Ingo Douglas Swann (September 14, 1933 – January 31, 2013) was an American psychic, artist, and writer known for being the co-creator, along with Russell Targ and Harold E. Puthoff, of remote viewing, and specifically the Stargate Project.
Biography
Swann was a claimed psychic who called himself a "consciousness researcher who had sometimes experienced altered states of 'consciousness'". He said, "I don't get 'tested', I only work with researchers on well-designed experiments." According to Russell Targ and Harold E. Puthoff, "Swann-inspired innovations" have led to impressive results in parapsychology. However, some claim that experiments which were not controlled by Swann proved unsuccessful.
Remote viewing
Swann researched the process of remote viewing at the Stanford Research Institute in experiments that caught the attention of the Central Intelligence Agency. He is commonly credited with proposing the idea of controlled remote viewing, a process in which viewers would view a location given nothing but its geographical coordinates, which was developed and tested by Puthoff and Targ with CIA funding. Remote viewing is the practice of seeking impressions about a distant or unseen target, purportedly using extrasensory perception (ESP) or "sensing" with the mind.
Uri Geller
Due to the popularity of Uri Geller in the seventies, a critical examination of Swann's paranormal claims was basically overlooked by skeptics and historians. Uri Geller commented very favorably on Swann, saying, "If you were blind and a man appeared who could teach you to see with mind power, you would revere him as a guru. So why is Ingo Swann ignored by publishers and forced to publish his astounding life story on the Internet?"
Both Geller and Swann were tested by two experimenters, Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff, who concluded that they did indeed have unique skills. Others have strongly disputed the scientific validity of Targ and Puthoff's experiments. In a 1983 interview, magician Milbourne Christopher remarked that Swann was "one of the cleverest in the field".
Out-of-body experiment
In 1972 in the newsletter of the American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR), their director of research Karlis Osis described his personal controlled out-of-body (OOB) experiment with Swann. The targets that Swann was to attempt to describe and illustrate were on a shelf two feet from the ceiling and several feet above Swann's head. Osis does not describe the height of the ceiling. Swann suggests, the ceiling was 14 feet in height. The room was illuminated by two kitchen-style overhead fixtures. Swann sat alone in the chamber with wires from electrodes fastened to his head running through the wall behind him. Swann sat just beneath the target tray. He was given a clipboard to use for sketching. Any movement while drawing did not result in "artifacts" in the brain readout. In Swann's book To Kiss Earth Goodbye there is a photograph of the objects on the shelf. Swann wrote that he was aware of most of the objects on shelf above his head, but he did not know it held four numbers on a side that would not have been visible if a reflecting surface had been angled near the end.
Psychological scales were developed for rating the quality and clarity (as subjectively described) by Swann of his OOB vision, which varied from time to time. The results were evaluated by blind judging. A psychologist, either Bonnie Preskari or Carole K. Silfen, was asked to match up Swann's responses without knowing for which target they were meant. She matched all the eight sessions. Osis stressed the odds about Swann being correct were forty thousand to one. There is no record of any experiments being performed in the dark.
Together, Silfen and Swann prepared an unofficial report of later out-of-body experiments and circulated it to 500 members of the ASPR, before the ASPR board was aware of it. According to Swann, Silfen has disappeared and cannot be located. He was searching for her and was asking for the public's help. According to Swann, in April 1972 a move was made at the ASPR in New York to discredit him and throw him out, because he was a Scientologist.