Paranormal through shrooms?
It is known for a long time that people often report paranormal experiences when in an altered state of consciousness, for example when dreaming, meditating or just before falling asleep. Parapsychologists invented a setting that quickly brings people in such a state: the Ganzfeld. At an equally named experiment the test person lays down on a comfortable chair in a soundproof room. Headphones that only produce a noise. Two half ping pong balls on the eyes with a red lamp shining on them. Without any stimulations of the senses, the paranormal signals would be more cleary perceptible.
In the other room, a ‘sender’ is present. He looks at a picture and tries to ‘send’ the image to the test person. There are multiple variations on this experiment; mostly the receiver describes his impressions and chooses from four pictures one he thinks he has received.
Chances when choosing at random are 25%, so a higher percentage would indicate that something paranormal has taken place.
After twenty years of Ganzfeld research through the whole world the average success percentage lays around 33%. Later on, Professor at University of Utrecht Dick Bierman and academic Rens Wezelman researched clairvoyance under influence of drugs. Test persons smoked a joint just before entering the Ganzfeld session, or they had a dose of the hallucinogen psilocybin, better known as magic mushrooms. The stoned test persons scored around 30%, which is slightly above chance level, but comparable with results of sober persons. Under influence of mind altering shrooms the success percentage went up to 58%.
Source: Psychologie magazine and research report: Het effect van cannabis en paddo’s in een parapsychologisch experiment by D. Bierman.
