Who's Calling at this Hour? Local Sidereal Time and Telephone Telepathy
📄 Original study📌 Appears in:
Plain English Summary
Can people really sense who's calling before picking up the phone? Six women in Amsterdam took 214 guesses at which of four possible callers was ringing, and they got it right 29.4% of the time -- above the 25% you'd expect from pure luck. Even more intriguing, the researchers tested whether a specific time of day measured by the stars (called "local sidereal time") boosted this telepathy effect, since earlier research suggested a sweet spot around 13:30 on that cosmic clock. Hit rates did climb during peak star-time (34.6% vs 25.2%), though the difference fell just short of statistical significance. One charming finding: the stronger the emotional bond between caller and guesser, the better the guessing. The catch? With only six participants and the star-time peak landing conveniently in the morning while non-peak fell in the evening, you genuinely cannot tell whether it's the stars or just the time of day doing the work.
Research Notes
Only prospective test of Spottiswoode's LST peak hypothesis within the telephone telepathy paradigm. Small N=6 and the winter Amsterdam setting (peak LST = morning, non-peak = evening) prevent separating LST from local time. Effect size (Cohen's h ≈ 0.10) matches ganzfeld literature but the 214-trial dataset is underpowered. Included in Sheldrake's 2025 telecommunication telepathy meta-analysis.
Prospective replication of Sheldrake & Smart (2003) telephone telepathy incorporating local sidereal time (LST) as an independent variable, following Spottiswoode's (1997) finding that anomalous cognition effect sizes peak around 13:30 LST. Six women completed 214 usable trials across 6 sessions (3 at peak LST, 3 at non-peak). Caller selection was randomized by dice at a separate location; an in-home experimenter monitored for signal leakage. Overall hit rate was 29.4% (p=0.05, one-tailed) above 25% chance; regular sessions: 32.7% (p<0.005). Peak-LST sessions yielded 34.6% vs. 25.2% non-peak (p=0.09). Emotional bond correlated with hit rate (r=0.41, p<0.05). Results tentatively support both telephone telepathy and the LST hypothesis, but LST was confounded with local time of day.
Related Papers
Extends
Cited By
- Telecommunication Telepathy: A Meta-Analysis — Sheldrake, Rupert (2025)
- Telepathy in Connection with Telephone Calls, Text Messages and Emails — Sheldrake, Rupert (2014)
- Automated Tests for Telephone Telepathy Using Mobile Phones — Sheldrake, Rupert (2015)
- Do You Know Who Is Calling? Experiments on Anomalous Cognition in Phone Call Receivers — Schmidt, Stefan (2009)
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📋 Cite this paper
Lobach, Eva, Bierman, Dick J (2004). Who's Calling at this Hour? Local Sidereal Time and Telephone Telepathy. Proceedings of the Parapsychological Association Annual Convention.
@article{lobach_bierman_2004_lst_telephone,
title = {Who's Calling at this Hour? Local Sidereal Time and Telephone Telepathy},
author = {Lobach, Eva and Bierman, Dick J},
year = {2004},
journal = {Proceedings of the Parapsychological Association Annual Convention},
}