DREAM STATES AND ESP: A DISTANCE EXPERIMENT FEATURING A PURE CLAIRVOYANCE, FREE-RESPONSE DESIGN

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DREAM STATES AND ESP: A DISTANCE EXPERIMENT
FEATURING A PURE CLAIRVOYANCE, FREE-RESPONSE DESIGN
Betty Markwick (5 Thorncroft, Hornchurch, Essex, RM11 1EU,
England) and John Beloff (University of Edinburgh)
At the 1982 PA Convention in Cambridge (RIP 1982, 228-230)
we reported a study of ESP in dreams composed of 100 trials car-
ried out under a simple, but watertight, postal protocol. A rank-
sum analysis yielded an overall p value of 0.030, one-tailed. The
p value reached a peak of 0.0015 at Trial 64, but (coinciding with
a crisis in B.M.'s life) scoring thereafter fell to chance level.
We here report a second series of 100 trials, spanning the
period November 1982 to July 1987. The results for GESP and
clairvoyance in the original series had been closely comparable, and
it was decided to concentrate upon clairvoyance designs in the
present work. Four experimental modes were explored: clairvoy-
ance ("C," three runs), clairvoyance with deferred selection of
controls ("CD," two runs), pure clairvoyance ("PC," three runs),
and precognition ("PRE," two runs).
The basic clairvoyance procedure was as follows. For each
trial a new judging pool was assembled, consisting of five maximally
contrasting, or randomly selected, picture postcards. Having alerted
B.M. at her home in the London area, J.B. , at his home in Edin-
burgh, would randomly select a target card and insert it, sight
unseen, into his "psi box." B.M. would then, over a period of
several days, record her impressions from selected dreams and
hypnagogic imagery. Eventually B.M. would open the duplicate
judging pool and rank the five pictures in order of their corres-
pondence to the dream protocol. She would then post the dream
protocol with her ranking to J.B.
In the "deferred" mode, the four control cards were not
specified until after B. M. had had an opportunity to record her
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impressions, in the hope of reducing displacement effects. A sys-
tem of concealed code tags and complement judging pools was em-
ployed to preserve rigor. For the pure clairvoyance runs a com-
plex design, devised by B.M., was used.
The question whether pure clairvoyance exists is of crucial
importance. If clairvoyance were to be demonstrated under condi-
tions that eliminated telepathy, precognition, and feedback chan-
nels, the observational theories would be largely undermined. More
generally, theoretical systems based on the assumption that clair-
voyance is impossible would need to be modified.
Until recently, reported studies of pure clairvoyance have
been confined to forced-choice designs. Tyrrell's experiments with
an electrical apparatus in the 1930s included a pure clairvoyance
condition under which highly significant results were claimed. In
1941 Humphrey and Pratt reported an apparently successful "chute"
experiment in which subjects "posted" concealed ESP cards through
labeled openings. With the advent of computers the testing of pure
clairvoyance became greatly simplified, and some successful studies
have been reported.
The disadvantage of computer designs, in particular, is the
sterile nature of the task. Yet the idea of testing pure clairvoy-
ance using free-response target material hardly seemed feasible.
However, in JASPR (1985, 493-500), Elisabeth Targ et al. reported
an ingenious attempt to do just that. The procedure involved a
complex system of target handling and encoding such that no one
person ever had sufficient information to deduce the result of any
trial. The results appeared to support the hypothesis that clair-
voyance can function in the absence of feedback.
The devising of a pure clairvoyance design suitable for home
dream research demanded a very different approach. A solution
emerged in combining the "chute" idea of Humphrey and Pratt with
the technique of associational remote viewing (in which a forced-
choice task is mediated through free response to arbitrarily associ-
ated material), B.M.'s procedure preserves the rank ordering of
five pictures. On each trial, an envelope containing 15 identical
"target pointers," divided into sets of 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1, is placed
in the psi box. At the end of a run, the 150 target pointers are
sorted into five response boxes (labeled A, B, C, D, E) according
to how B.M. has voted on each judging pool; the rank sum can
then be determined. Optionally, a target-response matrix may be
compiled--but this would allow the recovery of individual results by
collation with the response data.
The standard experimental approach to the investigation of
dream ESP was set by the pioneering research at the Maimonides
Dream Laboratory during the 1960s. Typically, the subject's dream
phases are monitored by EEG equipment and the whole dream record
constitutes the ESP response.
In the context of home dream research, it is more appropriate
to select dreams that relate specifically to the experiment: dreams
about meeting the experimenter, doing psi experiments, opening
boxes, drawing pictures, playing cards, and so on. Symbolic
"tracers"--notably the telephone in B.M.'s dreams--may serve as
psi indicators. Unusually bizarre, or mysterious, dreams also seem
worth recording. Hypnagogic imagery, lucid dreams and--above
all--translucid (out-of-body) experiences merit special attention.
Trial 6: translucid dream. "I imagined my hand floating
down on to the psi box (which stood on the floor beside the bed).
I couldn't get the box open at first--until I remembered to relax.
Inside, my hand encountered a mass of cloth--then, within this,
something hard. I tried to run my fingers over the object, but
again my efforts were inhibited until I relaxed. I then sensed a
sea-shell ... I awoke suddenly."
Trial 16: hypnagogic image. The word "QUOTATION." It
occurred to me that QN might be the code for the target card--and
so it proved. (Each of the 30 cards in the grand pool carried a
two-consonant identity code; my chance of a hit was thus effec-
tively 1 in 30.)
Trial 29: nonlucid dream. "I came across you [J.B. ] mixing
bright yellow ice cream, which I understood to have been made from
crushed fish. This was apparently intended to be eaten as a prize
if I scored a hit.... I mixed a portion of the ice cream in a large
leaf and tasted it: it had that characteristic tang (not fishy) that
ice cream always has in my dreams. I gazed down into a pool at a
shoal of fishes, searching for a yellow fish--but they were all grey."
This bizarre dream left no room for doubt as to which picture to
choose from the judging pool: the target was a black and white
photograph of a model of the Beatles' "Yellow Submarine."
Trial 80: nonlucid dream. A "security officer" for ESP data
"made a photocopy of a card bearing a black-and-white drawing.
She lay the card askew on the duplicator plate, and before I had a
chance to adjust it the copy had been done. To my astonishment
the duplicate picture came out straight!" The "skew" idea was very
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Papers II Brief Papers
strong and served to pinpoint a photograph of the "Leaning Tower
of Pisa."
Results
The ten runs produced the following rank sums:
27 (CD)
29 (CD)
32 (C)
26 (PRE)
37 (PRE)
33 (C)
33 (C)
29 (PC)
33 (PC)
27 (PC)
The total rank sum of 306 (MCE = 300) comprises 22 rank is, 16
rank 2s, 19 rank 3s, 20 rank 4s and 23 rank 5s. The results are
not significant on a rank-sum analysis, either overall or in any of
the four experimental modes.
The "deferred" mode showed initial promise: in the first run,
four direct hits were scored on the eight trials for which the de-
ferred condition held.
Run-score variance. The total run-score variance is 116
against chance expectation of 200. The effect is even more pro-
nounced at the half-run level: observed 80, expected 200, p <
0.01, two-tailed (Monte Carlo method). This post-hoc finding sug=
gests a psi effect in "balancing out" the rank sums: the variance
at the trial level being greater than expectation. Exclusion of the
precognition runs (which B.M. regarded as merely "baseline" runs)
would give for the half-run score variance: observed 43, expected
160, p < 0.005, two-tailed.
Displacement and psi-missing. Some striking hits were ob-
tained on attractive control pictures, and it is surmised that dis-
placement may have vitiated the results. The drawback with clair-
voyance designs is that there is little difference in status between
target and controls: the whole array may thus constitute an ESP
stimulus. (See, e.g., Schmeidler, JASPR, 1985, 13-26.)
There are also indications that B.M. tends to react against
disliked conditions or minor hitches in procedure by producing an
extreme miss. The occurrence of a familiar target picture in runs
utilizing a mixture of new and reused material proved a decidedly
unfavorable condition, accounting for a disproportionate number of
the rank 5s.
Conclusion
This study is presented principally for its methodological
interest. It shows, after all, that it is possible to conduct dream
research without elaborate apparatus using a protocol that eliminates
sensory leakage. At a rate of 200 trials in eight years, our
experiment may well be the slowest on record! However, given a
more concentrated effort there is no reason why the comparative
speed of the Maimonides work could not be emulated.
Dreams remain the "royal road," not only to the unconscious
but to insight into the manifestation of psi. Home dream research
has much to contribute to this exciting field.
IN SEARCH OF "PSYCHIC SIGNATURES" IN RANDOM DATA
Rick E. Berger (Science Unlimited Research Foundation,
311-D Spencer Lane, San Antonio, TX 78201)
A pilot experiment was conducted to determine (1) if subjects
interacting with a hardware random number generator (RNG) in a
psi game experiment produce temporal patterning in the random data
and (2) whether such patterns, if present, are unique enough to
allow the computerized "blind matching" of two independent subject-
generated data sets when embedded in a matrix of 20 decoy data
sets.
By epoch averaging the data, it was anticipated that, if psi
processes are operational, idiosyncratic temporal patterning would
emerge in putative random data. One may view the present method-
ology as within-subject majority voting of data at selected experimen-
tal epochs.
Hypotheses
(1) Correlations of signal-averaged data derived from two
independent experimental series will show that subjects, when in-
teracting with randomly generated data through a "gating" process,
idiosyncratically pattern such data and that such patterns are con-
sistent within individuals.
(2) Within the context of a matrix of 20 sets of computer-
simulated game data, individual subject's second data set ("replica-
tion") will be identifiable as the match to first data set ("template")
of that given individual by the highest correlation coefficient (i.e. ,
the best match to the template data will be the subject's own repli-
cation data).
Experimental task. Volition is a PsiLab// RNG-sampling video
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