One night, when Sam Clemens (Mark Twain) was an apprentice pilot on the steamboat Pennsylvania, he had a strange dream involving his younger brother, Henry, who was a clerk on the same vessel. He dreamed that "he saw a metal coffin resting on two chairs...and in the coffin [was] the laid-out body of Henry. On Henry's chest was a bouquet of white flowers with a single crimson flower in the center." ⁵

Three days later, Clemens was transferred to another steamboat set to sail for Greenvile, Mississippi. Upon arriving there, he heard the news that the Pennsylvania, which Henry had still been aboard, had exploded near Memphis. Clemens immediately rushed to Memphis and beheld the visions of his dreams: Henry was laid out in a metal coffin resting on two chairs, and as he stood there, an elderly woman entered the room with a bouquet of flowers and placed then on Henry's chest. The bouquet was comprised of white flowers with a single red rose in the center. ⁵

Stories such as these illustrate the surprisingly common phenomena termed precognition, or the ability to perceive future events. Precognitive impressions can be received clairvoyantly, such as when a person seems to see a future event or scene, or telepathically, such as when a person experiences the future emotions or distresses of another person.

Nearly 80% of precognitions concern a spouse, relative, orfriend, and the same percentage concern tragedies such s death, accident or illness. Only a minority of precognitions involve major impersonal disasters, such as plane crashes. ³

While most precognitive experiences happen within two days of the perceived event (the majority within twenty-four hours), there have been some cases in which the incident was perceived months in advance. ³

However, not all precognitive events showcase impending disaster. Some are as simple and inconsequential as thinking of a friend you haven't spoken to in a long time, and having them call just minutes later. Most of these instances, however, are put off to "coincidence" and are therefore not documented.

In an attempt to bring precognition into the laboratory, Helmut Schmidt developed the random number generator (RNG). Schmidt's device revolutionized the use of computerized tests in parapsychology research, and would later contribute greatly to psychokinesis research.

"The [random number] generator works by means of an interrupted current with a million pulses a second. A switch in the circuit is closed by a subject at a certain time. The presence or absence of a pulse at that time is used to light a lamp or leave it dark. To prevent any periodicity of switching being used by a subject, a random time delay is interposed between the time the switch is pressed and the presence or absence of the current pulse. This time delay is produced by the [random] radioactive decay of strontium-90 nuclei." ⁴

Precognition is tested by the RNG by a subject guessing beforehand whether the lamp will be dark or lit. Later versions of the RNG used four colored bulbs which would light up randomly. The subject's task was to guess beforehand which of the bulbs would light next. The results of the experiments involving RNG's were astonishing.

For example, in one series of experiments, which consisted of 63,066 trials, the subjects were able to correctly predict over 26% of the results (where 25% is expected by chance). While this number may seem meager, the odds against chance of such a result are more than 100-million-to-one. ² (It is important to note that when such above-chance results are sustained over a period of time, as is the case in many parapsychology experiments, the results are considered valid and cannot be easily dismissed. ⁵)

Another experiment that Schmidt tried with the RNG was to see if subjects could control their ESP. He selected one group to try and consistently predict which lamps would light (the "high-aim" trials), and another to try and consistently miss (the "low-aim" trials). The results showed that the high-aim trials yielded a scoring rate of nearly 27%, while the low-aim trials yielded just under 23%. The odds against chance of such results are better than one-billion-to-one. ²

However, one uncertainty regarding the RNG experiments was whether or not the results were really due to precognition. Could it also be that the person was using psychokinesis (PK) to influence the outcome of the bulbs to correspond to the guesses made?

To test this, Schmidt revised his RNG to randomly pre-select the sequence of lights. Therefore, the possibility of influencing the random outcome through PK was eliminated. The results of the experiments conducted with this method proved to be about the same as all the others, suggesting that PK did not play a role in the outcomes of the earlier experiments.

Another series of experiments into precognition were conducted at the Maimonides Dream Laboratory. These experiments involved incorporating future events into the dreamscape. One such experiment involved a subject named Malcolm Bessent.

In this experiment, the subject is awoken after REM sleep, as in the telepathy experiment, and asked to recount his dream. This time, however, there is no agent and no target image present. The transcripts of the dreams are mailed off to outside judges the following morning, and afterwards, a member of the team who had no part in the recording of the data from the dream would then randomly select the target image and send it separately to the judges. In order to facilitate any precognitive ability, the subject would, after the target image was selected, undergo an experience that resembled the emotions in the image or view something related to the image, thereby allowing the subject to dream about events that would occur to him, personally, the following morning.

In one experiment involving Bessent, he reported dreaming about "a large concrete building...a patient upstairs escaping...had a white coat on, like a doctor's coat...a feeling of hostility toward me by people in a group I was in daily contact with...my impression was that they were doctors and medical people." The following morning, after the image had been selected, Bessent was "escorted down a dark corridor resounding with cackles of hysterical laughter. Staff in white coats greeted him as 'Mr. Van Gogh'...[and he viewed] slides of paintings done by mental patients." The target image was Van Gogh's Hospital Corridor at Saint Remy. ²

With the successes of the Maimonides Dream Laboratory prior to its closing, psychic dreaming had effectively been brought into the laboratory. From there, parapsychologists could build off the experimental methods and results. One of the products of this attempt was Charles Honorton's popular ganzfeld experiment.