 1: Vangelia gusht or Ova, also known as Baba Vanger, who
Speaker 1: some believe was the most effective psychic of the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: Fanger died in nineteen ninety six, but according to a
Speaker 1: number of her supporters, she is said to have left
Speaker 1: a string of predictions with instructions to reveal them at
Speaker 1: certain times after her death. So far, this list has
Speaker 1: included the prediction that in twenty twenty three the Earth's
Speaker 1: orbit will change, and that rather enigmatically, in twenty eighty four,
Speaker 1: Nate will be reborn, and my personal favorite that in
Speaker 1: twenty one thirty, with the help of alien civilizations, will
Speaker 1: be able to live under water. As word of bab
Speaker 1: of Anger's apparent powers began to spread, she came to
Speaker 1: the attention of a number of mainstream scientific researchers, who
Speaker 1: were said to have made efforts to study her. Sadly, However,
Speaker 1: no official documentation or other significant evidence for this seems
Speaker 1: to exist either way. Although it might seem unlikely that
Speaker 1: an individual such as bab of Anger and her supposed
Speaker 1: powers would be given any credibility by mainstream science, there
Speaker 1: is a long and fascinating history of well respected academics,
Speaker 1: many of whom have made significant contributions in their field,
Speaker 1: putting such people to the test, with often startling results.
Speaker 1: Of all the supposed paranormal powers that some believe humans
Speaker 1: could possess, none have proved more fascinating to scientific researches
Speaker 1: than clairvoyance. In nineteen thirteen, French physiologist Charles Rochet won
Speaker 1: a Nobel Prize for medicine for his work on immunology,
Speaker 1: specifically the way in which some people can often have
Speaker 1: lethal reactions when injected with an antigen. Richet coined the
Speaker 1: term anaphylaxis, still used today to describe this phenomenon. What
Speaker 1: is perhaps less known, however, is that Richey also spent
Speaker 1: a considerable part of his professional life studying the paranormal,
Speaker 1: in particular the apparent clairvoyant skills of spiritualists, and is
Speaker 1: even credited with coining the term ectoplasm. Richet conducted a
Speaker 1: number of studies which he believed confirmed the existence of
Speaker 1: human extrasensory powers. When others attention did to replicate his studies, however,
Speaker 1: they were unable to draw the same conclusion. Brichet is
Speaker 1: considered to be one of the first to attempt a formal,
Speaker 1: mainstream science study of the apparent phenomenon of clairvoyance, but
Speaker 1: by the mid twentieth century such endeavors had become commonplace.
Speaker 1: In the late nineteen twenties, botanist Joseph Banks Ryan brought
Speaker 1: the study of alleged psychic phenomena even further into the
Speaker 1: mainstream when he established a parapsychology lab at Duke University
Speaker 1: in North Carolina in the United States, one of the
Speaker 1: most prestigious academic institutions in the world. Among Ryan's most
Speaker 1: famous subjects was Eileen Garrett, considered by some to be
Speaker 1: one of the most powerful clairvoyants to have ever lived.
Speaker 1: Garrett's reputation was cemented largely due to a series of
Speaker 1: experiments conducted by Ryan in which she was tasked with
Speaker 1: trying to guess the images printed on cards in envelopes.
Speaker 1: Ryan claimed that Garrett was able to successfully guess the
Speaker 1: images at a rate far higher than chance, suggesting she
Speaker 1: did indeed have some kind of supernatural power, much like
Speaker 1: with Charles Rochet's experiments. However, subsequent efforts to replicate Garrett's
Speaker 1: seemingly positive results proved unsuccessful, with many later questioning the
Speaker 1: validity of Ryan's methods. Of all the scientists who have
Speaker 1: attempted to confirm the existence of psychical powers, however, none
Speaker 1: are perhaps more famous than Harold put Off and Russell
Speaker 1: targ Back in nineteen seventy two, Harold put Off, an
Speaker 1: electrical engineer and specialist in lasers, was looking to secure
Speaker 1: a grant to conduct a study and quantum biology, a
Speaker 1: fledgling concept at the time that examines the way which
Speaker 1: quantum mechanics might affect biological processes. About the same time,
Speaker 1: he was introduced to a man named Ingo Swan, an
Speaker 1: artist based in New York who also claimed to have
Speaker 1: psychic abilities. Swan suggested to put Off that he should
Speaker 1: turn his attention instead to trying to understand at the
Speaker 1: quantum level where the border lies between an inanimate object
Speaker 1: and an animate one. By way of explanation, Swan told
Speaker 1: put Off about some experiments he'd recently conducted with Professor
Speaker 1: Gertrude Schmidler at City College in New York, which he
Speaker 1: claimed provided proof that he had psychokinetic powers. Intrigued by Swan,
Speaker 1: put Off invited him to put these apparent powers to
Speaker 1: the test at the Stanford Research Institute, where he worked
Speaker 1: in Menlo Park, just outside of San Francisco in California.
Speaker 1: On Swan's first day at the institute, put Off claimed
Speaker 1: that he successfully described the structure of a magnetometer, a
Speaker 1: device used to measure electromagnetic fields, that put Off had
Speaker 1: been planning to show him. Put Off was so blown
Speaker 1: away by this seemingly spontaneous act of clairvoyance that he
Speaker 1: wrote it up in a report for his colleagues, which
Speaker 1: came complete with the detailed schematic drawing that Swan, who
Speaker 1: claimed no knowledge of such devices, had drawn on that
Speaker 1: first day. A few weeks later, two men showed up
Speaker 1: unannounced at Putoff's lab carrying a copy of his report
Speaker 1: on Swan. The men had come from the CIA, as
Speaker 1: they explained to a stunt put Off, they'd received word
Speaker 1: that the government of the Soviet Union was funding studies
Speaker 1: in parapsychology with a view to potentially harnessing paranormal powers
Speaker 1: for use against their enemies. The men were intrigued to
Speaker 1: know more about put Off report and asked if the
Speaker 1: engineer would be interested in conducting some more experiments with
Speaker 1: Swan under their supervision, with the aim of starting their
Speaker 1: own parapsychology program. A few weeks later, the two operatives
Speaker 1: were sat and put Off slab holding a box chosen
Speaker 1: at random from a selection of identical boxes, each containing
Speaker 1: a different, unrelated object. It was Ingo Swan's job to
Speaker 1: try and guess what was inside it. I see something small,
Speaker 1: brown and irregular, said Swan, who was sat alone inside
Speaker 1: an adjacent room, sort of like a leaf or something,
Speaker 1: except it seems very much alive. It's even moving. The
Speaker 1: men from the CIA opened the lid of their box,
Speaker 1: astonished to find flapping about inside a small brown moth
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Speaker 1: Sunday Scaris dot com. After the success of his initial experiments,
Speaker 1: Harold put Off secured funding from the CIA to complete
Speaker 1: an eight month pilot study to determine firstly if clairvoyance
Speaker 1: was genuinely possible, and secondly, if it was, could it
Speaker 1: be used against the United States as a tool for espionage,
Speaker 1: put Off drafted in Russell Targ to assist him, a
Speaker 1: physicist who'd worked with him previously helping to develop lasers.
Speaker 1: In the first few weeks, put Off and Targ continued
Speaker 1: to test Ingo Swan along the same lines as before,
Speaker 1: studying whether he was able to guess symbols and objects
Speaker 1: hidden from his view. When he apparently proved able to
Speaker 1: do this regularly, they decided to expand the experiment. In
Speaker 1: what became known as the Outbounder experiments, put Off would
Speaker 1: traveled to one of six random locations within the San
Speaker 1: Francisco Bay area, while back in the laboratory, Russell Targ
Speaker 1: would sit with Swan as he attempted to guess where
Speaker 1: put Off had gone. Incredibly, according to put Off and targ,
Speaker 1: more often than not he did it successfully. Although Swan
Speaker 1: would rarely guess the target location exactly, he provided enough
Speaker 1: elements to define it, such as the sense of water
Speaker 1: or a particular geometric shape, which, taken together, put Off
Speaker 1: and Targ argued could reasonably be said to be a
Speaker 1: correct reflection of it. Since such a process had never
Speaker 1: been tried before, the three men had to coin a
Speaker 1: term for what it was. They were doing, and eventually
Speaker 1: alighted on the phrase remote viewing as Ingo Swan. Former
Speaker 1: police officer Pat Price was examined during this period too,
Speaker 1: and also found to have the capacity for remote viewing.
Speaker 1: At some point during the study, Russell targ invited his
Speaker 1: friend Hella Hammid to take part. Hamid, who immigrated to
Speaker 1: the US from Germany in the nineteen thirties, was a
Speaker 1: successful photographer at the time with little interest in psychical studies.
Speaker 1: Hamid's job was to be the control subject to help
Speaker 1: get a sense of how much Swan or Price's apparent
Speaker 1: visions of the target deviated from the random guesses of
Speaker 1: a lay person. What they hadn't bargained for was Hamid
Speaker 1: apparently becoming the most effective remote viewer of them all.
Speaker 1: For her first trial, Hammid was asked to enter a
Speaker 1: shielded room, then close her eye and just say whatever
Speaker 1: came into her mind. As she sat taking long, calm breaths,
Speaker 1: she claimed to see a series of squares within squares
Speaker 1: that got smaller and smaller, tapering off like a long path,
Speaker 1: disappearing into a central vanishing point. At the time, Harold
Speaker 1: put Off was standing at the entrance to a long
Speaker 1: pedestrian crossing with a chain link frame along the entirety
Speaker 1: of it that stretched out ahead of him and disappeared
Speaker 1: into a central vanishing point. In the first nine trials
Speaker 1: conducted with hammid she was judged to have seen the
Speaker 1: location in her mind without question in five of them,
Speaker 1: while the other four were judged to be only marginally
Speaker 1: less accurate. In nineteen seventy seven, Hammered and Ingo Swan
Speaker 1: were invited to take part in another experiment with Stephen Schwartz,
Speaker 1: a scientific researcher who was also fascinated by the possible
Speaker 1: abilities of remote viewing. In collaboration with put Off and
Speaker 1: targ and the Institute for Marine and Coastal Studies at
Speaker 1: the University of Southern California, Hammered and Swan were asked
Speaker 1: to locate and as yet undiscovered shipwreck that was thought
Speaker 1: to be located somewhere off the coast of California near
Speaker 1: Catalina Island. After separately being given an ocean map of
Speaker 1: the general area, both Hammered and Swan are said to
Speaker 1: have pinpointed a similar location within a hundred yards of
Speaker 1: each other. Both also provided details about what would be
Speaker 1: found there, including chains pulleys, and the location of the
Speaker 1: ship's wheel, and, most oddly of all, a large rectangular
Speaker 1: block of stone. In June nineteen seventy seven, in what
Speaker 1: became known as Project Deep Quest, Hammered and Swan were
Speaker 1: taken down in a submarine named Taurus Wan. They guided
Speaker 1: its pilot to the precise location of the wreck. Sure enough,
Speaker 1: they also found the pulleys, chains, and ship's wheel sticking
Speaker 1: out of the seabed, just as Hammered and Swan had predicted,
Speaker 1: and among it all, just like Hammid had also said,
Speaker 1: was the incongruous site of a large rectangular block of granite.
Speaker 1: A declassified CIA report released in nineteen ninety five stated
Speaker 1: that there can be no question that Hella Hammid can repeatedly,
Speaker 1: although not reliably, reduce information not available through normal means.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy eight, having been sufficiently impressed by Harold
Speaker 1: put Off and Russell Targ's experiments at the Stamford Research Institute,
Speaker 1: the pair were invited by the CIA to lead a
Speaker 1: secret Defense Intelligence agency program to determine the potential usage
Speaker 1: of psychic nomena in real world military engagements. The program
Speaker 1: was called the Stargate Project and you can hear much
Speaker 1: more about it in the next season of Unexplained. For now,
Speaker 1: there are three more episodes of season six still to come,
Speaker 1: along with their extras for you to enjoy. So as ever,
Speaker 1: thank you for listening and until next time. If you
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Speaker 1: All elements of Unexplained, including the show's music, are produced
Speaker 1: by me Richard McClain smith. Please subscribe and rate the
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