PART 1

The dull whir and arcade blare of McCarran International Airport rattles my skull even after I scurry into the cool dark Uber. I do not care for Las Vegas, particularly casino culture. But I am here, headed to a gambling conference. I recount the small sum I am willing to spend, to fritter away on a dream. For nearly an hour we cruise. Hot, unpopulated strip malls, distant red rockscapes. At some point we drive up into pooled and palm-treed hills, upscale and residential, where I am safe from heat and greed but not the question that beats like a low, steady drum. Why did you come?

The answer still startles me: to see the future.

In the distance: a glimpse of the Strip. Every gambling film I had ever seen—Swingers, Casino, Oceans 11—flickers to mind. I am on my own type of heist. The prize: a new reality about human capability. I promised myself that once I got to Vegas, my choice to attend a precognition conference would seem right. That I would not doubt what I have come to believe almost without question. We are quite capable of knowing important events before they happen. Of using what folklore calls the Second Sight. When and how we sense the future has captivated parapsychologists for over half a century. Today, in about an hour, I will participate in an experiment. I have been shown spreadsheets with large dollar amounts, promised multiple opportunities to bet and win. By the end of the weekend, I will either believe more deeply without this creeping embarrassment, or see the horrible bones of a scam.

I don’t know which.

The irony of not knowing is not lost on me.

The method, Applied Precognition, proposes the future can not only be sensed, but also drawn on paper in crude images, and wagered on for profit. I struggled to hide how ridiculous it sounded as I told friends and colleagues that I was attending an ESP sports wagering conference in Las Vegas.

I was not surprised by the clichéd responses:

I knew you were going to say that.

I can tell you’re going to love it.

Every time I assure them my choice to attend is as a spectator only. I am a witness only. Sports gambling, like an all-you-can-eat shrimp bar, has no appeal. On the other hand, I’ve been a careful inquirer, some might say seeker, into extraordinary abilities for some time. If you add in the flight, the hotel, the conference fee, and the amount I am willing to gamble, I have spent $1500 on this weekend adventure so far. Peanuts compared to the three years and thousands of hours spent poring over scientific journals, interviewing practitioners, researchers, and reading theory books about the flexibility of time. I am alternately proud and ashamed of this fact. Proud because my interest feels futuristic and advanced, ashamed because it feels like a vice.

Part 2

We arrive at the Green Valley Ranch under screaming blue sky. I circle the manicured grounds, wheeling my pretend skepticism right along with my suitcase. In the lobby, marble pillars and nouveau classic arches lead me towards the desk and a surprising number of families–young good-looking parents with small children and stacks of luggage wheeled by hardworking bellhops. I am directed to the escalator; our conference rooms are on the lower level. Downstairs tuxedoed waiters roll silver carts through otherwise empty halls. My stomach sinks as I near the action and the chance to verify what I have suspected for a long time. That the extended mind not only exists, but can be accessed and used on the regular, by anyone, for just about anything. I begin to employ positive, logical thoughts. Optimism helps the odds. Intention influences outcome. Neuropsychologists and physicists who are deep in the study of precognition have told me the positive tropes I am so drawn to in life also have effects on psychic success. They prime the mind to open, keep doubts at bay. At the moment they seem to be working, the tension in my stomach releases like a flower opening to the sun.

I take my seat under diffuse chandelier glow and scan the room, ignoring ugly fractal-like patterns on the beige carpet. I am one of a few women among one hundred mostly male participants. They range in age but stare, unblinking and focused, at the lecturer who repeats ideas I have already begun to digest.

Intention matters.

Your crappy thoughts can ruin things.

Your hope and curiosity and interest pave the way.

We share a deep bond, we humans, and we’ve just begun to discover the ways in which we are glued.

I pour myself water and unwrap a chocolate. I listen to lecture after lecture, about how time is not linear, how the human mind is an open, permeable system. By the time we’re ready for an experiment, I am so on board that I start to feel bad for people who think time is just a series of twenty-four forward moving hours in a day.

Part 3

The extended mind has been sought, tested, and rendered significant in the US ever since J. B. Rhine started his research center at Duke University in 1927.  For the better part of a century, academics have been working quietly, at times out of their garages, hiding their interest in what most considered an illegitimate field. Enough evidence—trials with dice, telepathy cards, and documented out-of-body travel—pointed to something else, possibly magnificent, than what our current laws of physics deem possible.

The discipline of parapsychologyeven enjoyed a brief time in the sun thanks to anthropologist Margaret Mead. After a 1976 speech Mead gave to the American Association of the Advancement of Science (AAAS), of which she was president, the science community embarked on an open-minded era. Mead, who was a supporter of J. B. Rhine, chose her words carefully when she implored the science community to reconsider “the multisensory nature of human function” and the “disciplined use both of the mind in the usual sense and of the whole body in the light of our new knowledge.” It was as though she was speaking in code, one that showcased her exploratory interest just enough.

Soon after, the Parapsychology Association was admitted into the AAAS. For the first time, the study of psychic ability received federal funding. Rigorous laboratory results in precognition, telepathy, and out-of-body experiences were peer reviewed and published. Books, films, retreat centers, and cultural figures, including Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell, who founded the Institute for Noetic Sciences after his return trip from the moon, emerged in a burst of enthusiasm for the field. A movement of Human Potential began. But today only two universities have parapsychology departments: the University of Virginia Department of Perceptual Studies and University of Arizona School of Consciousness and Health. Both eschew the dated term arapsychology. Although both do groundbreaking work with mediumship, out-of-body-experiences, and past lives, they share the same predicament when it comes to explaining psychic experience. The phenomena, which seem not to exist either within the brain or the body, remain elusive to study. How do you trigger the mechanism of a past life, or an out-of-body experience, if it doesn’t happen within the body?

Triggering that mechanism is what drives the Applied Precognition Project. Running the show is Marty Rosenblatt, bespectacled, enthusiastic, and a life-long physicist who once managed projects in hypervelocity impact and nuclear weapon effects for the Department of Defense and NASA. Rosenblatt, who co-founded the Applied Precognition Project conference (APP) when he retired, has a warm grin and likeable manner when describing the science. Far from effete, he is amused by the material like an adult explaining the Big Bang to children. He emphasizes practical, more manageable steps toward developing precognitive ability. He deemphasizes both the intellectual complexity and the conference’s draw: gambling. “You’re here to build up communication channels with yourself,” I hear him say more than once. I hear similar phrases echoed by the attendees during breaks: precognition merely requires a positive relationship with one’s unconscious mind. Nurture the unconscious mind, and your space-time barriers will fold like a soft blanket.

It is almost enough for me to be in the company of those who accept this idea. The positivity is deafening and fills the room, loud enough to drown out my misgivings.

Previous gambles I’ve taken:

1. With $400 in cash in my pocket and a few years of French, I withdrew from college and boarded a plane to Paris on August 17 with a return date scheduled for November 28.
2. I adopted an unfriendly, wild dog with no known history except that she had been wandering the desert starving for two months.
3. I once agreed to temporarily share an apartment with an un-medicated, mentally-ill friend prone to violent outbursts.
4. A few times I have spent 5-7 days eating nothing but honeydew melon as a “cleanse.”
5. I met, married, and had a child with a man I knew for only fourteen months

In gambling, everyone knows the house always wins. I am the house, in the cases above, in that I always come away with self-knowledge, providing I live. I do not pretend to believe I am going to beat the casino once we get the precognition experiment started, but I also understand my doubts mean I am betting against the house that is me. Moving forward means lifting my skepticism, facing my fear, and increasing the odds.

Part 4

True: precognition violates the law of causality at the macroscopic level. In other words, cause can’t follow effect. If you clap your hands and hear the sound of the clap, the clap is the cause; the vibration in your ears is the effect. In a similar way, if the phone rings and you answer it, the ringing phone is the cause, your action is the effect. But sometimes, the following happens: you think of a friend, and then, out of nowhere, the phone rings and it’s her. Some flexible-minded people will wonder, for just a second, “Did I cause her to call me?” We’re so conditioned to think of cause preceding effect, we can’t think of another solution besides the most outlandish. But viewed through the lens of precognition, this scenario, which most people have experienced, flips the law on its head. Precognition proposes you picked up on your friend’s call before the phone even rang. You received the effect of a cause that had yet to happen.

“The mind seems to have access to a universe of collective consciousness,” Rosenblatt explains as he lays out the procedure that depends on this phenomenon, of receiving the effect of a cause that has yet to happen. He does not spend time speculating on the mechanics. Like other researchers at the conference—former government scientists who have spent their lives studying the topic—Rosenblatt avoids the question of how, and focuses more on when precognition works best (fact: the higher the entropy, the more accurate the readings). The truth is, no one really knows how the mechanism works. Even the most successful Remote Viewers, the name for the truly skilled precognition practitioners, tend to not dissect their process. But Rosenblatt gives us one to follow: the room will be divided into Viewers and Judges. The Viewers do the actual precognition—they try to see a specific future moment. After twenty minutes or so, Viewers sketch their views, and then submit their sketches to the Judges. The Judges rank the drawings and submit the ranks to Rosenblatt. Rosenblatt feeds the data into a software program, and a prediction is divined. From there, wagering is up to the gambler.

Part 5

I am ready to give it all a try.

Of the choices to serve as a Viewer or a Judge, I choose Viewer first, which means I stay in the conference room and sketch. When Rosenblatt “tasks” us—which means he gives us a long serial number known as the “session coordinate” —the room falls into silence. I write the long, computer generated ID number in the top left corner of the page as instructed. I know only that this coordinate corresponds with one of two photos, or photosites. They too have been computer generated and pre-selected, sealed in yellow envelopes near to where Rosenblatt stands. I’m supposed to draw one of the photos, even though I’ve never seen either one. I am supposed to use my precognitive ability.

From here, the exact process becomes complicated to explain: I trace the ID number with my pen, underline it, and let my mind wander. I try to use my mind like a periscope: as capable of moving through time and across distances, through the Pinterest boards we all carry in our heads. I draw unconsciously. The photosites, or sensory-rich photographs, are each associated with the upcoming sporting event, in this case the Cubs vs. Indians baseball game happening later that afternoon. One photosite corresponds with a Cubs win; the other corresponds with an Indians win. I sift through my images, ideas, and memories, searching. I’m looking for the future moment, the one when I see the envelope open, and the correct photosite is revealed. To be clear, I am drawing before the game is even played.

I am given few details upfront, or minimal frontloading, so as to keep me mentally clear and free of psychic noise. I know this: two photosites exist, the game is being played in Chicago at 1:00 p.m., and we will have to draw, be judged, and wager before the game begins. I know my drawing, and every drawing at my table, will be ranked and scored by the Judges once they take the photos out of the envelopes and compare them to our renderings. I know my head feels faint because I am nervous and inexplicably scared. I know my drawing doesn’t have to be “good,” just accurate.

Before this moment, my understanding of precognition was based on movies. It’s hard not to think of Philip K. Dick’s Minority Report, and the earlier, more earnest Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Think of the pivotal scene in which Richard Dreyfuss recreates the craggy, plateaued Devil’s Tower mountain multiple times—first in pencil, then in mashed potato, then finally in dirt and shrubs in the middle of his broken family’s living room—based on an image he can’t forget. The reality of an actual precognitive vision is much less certain, much more fleeting and elliptical. If you aren’t paying attention, you will miss it. The information comes into the mind out of sequence, swiftly. Some at this conference will say the information isn’t really coming into the mind, as much as you are astral projecting, or mentally crossing time and space to reach the moment in question. You’ve found an open doorway in consciousness, like the character Eleven in the retro Sci-Fi show Stranger Things, and can move to other locations and times at will. I don’t know if that’s true, but I do know we aren’t in television, and the precognitive process is both more and less obtuse. In some ways, it’s as easy as recognizing a picture when it comes to mind. But if your mind is cluttered, as most minds are, recognizing a precognitive vision can only be done within a structured method like this one. Otherwise, most of us will dismiss a precognitive vision as a mental hiccup, rather than value it as a vision of the future. It’s just too much to think about.

Part 6

The well-known history among all conference attendees: a tried and true system of precognition, called Remote Viewing, was funded and used by the CIA and then by the US Army for intelligence gathering from 1972-1995. In order to counter the Soviet Union’s Cold War investment in psychoenergetics, or mind control, the Department of Defense hired two laser scientists, Russell Targ and Hal Puthoff, to explore a top-secret question: can information be gathered about a spy target from a distance? Can psychic spies be trained to collect intelligence at KGB headquarters while sitting in a clandestine Palo Alto office park?

The small, dozen-person operation, Stanford Research Institute International (SRII), is where Targ and Puthoff recruited a select number of high-adrenaline military and intelligence personnel to train as psychic spies. Some, like Joe McMoneagle, had had prior psychic or out-of-body experiences in addition to a severe type A personality. Others, like artist Ingo Swann, started making oil paintings of his psychic visions and caught the attention of Targ and Puthoff. Over twelve months, the recruits were given coordinates, or numbers that represent the targets, and asked to perceive and report events, sites, and information from a great distance—sometimes from across the world—while sitting in a blind room with nothing but a piece of paper, a pen, and an uninformed facilitator. The program, eventually taken over by nuclear physicist Ed May following Targ and Puthoff’s step down, became a $20 million project. While it changed drastically over the two decades and garnered much controversy, most of the information about how the subconscious mind works informs the judging process Rosenblatt uses in sessions today. What are the unambiguous, unique, and matchable elements that compare with the target? Are there bodies or water, landmasses or buildings? Colors, shapes, or textures?

Part 7

In 2013, psychology studies published in Brain, Experimental Brain Research, and Psychological Methods, were rounded up along with twenty-three other reports between the years 1978-2010 and used for a meta-analysis about presentiment, a close cousin of precognition. Dr. Julia Mossbridge, lead author of the analysis that appeared in Frontiers of Science, found consistent evidence across three decades for presentiment, or having a bodily awareness of a future event. Specifically, she found that accurately predicting a future event was not only possible but measurable through heart rate, pupil dilation, and other physiology. Let me say that again. The study showed that for thirty years, science has known presentiment is a measurable human bodily function.

Although news outlets including the Wall Street Journal and CBS reported on the findings, the topic remains unintegrated into our media, science, and culture. Skeptics claim the effect is too small to matter. Supporters persist on the academic fringe. It is almost as though we are collectively ignoring the information.

Part 8

I draw a few lines at first, then a box-like structure. It’s a farmhouse, I think, before the first question smashed me: how do you know it’s a farmhouse? Then the second: even if a farmhouse photo does sit within one of the envelopes, how do you know you’re drawing the winning envelope’s image? Then the third: seriously, how could your drawing relate to anything in either envelope? 

“The accurate information coming in will feel different for everyone,” Rosenblatt says.

Is it a trace, like a memory, rising up above the mental noise? I don’t know.

I remind myself how the mind works in this situation, behaving almost outside of space and time, moving like a Frisbee or boomerang to the future moment when the photos in the envelopes are revealed. I try not to dwell on my doubt, the psychic noise known at the conference as feedback. Once your mind shifts away from drawing and towards intellectual analysis, the distraction is often unmanageable. Think of that searing noise at a live music show, when the microphone is not properly adjusted to the amplifiers. Think of how it ruins the song, takes over the entire music experience. Feedback is the same here, pestering invasive doubts and questions that ruin the entire operation. It is why Viewers are not allowed to judge their own transcripts.

I push through, my hand moving fast across the paper in full-on sketch mode. I forget about the weirdness for a few thrilling moments, even enjoy a short rush before the clarity fades. Now nothing about the drawing makes sense. Rudimentary stick figures, spirals, and random thoughts poured onto my paper. Like a drawing from my child’s nursery school art class. I add cylinders and lines around the edges because something in my mind’s eye tells me I should. Some words I write are “outside,” “brick structure,” and “sand.” I’m not sure any of this is coming from the future, but the flicker of uncertainty warns me to stay focused. I remind myself my cultural bias is my worst enemy. I’m so conditioned to deny, I can stop any latent precognitive talent with just a shimmer of doubt.

In the last few minutes before turning in our papers, Rosenblatt attempts to deflect group worry by whispering encouragement. “Don’t hold back! Chaos is the foundation of creativity!”

I wonder if there’s such a thing as a precogger’s confidence, something resembling a gambler’s gut instinct. I’m not supposed to, but I glance at other transcripts as the table manager collects them, and notice evidence of hesitation on almost everyone’s page: question marks and arrows, the words I can’t see and pass.

Gambles I wish I had taken:

1. Accepted the gift of an Irish bar when an owner of multiple pubs, drunk and grandiose, offered with the words, “You want one?”
2. Started a band, rather than repress the urge to play music and sing.
3. Joined the crew for a team of hot-air ballooners racing across Europe, rather than remain in Provence, France, to repair a medieval farmhouse.

I am never sorry for gambles taken, only those skipped. Even if the right decision is to skip, if losses clearly outweigh gains, I still look back wanting to have taken the risk, to see if I could have beaten the odds.

We turn in our transcripts. I wipe the sweat from my hands. In the bathroom, I splash water on my face and remind myself I’m in Las Vegas, a place built on fun and chance. The true definition of a gambler, for me, lives in the words of Anaïs Nin. “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” Unlike Nin, I don’t want to gamble with my sex life or intimacy anymore. Instead I am gambling with my belief and mental stability. I search for the courage to continue, and fight the urge to leave the whole thing behind and hang out by the pool. I wonder if anyone else finds the activity as unhinging as I do. If they are more comfortable than I am in saying to myself, I’m psychic. If they have the courage to still think positively, even when they lose.

Part 9

Hawaiian shirts, open-toed sandals, sundresses, crystals. Highlighted hair, balding heads, business casual, middle class. I don’t see anyone who matches me, inside or out: urban, skeptical, curious, hesitant. Everyone has dressed properly for Las Vegas. Everyone believes.

For comfort, I trace the roots of my beliefs in this area back to some of the greatest thinkers of the nineteenth century. Ralph Waldo Emerson and William James write about mystical experience and transience, how thoughts and inspiration are not linear but travel sideways, backwards, and circuitously. The same might be said for imagination, according to Stephen King in his memoir, On Writing, who goes so far as to say writing is a form of telepathy. I trust these concepts coming from these thinkers.

So why am I bothered by putting ideas into action?

I am bothered by the betting.

I find a copy of Rosenblatt’s data analysis and bar graphs in my purple conference folder. People win big, say the colorful jagged lines climbing upwards over ten and then twenty-five days. Slow, consistent success. In one graph, a Viewer walked away with a profit of $800 on a $2000 wager. Another summary chart, from September 2015 to September 2016, a nine-partner prediction group invested $2000 each and had a 95% return on investment, with some Viewers averaging a 444% return. My eyes naturally linger on the winning investors. It’s easy to ignore three losing investors with -6%, -24%, and -28% returns listed just as prominently.  The eye naturally goes to the winnings, and I am persuaded in the same way I am persuaded by card counting. It’s a system, with ROIs right here.

And yet: I cannot shake an icky sensation. Exploiting what feels like a spiritual gift in the name of sports wagering feels lowbrow, almost obscene: not as obscene as using children in pornographic fashion photography, but almost.

I am not alone.

Part 10

Inside, I am able to interview Joe McMoneagle, veteran Remote Viewer from the Stargate program. He has come to the conference somewhat begrudgingly to speak about his work as a psychic spy. I noticed him first on his red indoor scooter, necessary transportation after breaking his back so many times during his three decades in the army. I overhear him having words with Rosenblatt regarding the judging method, and Rosenblatt saying, “Our method is working for us, Joe.”

Up close, I see he has a square jaw and powerful physique, but his kind eyes soften the more intimidating manner typical of a grouchy man in his seventies. He avoids answering directly when I ask him what he thinks about gambling with psychic ability.

“People think because it’s the paranormal they can just jump in and do whatever they want. They do a disservice to the field.”

Throughout his career as a military psychic, he has located underground tunnels, nuclear generators, Russian submarines, American hostages, and captured soldiers. He has contributed strategically to multiple missions from the Carter to the Clinton Administrations. He has won the Legion of Merit. His ability boggled the minds of his government employers, even as they employed him.

“I want people to know this is real, but to be honest, I’m tired of doing it. I’m tired of trying to convince people.”

When it came time for the army to formalize the program at Fort Meade, McMoneagle saw the end of the method’s purity. The defense unit that was made famous by the book Men Who Stare at Goats suffered from too many cooks in the kitchen.

“They took about half the research, then added the rest themselves, and crunched it down to an eight-week training course when in reality it takes three years to make a good Viewer.”

I hear a unique fatigue in his voice. He makes clear he disapproves of augmenting the method, especially for personal gain. He confides in me that he is at work on a book on ethics in the psychic world. When it’s time to place bets, he is nowhere to be seen.

Part 11

The judging is complete. The transcripts are ranked either as hits, misses, or passes. I learn that my drawing was scored highly at a hit, a 3.5 out of four. When they open the envelope and I take a look, my insides fall. There’s no farmhouse. Instead, I see an adobe church, Spanish-mission style, with a gravel path and rounded wood door. To me, it’s a miss, but the judge points out how I had correctly perceived an exterior structure, a path, and even the gravel. When I remain unconvinced, she shows me the second photo of a giant whale underwater. “Your mind saw the correct photo,” she said. “It just wasn’t sure what it was seeing.”

Our averages are fed into Rosenblatt’s custom-designed software system. The software creates a statistic out of our averaged scores, and Rosenblatt makes his prediction on how we might wager for the Cubs/Indians game. We are to wager within the next hour, to bet on the Cubs to win “under.” This means the total points between the two teams will be less than the projected total. I take the tip, race upstairs with the rest of the team. My tablemates and I stick together. We span two decades, hail from five different states, and sport diverse footwear: Birkenstocks, leather boots, loafers, gold sandals. We are a motley crew, but I feel, suddenly, like I am part of a family as we weave through the casino, to the sports wagering corral where TVs blare simultaneous live games and drown the din of slots and desperation. My hesitation dissolves, and I fill with power not my own. Those $20 cigarette vending machines and cocktail waitresses with giant bouffants are for other types of gamblers. We have strategy. We know what we’re doing.

Part 12

My tablemates and I pass our money to the sports wagering attendant, winking to one another with a smug certainty. When we find out hours later that I doubled my money, $50 just became $100, the sharp thrill in my heart drowns in a surge of nausea. We had either monetized the method, or we had been lucky. I didn’t know which. My tablemates are convinced our viewing sessions had led us to win. Those who trusted in themselves had wagered more—a lot more. Gentle high-fives circulated our table. I don’t know why I wasn’t more excited. A strange dread different than doubt filled me. I collected my money from the attendant, a woman probably ten years my senior who had already seen more than a lifetime of gambling. Her hot pink lips disappeared into the straight line of her mouth. Something about her lack of expression cautioned me. I sat out the next round. Everyone at my table protested. We were at the beginning of a streak, they urged. I wasn’t feeling it, I said, and went out to the pool. The next wager was a bust. Someone at my table lost $1200. No one called me a cooler directly, but I noticed the subtle shift in conversation, diminished warmth in eye contact, fewer mentions of future games.

Gambles I will never take again:

1. A cocktail of antidepressants for nearly a decade of my life, given to me by a psychiatrist who did not believe in Chinese medicine.
2. A sailboat on a roaring lake with an angry friend at dusk before a summer storm, when I myself could not sail.
3. A romantic fling in a snowy Colorado forest with an unmedicated bipolar colleague because he was handsome and a good person.

Sometimes, you have a feeling that tells you, although the components seem dodgy, they will somehow pull together to make better circumstance than you could have imagined. I have learned to think better of this particular, high-risk feeling.

The rest of the weekend brought hundreds, and in one case thousands, to my tablemates. On the plane ride home, I blame myself for coming all this way and not gambling more. The common phrases used to mock paranormal activity keep coming to mind: it’s psychosomatic or magical thinking; it’s delusional, the domain of tin-foil hat wearing freaks. Somewhere over Arizona, I order a cocktail and watch a movie starring Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard about spies in World War II. It is a mediocre film about mixed messages and misunderstandings. As I watch, I know suddenly the culture is having the wrong argument about precognition. The question isn’t whether or not it exists, but whether it’s going to be used ethically by governments, corporations, and powerful individuals.

I will not bring this revised argument with me back to Chicago. I will leave it on the plane in the liminal space where it can’t bother anyone. Especially me.

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