Psychic Ability

Psychic ability is the label for claimed mental powers such as telepathy and extrasensory perception (ESP).

• In 1950 Wilbert Smith, a Canadian radio engineer, wrote that U.S. authorities were investigating lines of inquiry that might be related to the saucers, "such as mental phenomena" (The Smith Memo). The line is Smith's paraphrase, not a quote from his source, and it does not use the words ESP or telepathy. Later researchers read it as the earliest official hint that UFOs are tied to consciousness, and Grant Cameron says it was left out of the literature for thirty years. That reading is theirs, not the memo's.
• Smith later said he was in telepathic contact with extraterrestrials, in articles collected as The Boys from Topside.
• By Cameron's account, Eric Walker, a former Penn State president, broke off an interview about recovered craft in 1990 to ask how good the interviewers' "sixth sense" was and what they knew of ESP (the remark). A 2016 radio summary dates it to 1980. It is known only from researchers' accounts, and a second version says "seventh sense." No documented link between Walker and psi research has been found.

Government work on it appears under Remote Viewing. A February 1974 entry in Jacques Vallee's journal says a small part of Kit Green's duties at the CIA involved keeping an eye on reports of paranormal claims. John Alexander, an Army intelligence officer, is described as well known for his interest in parapsychology.