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The Telepathy Project

Science Unbound* Help us discover the truth and create a groundbreaking scientific documentary

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The Telepathy Project

The Telepathy Project

The Telepathy Project

The Telepathy Project

The Telepathy Project

Science Unbound* Help us discover the truth and create a groundbreaking scientific documentary

Science Unbound* Help us discover the truth and create a groundbreaking scientific documentary

Science Unbound* Help us discover the truth and create a groundbreaking scientific documentary

Science Unbound* Help us discover the truth and create a groundbreaking scientific documentary

Diane Powell
Diane Powell
Diane Powell
Diane Powell
1 Campaign |
Medford, United States
$7,070 USD 66 backers
1% of $487,000 Flexible Goal Flexible Goal

What is The Telepathy Project?

What if telepathy is real? What if it is innate in all of us? If these statements are true, then why is telepathy so hard to prove?  I wondered years ago if scientists might be looking in the wrong place. Why? Because I would look in one of the last places they would. Autistic children aren't supposed to understand that others have minds, let alone have the ability to read them. My research strongly suggests some are. 

The Impact

Why should we care about proof of telepathy? If real, telepathy is just one of many fairly common experiences reported by people, but ignored by science because it doesn't make sense. To me, such enigmas are clues to what is really going on. Only one of these anomalies needs to be proven to shatter the current paradigm, which will open the doors for examining the rest.  

As humans we constantly make assumptions about what others think or feel, based on their behavior. One common source of miscommunication is to assume others operate from the same perspective we do, and they often don't.  We live at a time when we need to understand each other, and get along better than we ever have before. Instead, miscommunication and disagreement have become the norm. What if telepathy is an innate skill in all of us that could be developed to help with that?

I believe we are capable of so much more than we realize, but research funds are rarely spent on human consciousness, or developing its untapped potential. Instead, much of the available money is used to develop more drugs. This does not advance the human species, or begin to meet the needs of children like Hayley. 

Rather than being weird or spooky, people find it reassuring to feel interconnected telepathically with those they love. Solid proof of telepathy would radically shift how we see ourselves... as humans, and in our relationships with others. It's only after people come to believe in telepathy that many report experiencing it. This might be the "Catch-22" that keeps analytical scientists from changing their minds.

The implications of telepathy are so profound that it is met with fierce opposition, even though many Nobel laureates and other eminent scientists have supported it for over a century. Most scientists don't look into it or want to go out on a limb.

There are unwanted consequences to believing you're psychic... you might be diagnosed as mentally ill and in need of antipsychotic drugs. That's enough to keep many patients silent, but it also extends to professionals. Some people working with autistic children tell me they think the children are telepathic, but they would be afraid to say so publicly for fear of losing their jobs.  

We can't ignore this situation much longer. The incidence of autism continues to increase. We need to understand their needs. We are also at critical stage as a planet, with multiple challenges facing us. We need to shift our paradigm, because the old one has failed us.  By funding this project, and helping to make this thought-provoking film, you will participate in shaping a vital conversation about what is possible... and what it means to be fully human.

Background

My name is Diane Hennacy Powell, MD.  I trained as a neuroscientist during my undergraduate and postgraduate years, and went to Johns Hopkins Medical School to become a doctor. I initially planned to become a neurosurgeon, because it fit my goals to both help people and do cutting-edge research to advance our understanding of human consciousness. After I started my clinical rotations, I chose a different path. I became fascinated by psychiatry... especially its unsolved mysteries. Autistic savants are particularly intriguing; they can reliably demonstrate extraordinary skills… but no one understands how they do it.

I was raised to be a scientist by a father who was a professor with three graduate degrees in science. My brother, Ken Hennacy, PhD, is a theoretical physicist and expert in artificial intelligence who shares my interest in consciousness.  Over the years we’ve been collaborating on a model for understanding the neuroscience and physics of consciousness. We presented our model for the savant ability of calendar calculation at an international scientific conference on consciousness in Copenhagen, Denmark in 2005. 

While working on a model to understand savant skills, it became apparent that the abilities fell into three general categories: 

1.  Some can be explained by an algorithm and/or prodigious memory, such as calendar calculation. For example, some children can tell you the day of the week any date would fall on… for periods spanning thousands of years.

2.  Some posses very highly advanced skills that appear at a young age despite their cognitive limitations. For example, some musical savants can play a complex piece of music after hearing it only once, and without having had music lessons. They otherwise have cognitive problems that prevent them from being able to do basic tasks we take for granted.

3.  Some provide information without any explanation for how they access it. For example, Neurologist Oliver Sacks described autistic twins who can call out six digit prime numbers in sequence, back and forth with each other like a volleyball without consciously deriving the numbers or having memorized them.  Psychiatrist Darold Treffert witnessed a child draw the periodic table, complete with the symbols for the elements, without any known exposure to it previously, or knowledge that he was going to be asked to do so.

This third category really caught my interest. How do they do that? The more I thought about it, the more I realized this was a lot like psychic abilities. In most reports of telepathy and clairvoyance, the psychics say their answers don't come from analysis… they just pop into their heads!

The late autism researcher Bernard Rimland wrote brief case reports of precognition and other psychic abilities in autistic children. These stories have largely been ignored and criticized. More recently, there have been reports of autistic children who exhibit telepathy to very high levels of accuracy, which is what science demands. Why hasn't it been done?  Doing research with autistic children poses its own challenges, and is very labor intensive.

Severely autistic children are trapped in bodies difficult for them to control. They struggle to speak, write, and even sit still. Initiating and stopping movements is particularly hard. Many of them are untapped geniuses who just need technological aids to express themselves. Unfortunately, many of them go unrecognized because they are prejudged to be mentally retarded.

My curiosity about telepathy and autism led to my recent experiments with Hayley, the ten year old autistic child in this video.  During this footage, she is relatively quiet and cooperative. Anyone who has spent time with nonverbal autistic children knows that this is not representative of their behavior. During experiments she isn't running around wildly. She is focused and takes pride in her ability, sometimes squealing with delight when she gets the answer 100% right . 

I've learned so much from people who spend significant time with severely autistic children like Hayley. Contrary to what many psychiatrists are taught, they love their caregivers as much as any child without autism. They and their caregivers desperately want to communicate with each other. If humans have an innate capacity for telepathy, this set of circumstances might foster its development and expression. 

In January 2103 I evaluated several autistic savants in India, where I had been invited to speak at an international conference on autism. Their parents told me stories about their children's telepathic abilities. The experimental conditions for proof require that there be no contact between the people in the experiment.  Many nonverbal autistic children use facilitated communication (FC), which involves physical touch, to aid their typing because of their sensorimotor issues. For this research, I need autistics who don't use FC.

In August 2013, I learned of Hayley**, the severely autistic girl in this video. Instead of using FC, she can type independently. Hayley's father contacted me at the recommendation of Darold Treffert, MD, a world-renown expert on autistic savants, who knew of my research. Hayley is ten years old, and just recently started to say letters and numbers, but otherwise can't speak. She also can't do simple math, but she can give the answers to complex equations.  She's not a mathematical savant, but her parents initially thought she was, because she could answer increasingly complex equations. Then they learned she doesn't know the answer unless the person working with her does. 

This startling discovery was made by her therapist while doing math exercises. Without seeing the calculator, or being told of the change, Hayley's answers switched from ordinary numbers to scientific notation... right after the display on the therapist's  calculator changed to that.  When asked how she had done that, Hayley typed back, “I see the numerators and denominators in your head.”

Hayley then answered many questions she shouldn't have known the answers to, such as the surname of her therapist's landlord, and the name of a book the therapist was thinking about. Hayley was correct each time! The therapist was shocked. Hayley's parents were equally surprised when they witnessed it for themselves, but became concerned about how people might react to their daughter. 

Without knowing any of this, another therapist suspected Hayley was reading her mind.  Hayley's errors were exact copies of her own spelling mistakes.  Half-joking, she asked Hayley to translate “I love you” into German, a language Hayley was never exposed to.  Hayley correctly typed,  "Ich liebe dich."  

In May 2014, my videographer Kent Romney and I filmed Hayley and her therapists for over six hours of controlled experiments using randomized stimuli. I presented the "jaw-dropping" results at a peer-reviewed scientific conference in August 2014.  http://dailygrail.com/Mind-Mysteries/2014/8/New-Research-Suggests-Autistic-Savants-May-Have-Enhanced-Telepathic-Abilities.  We believe our plans for optimizing the experimental setup could lead to solid proof this coming year!

I now know of at least three autistic children besides Hayley who have convinced their parents, teachers, and/or clinicians that they are telepathic.  I want to see if they can demonstrate this under proper scientific conditions. 

*The campaign subtitle refers to Prometheus Unbound, a drama about the torments of the Greek mythological figure who defied the gods by giving mankind fire. He is subjected to eternal punishment and suffering as punishment. Research on experiences labeled “paranormal”, such as telepathy, is  blacklisted by mainstream science. Our explorations are tethered by lack of funding and censorship. Please see my archived blog "Sticky Wiki"  for more. 

**In order to protect her privacy, Hayley's actual name is not being used.

The Film

The Telepathy Project will be a full-length documentary that includes our scientific experiments and interviews with the children’s parents and therapists. There will be commentary by recognized scientists and experts on autism, and by a skeptical scientist before and after witnessing an experiment. 

We want to create the opportunity for you to join us in exploring one of the biggest mysteries in consciousness: is telepathy real?  If you've been frustrated by science's refusal to take research on telepathy seriously, this is your chance to change that. I'll share my insights with you as I make discoveries and solve research challenges along the way.

Why raise money here? 

We have come to the Indiegogo community because traditional funding sources are not available. Research on telepathy is labeled pseudoscience.  We lose control over the quality of the research if we receive funding from source such as a television network, because they are primarily about entertainment. Pioneering scientists have to be self-supporting. This has really slowed down my progress, especially since my experimental subjects are scattered around the world and experimental-grade video is labor intensive. 

With your help my videographer and I can devote the next eighteen months to collecting data from around the world. All donated funds will be used for the creation of this documentary and the collection and analysis of data. The level of funding we receive will determine how comprehensive this research and documentary can be. 

We believe you can see the potential for enormous impact from this project.  We also believe in your desire to help fund what's important… for us, and for future generations. 

Our goal

So far, we have interviews with Hayley’s  parents and both therapists. We also have approximately six hours of experimental footage using the setup seen in this video. Now that we have had a chance to work with Hayley in person, we want to return and film her under optimized experimental conditions. Ideally she would be in a separate room from the person who knows the answers, but at the time we filmed this was not possible. 

 Hayley typed answers independently when her telepathy was first noticed. After placing a physical barrier between Hayley and her therapist to avoid eye-to-eye contact during the experiments, Hayley's behavior regressed. She went back to using stencils for communication. We believe she will be able to type independently under this experimental setup. Since she demonstrates telepathy with more than one person, we will test with one in the room to keep Hayley focused, while the other knows the answer and is located at varying distances. 

We also know of at least three other autistic children across the globe who are reportedly telepathic, and we anticipate learning of more. Filming them will demonstrate that Hayley is not an isolated case, adding more credibility to telepathy.

We also want to film interviews with scientists, especially those who are experts on autism, as well as a skeptic who is open-minded and willing to observe one of these children.

Besides creating the documentary, I will be presenting my research at academic institutions and scientific conferences, and submit my findings to peer-reviewed scientific publications. I am also founding a nonprofit 501 (c)3 to be called ISSAC, Institute for the Scientific Study of Autism and Communication.

The urgency

Hayley is starting to acquire some ability to speak, and many autistic children reportedly become less telepathic as their language skills increase. This means there is a critical window of opportunity to film these children now.

Risks & Challenges

The biggest challenges will be in timing.  There are unknowns, such as the length of time to acclimate autistic children to the experimental protocol, because children with autism do not accept changes to their routine easily. Unexpected delays can also happen whenever foreign travel and people are involved. If we encounter obstacles and need to delay delivery of rewards associated with this film, we will keep you updated and be completely transparent. We are committed to this project and will do our best to complete it on schedule.

Other Ways You Can Help

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    Email Thanks

    $5 USD
    You will receive an email thanking you for participating.
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    January 2015
    2 claimed

    Certificate of Participation.

    $10 USD
    Your name will be listed in the “Special Thanks” section on our website. You'll also receive an email of appreciation with an attachment to print your certificate of participation.
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    January 2015
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    Team Membership

    $20 USD
    You will get the above reward AND exclusive updates regarding the film such as behind the scenes anecdotes, images, and clips. Welcome to the team!
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    February 2015
    13 claimed

    Digital Download

    $50 USD
    All rewards listed above AND digital download of "The Telepathy Project" upon release.
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    July 2016
    14 claimed

    Silver Screen Special Thanks

    $100 USD
    All of the rewards above AND your name will be in the "Special Thanks To" section in the credits of the film.
    Estimated Shipping
    July 2016
    7 claimed

    Limited First Edition Book

    $150 USD
    All of the rewards above AND Dr. Powell’s “The ESP Enigma,” which lays the groundwork for understanding why Dr Powell decided to investigate autistic children for telepathy, and for understanding her model for ESP. Hurry while they last! There are only a limited number of paperbacks left. These will be the only ones autographed with an personalized acknowledgement of your participation in The Telepathy Project.
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    March 2016
    2 out of 1000 of claimed

    Skype with Dr. Powell

    $250 USD
    All of the rewards above AND a 15 minute Skype with Dr. Powell. Pick the brain of this fascinating scientist and doctor. You'll enjoy learning and leave hungry to know more. The sessions will be scheduled throughout the filming schedule, so you might be the first to learn some exciting news!
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    July 2016
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    Tickets to the Premiere

    $500 USD
    All of the rewards above (except the book and Skype session) AND a pair of tickets to the film's premiere! (Travel and accommodations not included.) Choose between the East and West Coast, whichever is more convenient to you.
    Estimated Shipping
    July 2016
    2 claimed

    Meet and Greet Party

    $1,500 USD
    All of the above awards (except for the Skype session) AND hang out with Dr. Powell and her team after the Premiere to celebrate this historic event! (Travel and accomodations not included) We have 100 pairs of tickets available for each coast.
    Estimated Shipping
    August 2016
    2 out of 200 of claimed

    Executive Producer Credit

    $10,000 USD
    All rewards above AND an Executive Producer credit in the film AND tickets to attend a private screening of the film with Dr. Powell. (Accommodations and travel not included.)
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    July 2016
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