maximus otter
Recovering policeman
- Joined
- Aug 9, 2001
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- 15,552
In April of 1972, Russell Targ, a Columbia-trained physicist with an unusual interest in the paranormal, met with the Office of Scientific Intelligence, a secretive branch of the CIA that monitored biological warfare, nuclear weapons and guided missiles during the Cold War.
The bespectacled researcher was there to pass along a concerning — and rather peculiar — piece of information: Their Soviet enemies, who had likely been experimenting with drugs, hypnotism, yoga and black magic, were now reportedly moving inanimate objects with their minds. One woman, a self-proclaimed psychic from Leningrad, had apparently torn up a dismembered frog’s heart with her mental powers alone. From a military standpoint, the implications were horrifying.
So the U.S. government brokered a deal: For an initial investment of $874, or just under $7,000 in today’s dollars, Targ and his colleague, fellow physicist Harold Puthoff, would test the feasibility of using psychic spies at their Menlo Park lab. The operation, called Stargate, would go on to explore whether ordinary civilians could locate clandestine military facilities across the world using their hidden third eye.
Targ, arguably the face of parapsychology at the time, wasn’t interested in fueling the “psychic competition” between nations that consumed American officials. Rather, he was more invested in expanding the limits of consciousness and using it for more humane purposes. One example of this took place in 1974, when a gruesome and mysterious homicide rocked Northern California, sending authorities into a tailspin.
That October, the body of 19-year-old Arlis Perry was found inside the university chapel, a Romanesque-style church where she had gone to pray at midnight.
Perry, who was discovered half-nude near the altar, had apparently been tortured using 3-foot-long candles and stabbed in the back of the head. Her death was so bizarre, reporters asked local authorities if it was part of a satanic ritual. They didn’t rule it out.
At the time, a lieutenant looking into the violence at the university had been reading about the SRI’s unorthodox experiments in the news. The case was beginning to go cold, and police were running out of leads — so he contacted the research center and they summoned Hella Hammid, an earnest and self-effacing subject who wasn’t sure if she’d be able to help. Regardless, she offered to at least try.
While speaking into a tape recorder, she went on to accurately describe the detailed murder of a person in the chapel, the killer and the deceased, the location of their fatal stab wound, and the “ritualistic tone” of their death, according to CIA documents. The only detail that was incorrect, reports show, was her claim that the deceased wore earrings. Though press information officers with the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office could not provide confirmation, it’s likely that Hammid was describing Perry’s brutal killing.
While officials followed the new leads that Hammid provided, the murder case would remain cold for several decades. In 2018, new DNA evidence finally led authorities to a suspect, Stephen Blake Crawford — the former Stanford security guard who claimed to have found her body — but by then, it was already too late. When they arrived at his home, Crawford had killed himself.
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/project-stargate-cia-psychic-spies-california-20063511.php
maximus otter
The bespectacled researcher was there to pass along a concerning — and rather peculiar — piece of information: Their Soviet enemies, who had likely been experimenting with drugs, hypnotism, yoga and black magic, were now reportedly moving inanimate objects with their minds. One woman, a self-proclaimed psychic from Leningrad, had apparently torn up a dismembered frog’s heart with her mental powers alone. From a military standpoint, the implications were horrifying.
So the U.S. government brokered a deal: For an initial investment of $874, or just under $7,000 in today’s dollars, Targ and his colleague, fellow physicist Harold Puthoff, would test the feasibility of using psychic spies at their Menlo Park lab. The operation, called Stargate, would go on to explore whether ordinary civilians could locate clandestine military facilities across the world using their hidden third eye.
Targ, arguably the face of parapsychology at the time, wasn’t interested in fueling the “psychic competition” between nations that consumed American officials. Rather, he was more invested in expanding the limits of consciousness and using it for more humane purposes. One example of this took place in 1974, when a gruesome and mysterious homicide rocked Northern California, sending authorities into a tailspin.
That October, the body of 19-year-old Arlis Perry was found inside the university chapel, a Romanesque-style church where she had gone to pray at midnight.
Perry, who was discovered half-nude near the altar, had apparently been tortured using 3-foot-long candles and stabbed in the back of the head. Her death was so bizarre, reporters asked local authorities if it was part of a satanic ritual. They didn’t rule it out.
At the time, a lieutenant looking into the violence at the university had been reading about the SRI’s unorthodox experiments in the news. The case was beginning to go cold, and police were running out of leads — so he contacted the research center and they summoned Hella Hammid, an earnest and self-effacing subject who wasn’t sure if she’d be able to help. Regardless, she offered to at least try.
While speaking into a tape recorder, she went on to accurately describe the detailed murder of a person in the chapel, the killer and the deceased, the location of their fatal stab wound, and the “ritualistic tone” of their death, according to CIA documents. The only detail that was incorrect, reports show, was her claim that the deceased wore earrings. Though press information officers with the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office could not provide confirmation, it’s likely that Hammid was describing Perry’s brutal killing.
While officials followed the new leads that Hammid provided, the murder case would remain cold for several decades. In 2018, new DNA evidence finally led authorities to a suspect, Stephen Blake Crawford — the former Stanford security guard who claimed to have found her body — but by then, it was already too late. When they arrived at his home, Crawford had killed himself.
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/project-stargate-cia-psychic-spies-california-20063511.php
maximus otter
