The Making of a Psychic Spy - Part 19

When I decided to write the Black Swamp Mysteries series featuring CIA psychic spy Vicki Boyd, I decided I would make her role and the missions she worked as close to reality as possible. I immersed myself in reading true stories of psychic spy missions, much of which is available through the Freedom of Information Act or has been declassified.

One name that popped up over and over again was Russell Targ. You might remember him as a pioneer who helped to engineer lasers and laser technology that we often now take for granted. He is a physicist and an author, and during the 1970's and 1980's, he worked at Stanford Research Institute. His mission there was to explore psychic abilities and what became known as remote viewing. The funding for the project came from the CIA. Yes, that CIA.

As a scientist, Targ looked for proof. The results were often astounding, and led to more than 100 papers he published on ESP research as well as plasma physics and laser technology. One of his more recent books is The Reality of ESP: A Physicist's Proof of Psychic Abilities. He is known for pushing the boundaries of science and exploring the relatively new frontier of parapsychology, of psychic research, of spirituality, and of those things we can not explain in a three-dimensional world.