I'm new — give me the lay of the land
A chronological greatest-hits tour from the 1930s to the 2020s. One paper per era, covering the major domains and debates as they unfolded historically.
Phantasms of the Living
Gurney, Myers & Podmore (1886)
The founding text of systematic psychical research. Combines 702 verified crisis-apparition cases with controlled thought-transference experiments (17,653 card trials, p < 0.00000002) to build the first empirical case for telepathy. Introduces the statistical logic of comparing observed anomalous coincidence rates against chance — the framework every subsequent meta-analysis in this library inherits.
Extra-Sensory Perception
Rhine (1934)
The foundational monograph that launched modern experimental parapsychology at Duke University. Introduces the term "ESP," Zener card methodology, and statistical approach. Reports 64,000+ trials with X values reaching 75.3. Sets the paradigm for all subsequent research.
Extrasensory Electroencephalographic Induction Between Identical Twins
Duane & Behrendt (1965)
The earliest entry in the library, published in Science. Sets the stage: can separated minds show correlated brain activity?
Information Transmission Under Conditions of Sensory Shielding
Targ & Puthoff (1974)
The SRI remote viewing paper in Nature. Launches a government-funded program and a decades-long debate.
The Persistent Paradox of Psychic Phenomena: An Engineering Perspective
Jahn (1982)
A Princeton engineering dean takes psychokinesis seriously in the Proceedings of the IEEE. Founds the PEAR laboratory.
The Strange Properties of Psychokinesis
Schmidt (1987)
Helmut Schmidt's influential overview of PK research, including retroactive PK on pre-recorded random events.
The Anomaly Called Psi: Recent Research and Criticism
Rao & Palmer (1987)
A balanced review of the state of the field as of the late 1980s, covering both positive findings and methodological critiques.
Future Telling: A Meta-Analysis of Forced-Choice Precognition Experiments, 1935--1987
Honorton & Ferrari (1989)
Fifty years of forced-choice precognition data, meta-analyzed. The cumulative odds against chance are staggering.
Evidence for Consciousness-Related Anomalies in Random Physical Systems
Radin & Nelson (1989)
The landmark micro-PK meta-analysis. Establishes that the effect is tiny but extraordinarily consistent across hundreds of studies.
Biological Utilisation of Quantum Nonlocality
Josephson & Pallikari-Viras (1991)
A Nobel laureate (Josephson) proposes that quantum nonlocality could underlie psi. A rare high-prestige theoretical framework.
Does Psi Exist? Replicable Evidence for an Anomalous Process of Information Transfer
Bem & Honorton (1994)
The autoganzfeld paper in Psychological Bulletin. Designed to answer every criticism Hyman raised. A turning point in the debate.
Anomaly or Artifact? Comments on Bem and Honorton
Hyman (1994)
The immediate skeptical response. Read it back-to-back with the paper above to see the debate at its sharpest.
An Assessment of the Evidence for Psychic Functioning
Utts (1996)
The statistician's report for the CIA Stargate review. Concludes remote viewing works but stops short of endorsing the mechanism.
Does Psi Exist? Lack of Replication
Milton & Wiseman (1999)
The replication crisis hits ganzfeld. A meta-analysis of newer studies finds no significant effect.
Updating the Ganzfeld Meta-Analysis: A Response to Milton and Wiseman
Bem, Palmer & Broughton (2001)
Direct response to Milton & Wiseman showing the ganzfeld effect persists (31.2% hit rate, Z=3.49, p=.0002) when protocol adherence is maintained. Demonstrates that study quality, not year, predicts outcomes.
Near-Death Experience in Survivors of Cardiac Arrest
van Lommel et al. (2001)
Published in The Lancet
Published in The Lancet. A prospective study of NDEs during cardiac arrest, opening a new empirical front.
Correlations of Continuous Random Data with Major World Events
Nelson et al. (2002)
The Global Consciousness Project: do RNG outputs worldwide correlate with events like 9/11? Ambitious and controversial.
A Compendium of the Evidence for Psi
Parker & Brusewitz (2003)
A 2003 annotated review covering all major paradigms from classical studies through then-current meta-analyses. A natural survey point between the GCP launch (2002) and the Bem era (2011). Effect sizes across domains: free-response d=0.16, DMILS d=0.11, dream-ESP d=0.33, extraversion d=0.20. Provides historical depth before you enter the modern statistical debates.
Testing a Language-Using Parrot for Telepathy
Sheldrake, Morgana & Sheldrake (2003)
Same year as Parker's compendium — a single-experiment study that illustrates what a controlled behavioral psi claim looks like at its best. The African Grey parrot N'kisi names what his owner (in a separate room) is viewing in sealed photographs; 131 trials, 23 hits vs. 12.2 expected, three blind transcribers, independent statistician. Stands in contrast to the statistical landscape of meta-analyses: one animal, one ability, clearly stated success criterion.
Electroencephalographic Evidence of Correlated Event-Related Signals Between the Brains of Spatially and Sensory Isolated Human Subjects
Standish et al. (2004)
The largest EEG correlation study (N=60) demonstrating that 8.3% of emotionally bonded pairs show significant brain-to-brain correlations (Stouffer z=-3.28, p=0.0005) when one member receives visual stimulation. Most methodologically rigorous demonstration from the Bastyr/UW lab, with seven independent laboratories reporting similar findings since 1963.
Feeling the Future: Experimental Evidence for Anomalous Retroactive Influences
Bem (2011)
Published in a top psychology journal, this paper on precognition triggers a firestorm about replication and statistical methods.
Predictive Physiological Anticipation Preceding Seemingly Unpredictable Stimuli
Mossbridge, Tressoldi & Utts (2012)
Presentiment goes meta-analytic. The body seems to know what is coming before the stimulus is selected.
AWARE -- AWAreness during REsuscitation
Parnia et al. (2014)
The largest prospective study of consciousness during cardiac arrest. Rigorous hospital-based protocol with visual targets.
Estimating the Reproducibility of Psychological Science
Open Science Collaboration (2015)
The broader replication crisis. Context for understanding why psi's replication struggles are not unique.
The Experimental Evidence for Parapsychological Phenomena: A Review
Cardena (2018)
The current state of play, in American Psychologist. A comprehensive, peer-reviewed summary of where things stand.
Sentiment and Presentiment in Twitter: Do Trends in Collective Mood "Feel the Future"?
Radin (2023)
An accessible example of how psi research has expanded to Big Data: 13 years of Twitter sentiment in 10 languages shows a statistically significant anticipatory decline before unpredictable negative world events. Bridges individual presentiment psychophysiology with GCP-style collective-consciousness research, and illustrates how a publicly verifiable dataset can serve as an independent test.
Observer Influence on Quantum Interference: Testing the von Neumann-Wigner Consciousness-Collapse Theory
Radin (2025)
The latest double-slit consciousness experiment. Shows the research program is ongoing and evolving. --- --- ## How to use this path - If you are an AI agent: Each paper is cited with its catalog ID in backticks. Cross-reference with `_CATALOG.json` for full bibliographic information and methodology data. - If you are a human reader: Follow the papers in order for chronological greatest-hits tour for newcomers. - To update: When new papers are added to the library that advance this path's purpose, add them in order and renumber all subsequent entries. Back to [Reading Paths Index](_INDEX.md)