# Remote viewing Source: https://spiritfold.com/Remote_viewing Published by the Australian Spiritual Alliance on Spiritfold, licensed CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. **Remote viewing** is the claimed ability to describe, by mental means alone, places a person has not visited.[1] From the 1970s researchers studied it as a form of "anomalous cognition", and for about two decades it was the subject of research and intelligence programmes funded by the United States Government.[1][2] ## Description ### Key terms - **Viewer**: the person who tries to describe or draw the hidden target.[3] - **Target**: the place, photograph, object or video clip to be described.[3] - **Monitor**: a person who sometimes asks the viewer questions during a session, and who in those experiments also did not know the target.[3] - **Judge** and **decoys**: the judge compares the viewer's report with the real target and with a set of other possible targets (the decoys) that were not used.[1] - **Anomalous cognition**: the researchers' umbrella term for gaining information without any known channel. Utts divides it into telepathy, clairvoyance and precognition according to where the information appears to come from.[3] ### A remote viewing session In the early experiments, a person called the "beacon" or "sender" travelled to a series of distant sites, and the remote viewer tried to describe where the sender was, usually with drawings and a spoken description. A judge then ranked the possible locations against the description; if the description best matched the true location, the trial was scored as a "hit".[1] In later experiments, the viewer tried to draw or describe a target such as a place, a photograph, an object or a short video clip. All known channels for receiving the information were blocked. Sometimes a monitor who also didn't know the target asked the viewer questions, and sometimes nobody looked at the target during the session at all. Usually the viewer was later told the correct answer.[3] In most of the more recent laboratory studies reviewed in 1995 the targets were drawn from a pool of *National Geographic* photographs, and the viewer's report was compared with the target and with a set of decoys, usually five pictures in all.[1] ### Protocols described by practitioners Stephan Schwartz, a remote viewing researcher who founded the Mobius laboratory in Los Angeles, describes a session in the Society for Psychical Research's *Psi Encyclopedia* as an agreed, focused conversation in which one person (the "monitor") asks questions and the other (the "viewer") answers them. He outlines several variants: a precognitive form, in which the target is chosen at random only after the viewer has given a description; an "outbound" form, in which a third person goes to a randomly chosen place; and forms in which the viewer is given only map coordinates. In "associative remote viewing", each possible target stands for a possible outcome of a future event, such as a horse race, and the target the viewer describes is taken as a prediction.[4] Schwartz writes that remote viewing has also become a hobby, with clubs, associations such as the International Remote Viewing Association, conferences and magazines. He regards the research evidence for remote viewing as strong.[4] ## Scope ### What it includes - Describing or drawing a distant or hidden place, object or picture[3] - Laboratory testing, in which a judge compares the description with the target and with decoys[1] ### What it is not - It is not mediumship. Remote viewing seeks information about places and objects, and the research framed it as anomalous cognition (telepathy, clairvoyance and precognition), not as contact with people who have died.[3] - The 1995 evaluation for the CIA concluded that, although a statistically significant effect had been observed in the laboratory, it remained unclear whether a paranormal phenomenon had been shown to exist, and the experiments had not identified its origin or nature.[1] - The same evaluation found that remote viewing had never produced information that was used to guide intelligence operations.[1] ## Research ### The 1995 evaluation In 1995 the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) commissioned the American Institutes for Research (AIR) to evaluate the government's remote viewing programme. AIR assembled a panel that included two experts chosen to represent both sides of the debate: Jessica Utts, a professor of statistics at the University of California, Davis, whose work viewed paranormal interpretations positively, and Ray Hyman, a professor of psychology at the University of Oregon, who was chosen to represent a more sceptical position. The panel reviewed about 80 publications describing the laboratory research.[1] The reviewers agreed that the laboratory studies showed a statistically significant effect, with hits occurring more often than chance, and that recent experiments had improved methods and controls. They disagreed about what caused the effect. Hyman held that a significant result doesn't prove remote viewing, because other explanations had not been ruled out; Utts believed they had been. AIR noted that most significant results came from the same viewers, the same judge, the same targets and the same scoring methods, which made it hard to say what was producing them, and both reviewers stressed the need for independent replication.[1] In her own review, Utts concluded that, by the standards applied in other areas of science, psychic functioning had been well established, with an effect of small to medium size.[3] ### Use in intelligence work AIR's review of operational use found that the conditions under which remote viewing is seen in the laboratory don't apply to intelligence gathering. The intelligence users it interviewed said the reports showed some accuracy about broad background features but failed to give the concrete, specific information they needed; the information was inconsistent, inaccurate in its details and needed a great deal of interpretation. AIR concluded that continued use of remote viewing in intelligence operations was not warranted.[1] The CIA's own summary of the evaluation is that enough accurate remote viewing experiences had been recorded to defy randomness, but that the phenomenon was too unreliable, inconsistent and sporadic to be useful for intelligence, and the agency decided not to restore the programme.[2] ### Earlier reviews In the mid-1980s a panel of the US National Research Council, reporting in 1988 on techniques for enhancing human performance, found little or no support for the usefulness of remote viewing. AIR also noted that early remote viewing research had statistical and methodological flaws, such as cues (for example, the time taken to drive to a site) that might have let viewers score hits without any paranormal ability.[1] ### Later research A 2023 journal study, led by a researcher at Ramon Llull University in Barcelona, set out to replicate the findings of the CIA-funded research. In one experiment, 347 people who did not believe in psychic experiences tried to describe targets identified only by location coordinates, and the results were not significant. In a second, 287 people who did believe in such experiences worked with images of places; the authors reported significant effects, which they linked to the participants' emotional intelligence, and proposed that emotions felt during a session may play a part.[5] ## Traditions and lineage According to the CIA's History Staff, the agency was interested in ESP and other paranormal phenomena from early in its history; the earliest record they have found is a 1948 memo on whether hypnotised people could be used for long-distance communication. The CIA began its own research in the summer of 1972, working with scientists to test whether certain people could "see" places and objects around the world without being there.[2] Government-sponsored research took place at the Stanford Research Institute (later SRI International) from the early 1970s until 1989, and then from 1990 at Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), under Edwin May.[3] The CIA's programme ended in 1977, and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) became directly involved from about 1985.[1] AIR describes the DIA programme as "Star Gate"; the CIA's History Staff says the programme was known by the names STARGATE and GRILL FLAME.[1][2] In the mid-1990s the DIA handed the programme back to the CIA, which agreed to take it on only after an independent evaluation.[2] After the 1995 evaluation, at the request of Congress, the CIA, DIA and US Army declassified their records of the programme. They are available in the CIA's FOIA Electronic Reading Room.[2] ## Context ### Within Spiritualism Spiritfold has found no published source linking remote viewing with Spiritualism. The wider history still helps to place it. Spiritualism inspired the rise of psychical research, which developed ways of testing two different kinds of claim: basic psychic experiences such as telepathy, clairvoyance and precognition, and the more complex claim of contact with spirits.[6] From the 1930s J. B. Rhine at Duke University took psychic events into the laboratory, renaming the field parapsychology and seeking experiments that could be repeated.[7] The remote viewing research, which classed its subject as telepathy, clairvoyance or precognition, deals with the first kind of claim.[3] Spiritualism, by contrast, is defined by the second. Melton writes that its emphasis on personal survival after death, demonstrated through mediumship, is what distinguishes it from other psychic groups,[7] and the Spiritualists' National Union in Britain says the purpose of mediumship is to offer proof of survival.[8] This distinction matters for anyone comparing the two: a successful remote viewing trial, even if accepted at face value, would show something about a living person's perception, not that anyone survives death. ### In Australian Spiritualism Spiritfold has found no published source linking remote viewing with [Spiritualism](https://spiritfold.com/Spiritualism) in Australia. Australian Spiritualists do draw the general line between psychic and mediumistic work. In Matt Tomlinson's study of the Canberra Spiritualist Association, Spiritualists treat psychic work as communication between two living minds and [mediumship](https://spiritfold.com/Mediumship) as contact with people in the spirit world, and a lesson he heard often was that every medium is psychic but not every psychic is a medium.[9] ### A Spiritualist perspective Remote viewing grew out of laboratory parapsychology and government research, not out of Spiritualism. A Spiritualist would regard it as a separate field, nearer to clairvoyance tested under experimental conditions than to mediumship, since it seeks information about places and objects rather than contact with people in the spirit world. For a student, it is a useful example of a psychic claim studied entirely on its own terms, with no spirit communicator involved. There is something a Spiritualist can respect in its careful protocols and honest scoring, and in its plain record of what worked and what did not. That same honesty belongs in any psychic work. Anyone offering remote viewing to the public should be clear about what is and isn't claimed, should not encourage people to stake money or important decisions on it, and should be upfront about costs. Mediumship has its own purpose, and the two are best kept distinct. ## Remote viewing in Australia ### Australian press coverage The American research was reported in the Australian press. In January 1978 *The Canberra Times* reviewed Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff's book *Mind-Reach: Scientists Look at Psychic Ability*. The reviewer, Barend Jan Terwiel, summarised their method: a target place was chosen at random, even the scientists watching the viewer did not know it, and the viewer's description and drawings were later compared with it. He noted that matching drawings to real scenes involves some interpretation and that the authors had been strongly criticised in scholarly journals. Following the book's guidelines, he tried a few informal experiments at home; the first seemed to succeed, the next two were inconclusive, and he held back from a final view.[10] When the 1995 evaluation was made public, *The Canberra Times* carried a Reuters report saying that the CIA-commissioned study had found statistically significant results in laboratory tests of remote viewing. The report said the study had been requested by the US Senate Appropriations Committee, and quoted Jessica Utts's view that, by the standards of other sciences, psychic functioning had been proven.[11] The short report did not cover AIR's separate conclusion that remote viewing had not proved useful for intelligence work.[11][1] ### Law Section 40 of South Australia's *Summary Offences Act 1953* makes it an offence for a person, intending to defraud, to claim to act as a spiritualist or medium, or to claim to use telepathy, clairvoyance or similar powers. The maximum penalty is a $10,000 fine or two years' imprisonment.[12] The section does not name remote viewing, and the offence requires an intent to defraud. It may still be relevant, because the research reviewed for the CIA treated remote viewing as a form of "anomalous cognition", which Utts divides into telepathy, clairvoyance and precognition.[12][3] ## Safety and good practice Scamwatch, the scam information website of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), does not mention remote viewing, but it does warn about scammers who present themselves as psychics or clairvoyants. It says they may make contact by post, email, phone or in person, forecast good fortune or claim the person is in trouble, and then offer a fix. Its advice is never to send such people money, card details or other personal information, and, for anyone who decides to pay for a psychic or clairvoyant service, to find out first the full cost, exactly what is being provided, and whether there are conditions or ongoing or hidden costs.[13] ## Related modalities - [Clairvoyance](https://spiritfold.com/Clairvoyance) - [Telepathy](https://spiritfold.com/Telepathy) ## References 1. Mumford, Michael D., Andrew M. Rose and David A. Goslin. *An Evaluation of Remote Viewing: Research and Applications*. Washington, DC: American Institutes for Research, 29 September 1995. Prepared for the Central Intelligence Agency; approved for release 22 May 2002. [CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room, document CIA-RDP96-00791R000200180006-4](https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp96-00791r000200180006-4). Read from the Internet Archive copy of the reading room PDF of 17 July 2025 (accessed 11 October 2026). 2. ["Ask Molly: Did CIA Really Study Psychic Powers?"](https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/ask-molly-did-cia-really-study-psychic-powers/). Central Intelligence Agency, 27 October 2021 (accessed 11 October 2026). 3. Utts, Jessica. [*An Assessment of the Evidence for Psychic Functioning*](https://ics.uci.edu/~jutts/air.pdf). Division of Statistics, University of California, Davis, 1995. Also published as Review 1 in Mumford et al., *An Evaluation of Remote Viewing* (1995) (accessed 11 October 2026). 4. Schwartz, Stephan. ["Remote Viewing"](https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/remote-viewing). *Psi Encyclopedia*. London: Society for Psychical Research, 2017; last updated 9 July 2026 (accessed 11 October 2026). 5. Escolà-Gascón, Á., J. Houran, N. Dagnall, K. Drinkwater and A. Denovan. "Follow-up on the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) remote viewing experiments". *Brain and Behavior* 13, no. 6 (2023): e3026. [doi:10.1002/brb3.3026](https://doi.org/10.1002/brb3.3026). Abstract read via [Europe PMC](https://europepmc.org/article/MED/37133806) (accessed 11 October 2026). 6. Melton, J. Gordon. ["Spiritualism"](https://www.britannica.com/topic/spiritualism-religion). *Encyclopaedia Britannica*. Last updated 6 November 2025; read from the Internet Archive copy of 31 December 2025 (accessed 12 October 2026). 7. Melton, J. Gordon. ["Western Esoteric Family II: Spiritualism & New Age"](https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/western-esoteric-family-ii-spiritualism-new-age). *Melton's Encyclopedia of American Religions* (Gale), via Encyclopedia.com (accessed 12 October 2026). 8. Spiritualists' National Union. ["Mediumship"](https://snu.org.uk/about-us/about-spiritualism/mediumship/). SNU (no date shown; accessed 12 October 2026). 9. Tomlinson, Matt. *[Speaking with the Dead: An Ethnography of Extrahuman Experience](https://doi.org/10.53288/0465.1.00)*. Earth: punctum books, 2024, pp. 39–40. Open access under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (accessed 12 October 2026). 10. Terwiel, Barend Jan. "Seeing through the mind is not for all of us" (review of *Mind-Reach* by Russell Targ and Harold E. Puthoff). *The Canberra Times*, 21 January 1978, p. 15. [Trove](https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/131710911), National Library of Australia (accessed 11 October 2026). 11. "Scientific study 'proves' esp works for some" (Reuters). *The Canberra Times*, 30 November 1995, p. 8. [Trove](https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/130573933), National Library of Australia (accessed 11 October 2026). 12. *Summary Offences Act 1953* (SA), section 40, "Acting as a spiritualist, medium etc with intent to defraud". Authorised version current from 1 July 2026. [South Australian Legislation](https://www.legislation.sa.gov.au/lz?path=%2Fc%2Fa%2Fsummary%20offences%20act%201953) (accessed 11 October 2026). 13. ["Buying and selling scams"](https://www.scamwatch.gov.au/types-of-scams/buying-and-selling-scams). Scamwatch, National Anti-Scam Centre, Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. Read from the Internet Archive copy of 8 September 2026 (accessed 11 October 2026). ## Further reading - Central Intelligence Agency. ["Ask Molly: Did CIA Really Study Psychic Powers?"](https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/ask-molly-did-cia-really-study-psychic-powers/). 2021. - Escolà-Gascón, Á. and others. ["Follow-up on the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) remote viewing experiments"](https://doi.org/10.1002/brb3.3026). *Brain and Behavior*, 2023. - Mumford, Michael D., Andrew M. Rose and David A. Goslin. [*An Evaluation of Remote Viewing: Research and Applications*](https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp96-00791r000200180006-4). American Institutes for Research, 1995. - Schwartz, Stephan. ["Remote Viewing"](https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/remote-viewing). *Psi Encyclopedia*. Society for Psychical Research, 2017. Written by a remote viewing researcher. - Utts, Jessica. [*An Assessment of the Evidence for Psychic Functioning*](https://ics.uci.edu/~jutts/air.pdf). University of California, Davis, 1995.