Ingo Douglass Swann (September 14, 1933 – January 31, 2013) was an American psychic, artist, and author, whose claims of clairvoyance were investigated as a part of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Stargate Project. Swann is credited as the creator of the term "Remote Viewing,"Mind-Reach: Scientists Look at Psychic Ability by Russell Targ & Harold Puthoff, A Delta book, Dell Publishing Co. Inc., 1977. a term which refers to the use of extrasensory perception to perceive distant persons, places, or events.
Early life Swann was born in Telluride, Colorado, on September 14th, 1933. Swann claimed to have out-of-body experiences beginning at three years of age, during a tonsil removal operation, after which he began to see colorful 'auras' around certain objects. These experiences continued throughout childhood, and eventually prompted Swann to volunteer as a participant in parapsychology research at the age of 37.
Remote viewing Before severing his ties with the organization in the late 1970s, Swann was a prominent celebrity Scientologist, having attained the level of Operating Thetan through Scientology auditing. It is purported that the attainment of the level may extend one’s psychic abilities including controlled out-of-body experiences, called "exteriorization" in Scientology. In 1972, Swann first demonstrated his exteriorization skills at the Stanford Research Institute in experiments that would come to be known secularly as remote viewing. These experiments caught the attention of the Central Intelligence Agency. He is commonly credited with proposing the idea of controlled remote viewing, a process in which viewers would view a location given nothing aside from its geographical coordinates, which was developed and tested by Puthoff and Targ with CIA funding.
Uri Geller Due to the popularity of Uri Geller in the 1970s, skeptics and historians basically overlooked a critical examination of Swann's paranormal claims. Uri Geller commented very favorably on Swann, saying, "If you were blind and a man appeared who could teach you to see with mind power, you would revere him as a guru. So why is Ingo Swann ignored by publishers and forced to publish his astounding life story on the Internet?"
Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff, two experimenters, tested Geller and Swann and concluded that they had unique skills. Others have strongly disputed the scientific validity of Targ and Puthoff's experiments.The Search for Psychic Power: ESP and Parapsychology Revisited, C.E.M. Hansel, Prometheus Books, 1989. In a 1983 interview, magician Milbourne Christopher remarked that Swann was "one of the cleverest in the field". A Final Interview with Milbourne Christopher, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol 9, No 2 / winter 1984–85, p 165
Out-of-body experiment In 1972, in the newsletter of the American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR), their director of research Karlis Osis described his personal controlled out-of-body (OOB) experiment with Swann. The targets that Swann was to attempt to describe and illustrate were on a shelf two feet from the ceiling and several feet above Swann's head. Osis did describe the height of the ceiling."New ASPR Search on Out-of-the Body Experiences", Karlis Osis, ASPR Newsletter, No. 14-Summer 1972 p. 2. Swann suggested that the ceiling was 14 feet tall. Two kitchen-style overhead fixtures illuminated the room. Swann sat alone in the chamber, wires from electrodes fastened to his head running through the wall behind him. Swann sat just beneath the target tray. He was given a clipboard to use for sketching. Any movement while drawing did not result in "artifacts" in the brain readout. In Swann's book To Kiss Earth Goodbye there is a photograph of the objects on the shelf. Swann wrote that he knew most of the objects on a shelf above his head, but he did not know it held four numbers on a side that would not have been visible if a reflecting surface had been angled near the end.Search for the Soul by Milbourne Christopher, Thomas Y. Crowell, 1979Kiss the Earth Good-bye: Adventures and Discoveries in the Nonmaterial, Recounted by the Man who has Astounded Physicists and Parapsychologists Throughout the World by Ingo Swann, Hawthorne Books, 1975
Psychological scales were developed to rate the quality and clarity (as subjectively described) of Swann's OOB vision, which varied from time to time. The results were evaluated by blind judging. A psychologist, Bonnie Preskari or Carole K. Silfen, was asked to match up Swann's responses without knowing which target they were meant. She matched all eight sessions. Osis stressed the odds of Swann being correct were forty thousand to one. There is no record of any experiments being performed in the dark."New ASPR Search on Out-of-the-Body Experiences", Karlis Osis, ASPR Newsletter, No. 14-Summer 1972 pp. 2,4.
Silfen and Swann prepared an unofficial report of later out-of-body experiments and circulated it to 500 members of the ASPR before the ASPR board was aware of it. According to Swann, Silfen had disappeared and could not be located. While searching for her, he also sought help from the general public. Swann claimed that in April 1972, the ASPR in New York attempted to discredit him and expel him due to his affiliation with Scientology.
Magnetometer psychokinesis tests When Swann arrived at SRI, Harold Puthoff decided he would first be tested for PK. On June 6, 1972, the two men visited Dr. Arthur Heberd and his quark detector, a magnetometer, at the Varian Physics Building. The well-shielded magnetometer had a small magnetic probe in a vault five feet beneath the floor. The oscillation ran silently for about an hour, tracing a stable pattern on the chart recorder. Puthoff asked Swann if he could affect the magnetometer's magnetic field. Swann said he focused his attention on the interior of the magnetometer and was getting nothing.Mind-Reach: Scientists Look at Psychic Ability by Russell Targ & Harold Puthoff, A Delta book, Dell Publishing Co. Inc., 1977
Then, there are different versions of the following events. Puthoff states that after about a five-second delay, Heberd says it was a ten- to fifteen-minute delay, the frequency of the trace recorder oscillation doubled for about 30 seconds, reportedly a common occurrence due to variations in the shared helium line to the laboratory. Heberd continued, and when the curve burped, Swann asked, "Is that what I am supposed to do?"Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns and Other Delusions by James Randi, Prometheus books, 9th printing 1987 Swann said he responded, "Is that an effect?" According to Heberd, Swann crossed the room, taking his attention away from the chart recorder. Swann said he took his mind off the machine and was sketching. Others watched the recorder to see if the irregularity would be repeated, and it was. Puthoff asked Swann, "Did you do that too?" Swann said he again responded, "Is that an effect?" According to Puthoff, Swann said he was then tired and couldn't "hold it any longer" and let go. The chart recorder pattern returned to normal.
More supportive sources say that Heberd supports Puthoff's version, and in the second instance, Heberd suggested he would be more impressed if Swann could stop the field change altogether. Heberd denies he told James Randi that he never suggested it. Swann recalled he heard, "Can you do that again?" from Puthoff. Swann said his feats frightened some doctoral candidates, claiming that two "virtually ran" from the room and one collided with a "totally visible" structure support.
Puthoff writes Dr. Heberd suggested that the equipment must be wrong. The following day, it was certain the magnetometer was malfunctioning. "The equipment was behaving erratically; it was not possible to obtain a stable background signal for calibration." Therefore, the experiment was not repeated. Swann related this SNAFU in his book, Remote Viewing: The Real Story. In his CIA report, paranormal expert Dr. Kenneth A. Kress does not record anything about Heberd's malfunctioning suggestions. Kress writes, "These variations were never seen before or after this visit." Though Swann was to spend a year at SRI, in their book, Targ and Puthoff present no further data and, Swann did not mention he was involved in any other PK experiments with the magnetometer than those that occurred and were recorded on June 6, 1972.
Immediately after, Puthoff wrote a brief paper in a draft form. Rather than publishing the results in a scientific journal inviting peer review, this paper was circulated hand to hand throughout research and academic institutions across the US, and Puthoff accepted invitations to speak.Reading the Enemy's Mind: Inside Star Gate America's Psychic Espionage Program by Paul H. Smith, Tom Doherty Associates, LLC, 2005 This paper caught the attention of the CIA and two agents paid a visit to Hal Puthoff at SRI and also met Swann. This paper was later published as a part of a conference proceedings.Physics, Entropy and Psychokinesis by H. E. Putoff and R. Targ in the proceedings of the conference Quantum Physics and Parapsychology (Geneva, Switzerland); (New York: Parapsychology Foundation, 1975)
Early Coordinate Remote Viewing experiments Targ and Puthoff write about their pilot experiments, "We couldn't overlook the possibility that perhaps Ingo knew the geographical features of the Earth and their approximate latitude and longitude. (It is Swann who suggests these Coordinate Remote Viewing tests, not the experimenters. He is in control.) "Or it was possible that we were inadvertently cueing the subject (Swann), since we as experimenters knew what the answers were."Mind-Reach: Scientists Look at Psychic Ability by Russell Targ & Harold Puthoff, A Delta book, Dell Publishing Co. Inc., 1977, Page 28