Psychic Commanders, ESP Pigeons in Military Studies

By Noah Shachtman

Col. John Alexander wasn't the only one in the American military establishment, trying to harness psychic powers to help win the Cold War. A quick trip through the archives of the Defense Technical Information Center reveals dozens of studies and serious military-academic papers on, shall we say, non-traditional phenomenon. Here's a sample:

Psychokinesis and Its Possible Implication to Warfare Strategy: A 1985 study from the Army's Command and General Staff College declares that "psychokinesis could, with continued research, have a potential military value for future military operations when psychokinesis has been developed to the point for effective utilization." However, "the implications of psychokinesis with respect to warfare strategy are not of immediate concern, but are of long range consideration impacting on command and control."

Testing For Extrasensory Perception With a Machine: "Since reports of apparently significant ESP performances are increasing in number, it becomes more important to use the most rigorous of experimental techniques in testing the ESP hypothesis," announces this 1963 paper from the Air Force Cambridge Research Labs, "cover[ing] the design of an objective test of three modes of ESP, pretest considerations and planning, final testing, and results obtained using the specially designed testing and recording machine, the VERITAC."

Research on Animal Orientation, With Emphasis upon the Phenomenon of Homing in Pigeons: 1962, Duke University researchers set out on "an attempt to elucidate the hypothesis that extrasensory perception may be an essential factor in homing. Use of mobile lofts on land and its disturbing effects on exercise flights and possible use of lofts aboard ship for further extrasensory perception studies."

Research on Human Non-Visual Perception: This 1996 report examines how people can supposedly "see" something, without ever laying eyes on it. "This effect -- found only in women to date - -has been called 'dermo-optical perception,' 'cheek vision,' and 'finger sight.' Whether these responses are to visible light or to some other band of the energy spectrum, and whether they are tactually mediated is not yet clear."

Early in 1965, it was learned that an American female was reported to have abilities such as those mentioned above. After a number of demonstrations by this subject (A), studies were performed to determine whether A's non-visual discriminations of the visual properties of stimulus objects differed from chance and from the performance level of control subjects. Results of these studies indicated that the subject performed reliably above chance and above the level of the controls as a group in discriminating colors of plastic discs; light projected through two colors of Wratten filters; and in discriminating the suit and number of playing cards. Results also showed that the control subjects tended in some cases to perform reliably above chance, but to a lesser degree than A. Questions as to the nature of this ability were discussed.