In the 1930s German psychologist Wolfgang Metzger pioneered a method of perceptual deprivation found to induce hallucinations, later referred to as the “Ganzfeld effect,” from the German for “complete field.” In the 1970s and 80s two American parapsychologists, William Braud and Charles Honorton, began using the same approach to test psychokinetic influences on living systems.
The point of their experiments was based on the assumption that ESP is such a weak force, that our everyday senses tend to drown them out. Test subjects had their eyes covered, were bathed in red light, and wore headphones with white noise drowning out all other sounds. Honorton’s meta-analysis of several studies found a 35% hit rate, a 10% increase over random chance, if true. More recent studies have come up with a hit rate of 32.2%.
It is possible to recreate the effects on your own, albeit in a biased, non-scientific trial. Your sense of sight and sound are the two most prominent sense that are said to drown out psi abilities. A simple blindfold and earphones playing white noise are easy to procure. The sense of smell, oddly enough, may actually be more important. Different studies have tried a variety of approaches to inhibit or deprive the olfactory sense. Some have tried overwhelming the subject’s sense of smell through strong odors, while others inhibit the subject’s ability to breathe through the nose at all.
Quirks and Curiosities 