Testing the ESP claims of SORRAT

The Society for Research in Rapport and Telekinesis (SORRAT) claims to be in touch with spirit entities" that produce a vast range of paranormal phenomena including rapping, table levitation, apports (the appearance of objects through objects), and the movement of objects inside carefully sealed containers or "minilabs." This Missouri-based group was founded in the 1960s by John Neihardt, a respected academic and authority on the Plains Indians. After Niehardt's death in 1973, the leadership of the group was taken over by Tom Richards and Alice Thompson (John Neihardt's daughter).

In 1977, William Cox, a well-known-parapsychologist (since deceased), moved to Missouri to study the SORRAT phenomena and has done much to publicize its activities (see, e.g., Cox 1983). A few years ago Cox contacted us and claimed that the entities had developed a new skill, and were now able to divine the order of sealed decks of ESP cards (twenty-five playing cards with either a square, cross, star, circle or lines on their faces) with almost one hundred percent accuracy. Cox explained that he simply placed the decks into the cellar of a home of a well-known SORRAT member, and the entities were able to write the order of the cards in the deck on a piece of paper. Cox asked us if we would like to send him a sealed deck and test the entities' abilities. Such an investigation appeared worthwhile because although SORRAT has generated much anecdotal evidence of ostensible psi phenomena (see, e.g., Richards 1982), the group has rarely been subjected to controlled testing (but see Phillips and McBeath 1982; Hansen and Broughton 1991; and Stillings 1991). For this reason we decided to carry out the following test.

Our experiment involved sealing a shuffled deck of ESP cards and sending them to Cox, from Britain to Missouri. Cox would ask the entities to divine the order of the cards in the sealed deck. He would then return to us this card order listed on a piece of paper, along with the sealed deck. The actual order of the cards would then be compared with the order discerned by the entities. To be successful, the entities must score at least fifteen out of twenty-five possible hits. This was well within the range of the claim (Cox had claimed that many previous trials had obtained twenty-five hits) and clearly above chance.

In past tests of this type, claimants who have failed to produce ostensible paranormal phenomena have stated that the experimental conditions were not favorable to their psychic abilities. To help prevent such misunderstandings, we asked Cox and Richards to examine our protocol prior to the experiment. After a few minor modifications they wrote back to say that the experiment had their approval and that they were looking forward to receiving our sealed deck. The test was on.

We thoroughly shuffled a deck of ESP cards, made a list of their order, and placed this list in a secure location at a university.

The ESP cards were then placed inside a commercially available, high-security, "tamper-evident" envelope. This envelope is constructed from polyethylene and cannot be slit and resealed without detection. It is sealed with a special self-adhesive strip that reveals any signs of tampering including attempts to peel off the strip, the application of heat or cold, and the use of various solvents. Each envelope carries a permanent, and unique, six-digit number to help prevent it from being opened and then replaced by a second duplicate, but undamaged, envelope.

Next, the sealed envelope was encapsulated in transparent industrial embedding resin. To prevent someone from breaking up the entire block (e.g., by melting it), and then replacing it with an identical but undamaged block, a number of drops of chemical dye were placed in the resin. These formed small dark spots of different shapes and sizes, which fell to different depths in the resin. The exact position and diameter of these dots were recorded such that it would have been very difficult to duplicate. The encapsulated deck was then placed inside a second tamper-evident envelope.

We realized that if the returned deck showed signs of damage or tampering, it may be difficult to decide if this would constitute evidence of cheating, damage in transit, or opening by another individual (e.g., a customs official). This was an important consideration, as Cox (1986) has claimed that possible signs of tampering on a similar package used in a previous test (see Hansen and Broughton 1991) may have been caused by a dishonest postal employee, possibly looking for jewelry. To minimize this possibility, a strip of paper was placed around the package. This explained that the package was part of a parapsychology experiment and asked individuals not to open the package. In addition, the labels carried our addresses and that of William Cox, noting that more information about the experiment could be obtained from either of these sources. Cox was asked to replace this strip of paper around the parcel when returning it to us.