- What an excellent use of taxpayer money.
The Cold War period was a weird time to be alive. For the lack of open confrontation, the U.S. and the Soviet Union engaged in various arms races — some of them absolutely bizarre.
For instance, the Soviets had official military departments working to unlock psychic abilities. Of course, America couldn’t let the communists beat them in utter nonsense, so the CIA kickstarted its own psychic program in 1970, which lasted until 1995.
Unlike its rival program, the U.S. work in psychic powers actually produced results. Using telepathic abilities, the CIA successfully determined the location of the Ark of the Covenant.
Take that, Soviets! Actually, wait… What?
Indeed, declassified CIA documents describe an experiment where a psychic “viewer” used their telepathy to remotely see the Ark of the Covenant. The person described what the lost biblical artifact looks like, its immediate surroundings, and its supposed guardians.
Yet, the viewer couldn’t actually say where the Ark is hidden. Oh, well — these results were still definitely worth the CIA psychics program’s $20 million price tag.
Project Sun Streak
The harebrained telepathy experiment was carried out on December 5, 1988. It was part of Project Sun Streak, a CIA project dealing with “the use of psychoenergetics in the collection of intelligence information.”
For the purposes of the program, “psychoenergetics” were defined as either psychokinesis or telepathy/remote viewing. The first involved manipulating the physical world with the power of the mind alone, while the latter deal with perceiving things through paranormal sensory means.
By the way, we can’t emphasize enough that we’re not making any of this up. This was a real CIA program, and you can go read all the released documents yourself.
Although Project Sun Streak never produced any tangible benefits or results, some of its experiments were apparently successful, according to the documents. For instance, the project’s files state that “laser physicists” Hal Puthoff and Russel Targ from the Stanford Research Institute “proved successful” in demonstrating the use of remote viewing as an intelligence gathering tool.
Maybe we’ll need to tell you about story some other time.
But for now, let’s focus on that December day in 1988. The experiment started at 9:15 a.m. and concluded at 10:45 a.m.
It involved a psychic, or remote viewer, simply identified as Viewer #32. We assume this means the CIA evaluated dozens of supposed telepaths.
Viewer #32, however, may be a standout candidate. According to the project file, they did “very well” in establishing a connection with a lost wonder of the ancient world — the Ark of the Covenant.
Which is reduced to “training target #0209” in the document. Apparently scrying the Ark is just an everyday exercise at the CIA.
Protected Underground
During the hour-and-a-half experiment, Viewer #32 used their telepathic abilities to peer through the physical world. According to the evaluation notes, the results were very promising.
“Viewer #032 attained excellent site contact. Doing very well with Stage IV structure. Viewer also exibits [sic] the ability to keep AOL to a minimum,” the document reads.
We don’t know what all these terms mean. But let’s get to the good stuff — what does the Ark of the Covenant look like?
According to Viewer #32, it’s a container, housed within a container. It’s quite a decorative one to boot.
“The target is fashioned of wood, gold, and silver. The target is similar in shape to (AOL) coffin, and is decorated with seraphim,” Viewer #32 perceived.
The seraphim are a type of angel showing up in the Bible. According to drawings accompanying the documents, they kind of look like birds.
Viewer #32 states that the Ark is located somewhere in the Middle East, hidden underground in a dark and wet location. Around it are Arabic-speaking people clad in all white.
Yet, perhaps the most terrifying part of this all are the Ark’s guardians. Viewer #32 claims the Ark is protected by mysterious “entities.”
The Ark can’t be opened until “the time is deemed correct.” Should anyone try to force it open, they would be “destroyed by the container’s protectors through the use of a power unknown to us.”
A note accompanying this description points to page 17, where you can find the handwritten words “quick death.”
You know, this stuff is getting pretty spooky. Perhaps it’s for the best that the experiment report ends here.
We just feel like if Viewer #32 was legit, they were getting close to knowledge we weren’t meant to know.
What’s the Ark?
In case you don’t know what the Ark of the Covenant, you obviously haven’t watched Raiders of the Lost Ark. That said, the Ark is much more than a plot device for an Indiana Jones movie.
The Ark of the Covenant is a sacred object in Abrahamic religions, in particular Judaism. It’s a storage chest that, according to religious tradition, contains various holy items.
Most importantly, it houses the Tablets of the Law. Those are nothing less than the stone tablets containing the Ten Commandments that God handed to Moses on Mount Sinai.
In addition, certain books in the Hebrew and Christian Bibles name other stuff that’s placed in the Ark as well. These include the staff of Aaron, Moses’ brother, and a pot filled with manna, the miraculous food God sent to feed the wandering Israelites.
So, yeah. The Ark’s a kind of a big deal in religious terms.
According to Jewish tradition, the Ark of the Covenant was housed in the Holy of Holies, the most innermost chamber of the First Temple in Jerusalem. Following the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem in 586 BCE, the temple was destroyed and the Ark vanished.
No one knows where it is today. According to some religious texts, it was hidden before the temple’s destruction in an unnamed cave, while others state that it was moved to Ethiopia.
Well, based on the CIA’s results, we can now start pinpointing the Ark’s location. It’s underground, somewhere in the Middle East where Arabic is spoken.
Wow, that really narrows it down.