Psychic Spies Beat Tech in Ancient Egypt
On this page
Can psychic abilities find buried treasures better than technology?
Imagine you're an archaeologist searching for a lost Byzantine church in the Egyptian desert, armed with the latest ground-penetrating radar and satellite imagery. After years of high-tech surveys, you find nothing. Then two people, sitting thousands of miles away with no equipment except paper and pencil, claim they can 'see' exactly where to dig—and describe not just the building's location, but its doorway, corners, and the decorative tiles inside. When archaeologist Stephan Schwartz put this to the test in the buried city of Marea near Alexandria, the remote viewers successfully located a structure that all the electronic sensors had missed entirely. The question that emerges from this archaeological detective story challenges everything we think we know about human perception.
Remote viewers found a buried building that high-tech sensors missed completely.
In the buried ruins of Marea, an ancient Egyptian trading city near Alexandria, archaeologists faced a challenge: how to locate specific buildings beneath centuries of sand and debris. While electronic ground-penetrating radar and satellite imaging are the standard tools, one researcher decided to test whether psychic remote viewing might offer an alternative approach to archaeological discovery.
Remote viewers successfully located and described a buried Byzantine structure that sophisticated electronic sensing equipment had completely failed to detect.
Key Findings
- The remote viewers successfully located and described a Byzantine building that was later confirmed through excavation.
- They accurately identified structural features including the building's corners and doorway, and correctly predicted decorative elements that would be found at the site.
- Most remarkably, conventional electronic sensing methods had completely failed to detect anything at this location, suggesting the building lay beyond the reach of standard archaeological survey technology.
What Is This About?
Researcher Stephan Schwartz recruited two experienced remote viewers and asked them to psychically locate the buried city of Marea, then zoom in on a specific building within it. The viewers worked without any maps or prior knowledge of the site, using only their claimed psychic abilities to describe what lay beneath the sand. They provided detailed descriptions of a Byzantine structure, including the locations of doors, corners, and decorative materials like tiles. Schwartz then compared these psychic impressions to electronic remote sensing data that had been collected three years earlier using conventional archaeological survey methods.
Two remote viewers attempted to locate and describe a buried Byzantine building in the ancient city of Marea, Egypt. Their findings were compared to electronic remote sensing data collected three years earlier.
Remote viewers successfully located a building site and accurately described archaeological features found there, while conventional electronic sensing methods had detected nothing at that location.
How Good Is the Evidence?
Two remote viewers provided accurate archaeological information where electronic sensors found nothing - a striking contrast given that ground-penetrating radar typically detects buried structures. In controlled laboratory studies, remote viewing typically shows hit rates of 30-35% compared to 25% expected by chance.
Supporters argue this demonstrates that consciousness can access information beyond the reach of physical sensors, potentially revolutionizing archaeology and other fields. They point to the specific, verifiable details provided by the remote viewers and the complete failure of conventional methods. Skeptics counter that this appears to be a single anecdotal case without proper controls, statistical analysis, or independent verification. They argue that archaeological sites often contain multiple structures, making some level of 'hits' likely by chance, and question whether the remote viewing data was truly as specific as claimed.
Mainstream: This represents an interesting anecdote but lacks the controlled conditions needed for scientific validation of psychic phenomena. Moderate: While intriguing, this single case study needs replication with proper blinding and statistical controls before drawing conclusions. Frontier: This demonstrates that consciousness can access non-local information, suggesting remote viewing could become a valuable archaeological tool.
Common misconception: Remote viewing means seeing detailed images like a psychic camera. Reality: Remote viewers typically receive impressions, feelings, and fragmentary information that must be interpreted - more like getting puzzle pieces than watching a movie.
To establish remote viewing as a reliable archaeological tool would require controlled studies with multiple sites, blinded conditions where viewers don't know the research purpose, statistical analysis of hit rates, and independent replication by other research teams. This study provides an intriguing proof-of-concept but lacks the controlled conditions and statistical rigor needed for scientific validation.
The Remote Viewers were successfully able to locate a building, including staking out its door, and corners, as well as providing a wealth of reconstructive and descriptive material about what would be found at the site, while the electronic remote sensing and geographical analysis produced no suggestion whatever that there was a site at this location.
Stance: Supportive
What Does It Mean?
Two people with pencils and paper outperformed years of satellite imagery and ground-penetrating radar in locating a buried ancient structure. The remote viewers even accurately described architectural details that weren't discovered until the actual excavation began.
It's like having a friend who can somehow 'sense' what's in a wrapped gift before opening it, while X-ray machines see nothing unusual. This study tested whether some people might have a similar ability to perceive hidden archaeological sites that even sophisticated technology misses.
If these results reflect a genuine phenomenon, they could revolutionize how we approach archaeological exploration and our understanding of human cognitive capabilities. This might suggest that consciousness operates through mechanisms that extend beyond our current scientific models, potentially opening new avenues for research in both archaeology and neuroscience. Such findings could also influence how we think about the relationship between mind and physical reality.
This study illustrates the difference between anecdotal evidence and controlled experimentation - while the practical results are impressive, the lack of blinding and statistical controls means we can't rule out alternative explanations like lucky guessing or unconscious cues.
Understanding Terms
What This Study Claims
Findings
Electronic remote sensing and geographical analysis failed to detect any archaeological site at the location where remote viewers found the building
strongRemote viewers successfully located a buried Byzantine building and accurately described its structural features including doors and corners
moderateRemote viewing data contradicted the informed judgment of an archaeologist considered the leading authority on Marea
moderateMethodology
The study represents an applied remote viewing experiment comparing psychic methods to conventional archaeological survey techniques
strongInterpretations
Remote viewing demonstrated superior performance compared to conventional electronic remote sensing methods for archaeological site detection
moderateThis summary is for general information about current research. It does not constitute medical advice. The scientific interpretation of these results is debated among researchers. If personally affected, please consult qualified professionals.