The term 'telepathy' was coined by F.W.H. Myers in 1882 from the Greek words tele, meaning distant, and pathe, meaning feeling. The ability is generally thought of as mind-to-mind contact, wherein a person seems to acquire information directly from another's mind, without resorting to the use of the five known senses. In popular reference, telepathy is known as the ability to read minds and transmit thoughts. (However, telepathy is not the only term for this phenomena. For example, the Russians use the term biocommunication.⁴)

The most common form of telepathic communication comes during a crisis situation, such as when one becomes aware that a friend or close relative is in danger or has died. Often, such information enters the mind during sleep, in the form of a dream. However, it can also appear during the waking state in the form of an intuition or crisis apparition.

Some telepathic cases have been reported which involve the successful transference of thought over a great distance, dismissing the claim that telepathy is a subconscious piecing together of nonverbal, sensory clues. Other cases have supposedly involved the transfer of thoughts between people who do not know each other well, discounting the theory that telepathy is simply a coincidence that occurs between two people who, as a result of their closeness, have come to think alike.

One theory regarding telepathy, put forward by Sigmund Freud, is that it was an archaic means of communication between people, but as man evolved, the ability began to disappear, and verbal and oral communication took its place.

This theory has been tested by experiments in telepathy with regard to age groups. In this series of experiments, people of the same age were paired together and one was told to send the contents of an image to the other, while the other was to try and perceive the image; after a while, the roles were reversed. The three youngest age groups (which started from approximately three-four years), had a success rate of 451, 361, and 261, respectively (where 200 was expected by chance). The odds against chance of this result is 1000-to-one. However, the older age groups generally did not have any significant variation from a chance outcome. ⁴

Other experiments in telepathy tested the hypothesis that ESP was facilitated in an altered state of consciousness. Perhaps the most famous of these types of experiments were those conducted by the Maimonides Dream Laboratory in New York (which also happened to launch a new wave of free-response experiments and revolutionize experimental parapsychology in the process).

This series of experiments involved various subjects who were brought in simply to sleep. In the meantime, another person, the agent, would be given a randomly selected image, which he would try and mentally communicate to the subject. Once the subject achieved REM sleep, the agent would begin trying to communicate the contents of the image to the subject. After REM sleep had passed, the subject would be woken up and asked to describe all the details in his dream.

Afterwards, the subject would be shown four pictures and asked to identify the one that most closely resembled the images in his dream. Other methods of testing the results involved sending the target images and descriptions to outside judges, typically psychologists familiar with dream interpretation, who then determined how well the transcripts of the dreams compared with the target images.

These experiments led parapsychologists to the following conclusions: 1) Telepathy in dreams can be demonstrated in a laboratory setting; 2) Target stimuli that are emotional in nature appear to be more effective than nonemotional material; 3) Altered states of consciousness appear to be favorable for the occurrence of ESP. ⁴

Despite the astonishing success of the the dream experiments, they were rarely replicated by other researchers because of the high cost of the monitoring equipment needed. (The Maimonides Dream Laboratory had to close its doors in 1978 due to lack of funding.) For this reason, researchers began searching for an cheaper, alternative method. This search led to the development of Charles Honorton's famous and highly successful ganzfeld experiment (first implemented in 1974). The term ganzfeld is German for 'a unified field.'

Believing that ESP is similar to a weak form of our ordinary senses, Honorton devised the ganzfeld to block out any signals from the ordinary, stronger senses. He theorized that this would prevent the stronger signals from overpowering the weaker ESP signals, thereby facilitating the perception of such signals. (Honorton perhaps gauged these assumptions from the comments of various gifted psychics, who often stated that they needed to "still the mind," "eliminate distractions," etc. In fact, several psychics often meditate before practicing their abilities.) ²

In the ganzfeld, the subject is placed in an environment thatis free of auditory and visual distractions. They are given a comfortable chair to lie down on, half ping-pong balls are placed over their eyes to eliminate visual input, and earphones are placed over their ears, through which white noise is played to reduce auditory input. The result is to keep the subject awake, but to remove all outside stimuli and distractions.

The experiment typically lasts about a half-hour, during which time the agent or sender randomly selects an image (in later years, not only were paintings and drawings used, but also film strips, excerpts from movies, and cartoons) and attempts to send its contents to the person in the ganzfeld. The subject is asked to continuously report all images and thought processes as they occur during this time, all of which are recorded by the experimenter.

Afterwards, they are given a set of four pictures to choose from and are told to select what they believe the target image was. Other times, the target picture and the recordings of what the subject reported are sent to independent judges who them determine if the descriptions of the subject significantly match the target image. If they do, the result is said to be a hit.

One example of a direct hit took place when a man reported thinking of firemen while in the ganzfeld. He reported that the images that came to mind were black and white, and that though he could see people, he saw no faces. Later, he stated that one man at the bottom of the scene seemed to be facing him. The target picture was a black-and-white photograph of firemen. All were training their hoses on a fire and had their backs to the camera, except for one man near the bottom left of the photograph, who had turned to look into the camera. ³

"After scores of such experiments, presently totaling about 700 individual sessions conducted by about two dozen investigators worldwide, the results show that the target image is selected on average 34% of the time" where 25% is expected by chance. ¹ These numbers reveal a highly significant result, indicating that perhaps the ganzfeld is the elusive repeatable experiment that many parapsychologists have been searching for.

Because of the success of the early research, many skeptics attacked the ganzfeld experiments and claimed that the results were due to flaws in the experimental procedure. "Working in conjunction with the skeptics, researchers at the Psychophysical Research Labs (PRL) [in Princeton, New Jersey,] developed the world's first completely computer-automated ganzfeld experiment. Dubbed the autoganzfeld, this procedure continues to yield dramatic evidence for psi in laboratories around the world." ⁶

Set up almost exactly as Honorton's ganzfeld, the autoganzfeld is run by random computer selections, as well as outputs and recordings, to avoid the possibility of human error or the accidental conveying of information.

In one autoganzfeld experiment, the target image was that of a fire-eater. The subject's response was as follows: "I find flames again...the fire takes on a very menacing meaning...an image of a volcano with molten lava inside...Molten lava running down the side of the volcano...Suddenly I was biting my lip, as though lips had something to do with the imagery...The lips I see are bright red, reminding me of the flame imagery earlier..." All in all, the subject mentioned the words fire or flame 29 times. ⁶ This particular experiment was an astounding hit.