Paranormal people

I am sensible person and was a science major in college as well as grad school. But I do believe that some people, such as CharlieGoldsmith the healer (and cats, apparently), have special abilities. The U.S. government agrees. Beginning in the 70s and continuing for a couple of decades, the U.S. military and intelligence agencies studied and documented the paranormal abilities a bunch of people. Reports of these studies have only recently been declassified. In one 1975 report by the CIA, the authors conclude: “A large body of reliable experimental evidence points to the inescapable conclusion that extrasensory perception does exist as a real phenomenon.” The history of the government’s programs in this realm is documented in an excellent book called Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government’s Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis, by Annie Jacobsen.

One of the phenomena of interest to the government was the ability by some people to “see” things far away—what they called traveling clairvoyance or remote viewing. To test this ability, the agency scientists would give map coordinates to the test subject who would describe what he or she visualized at that location. Some people were remarkably accurate, but their visualizations weren’t particularly helpful. For example, in one famous case, the remote viewer person could visualize all the elements of the location where a fugitive was hiding but could not say precisely where that location was. By the time the authorities figured it out, the fugitive had left.

Among the people the government tested was Uri Geller, he of the spoon bending. In one test at the Stanford Research Institute a scientist put a die (as in dice) in a sealed metal box. The scientist would shake the box, then put it in front of Geller. Without touching it, Geller would declare which number was uppermost. They repeated the test eight times and Geller was correct every time. The probability that this could have occurred by chance is about one in a million. The scientists performed many more tests on Geller, all of which he handled perfectly.

The author of the book mentioned above spent several days in Tel Aviv with Geller (now in his 70s). Everywhere they went, people would ask him to bend spoons and he’d always comply. (In case you didn’t know, he does this with his mind.) On one day, they visit Benjamin Netanyahu at his home. As they sit in the courtyard, the old family dog, who has a terrible limp, sits down at Uri’s feet. The dog gets up to chase a bird and displays no limp. Netanyahu’s wife says, ‘Uri, you healed Kaya.” Geller replies, “I’m not a healer, but she does look better.”

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