today, on a whim, I participated in an experiment in the basement of an accredited institute of parapsychology. I had no idea there was such a thing in this city. you can even get FEE-HELP for their degrees. anyway I am pretty convinced that there is no such thing as “psychic powers” as they are generally understood but I grew up on too many tales of heroic telepaths to refuse such an offer. you had to complete a questionnaire on your attitudes to paranormal stuff, then lie down quietly in the dark for exactly nineteen minutes while focusing your attention on an unseen picture inside an opaque envelope wrapped in aluminium foil (!), attempting to divine its content. the aim of the experiment was to determine the impact of certain meditative practices on psychic receptiveness.
here are the images that came to me while I was in the dark: dragon, hawk, woman with curly hair, stalagmites, lump of spheroid haematite. based on that I had to guess which of four images presented to me was in my envelope: ghost, shooting star, circus tent, shepherd’s crook, which I placed in that order of likelihood. but actually the image I was meant to be receiving was the circus tent so I fail at being psychic. my less-sceptical friend Abby who took me guessed that her turtle imaginings were meant to be the similarly round and patterned ball of ball of string, which as it turns out was correct.
I mean there was a 50% chance that one of us was going to guess correctly but still. I imagine Hermione Granger felt like this when she was told that the only reason she didn’t believe in Divination was because her mind was hopelessly mundane. sigh
all in all it was a grand day out and very relaxing
