The Stargate Chronicles: Memoirs of a Psychic Spy

by Joseph McMoneagle

  What I drew was a nearly perfect cube that I said had no windows, or very few. I said it had four massive engines that were creating a very high squealing sound—like high-pitched turbine noises.

  When I got to England the actual target that was selected was another power station outside London in the countryside—a large cube of a building made from metal, inside of which were four very large power output generators driven by steam-driven turbines.

  When they took us to the site for feedback, and filming, they wouldn't let us in. The general manager of the plant decided at the last minute that he didn't want his plant on television associated with psychics.

  On the advice of Richard Wiseman, we went to a second site, which also happened to be a cube-shaped building—a museum containing four large locomotives. I argued that only the first site should have counted, and therefore the entire effort should be abandoned as a blown protocol. Richard said the second site had been his second-place match during the independent judging session and therefore it should count.

  It was evident to the producer that since the locomotives were sitting there silent and I had specifically stated very loud turbine noises that there was something wrong with the protocol, but Richard refused to relent in his judging position. The producer abandoned the effort altogether, and I marked it all down as a failure.

  I've done sixteen other live remote viewings on camera in Japan and America. Of the 22 total, seventeen have been successful. Of the five failures, two were protocol violations by the production companies (avoidable or not), so I asked them not to use them for that reason. I still consider them failures, however—at the very least, failure on my part to ensure they were properly instructed in how the protocol works.

  One of the live RVs I did was at the J.B. Rhine Center for a group of students, which was also filmed by a production company for the

  Discovery Channel. What I really liked about it was the fact that 29 of the 30 students and others present gave me a first-place match when comparing my drawing to a selection of five possible sites. (This means they chose the actual target from the five possible sites presented 29 out of thirty times.) The person who ran the protocol for that presentation was—Dr. Richard Wiseman, who happened to be visiting from England. Ed and I had dinner with him the night before and he incessantly argued that the protocols we used were not tight enough. So, we suggested that he take the materials and the target pool and run the protocol any way he chose the following day, which he did. I still got the 29 first-place matches and Discovery Channel got a wonderful piece for television. Richard has refused to discuss it since.

  My first appearance on Japanese television was on a program called Battle TV, which has two panels taking opposing views of a controversial issue and arguing about it for the television audience. They brought me on to demonstrate RV.

  I didn't know at the outset that the head of the panel opposed to the possibility of remote viewing was the head of the physics department at the University of Tokyo. I was told that at the beginning of the program that he had stood up and promised that if he couldn't demonstrate the "trick" I used to do remote viewing, he would resign his position at the university. The other part I didn't know was that they had asked him to stop somewhere on his way to the studio and have his picture taken with a Polaroid camera and not tell anyone about it.

  When they announced this, I didn't point out the fact that it was a major violation of protocol, in that he would be sitting there, knowing what the target was, and could be giving me information simply by his body movements. It kind of upset me, but I didn't say anything. When they asked me to describe where he had his picture taken, I drew a descending ramp off the side of something I said was very large and made from concrete. I told them the descending ramp circled an open grassy area in the middle.

  They asked him to show the picture he had in his pocket to the audience and it showed him leaning over the edge of a descending ramp coming off the side of a very large bridge. This really amazed the audience. The professor's comment was "He could have guessed. There are dozens of these ramps all over Tokyo."

  My response was that there were also dozens of bowling alleys, temples, bridges, and other common places throughout Tokyo as well, but I didn't describe any of those.

  His response was to sit silently staring back at me.

  They then sent a young lady off with a camera team, and told the audience that she had three hours to go anywhere she wanted to in Japan. She had access to the bullet train, so that was almost true. They asked me what I was going to do, and I said that I was going to take a nap in the Green Room, which I did, stretching out on a tatami mat. Scooter told me they came in and filmed me snoring there a couple of times.

  Three hours later I went back out onto the stage and sat down at a table and drew a picture of what I called a fake lake or pond with some sort of small, funny-looking tea-house sitting alongside it. I said it was strange because it felt as though it was all imitation. I was hoping not to offend anyone because they don't imitate much in Japan, as everything is original. When they called the young lady on her phone, they began transmitting from her location. She was standing in the middle of a small indoor pond, which had the funny little teahouse sitting toward the rear. Using the magic of technology, they even suspended my drawing of the small house over the actual picture and they were identical. It blew the audience away.

  When they went to the professor and asked him what he thought, he was also obviously stunned. He hesitated, then blurted out that it was obvious to him that I was in collusion with the studio and that the whole thing had been prearranged. It was a stupid response and he knew it as soon as it came out.

  They rushed the camera across the stage toward me, expecting me to be outraged, I suppose. Instead, I bowed very politely to the professor and said that since I had no help from the studio and everyone knew it, I could only take his comment as a compliment for the quality of my remote viewing. The audience roared its approval and the professor didn't say another word through the end of the program.

  A few weeks after I returned home, the producer sent me an e-mail and said the professor had been back into the studio two days running after the show, looking at the films. He went over them again and again, trying to find out how I was somehow signaled or how I did the trick. Of course, he was unable to find something that wasn't there. So far he has failed to resign his position at the university, however.

  When I first started doing remote viewings in front of the cameras, it was exciting and I felt it was also beneficial. But over time, I've found that it has probably done more damage than good.

  Maybe it's human nature, but a lot of things have been done with my films that should not have been done. Many who are not remote viewers now point to my films as proof of how good remote viewing is, and use them to validate their own claims regarding their own abilities at remote viewing. It has already become a cliché that remote viewing can be taught to anyone and that anyone can be a world-class or expert remote viewer.

  This is simply not true.

  If it were true, the world would be filled with people demonstrating their prowess on national television stations against totally blind, randomly chosen targets.

  It isn't.

  Some examples are being shown that are "simulations of real events," but that isn't the same thing. It's easy to say you have done something and then re-create it for film. That doesn't mean it actually happened in the manner in which it's being presented. It may not be outright lying, but it certainly can be selective memory at work and things may not have gone as accurately as one might believe.

  Numerous people call and tell me that my remote viewing examples are being used in presentations throughout the world. I have no problem with this, except in the cases where they then make claims based on that remote viewing in an effort to either sell themselves or some form of teaching. It isn't right, it isn't truthful, and as a result, in some cases people are being scammed out of a great d
eal of money. Remote viewing does work, but not as well as most want to believe.

  As I've stated over and over again, just about everyone who walks the planet is psychic to one degree or another. The spontaneity of psychic functioning is exhibited across the land, in every country, wherever more than two people congregate. It is surprisingly common among populations with an open mind. However, when it comes to what might be termed "world-class" remote viewing, it is very rare, and while the rules regarding it might be teachable, the capability is not transferable by teaching.

  There are a lot of claims made about one "method" of remote viewing versus another. A large percentage of these claims are outright fraudulent. The only way one can tell if they are true or not is if they can be demonstrated more than once, that is repetitively, under severely restricted controls—totally blind to anyone present when the remote viewing is being done.

  While I keep reiterating this, many keep saying that this isn't absolutely necessary.

  It may not be absolutely necessary within the form of applications they may be using it for. If it isn't, they shouldn't be calling whatever they are doing remote viewing. My statements regarding scientific controls while remote viewing are valid at all times—in and out of applications.

  For a long time, I've stated that these comments should not be construed as derogatory of other forms of paranormal information production, such as being psychic, or dowsing, or reading cards. I mean that. They have their own rules and function in their own specific ways. But a lot of people have gone to an exceptional degree of trouble to design and develop the blind and double-blind protocols used when demonstrating remote viewing in order to establish the method as acceptable to science. The independent analysis, the way the analysis is performed, even the way the evaluation packet is presented to the evaluation team, are all specifically done to preclude fraud or to establish the veracity of remote viewing and remote viewing alone. And absolutely nothing that is done in the science of remote viewing is there to prove any other form of paranormal functioning. People who use it for these purposes may be doing it out of ignorance, or may know full well that it's inappropriate. In either case, it is wrong and damaging to all remote viewers who are attempting to develop their skills in an appropriate and ethical manner.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Curtain Call

  During 1998, I began losing a lot of my energy and stamina. I also noticed that I was losing my breath on stairs. A visit with my cardiologist showed that my concerns about my heart seemed to be justified. The skip graft across the bottom of my heart muscle had ceased to operate effectively. While I had massively collateralized my heart muscle, there just wasn't sufficient blood circulation to the lower area, which was resulting in a great loss in energy. I scheduled myself for surgery in the summer of 1998.

  I continued to work with the lab on the West Coast. Once the program had been exposed and terminated, the lab, which was previously located at SAIC, relocated to the Laboratories for Fundamental Research in Menlo Park, California. The new lab is actually just down the street from the old SAIC location. My longtime and dear friend Ed and I have continued to work as near full time as possible on the remote viewing research. For the past six years it has all been essentially unpaid work. Expenses are covered (for the most part), but there has been very little in the way of salary.

  In July of 1998 I entered the hospital for a second open-heart bypass operation, which I was not looking forward to. I had reached a point where it took a great deal of effort and pain just to climb a set of stairs.

  The operation turned out to be particularly scary for Scooter, because it was accompanied by complications. After cutting the wire-wrap retainers and cracking my sternum about half an inch, the surgeon (Dr. Irving L. Kron, the same surgeon who did the original work on me in 1985) discovered that my older bypass grafts had adhered to the scar tissue along the inside of my chest wall. Had he just opened my chest, I probably would not have survived. He spent hours carefully detaching the old grafts to gain entry to my chest for the second operation. Of course I was oblivious to this, because I was enjoying a walk in the out-of-body state along a peaceful brook in the Bavarian Alps at the time.

  Because of my age, and the duration of the operation, it had a major impact on me. While I still returned home as quickly as I had from the first, it took a lot longer for me to regain sufficient strength to do what I considered a normal level of work.

  The heart problem was really beginning to frustrate me. I decided that I would have to work even harder to regain my strength and vowed that eventually I would put it all behind me. In a sense, it caused me to drive myself even harder in many respects, much to Scooter's dismay. I think the second operation frightened her just as much as the first. I was very sensitive to the pain I was bringing to her, but there was little that I could do about it, except get through it. During this operation they used both the mammary arteries in the upper chest wall and a vein taken from my left lower arm area. Dr. Kron said they'd learned a lot since my first operation and this one would probably last a lot longer. The difference has been truly amazing. I still have a major heart problem, but it has been a lot easier to deal with.

  Some of our research has carried us to other countries in the search for support and subjects. The research continues to be interesting and diverse, and Ed continues to publish most of the lab results in the appropriate journals, and I attempt to write about them.

  One of my favorite remote viewings was done in private at the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary. Ed and I were visiting with the head of the experimental psychology department there, Dr. Eva Banyai, who is world renowned for her work in experimental hypnosis. She asked if we would do a demonstration of remote viewing for her, there in her office. We of course agreed. I was very honored to be asked by her, as I've read a great deal about her and her work and have a tremendous respect for her insightfulness and no-nonsense approach to the science of mind.

  Ed and I carry a program in our laptop computers that includes a randomly generated selection method for doing remote viewing. It also contains a large target pool, photographs of a selection of possible sites across the world. The way it works is quite simple. Once you've entered your session data—name, date, place, etc., and it has been permanently recorded—you hit a button and it gives you a ready screen.

  You then do the remote viewing by drawing something on a piece of paper, or writing out your thoughts that relate to the target, which you will see at some time in the future as feedback.

  When the remote viewing is finished (and the remote viewing materials have been logged and recorded), someone can press another button and is then presented with a selection of five possible target pictures, one of which is the real target. Whoever is judging selects the one that most closely matches your results, followed by the second closest match, third, fourth, etc. Almost always this judging is done by a third party in order to keep the remote viewer from getting feedback on both the real target and the four randomly selected controls. Independently judging the results of a remote viewing also guarantees that the judge is not connected in any way to the collection of the material, keeping him or her blind to an expectation of a specific result. But in demonstrations, we usually leave the judging to the person we are demonstrating to, after I've left the room.

  The target pool contains 300+ target photographs from all over the world and no two are alike. Although I've already seen many of them, it is impossible for me to know which will be selected randomly as a target at any given time. In fact, the more of them I see, the harder it gets because I have recall of those I've been exposed to in the past. It makes the actual viewing even more difficult.

  There is one other catch, which I will explain in a moment.

  We called up the program and showed her how we entered all the salient data. After this, Ed pushed the button and the screen went white. He asked me to do the remote viewing.

  I started with what felt like a swe
eping beach line across a white sheet of paper.

  "A beach," I said.

  I then added some palm trees and a cluster of buildings off to the left. I wrote "large buildings" over the cluster of blocks that I drew so she would know that's what I was describing by my rather crude drawing. I then drew what appeared to be the edge of a mountain running down to the sea to the right.

  "Gee. This looks like Diamond Head, Waikiki Beach," I said, laughing. Then I added the title to the bottom edge of the drawing. Handing it to her, I said, "Obviously Diamond Head." I reiterated that sometimes things might not be that exact, so when judging, she should use perhaps a bit less exactness. I then excused myself from the room while she and Ed did the judging.

  After I left, Ed pushed the button and five pictures appeared. One of them was a typical photograph of Waikiki Beach and Diamond Head. She obviously had to give that a first-place match, followed by the other matching categories. When they were through, and the screen cleared of pictures, Ed called for me to rejoin them. He then asked her to punch the button, to show us what the actual target was.

  The picture of Diamond Head appeared centered on the screen.

  She smiled a bit nervously, thought for a very long moment, then proceeded to ask a lot of questions about leakage paths that might be possible as a result of how we just did the demonstration. Ed and I listened politely. Much of what she was saying were exactly the same comments or questions voiced by many scientists before her—all directed toward possible loops or problems in protocol that might have accounted for the accuracy of the remote viewing. Many of them are also quite true.