FT265

In the “Random Dictionary of the Damned” entry on telepathy, the author who calls himself the “Hierophant’s Apprentice” gives several good examples of spontaneous cases of telepathy, but his description of experimental research is flippant, and confined to comments on trials with cards conducted decades ago, and a very inadequate description of Ganzfeld telepathy tests. He made it sound as if the Ganzfeld researchers were completely naïve, and that he was much smarter than they were. “The slightest verbal connection – almost to the extent of a Freudian word-associat­ion test – would be taken as significant. So a picture of a windmill might be reckoned ‘seen’ and the response a ‘hit’ if the words ‘bread’ and ‘sails’ were among the responses, although the word ‘windmill’ might be entirely absent.” In fact, in Ganzfeld tests, subjects were asked to choose between four possible targets, one of which had been seen by the “sender”.