Well-known remote viewer Paul H. Smith has announced the passing of a (perhaps *the*) pioneer in the field, Ingo Swann, aged 79. A double degree graduate from Westminster College in Utah (in biology and art), Swann also served time in Korea in the U.S Army, before later pursuing a career in art and becoming involved with research into anomalous powers of the human mind:

Swann’s active participation in parapsychology research began in 1969 when he was 36 years old. During the next twenty years he worked only in controlled laboratory settings with scientific researchers. Although he lectured widely on the importance of psychic faculties and potentials, he has never publicly demonstrated his abilities. Because of his participation in hundreds of thousands of experimental trials, author Martin Ebon wrote of him as “parapsychology’s most tested guinea pig,” and Psychic News and other media often refer to him as “the scientific psychic.”

…In 1970-71 Swann experimented with Cleve Backster in attempting to influence plants by mental activity. In 1971-72 psychokinetic experiments involved successfully influencing temperature recorded in a controlled setting devised by parapsychologists Gertrude Schmeidler and Larry Lewis at City College, New York. this involved PK effects upon target thermistors (temperature measuring devices) in insulted thermos bottles at a distance of 25 feet from Swann…

Swann was also the subject of experiments in out-of-body travel, or psychic perception at a distance. These took place during 1971-73 at the American Society for Psychical Research. They involved Swann sitting in a chair and attempting to project his consciousness into sealed boxes on a small platform several feet above his head, in which there was a target symbol completely shielded from view. Swann was monitored by electrodes that would have recorded any movement from the chair.

Under these difficult laboratory conditions, Swann nevertheless scored significant successes in describing the targets. In one test he was actually able to state correctly that a light that should have illuminated the target was inoperative. There was no normal way of ascertaining this fact without opening the box.

In 1972-73, at the American Society for Psychical Research, Swann began suggesting experimental protocols to test for the existence of mind-dynamic processes that would enhance ESP and Dr. Gertrude Schmeidler, he coined the term “remote viewing” to describe the experiments in which subjects attempted to view targets at a far distance. His original remote-viewing protocols were later utilized and expanded upon in collaboration with the researchers Dr. H.E. Puthoff and Russell Targ. Other laboratories ultimately repeated various kinds of remote-viewing experiments.

…Even in his retirement, Ingo Swann maintained an interest in the progress of our understanding of human mental functioning, and was an avid observer not only of the human condition itself, but of the inroads being made to discover the full potential of the mind. At the time of his death, on February 1, 2013, Ingo was well along in the process of creating a new book featuring his marvelous art work.