Month Long ESP
experiment
At some point in your lifetime you will have learnt
new skills, some of these skills may have been for hobbies such as
learning how to play a musical instrument or taking up a particular
sport, others are essential skills which help us to literally survive.
For most of us, when we first try to learn these skills we are
completely useless, I can play guitar now but certainly couldn't when I
picked one up for the first time. As with all new skills I was only able
to play the guitar by practicing, the more you do something the better
you get at it. I would practice for a short period of time every day and
after a few weeks I noticed an improvement. So if time and practice is
all that is required for you to learn to play an instrument then could
the same apply to developing your clairvoyant ability?
The test would use the standard
ESP cards as pictured above, but rather then simply doing a single test
to establish whether clairvoyant ability is present or not I would do
the test every day for a whole month. Using 15 cards from a deck of 25
cards I would hold the card facing away from me and try to predict what
shape is on the other side of it and marking whether it is correct or
not. If my theory is correct then by the end of the month I should be
able to predict more cards then I could at the start of the month. The
only major flaw I could see to the success of this experiment was me, I
have so far demonstrated absolutely zero evidence for having the gift of
clairvoyant ability so to give the experiment a fair chance I recruited
four volunteers, each with different backgrounds of ability, who would
all be doing the same test, every day for a whole month. So what
happened? The table of results is below;
|
Date |
Richard |
Helen |
Vix |
Leanne |
Amanda |
|
01/10/2009 |
1 |
2 |
3 |
2 |
2 |
|
02/10/2009 |
3 |
2 |
4 |
2 |
2 |
|
03/10/2009 |
1 |
4 |
3 |
1 |
5 |
|
04/10/2009 |
3 |
3 |
6 |
6 |
4 |
|
05/10/2009 |
2 |
1 |
5 |
5 |
3 |
|
06/10/2009 |
2 |
2 |
8 |
5 |
4 |
|
07/10/2009 |
2 |
3 |
7 |
7 |
5 |
|
08/10/2009 |
3 |
2 |
5 |
4 |
3 |
|
09/10/2009 |
6 |
6 |
4 |
3 |
3 |
|
10/10/2009 |
5 |
6 |
8 |
0 |
4 |
|
11/10/2009 |
4 |
2 |
0 |
6 |
4 |
|
12/10/2009 |
5 |
5 |
4 |
2 |
4 |
|
13/10/2009 |
6 |
3 |
7 |
1 |
3 |
|
14/10/2009 |
3 |
6 |
7 |
3 |
2 |
|
15/10/2009 |
5 |
4 |
6 |
2 |
3 |
|
16/10/2009 |
6 |
2 |
11 |
6 |
4 |
|
17/10/2009 |
4 |
3 |
9 |
5 |
3 |
|
18/10/2009 |
4 |
6 |
12 |
1 |
3 |
|
19/10/2009 |
3 |
5 |
8 |
3 |
5 |
|
20/10/2009 |
1 |
6 |
11 |
4 |
4 |
|
21/10/2009 |
3 |
4 |
10 |
10 |
3 |
|
22/10/2009 |
7 |
1 |
8 |
6 |
1 |
|
23/10/2009 |
5 |
5 |
2 |
4 |
2 |
|
24/10/2009 |
4 |
2 |
6 |
3 |
3 |
|
25/10/2009 |
6 |
3 |
6 |
2 |
5 |
|
26/10/2009 |
3 |
2 |
6 |
2 |
3 |
|
27/10/2009 |
4 |
|
9 |
7 |
4 |
|
28/10/2009 |
1 |
|
8 |
2 |
3 |
|
29/10/2009 |
1 |
|
7 |
1 |
5 |
|
30/10/2009 |
5 |
|
2 |
2 |
2 |
|
31/10/2009 |
3 |
|
10 |
1 |
5 |
OK so as a table of
numbers this doesn't really make much sense, the only way to view the
results properly is to make a graph with a trend line showing the
improvement (if any) in our results.
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
Now with the trend lines in place it is much clearer
to see what happened, the first thing we notice is that on all but one
of the graphs the curve inclines showing an improvement, but then begins
to decline towards the end of the month. The only reason that Amanda's
graph didn't do this is because the results were so consistent, but not
high enough to show any sign of clairvoyance. On the day that the
results were announced the team was holding an event called Experience
The Sixth Sense, one of the guests at this event was Dr. Ciaran O'Keefe
who was familiar with this kind of test and mentioned that this kind of
result was common ever since the first tests were conducted way back in
the 1930s. He also commented that the decline effect is probably due to
boredom and affects people of all clairvoyant abilities, even psychic
"super stars".
But does the fact that there is a decline mean that
there is something there in the first place for the decline to happen?
Well I thought this may be the case but then I looked at the averages of
each participants results.
|
Richard |
Helen |
Vix |
Leanne |
Amanda |
|
3.58 |
3.46 |
6.52 |
3.48 |
3.42 |
With a 1 in 5 chance of predicting the correct card
simply by luck this means that out of 15 cards the "luck number" is 3
cards correct. As you can see from the averages that despite most of us
predicting several 5's and 6's we still only averaged just above three
correct, even Leanne who scored as high as 10 out of 15 one day still
only averages as 3.48 over the month. The one person who stands out is
Victoria who scored as high as 12 and averaged 6.52 over the month. Also
her trend line does show a decline but not as late and not as severe as
the other participants.
So my conclusion, well I am leaving it slightly open
for changes in the future as we could re-take this test with more people
and for longer to see how this affects the results but at the moment, to
answer the question "Can you train your clairvoyant ability?" my answer
is that clairvoyant ability is something you either have or you don't,
to try to get better with methods like this only proves that
improvements made are short lived.
I would like to offer a special thanks to all of the participants, without
you this experiment would never have been possible.
- Report by Richard O'Connor
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