connected to the main building. There were about three dozen people scattered in the seats, most older than fifty. A volunteer, a small elderly woman in a St. Pete’s sweatshirt and jeans and red Keds sat at a back table, surrounded by stacks of literature on the Center, program schedules, flyers calling for study volunteers. There was also a schedule of the bimonthly lecture programs: nothing Laurel hadn’t seen advertised at bookstores and yoga studios and community college seminars all over Los Angeles: “What Do We Know About Auras?”; “Healing Through Meditation”; “Coping with Spiritual Emergencies”; “The Implications of Parapsychology for Religion and Spirituality.”
Laurel collected one of each, and took a seat in the back row, where the dimness of the auditorium gave her some anonymity. The pamphlets were disappointingly lightweight—there was nothing of the groundbreaking potential she had been finding in the Rhine Lab files. Browsing through them, she realized that the bottom line of all of the brochures was to solicit contributions for the Center’s research. Just as she was wondering if donors might get tours of the Center, another elderly volunteer walked out on stage to introduce the speaker: the director of the Center, Dr. Richard Anton.
Anton took the stage to a murmur and scattering of applause from the audience. He was an arresting man in his forties, with thick dark hair and eyebrows and piercing black eyes. His black trousers and sweater and rich maroon scarf were all of fine quality and even from a distance Laurel could see the glitter of real gold in his watch. They must be getting money from somewhere, then, Laurel thought. When Anton started to speak, his voice was deep and compelling, and Laurel was instantly reminded of Dr. Leish, though the swarthy Anton did not physically resemble the cool, elegantly blond Leish in any way.
Maybe all parapsychologists are charismatics, Laurel thought. That’s how they convince people that the impossible is real.
The topic of the evening was remote viewing.
As a native of California, where New Age trends were as much a part of the culture as sunshine, Laurel was somewhat aware of the concept of remote viewing. As she understood it, it was the most recent catch phrase for ESP experiences, in which a subject could see something happening from a distance, sometimes a great distance. According to Dr. Anton, remote viewing had been tested in top-secret experiments by the military with apparent success.
But really it’s just another fad, isn’t it? We’re trying to put scientific explanations on something that exists, but can’t be explained.
On the stage, Anton was speaking about the PRC’s remote viewing experiments in their custom-built Ganzfeld rooms. “It was parapsychologist Charles Honorton who developed the concept of the Ganzfeld, the ‘empty field.’ We know from statistics that the vast majority of ESP or psi experiences occur while the subject is in an altered state: while dreaming, in a state of relaxation or meditation. Honorton theorized that ESP experiences were subtle communications that are easily drowned out by the cacophony of internal and external stimuli flooding our brains during normal, waking consciousness.”
Laurel sat up straighter in her seat. She knew from her reading that Leish had used the Ganzfeld technique in his experiments. She eased a notepad out of her purse and began to take notes.
“Taking as a model the practices of mystics and psychics throughout the centuries, Honorton adapted the Ganzfeld technique to reduce all distracting sounds and visuals. The ESP subject is seated in a soft, reclining chair in a soundproof room. Split halves of Ping-Pong balls are taped over the receiver’s eyes to eliminate visual distractions, and headphones play a relaxation tape, all to produce a mild state of sensory deprivation.
“A sender is in a similar room, and goes through similar relaxation exercises. Then the sender is shown a photo or a film clip, and for the next thirty minutes, the sender tries to mentally communicate the image or images to the receiver.”
Laurel already felt a nagging dissatisfaction with the structure of the tests. The whole concept of laboratory testing ignored the fact that telepathic and precognitive experiences seemed to manifest under conditions of extreme stress and trauma, which would be difficult if not downright unethical to create in a lab.
On the stage, Anton launched into a recitation of eye-glazing statistics from the Center’s latest remote-viewing study. Laurel saw movement at the corner of her eye and turned to see the elderly volunteer at the back table rise unobtrusively and head for a side