ExtraSensory Perception

Believing in ESP is almost like believing in a certain religion. While there are many experiments that fail to show it exists, a few, a very few seem to point to it being a real power... a sixth sense. Unfortunately, most of the tests that have shown ESP to be an effective force were questionably designed or simply stage shows that mystified the crowd, scientists included.

A very religious man once told me that he believed that things like witchcraft and demons simply proved that one side of the spiritual equation existed. He could then, by inference, believe in the other side... God, angels and Heaven. It was a working argument for him. Alas, I've never seen an experiment that showed ESP or any spiritual belief is demonstrable. That doesn't matter to me. I believe what I believe. That kind of belief requires no proof or duplicatable experiment. It is a gut feeling that doesn't have to be justified.

All this is leading up to what almost convinced a very hard nosed psychologist that ESP was a working force. During my senior year in university, I took a course in experimental psychology. It was fascinating. The experimental designs and statistics used to interpret the results were rigorous and could actually be duplicated with similar equipment and environment.

We were assigned the task of designing and implementing an experiment that would either show that ExtraSensory Perception existed or not. Of course, it was a given that the negative hypothesis in this case would not prove ESP's non-existence. "Absence of proof is not proof of absence." I don't remember who said that, but it applies.

We were given access to state of the art, electro-mechanical test equipment and used it to see if a subject, chosen at random from the student body could predict which of five symbols was going to appear on the screen in front of him. Results were tallied on the experimenter's control board. I was running a subject through the test and didn't notice Dr. Gardner entering the lab. The first I knew of his presence was when he asked, "How long have you been doing that?"

He had been watching me and I was recording the results without looking at the tally board. Dr. Gardner was just a little spooked. While none of our results indicated that any of our subjects could forecast what would appear, it looked like I was doing just that with the results.

Calm down. Remember that we were using electro-mechanical equipment, not digital. Each of the symbols' tally used a different electric motor and gear mechanism. My hearing was still good enough that I could detect the differences between them. That hearing is about gone now, thanks to the Army, but the memory of Dr. Gardner's face remains.

Sorry, no pictures for this memoir.