Inside America’s Psychic Spy Program: The Strange Reality Behind a Very Real Mystery

Growing up, one of the shows that completely shaped my love for mysteries was Unsolved Mysteries. And honestly, nobody could have hosted that show better than Robert Stack. His voice alone was enough to make you glance over your shoulder at least twice.

But there was one episode that never left my mind. Even today, yes, literally today, I can still replay it in my head. The episode was about the U.S. military dabbling in remote viewing, astral projection, and all sorts of psychic experiments. Basically… training people to be psychic spies.

They interviewed some of the so-called participants, but of course, their faces were hidden in deep shadow, and their voices were distorted to sound like every ransom-call villain ever. I remember one guy describing how he supposedly left his body, travelled across the world, moved through time, and even felt whatever environment he landed in.

He talked about crawling through the battlefields of a world war, feeling trenches, mud, and even piles of bodies. And honestly? If I had the ability to teleport my consciousness anywhere, a war zone would not be my top choice. Beach. Ice cream. Warm breeze. But hey, that’s just me.

Anyway, that memory sent me down a rabbit hole again today, so here’s the fascinating truth behind the real-life psychic spy program: Project Stargate.

The U.S. Government’s Secret Psychic Unit

The idea sounds like something ripped straight out of an X-Files episode, but Project Stargate was very real. It wasn’t one single project, either; it was an umbrella name used by the CIA for a cluster of experiments that ran from the early 1970s all the way until 1995.

Why? Because the U.S. caught wind that the Soviet Union was experimenting with psychic research, and the Cold War was basically a decades-long game of “anything you can do, we can do too.”

The early work started in 1972 at the Stanford Research Institute in California. A few researchers, Russell Targ, Hal Puthoff, and Ingo Swann, set out to study psychic abilities and determine whether they could be used for intelligence gathering. They focused on remote viewing: the supposed ability to mentally “see” distant places or hidden objects using only the mind.

At first, they hand-picked people they considered naturally gifted. But by the 1980s, the program expanded into something bigger and stranger.

Training Anyone to Become a Psychic

By 1983, the team believed remote viewing was something that could be taught. They developed a set of step-by-step instructions meant to help an average person reach reliable accuracy. And surprisingly, many of their participants, both civilians and military personnel, reported impressive results.

The program claimed successes like:

• Locating a Soviet nuclear test site in 1974
• Identifying a crashed Soviet bomber in Africa
• Providing dozens of intelligence “hits”, officials said they couldn’t verify any other way

Some remote viewers described vivid scenes, shapes, colours, structures, even sounds and smells. A few reportedly produced blueprint-level accuracy. Their overall reliability was said to reach up to 80% in series-based experiments.

Of course, results varied wildly depending on who you ask. Some insiders said the project proved psychic functioning was real. Others said the successes were exaggerated. Eventually, in 1995, the American Institutes for Research reviewed the program and recommended shutting it down, which the government did.

Today, the entire archive is declassified and stored in the National Archives.

Why the Mind Still Fascinates Us

Psychic abilities, remote viewing, ESP, telekinesis, and astral travel have always lived on the outskirts of mainstream science, even though almost every culture throughout history mentions them in some form.

There are old Chinese legends about doctors who could literally “see” inside the human body to diagnose illnesses. Some traditions say humans once had far sharper intuitive abilities that faded over time.

And honestly, with everything the mind can already do, who’s to say what its upper limits really are?

If remote viewing were possible, imagine the fun. I’d host a live Q&A, and you could ask me anything:

“Who really built Stonehenge?”

“Give me a sec… yep, definitely baby giants.”

Where Would You Go?

So here’s my question for you today:

If you could send your mind to any place, past, future, or present, where would you go?

A historic moment? A lost civilisation? A future version of Earth?

Let me know. I’m genuinely curious how many of us would choose ancient mysteries… and how many would choose to peek at next week’s lottery numbers.