Telepathy Experiments: What the Records Show—and Where They Stop
What can the surviving record still certify about tested telepathy procedures and engineered brain links, and where does certification stop?
Executive Snapshot maps the points that the current packet can stabilize, without merging separate experimental frames.
- CIA Reading Room PSI PHENOMENA PDF, Ganzfeld test framing
- CIA STAR GATE overview, telepathy within anomalous-phenomena scope
- Duke exhibits, ESP or Zener cards and a 1930 laboratory founding attribution
- PubMed definition, brain-to-brain interface as recording plus stimulation
- European Commission summary, EEG greetings encoded to binary and emailed
These items mark the stable edge of what this packet can certify, and the rest remains outside that edge.
The CIA Reading Room PDF CIA-RDP96-00792R000100130003-0 records two named Ganzfeld vulnerabilities
A CIA Reading Room file labeled PSI PHENOMENA preserves a short warning about how a telepathy test can fail on procedure.
The file names a specific problem as ‘sensory leakage’. It treats the issue as a practical threat to a test aiming at anomalous information transfer.
The same passage also flags inadequate procedures for randomizing target stimuli. The wording ties the warning to how targets are selected and how selection is controlled.
The warning is not written as a result. It is written as a category of error that can sit inside an experiment and distort what the test appears to show.
Nothing in this packet supplies a quantified rate for these problems, or a standardized checklist for eliminating them across studies.
The administrative trace that survives here is the phrasing itself, preserved in a government-hosted PDF and readable as a boundary on what the file considers methodologically fragile.[1]
This file can certify that two pitfalls were named in the same documentary space as the broader topic, but it does not certify how often they occurred or how any specific study controlled them.
In the same CIA file, Ganzfeld is defined as a sender and a receiver test
The CIA text also fixes a minimal description of the Ganzfeld procedure as a telepathic-communication test with two roles.
In that phrasing, one subject acts as the ‘receiver’ and another person serves as the ‘sender’. This is a structural definition, not a claim of effect size or success.
The same packet does not supply a single, stable protocol covering target pools, blinding, or scoring rules across laboratories.
The next unresolved question is how a peer-reviewed account defines the Ganzfeld condition itself as an experimental environment, separate from claims about telepathy.
A registered-report paper fixes the Ganzfeld condition as sensory homogenization
A peer-reviewed registered-report article available in PubMed Central describes the Ganzfeld condition as a technique for eliciting an effect through sensory homogenization.
In that framing, the condition is designed to eliminate distracting peripheral noise. The definition concerns controlling input, not proving mental communication.
This packet does not include a set of additional registered reports or meta-analyses that would let the archive stabilize how consistent outcomes are across studies.
The next step in the record is older: where the early card-guessing lineage is preserved as artifacts, but not as primary experimental reports.[2]
Duke exhibit records place ESP or Zener cards alongside the 1930 founding attributed to the Rhines
Duke University Libraries exhibits link ESP or Zener cards to the founding of Duke’s Parapsychology Laboratory in 1930.
The same exhibit text attributes that founding to Drs. J. B. and Louisa Rhine, and places the cards as a visible object in that institutional story.
Within this packet, the Duke material operates at exhibit level. It does not bring in the Rhines’ original experimental reports, so protocols, sample sizes, and statistical methods cannot be fixed from primary documents here.
The next unresolved question is how later institutions described their own scope when telepathy appeared as a topic, without implying performance.
A CIA overview of the STAR GATE project lists telepathy inside its scoped topics
A CIA Reading Room overview titled STAR GATE PROJECT: AN OVERVIEW describes the effort as focused on anomalous phenomena.
In that scope language, telepathy appears as one example among parapsychological and related biophysical interactions.
This packet does not include documentation that converts scope into validated operational capability, or that enumerates specific outcomes.
The next unresolved question is what changes when the record shifts from parapsychology claims to engineered systems that transmit encoded information by design.[3]
A PubMed record defines a brain-to-brain interface as extraction and delivery between brains
A PubMed-indexed record defines a brain-to-brain interface as a combination of neuroimaging and neurostimulation methods used to extract and deliver information between brains.
This definition draws a hard line around mechanism: recording on one side, stimulation on the other, and information transfer mediated by equipment.
The packet does not provide a bridge document that allows this engineered frame to be treated as evidence for paranormal telepathy, because the definitions remain non-equivalent here.
The next unresolved question is what the institutional summaries can certify about an actual demonstration pipeline, without the underlying peer-reviewed paper in hand.[4]
The European Commission and Harvard summaries describe an EEG-to-binary pipeline, but the underlying paper is outside this packet
An institutional European Commission summary describes a research team using EEG to translate the greetings ‘hola’ and ‘ciao’ into binary code.
That summary says the binary results were emailed for downstream use. In this packet, that is the bounded certified action, and it is not described as unmediated thought transfer.
A Harvard Medical School news summary also describes brain-to-brain verbal communication in humans in institutional terms, but the packet does not include the original journal publication behind the European Commission account.
Without that primary paper here, the archive cannot stabilize technical constraints such as detailed error rates, blinding implementation, bandwidth, or confounds for the described pipeline.
The next unresolved question is how, at the delivery end, neurostimulation can create a controlled percept that stands in for received information.[5][6]
Occipital stimulation producing phosphenes is a documented delivery channel for BBI-style demonstrations
A peer-reviewed PubMed Central article documents that stimulation of the occipital cortex often results in sensations of phosphenes.
Inside this packet, that is the clearest certified mechanism for what ‘delivery’ can mean in a brain-to-brain interface: a controlled induced percept rather than a decoded private thought.
The packet does not include a single document that maps this mechanism directly onto the European Commission-described pipeline with full experimental parameters, so the linkage remains conceptual at definition level only.
The next unresolved question is structural: how to keep the parapsychology telepathy-testing frame and the engineered information-transfer frame separated while still describing both as attempts at mental communication.[7]
Where the record can still certify thought transmission attempts, and where it cannot
The record can still certify that Ganzfeld was framed as a sender and receiver telepathic-communication test, and that specific procedural vulnerabilities were named in a CIA-hosted document.
The record can also certify that Duke exhibits preserve a lineage of ESP or Zener cards tied to a 1930 laboratory founding attribution, but that packet-level access stops before primary Rhine-era experimental reports.
The record can further certify that a brain-to-brain interface is defined as recording plus stimulation, and that institutional summaries describe EEG encoding of greetings into binary that was emailed for downstream use.
Certification stops at three concrete limits in this packet: missing original Rhine-era reports, missing the original peer-reviewed paper behind the European Commission summary, and a definitional separation that does not authorize treating engineered transfer as evidence of paranormal telepathy.
What remains is a document problem rather than a narrative problem: the next stable step would require the absent primary publications, not a stronger interpretation layer.[1]
FAQs (Decoded)
What is the Ganzfeld procedure in this packet?
It is preserved as a telepathic-communication test framed around two roles, a receiver and a sender, without certifying outcomes. Source: CIA Reading Room, PSI PHENOMENA PDF.
What procedural problems are explicitly named for Ganzfeld-style work?
The packet preserves two named categories: sensory leakage and inadequate procedures for randomizing target stimuli. Source: CIA Reading Room, PSI PHENOMENA PDF.
What does the registered-report paper mean by the Ganzfeld condition?
It defines the condition as sensory homogenization intended to eliminate distracting peripheral noise. Source: PubMed Central, registered-report Ganzfeld article.
What do the Duke exhibits allow us to say about early card testing?
They link ESP or Zener cards to Duke’s Parapsychology Laboratory founding in 1930 and attribute that founding to Drs. J. B. and Louisa Rhine, without supplying primary experimental reports. Source: Duke University Libraries exhibits, ESP or Zener cards item page and The Rhines exhibit page.
Does the STAR GATE overview confirm that telepathy worked?
No confirmation is stabilized in this packet, because the document is cited here only for scope language that lists telepathy among anomalous-phenomena topics. Source: CIA Reading Room, STAR GATE PROJECT: AN OVERVIEW PDF.
Does brain-to-brain communication in these summaries count as telepathy?
The packet keeps them separate because one is an engineered definition based on recording and stimulation, while the other is a parapsychology testing frame, and no provided document licenses merging them. Source: PubMed, brain-to-brain interface definition record.
For additional paranormal case files and related psychic research files, the archive maintains separate documentation corridors including stargate remote viewing files and clairvoyance evidence records.
Sources Consulted
- CIA Reading Room, PSI PHENOMENA PDF (CIA-RDP96-00792R000100130003-0). cia.gov, accessed 2025-02-17
- PubMed Central, registered-report Ganzfeld article. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, accessed 2025-02-10
- CIA Reading Room, STAR GATE PROJECT: AN OVERVIEW PDF. cia.gov, accessed 2025-02-03
- PubMed, brain-to-brain interface definition record. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, accessed 2025-01-27
- European Commission, institutional news summary. digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu, accessed 2025-01-20
- Harvard Medical School, institutional news summary. hms.harvard.edu, accessed 2025-01-13
- PubMed Central, occipital stimulation and phosphene mechanism article. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, accessed 2025-01-06
A Living Archive
This project is never complete. History is a fluid signal, often distorted by those who record it. We are constantly updating these files as new information is declassified or discovered.
