September 2, 2016 ▸ Paranormal, Science

Episode 123: Project Stargate–Remote Viewing

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On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we talk about Project Stargate and the alleged phenomenon of remote viewing. Similar to telesthesia or travelling clairvoyance, remote viewing is supposedly a skill where someone can see something at a great distance and summon up visual details in their mind’s eye. Starting as a bunch of small projects such Project Grillflame or Project Gondola, this became a unified military program under the Defense Intelligence Agency in 1991. Spanning from 1972, until it’s termination in 1995, this project was funded by various U.S. military and intelligence groups as well as ARPA and the Stanford Research Institute.

Yes, this was the government project that the film The Men Who Stare at Goats is based on. Supposedly, in the 1970s, a man named Ingo Swan showed up at the SRI when two psychologists were exploring psychic phenomenon, and he proved that he could view things remotely. According to the doctors, he had a 95% success rating. What’s even weirder is that he claimed he was NOT psychic, but that it was a skill that he could teach others. And teach he did. Most famously, he taught Major Ed Dames who is the current expert on remote viewings and claims to train other people to this day.

When the CIA took over the program in 1995, they had a famed statistician, Dr. Jessica Utts, explore the numbers, and she made the bold claim that there was something truly going on with the remote viewing “hits.” Her partner disagreed, however, and CIA shut the program down shortly after taking it over.

So what’s up with remote viewing? Is it entirely a lie? Is it a scam like something a mentalist will do, and Ingo Swan was just good enough to fool the Pentagon? Is it truly a skill that allows people to see with some sort of sixth sense that is still unknown to science? Good questions! You’ll want to listen to this one to see where the hosts fall because we see thing very differently on the possibility of remote viewing.