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From: dap@ihopa.UUCP (afsd)
Newsgroups: net.misc
Subject: Re: ESP
Message-ID: <162@ihopa.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 25-Feb-84 00:05:32 EST
Article-I.D.: ihopa.162
Posted: Sat Feb 25 00:05:32 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 19-Feb-84 08:13:24 EST
References: <258@vortex.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL
Lines: 38

Well, you can fault me for not doing double blind experiments with my
former roommate and submitting the results to a respected scientific
journal, but facts are facts and these are them:

I used to know a guy down at school who once told me in passing that he often
knew that the phone was going to ring before it actually did so.  This was
pretty wierd, but the thing that was interesting was that he didn't tell
this at parties or talk incessantly about it.  In fact, you practically had
to pry it out of him.  I had a pretty hard time swallowing it.

Later on, during a cooperative work assignment, I became roommate to the
same guy.  Several times during our rooming together he would say "Phone's
going to ring" and within a few seconds it would ring.  It would often
be my parents who only call when they have a definite reason (i.e., no
regularly made calls every night, maybe averaging once a week).  He was
NEVER wrong!  I would remember that quite vividly because it would have
been the exception to the rule.

Well, I guess I should have rushed him over to the local college and made
him repeat this feat at will for the professors, but I didn't think it
worked at will.  Maybe three or four times throughout the summer.  Nonetheless,
it is an amazing thing to see it happen, especially after he had told me
months before that he could often make such predictions.

Those are the facts.  Keep in mind that these were NOT regularly made calls at
all!  I'll go so far as to admit that my parents typically call between
6:30 and 9:00.  That doesn't change the fact that the calls came only about
once a week (again, not on any "regular basis") and he nailed down the
time to within seconds.  I can also rule out the fact that he might have
covertly agreed with my parents on when to call.  I know my parents better
than that.  I realize that ANYTHING can be explained away as coincidence,
but that seems like an almost nonexistent possibility in this case, especially
since he NEVER made a mistake and he claimed before he ever knew we were going
to be roommates that he had this ability.

Darrell Plank
BTL-IH
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