• Story originally published by •Research Into Our Sixth Sense
[Original headline: What colour is this woman thinking of?]
Do you ever have a sense of déjà vu? Do you sometimes know the phone is about to ring seconds before it does? You could be psychic – or just lucky.The paranormal, in its own sweet way, is all around us. Not in the sense that every graveyard is full of ghouls which rise at midnight, or every old building riddled with cloak-draped spectres which walk through walls, or every battlefield infested with the unquiet, screaming souls of the men who died in agony there. No. The truth is out there, as Mulder and Scully would say, but it’s a lot more subtle than that.
A report on research that aims to get to the bottom of the mysteries surrounding our sixth sense. But of course you knew that …
We connect with a world which we do not yet understand with almost predictable regularity, but only very rarely with the terrifying drama you might expect at places such as Boleskine House, Borley Rectory or Amityville. If we walk into an old church, we immediately sense the atmosphere of devotion and stillness. It is as if the stones are weeping the wisdom of centuries over us. How does science account for that?
Likewise, how can it rationalise the feelings many of us have experienced of still connecting in some way with a relative or friend who has died? It can’t – or at least, it can’t yet.
There is a strong argument that the paranormal is simply something which we are currently unable to interpret because of an inadequate present understanding of science. Centuries ago, lightning storms were interpreted as the wrath of God rather than the movement of electrically charged ions. It may well be that in centuries to come we will be able to explain and understand ghosts and the after-life as easily as we now understand the flicker of marsh gas or the behaviour of the atom.
It’s not that we’re not trying. For the last 16 years, in the heart of Edinburgh, a series of academic experiments have been going on in a bid to unravel some of the last mysteries which remain in the universe. The results are not yet definitive, but they do appear to provide evidence that the human mind is more powerful and more capable of paranormal behaviour than we could possibly imagine.
The Koestler Parapsychology Unit was established at Edinburgh University following the suicide in 1982 of the writer and critic Arthur Koestler and his wife Cynthia. The pair left a bequest in their wills for the establishment of an endowed chair of parapsychology at a university with an interest in the subject. Edinburgh was eventually chosen because of the reputation it had already gained for serious research in the field through the work of the now-retired parapsychology lecturer, Dr John Beloff.
Before we go any further, let’s correct a few false impressions. The unit, which is within the university’s department of psychology, is not an X-Files type operation. Its staff don’t spend nights in haunted houses or hold vigils sleeping behind gravestones. They’re not ghostbusters in the Hollywood – or, indeed, in any other – sense. Instead, they concentrate their attention on much more scientifically measurable (and, it has to be said, less glamorous) experiments involving the parapsychology of the human mind.
The unit’s main area of interest is in areas such as telepathy and ESP, and in attempting to establish whether humans really do have the mental capacity to transmit thoughts and actions to each other.
It’s a bit of a shame that they’re not quite the beheaded spectre of Anne Boleyn in front of the TV cameras or providing irrefutable evidence of the existence of the Loch Ness Monster. But their work does have merit, and appears to have contributed to our understanding of how humans use as-yet unknown forces to communicate with each other. “Most of what we do here”, explains Dr Caroline Watt, a Research Fellow who has been in the unit for the last 12 years, “is to carry out laboratory-based research under carefully controlled conditions. We don’t really do field research. We do get people who ask if we’ve found ghosts or poltergeists, but that involves sitting around for weeks, only to find that something happens when you’ve either turned your back or you’ve packed up and left.”
It is the department’s ESP work which has so far produced the most interesting results. It uses a technique known as a Ganzfeld experiment – the phrase means “unpatterned field” – to attempt to measure thought transmission from one person to another in a structured, and scientifically valid, way.
The Ganzfeld technique is a sophisticated refinement of the classic experiment of asking one person to try and project an image – say, of an object – and another to receive that image and describe what they are seeing.
Volunteers from the Edinburgh area are used as “senders” and “receivers”. Each person is chosen for their relative ordinariness. Commercial psychics aren’t used, because they have an agenda of their own. “The last thing we’d want”, says Dr Watt, “is these people going round and claiming that the University of Edinburgh had endorsed their psychic powers. We also try to avoid students because they represent quite a narrow section of the population, as they tend to be young people who are worried about exams and boyfriends.”
The one thing we do know about any form of parapsychological thought transmission is that any signals which are sent must be extremely weak. If they weren’t, then we’d all be engaging in frantic mental beaming activity, and the telekinetic clutter from all those sparking human craniums would probably interfere with everything from the radio to our microwave ovens.
The Ganzfeld technique assumes that mental projections are extremely weak and attempts to strip out all the background interference which could distort or hide them, leaving behind only the “pure” telepathic signal.
The person who has volunteered to try and receive the signal is placed in a soundproof room within the university several yards away from the sender. There is no possible contact between the two in any way. The receiver is then asked to make himself or herself comfortable on a couch. Headphones playing white noise – a gentle hissing sound which contains elements of a wide range of frequencies – are placed on the head and goggles are fitted over the eyes. A red light is then shone gently onto the face, creating the visual impression of a soft red mist.
The aim is to eliminate all extraneous influences allowing the receiver to concentrate on the image being transmitted. Several rooms away, the sender is then played a video image from a database of 150 clips selected randomly by a computer.
As the experiment proceeds, the receiver talks about the images coming into his or her brain. These thoughts are picked up by microphone and then recorded. After the session, which lasts half an hour or so, that person is immediately shown a series of four different still images and asked to describe which of them most closely relates to thoughts which they may have been picking up from the sender.
Of the four images, only one is the correct one.
This means that if they receive nothing and simply guess blindly, their chance of picking the image which matches the one played to them is be 25 per cent. “In fact,” says Dr Watt, “we find that people get it right about one in three times rather than one in four. We are trying to be objective, but that is a statistically measurable difference”.
In other words, it looks like there might be something in this after all. Dr Watt admits that the results are still crude and the test largely a result of trial and error, and she is pretty hard-nosed about the findings. “Some people feel that the Ganzfeld tests produce irrefutable evidence for the existence of ESP, but I don’t. There are still too many laboratories out there which haven’t achieved results. I’m sceptical. I wouldn’t say I was disbelieving, but I am not yet convinced. We are definitely achieving significant results, but there may be some other explanation – an undetected factor we have so far overlooked.”
Nevertheless, the work continues: the unit is now trying to find out why some people – creative professionals such as musicians and those who are used to performing – do better than others in achieving good results in the tests.
The unit is about to play its part in an ESP test which is being carried out by a London parapsychology researcher Alex Sabell, involving the beaming of mental images to the Scots explorer David Mill, who will shortly be attempting to set a record time for a solo walk from the North Pole to Canada. The experiment will be similar to that carried out in the 1930s by another Arctic explorer, Hubert Wilkins, which was published in the book Thoughts Through Space and appeared to indicate that ESP communication of this type could take place.
Mill will be beamed 20 pictures via a sender who will be based in London. If he picks anything up, he will pass the information back via his Canadian support team. A psychology student himself, Mill admits to being somewhat sceptical and, despite the unit’s help with the project, Caroline Watt is far from convinced it will yield useful results, believing the sample size is too small to be significant.
As well as its work into ESP, the Edinburgh unit is also researching two other forms of mind over matter activity: psycho kinesis, or PK, and DMILS, or Direct Mental Interaction with Living Systems. Unlike ESP, PK requires the sender to actually use their mind to produce a measurable effect on a process or object.
Getting someone to move a chair or levitate a table would do very nicely, thank you, but that sort of thing doesn’t happen very often and when it does, it usually turns out that the person responsible is either a conjurer or a fake. So the department is having to rely on rather less sexy and more scientifically based research methodology.
One way in which the unit does this is to use radioactive decay emissions, which are entirely random, and then ask a volunteer to use his or her mind to try and “bias” those emissions by forcing them into a discernible pattern. The results are then checked against control periods when the emissions are known to be random. Like the ESP experiments, the process is scientifically valid and measurable.
Unlike the ESP test, however, it doesn’t really seem to be producing any useful results. “We are looking for bias at times when bias is intended,” says Dr Watt. “What we’re getting is a very small effect, and it’s not consistent. We’re finding that our work in this area is producing mixed results. There is evidence for PK, but it’s thin. A lot of parapsychologists would take it with a pinch of salt.”
DMILS is yet another form of thought transmission, involving one person affecting the physiology of another by, for instance, trying to make them calmer or more nervous. If this could be proved to happen, it would indicate that someone could act as a receiver even when they are not thinking about the process. Once again, however, the results have not been compelling, and are described by Dr Watt as being of “borderline” significance.
All in all, then, we’re not looking at spectacular discoveries here. After 16 years of intense research, the boundaries of parapsychology hardly seem to have moved. It does rather beg the question: has Koestler’s admittedly rather eccentric legacy been little more than a waste of time?
Dr Watt responds to this criticism, which she must often hear, by pointing out that parapsychology is still a relatively young science, and that there are only a handful of researchers in the world working in this area. Progress is therefore likely to be slow.
She also points out that the research itself produces spin-off benefits. The department is a good testing ground for the development of new methods of scientific enquiry, since in a sense it doesn’t know what it is looking for. Because of the critical scrutiny to which it is constantly exposed, its methods of test and analysis have to be highly rigorous. “It forces you,” she says, “to pull your socks up.”
Not all the department’s work is connected with the paranormal: it is, for instance, just about to embark on a study of willpower, asking exactly what it is and why some people appear to have more of it than others. “A lot of this hasn’t been investigated by psychologists before. We want to look at what sort of people do well at volitional tasks, such as dieting and stopping smoking. We are currently looking for people to collaborate in the research.”
Dr Watt defends herself against claims that the department has spent much, enjoyed huge amounts of publicity, yet actually achieved little in tangible terms. Part of its role, she says, is to debunk as well as prove – that is why it employs not only psychologists, but also a physicist and even a magician.
It is its duty, she says, to be sceptical and to entertain only the most rigorous data and evidence. The university is supportive of the department because it does not make wild claims, but rather approaches everything from a scientific and objective standpoint. “We’re not gullible. We are well aware of the possibilities for fraud and self-deception, and have established our credibility in this area. That is the university’s main concern. You have to remember that Bob Morris (the academic who holds the chair of parapsychology in the department) was awarded the position of President of the Psychology Section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. I think that sums up what we’ve achieved here in terms of academic acceptability.”
There is also the question of public opinion – most people do apparently think that something is out there. “Some experiences do seem to be very common. At least 50 per cent of the population, for instance, report a belief in mind-to-mind communication, and half of those claim to have had experiences. The interpretation of that experience as paranormal is not at all unusual and that in itself is a justification for our existence.”
One day, she thinks, there could even be practical benefits. Who knows how and when basic research into parapsychology could be turned into applied research? “It may be that one day, for instance, we will be able to harness this brainpower to allow disabled people to turn on lights or computers just by thought. But we shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves. First, as you might say, you have to catch your rabbit.”
Or ghostie, or ghoulie, or long-legged beastie. In fact, a catch of anything that went bump in the night would be just dandy, thank you. But Dr Watt is as cynical as even the most hardened sceptic about all this. Does she believe in ghosts? “I believe that people have experiences they interpret as ghosts. I think people are responding to suggestions and to atmosphere, and that is the psychology of expectation.” And if several people see something at the same time? “Yes, well. That’s harder to explain.”
Nor, she says, does she believe in life after death. “I think that the theory of evolution provides an extremely good explanation of how life operates. I suppose in that sense, I’m a natural scientist.” A paranormal researcher, then, who doesn’t believe in the paranormal. It’s all a bit disappointing.
A real-life encounter with a ghost would, presumably, change her mind. But then ghosts have been walking the Earth for centuries, and are usually old and wise. They’re far too clever to appear in a place where they can be grabbed by Dr Watt and her team, strapped to a couch, and assaulted with white noise and goggles. Even damp old churches and graveyards must present a more appealing prospect than that.
