Top 10 Unbelievable Ways The CIA Experimented With Psychic Powers

During the Cold War, the CIA wasn’t just counting missiles and reading intercepted cables. It was also
spending real taxpayer money trying to answer a question that sounds like the plot of a late-night
sci-fi movie: Can human beings spy with their minds?

From the early 1970s through the mid-1990s, the U.S. government quietly funded a network of programs
that would eventually be rolled into something called the Stargate Project – a classified
attempt to test and, if possible, weaponize psychic powers like remote viewing, telekinesis, and
precognition. Millions of dollars went into controlled experiments, contracts with Stanford Research
Institute, and classified field operations that tried to turn “psychic spies” into real intelligence
assets.

Some scientists walked away convinced that something strange and statistically significant was happening.
Others decided it was all noise, wishful thinking, and bad experimental design. But taken together, the
declassified documents tell a story so bizarre that, whether you’re a skeptic or a believer, you can’t
help but be fascinated.

Let’s dive into the top 10 unbelievable ways the CIA experimented with psychic powers – and why this
weird chapter of intelligence history still refuses to die.

Inside the CIA’s Obsession With Psychic Powers

In the early 1970s, U.S. intelligence officials became worried that the Soviet Union was pouring serious
resources into “psychotronic” research – everything from telepathy to mind control. Internal reports
suggested the Soviets might be spending tens of millions of rubles on parapsychology. That was enough to
trigger a familiar Cold War reflex: “If they’re doing it, we’d better do it too.”

The CIA’s response began with Project SCANATE (“scan by coordinate”) and later evolved into a
family of programs with wonderfully dramatic codenames: Gondola Wish, Grill Flame, Center Lane,
Sun Streak, and finally Stargate. Most of the research was contracted to civilian
labs, especially Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in California, where physicists Harold Puthoff and
Russell Targ tested self-described psychics under increasingly tight conditions.

In 1995, the whole enterprise was transferred back to the CIA for a final scientific review by the
American Institutes for Research. After two decades and roughly $20 million, the CIA officially shut the
program down, concluding that remote viewing hadn’t produced reliable, actionable intelligence. The
debate over whether the data showed “something real” versus “nothing useful” has raged ever since.

The Top 10 Strangest CIA Psychic Experiments

10. “Remote Viewing” Top-Secret Files

The core skill the CIA wanted to weaponize was remote viewing – the supposed ability to
describe distant locations, objects, or events using only the mind. In classic experiments, researchers
slipped photos or drawings into sealed envelopes and asked psychics to sketch or describe what was
inside. Other trials gave only map coordinates or random number strings as “targets.”

Declassified reports describe remote viewers correctly recounting details of buildings, landscapes, and
even specific objects, sometimes with eerie accuracy. In one series of trials, a computer in a shielded
room generated random strings of ones and zeros. Some viewers reportedly reproduced those strings at
rates far above chance.

The CIA’s internal conclusion at one point was surprisingly blunt: remote viewing appeared to be “a real
phenomenon,” and potentially useful when other intelligence methods had failed. That doesn’t mean the
agency thought it was magic – just that something odd was happening often enough to keep the funding
flowing.

9. A Psychic Trip to Ancient Mars

One of the most famous remote-viewing transcripts sounds like it was ripped straight from a pulp
paperback. In 1984, a CIA subject was handed a sealed envelope. Inside, unknown to him, was a single
line: “The planet Mars. Time of interest approximately 1 million years B.C.”

Instead of describing a random mountain in Colorado, the viewer began talking about “pyramids,”
“massive obelisks,” and “very large structures” under a hazy yellow sky. When asked to move around
in time, he reported tall, thin beings sheltering in huge, boat-like chambers, waiting for explorers who
had gone off to find a new home as their world collapsed.

To skeptics, the session is a classic example of a creative mind spinning a story under suggestion.
To believers, it’s either evidence of psychic time travel or of some strange connection between
consciousness and places we can’t yet verify. To the CIA, it was largely a training exercise – but the
transcript still reads like the strangest science-fiction short story the agency ever paid for.

8. Calling in Police Psychics to Solve Crimes

CIA-funded researchers didn’t just study lab psychics; they also rang up police departments that had
used “psychic detectives” in real cases. A review of 11 officers who had worked with psychics found that
eight reported receiving information they considered genuinely helpful, and several said the
psychics had helped locate bodies or focus search efforts.

The CIA analysis was surprisingly practical. It treated psychic input as one more noisy data stream –
comparable to anonymous tips or rumors – and suggested that if you were desperate, you might as well
throw it on the pile. Psychic impressions were often vague and symbolic, but they occasionally nudged
investigators toward leads they might have otherwise ignored.

Did this mean psychics were real crime-fighting tools? The report didn’t go that far. But it did show
that in frustrating, high-stakes investigations, even hard-nosed cops sometimes embraced the weird.

7. Psychic Spies in Hostage Crises and War Zones

At its peak, the Stargate-style program reportedly ran hundreds of real-world missions. Remote viewers
were tasked with everything from locating hidden facilities to checking on American hostages in Iran and
Lebanon. In some cases, the descriptions of buildings, surrounding terrain, and even interior layouts
were said to match later on-the-ground reports.

One oft-cited case involved Marine Lt. Col. William Higgins, kidnapped in Lebanon in 1988. Remote
viewers described the town where he was held and offered details about his captors and surroundings. The
intelligence was reportedly accurate – but it didn’t change his fate. He was killed, and the psychic
information arrived as one more tragic “what if” in the case file.

Psychic predictions were also folded into briefings during Operation Desert Storm, where
viewers tried to anticipate airstrikes, troop movements, and even weather shifts. It’s one thing to
sketch a Soviet factory; it’s another to tell a general when it’s going to rain.

6. Trying to Bend Spoons (and Physics) With Telekinesis

Remote viewing wasn’t the only trick on the CIA wish list. The agency and its contractors also flirted
with telekinesis – the alleged ability to move or alter physical objects using the mind alone.
That led them straight to famous names like Israeli performer Uri Geller.

At Stanford Research Institute, Geller was put through a series of controlled experiments. In some, he
appeared to reproduce drawings hidden in sealed envelopes or bend metal bars without obvious physical
force. One report claimed that under tightly monitored conditions, a strip of metal bent by about ten
degrees while Geller sat nearby concentrating. Other subjects – including a teenage boy and French metal-bender
Jean-Pierre Girard – reportedly warped or altered metal samples that were later examined under the
microscope.

Critics pointed out that magicians are very, very good at fooling scientists. Many argued that the
experiments lacked proper controls against sleight of hand. Still, the fact remains: the CIA once paid
serious money to watch people stare at spoons.

5. The Man Who Walked Pills Through Solid Glass

When U.S. analysts heard stories about a Chinese man named Zhang Baosheng who could supposedly
“teleport” small objects through solid barriers, they didn’t just laugh – they collected translations of
Chinese research and added them to the archives.

In one widely cited experiment, pills were sealed inside a glass bottle. Zhang reportedly shook the
bottle, focused intensely, and somehow caused the tablets to appear outside the container without
breaking the seal. High-speed film allegedly captured a single frame where a pill appears halfway through
the bottle wall, as if it were “phasing” through matter. Chinese investigators claimed the objects showed
no structural damage afterward.

American scientists were deeply skeptical, but the CIA filed the report anyway. If there was even a tiny
chance that someone could move objects through walls, it was too tempting – and too scary – to ignore.

4. Faith Healers With Electric Auras

Not all of the CIA’s paranormal reading list focused on spies and war. One declassified report, translated
from Russian, describes experiments with faith healers and a photographic technique known as
Kirlian photography. When a high-voltage source is applied in the dark, objects placed on a
photographic plate can appear surrounded by glowing halos.

In one case, a healer identified as A. Krivorotov supposedly produced an unusually strong and colorful
halo around his fingers, far beyond what researchers had seen in ordinary subjects. Additional testing
suggested that his hands generated more heat and had different electrical resistance compared with
control subjects.

Some interpreted this as evidence of a real “healing field.” Others saw mundane explanations: moisture,
pressure, and ordinary electrical effects. The CIA didn’t endorse any mystical theory, but its analysts
clearly felt compelled to catalog even the stranger corners of Soviet-bloc research.

3. Solar Flares and the Psychic Weather Report

If you’re trying to quantify psychic phenomena, you eventually ask a very nerdy question: “Does anything
in the environment make this stronger or weaker?” One long-running analysis looked at six years of remote
-viewing data and compared it with solar activity.

The result: when solar flares erupted, remote viewers tended to perform worse that day –
scoring below their usual hit rates – and then significantly better about 24 hours later. Sunspots seemed
to have smaller, more confusing effects.

Was the Sun really scrambling psychic signals and then supercharging them? Or was this just statistical
pareidolia – our brains spotting patterns in random noise? The data were intriguing enough to merit
memos, but not enough to revolutionize physics. Still, for a brief moment, somewhere in an intelligence
office, someone really did check the space weather before scheduling a psychic experiment.

2. Fortune-Telling for the Pentagon

Once you accept the idea of remote viewing, the next question is obvious: Can you look at the future
instead of the present? That’s where precognitive remote viewing comes in. Some CIA-linked
experiments asked viewers to describe what would happen at a target location on a specific future day,
then compared their notes to what actually occurred later.

In one declassified operation, a viewer described “tube-like objects” being moved into a camouflaged
facility and hidden under netting. Later intelligence seemed to confirm the layout of the base, while
leaving the mysterious tubes only “plausible.” In Gulf War–era work, psychics were tasked with forecasting
airstrikes, troop actions, and even the timing of Iraqi moves across borders.

Depending on whom you ask, the results were either an impressive series of hits or cherry-picked
anecdotes surrounded by failures. Even sympathetic statisticians argued that whatever was happening
wasn’t under tight enough control to steer real-world military decisions.

1. A Global Race for Psychic Warriors

The CIA’s psychic adventure didn’t happen in a vacuum. U.S. analysts were convinced – sometimes correctly –
that other countries were experimenting with the same ideas. Soviet research in parapsychology
pre-dated the American programs, and U.S. agencies commissioned extensive studies of Russian and Eastern
European work on telepathy, psychokinesis, and biological “field effects.”

Some reports – which sound suspiciously like urban legends – described Soviet experiments in which baby
rabbits were allegedly killed aboard submarines while scientists monitored their mothers for signs of
psychic distress. Chinese researchers, meanwhile, ran mass tests on children claiming paranormal talents,
forming what was described as an “All-China Paranormal Physical Abilities Joint Testing Group.”

Whether or not any of this produced real-world “weapons,” it did produce one undeniable outcome: a
strange, global, low-key arms race in the realm of the paranormal. For a few decades, the world’s nuclear
superpowers also quietly competed over who could draw the weirdest graphs about telepathy.

So…Did Any of This Actually Work?

In 1995, the CIA asked an outside panel to take a hard look at the entire remote-viewing database. The
reviewers agreed that some lab experiments produced statistically significant results – basically,
outcomes that were unlikely to be pure chance. But they split sharply over what that meant.

Statistician Jessica Utts argued that the data were strong enough to conclude that some kind
of anomalous information transfer was happening, even if we didn’t understand the mechanism. Psychologist
Ray Hyman, a prominent skeptic, countered that design flaws, sensory leakage, and
methodological issues made the results far less impressive than they looked on paper. The CIA’s bottom
line: even if there was something interesting in the lab, it hadn’t proven consistently useful for
intelligence.

Meanwhile, former remote viewers like Joe McMoneagle insist that the program produced real,
operational hits – from sketching secret Soviet facilities to assisting in search operations – and that
their success rates were good enough to justify continued use, at least as a supplemental tool.

Today, most mainstream scientists remain firmly unconvinced. Yet the popularity of remote viewing courses,
YouTube tutorials, and the CIA’s own declassified “Gateway Process” meditation report shows that the
public’s fascination with psychic spying is very much alive.

Living With the Legacy of Psychic Spies (Experiences & Reflections)

Reading through the declassified CIA files doesn’t feel like going through normal government paperwork.
It feels more like being handed a mash-up of a PhD thesis, a New Age workshop flyer, and the script for
a conspiracy thriller. You’ll see careful tables of random-number hits and misses right next to session
notes about “non-physical realities” and “energetic structures” surrounding a target.

For many people who stumble onto this material today, the first reaction is a mix of amusement and
disbelief: The CIA actually paid people to sit in a room and draw pictures of Soviet bases from memory?
But once the initial laugh wears off, the emotional reaction can get more complicated.

One type of experience comes from former remote viewers and program insiders. In interviews,
memoirs, and talks, they describe the work as mentally exhausting, sometimes unsettling, and occasionally
rewarding in ways that are hard to explain. A viewer might get a target completely wrong one day and
then, on another session, sketch a facility layout or landmark that later turns out to be uncannily close
to reality. That roller coaster between “total failure” and “how on earth did I do that?” leaves a deep
impression – whether you interpret it as evidence of psychic ability, intuition, or lucky guessing.

Another set of experiences comes from ordinary people experimenting with remote viewing techniques
on their own. Because the CIA documents include training protocols and session formats, hobbyists
can now recreate simplified versions of the experiments at home: one person draws or hides a target,
another tries to sketch impressions, and everyone argues afterward about what counts as a “hit.” Even
skeptics sometimes walk away surprised by how often vague impressions can, with generous interpretation,
be matched to the target after the fact – a great live lesson in confirmation bias and human pattern-seeking.

The CIA’s interest in the Gateway Process – the Monroe Institute’s program of binaural-beat
meditations aimed at inducing out-of-body experiences and altered states of consciousness – adds another
layer. Modern participants at Monroe-style retreats often report vivid imagery, a sense of floating
outside the body, or intense emotional insights. Some interpret these as proof of consciousness traveling
beyond the physical world; others see them as powerful but natural shifts in brain states. Either way,
there’s a shared feeling that carefully structured mental exercises can radically change how reality
“feels,” even if they don’t turn you into a literal psychic spy.

There’s also the cultural experience: movies like The Men Who Stare at Goats and shows inspired by
MKUltra and Stargate-style projects have turned psychic warfare into dark comedy. For viewers, laughing
at generals trying to kill goats with their minds is a way to process the uncomfortable fact that real
people in power signed off on some truly bizarre ideas. Humor becomes a safety valve for the weirdness.

On the flip side, a small but passionate community treats the Stargate files almost like sacred texts,
proof that the government “knows more than it’s admitting” about consciousness and reality. This can be
exciting, but it also brings risks. People with underlying anxiety or mental health vulnerabilities may
fixate on the idea that they’re secret psychic weapons, or that shadowy agencies are still monitoring
their dreams. That’s why modern discussions around psychic research increasingly stress grounding,
critical thinking, and mental health awareness.

If there’s a practical takeaway from all these experiences, it’s this: the human mind is incredibly
creative, suggestible, and powerful in ways we still don’t fully understand. Whether or not psychic
powers exist in the science-fiction sense, the very attempt to study them – with protocols, statistics,
and lab reports – reveals just how far people will go to test the limits of perception. The CIA’s
experiments may not have produced a reliable squad of psychic commandos, but they did accidentally
create a lasting, very human story about curiosity, fear, imagination, and the strange things we do when
we’re convinced the other side might be one step ahead.

Conclusion

The CIA’s foray into psychic powers sits at a bizarre crossroads of science, superstition, and national
security panic. On one hand, you have declassified reports filled with cautious phrases like “statistical
significance” and “anomalous cognition.” On the other, you have tales of metal bending, Mars tourism,
and mystic healers that sound like late-night radio call-ins.

In the end, the official verdict was coldly pragmatic: whatever was happening in the lab wasn’t reliable
enough to guide critical decisions or justify ongoing funding. Yet the very existence of projects like
Stargate, SCANATE, and Grill Flame tells us something important about the Cold War mindset – and about
ourselves. When the stakes feel existential, even the most rational institutions will, occasionally,
gamble on the impossible.

Whether you see the CIA’s psychic experiments as a cautionary tale about bad science, a tantalizing clue
that consciousness is stranger than we think, or just the weirdest line item in a black budget, one thing
is undeniable: for nearly 20 years, “psychic spies” were not just a joke. They were a classified line of
work.