Testing ESP Through Dreaming: Montague Ulman’s Experiment

In 1953, to test the possibility of ESP through dreaming—that is, dreams that predict the future or contact others telepathically—a New York psychiatrist named Montague Ulman designed an experiment using a “sender” and a “receiver.”

The Experiment Setup

In this experiment, Ulman attached electrodes of an electroencephalograph (a machine that records brain waves) to the person acting as the receiver. This person would then go to sleep in one room, while the “sender” was placed in a different room. When the machine indicated the brain wave pattern that showed the receiver had fallen asleep, the sender opened a sealed envelope containing a “target” image and concentrated on the picture in an attempt to influence the receiver’s dream.

Unexpected Results

Once, when Ulman himself was acting as the sender, his thoughts strayed from the target image, and he began thinking about the book Spartacus, which had been made into a movie. The receiver then dreamed about the movie! Although not all of Ulman’s results were this successful, experiences like this convinced him that dream ESP warranted further research. In 1962, with Stanley Krippner, he opened a dream laboratory in Brooklyn at Maimonides Medical Center. Although the experiments produced mixed results, Ulman believed they proved the existence of dream telepathy, though not its reliability.

A Personal Experience with ESP

Having experienced instances of ESP in my own dreams, I must agree with the doctors about its reality. Here is an example of a precognitive dream from my files:

• The Dream: I am taken to a place where seminars are being held. Someone tells me that this is the same place where B. (a psychic healer friend of mine) studied. I peek around the corner and hear a man say, “Abadie is doing rocks.”
• I woke up feeling that “rocks” held significance for me, but I couldn’t figure out why. Still, the word lingered in my mind. A year later, I began working with crystals for healing and telepathy.

See Also: Dream ESP, Telepathy, Precognition, Crystals.