ESP Cycle - Phase 1

Swadlincote Paranormal Investigation's first major Extra Sensory Perception (ESP) experiments took place in 2009, since then however there was a break which I began to feel had lasted too long, so I decided it was time to re-ignite a previous experiment where the aim was to see if it was possible to improve your level of ESP.

I began by conducting standard ESP card tests, but not recording results as I was considering these early tests as being practice. During these test however I noticed an unusual pattern. My low scores and high scores all seemed to appear not randomly, but grouped together around an average of three days. No matter what I did, I seemed to get good results for three days in a row followed by poor results for around the same amount of time afterwards. This led me to consider a new possibility in the mechanics of ESP, that although I didn't show extraordinary abilities in predicting the future it might be possible to prove that it is present by measuring this ESP Cycle.

If an ESP cycle can be discovered it might provide evidence to suggest that ESP is present in all of us rather than just a gifted few, that ESP is not so much paranormal but more biological. Maybe we all have ESP, it is just not high enough to notice the fluctuations in our abilities unless they are tested and measured daily. That is why I set up an experiment to test out my theory.

The Experiment:

When recording ESP tests scores, it could be argued that high and low scores could be simply down to being lucky or unlucky on a given day, so to counter this I set up an experiment which would see me carrying out two separate tests on the same day, one after another. If ESP is the main influence of my results and not luck then I should see the high scores and low scores for each test occurring at the same time as each other. The two tests were;

ESP Cards

This test would be simply to draw 25 cards and try and predict the next card in sequence. The score based on chance is 5

Bingo Numbers

For the Bingo Numbers test, I would use a bingo machine with 50 numbers loaded into it and try to predict the first 10 numbers.

I began the test on February 27th 2011 but had to wait three weeks before the tests started to show a trend where an ESP cycle may be present, I decided to continue the experiment but noticed that after around 6 weeks the trend lines were starting to flatten out. I also realised that by using a full deck of cards I was able to get a very good idea of what the last few were going to be based on what had already been drawn and I realised that to get a true idea of the ESP level on a given day I should actually do several attempts of each test and then take an average to get my daily score rather than just one attempt of each test. For these reasons I decided to end the test at the six week mark and try again after making some adjustments.

Before admitting defeat, I decided to look further into the results. When I broke the scores down into the individual weeks and then looked at the average scores for the weeks, I noticed an interesting pattern. I plotted this onto a line chart and then placed a trend line, the result of this can be seen below.

Red line = Card Test Scores    -    Blue line = Bingo Test Scores

The reason I couldn't see a trend for the daily scores is because after six weeks, the trend lines had flattened out too much to be able to analyse them. Looking at the scores for the weeks rather than the days however showed that every two weeks the scores for both the card test and the bingo test would peak and decline. Could this be evidence that ESP was influencing my ability to predict cards and bingo numbers? Well more testing needs to be done first, therefore I have devised Phase 2 of this experiment as follows;

• Instead of 1 attempt of both the card and bingo test, I will conduct 3 attempts, take an average and use that number as my daily score. This should give a more accurate idea of whether ESP is present rather than just luck.

• Instead of using 25 cards, I will only use 15. This should reduce the possibility of me being able to make an educated guess for the next card rather than making a genuine prediction.

• The experiment is planned to last 3 months.

This report is a mere snapshot of what has been taking place over the last six weeks, keep an eye out for the report of Phase 2.

Richard O'Connor