Background

Craig Hogan and I communicated only via email. He lives about 700 miles away from me. All he knew about me was my name, email address, and that I lived in New Jersey. I would place an object on my table and Craig would email me his impressions. He said that he often got impressions of other objects in the room. His only input was an object on Bill Walker’s table. The impressions included sketches and sometimes written descriptions. In between sessions, the only feedback I gave to him were the photos of matched items that I show below. For each session, he gave anywhere from 5 to 20 impressions.

Sessions 1-5 were done in September, 2004. Session 6 was done in December, 2004.

Session 1

For the first session I told Craig that I would place an object on my work table. In my office I have an empty table next to the table with my computer and a green and brass banker’s lamp. I placed a Barnes and Noble coffee mug on it.

He sent me 5 impressions for this session, but did not identify the mug. The first thing I noticed was that he described “a green light shining down on gold brassy parts.” As I said, this matched the banker’s lamp that was about 6 feet from the target. I did not immediately recognize the other descriptions.

However, the next day I realized something. Many times when I work at home, I use my wireless laptop at the dining room table rather than the office. I looked at the bowl of decorative metallic “orbs” that my wife placed in the center of the table. The figure and description Craig provided, exactly described one of the orbs. See Figure 1. The “ribs” that were described were the “leaves”. It may be hard to tell from the figure, but in natural light, the orbs do have both silver and gold colors.

Session 2

I told Craig about the orb, and sent him the photo from Figure 1. For the next session we decided to try an object placed on my dining room table. He asked me to try to place an “unusual” item there. Since the last session, we had guests over, so my wife had removed the bowl of orbs and put a tablecloth on the table which was not there during the first session. I placed a yellow toy race car between the two candles that were on the table. Craig emailed me his sketches and some notes (about 20 impressions).

The first description specified the color yellow but did not identify the object. However, one sketch matched the only other item on the table, the base of the candle holder. See Figure 2. At the right side of the photo, you can see a piece of the yellow race car. Notice the irregular shaped pattern in the tablecloth below the candle holder.

One set of impressions described a chest. In the corner of our living room, we have two chests stacked, that we use as plant table. The living room and dining room are actually one big room. The latch is unusual in that the top piece is curved and swings down from the side into a horizontal catch. His description of the latch matched exactly. He also described and drew a picture of “an animal.” It had spots and looked like it had a long neck. He said he could see “an eye and an ear,” and that the rear end was to the left. Not until I looked at the chest did I realize that it had a giraffe on it. The head is turned to the side so you can only see one eye and ear. See Figure 3.

There were 2 or 3 figures that looked to me like an upside down lampshade with tassels hanging down. The description said that he kept “getting a circle with diagonal lines coming down.” The sketches showed three lines: one on the left, one center and one on the right. I looked on our console table that is right next to chest. On it we have a bowl with a few orbs similar to those in the dining room. If you look at the bowl directly from the front, you can see three ropes going down, one on the left, one in the center and one on the right. At the top of the ropes are tassels (although his sketch showed tassels all the way around). See Figure 4. The sketches on the left were exactly as Craig drew it. The bottom part matches the base of the bowl (the line between the sketches means that he saw it as two distinct images. I later asked him about that). The sketch on the right was on the next page, and it describes the texture of the bowl—“fine lines, individual strands, colors dull, subdued, light tan.”

Session 3

For this session, I asked Craig to try my kitchen table. There was only one item on the table besides the placemats (which he described in a later session). That was the centerpiece, that I was specifically looking for him to describe. It has leaves and unusual “stems” with what look to me like small peas on the ends of them.

For this session he sent about 6 sketches. One described the centerpiece. It said “organic, like stems” and looked like two leaves, with some stems that had small circles on the end of them. See Figure 5.

There were also two other sketches that I did not recognize. They described a “hollow tube thing,” with lines on it. I went to take a close look at the kitchen table. I saw that my son had left a small toy from a doctor’s set on the table. It was hollow and had lines on the base. See Figure 6.

Session 4

For this session, I again told Craig that I would place a target on my dining room table. I placed a black and yellow toy drill with an orange plastic drill bit on the table.

He sent 4 pages with between 2 and 4 sketches per page. One of the sketches did look like the base of the drill and the bit, but it was not close enough in detail and did not include any colors so I did not count it as a match.

There were three sketches that accurately described a plant that is on the small corner table in my dining room. It is the only plant in the room. Two sketches described the base of the plant and the “spiky leaves”. While these descriptions could describe many plants, what convinced me that he was describing the plant in my dining room was a sketch at the bottom of the page that said “gold mask-like”. It looked like a mask, on an angle, with two eyes and a line between them. If you look closely at the pot that the plant is in, the center of the gold band around it has a leaf that does look like a gold mask. It is on the exact angle as the “mask” that he drew (I did not rotate his sketch to match it). See Figure 7.

There was another description that exactly matched a small decorative flower that my son bought for my wife at the school store. This item was exactly 5.5 feet away from the corner plant. It is a peach colored flower in a pot in between two pointy leaves. The sketch said “light peach, green vegetation”. See Figure 8.

Session 5

We did one more session targeting the kitchen. Craig described my kitchen placemats and a phone charger on the counter next to the table. For the kitchen placemats he described them as being “antique green and brown,” having fringe, and having a repeating pattern with a bow on them. This is an accurate description of them. The phone charger is shown in Figure 9.

The phone charger was interesting because he provided two sketches. I noticed from the other sessions that when he presented multiple sketches or labeled something a "strong" impression, it was usually accurate (as with the bowl from session 2). The phone charger is actually silver. In a second sketch, he drew the same shape, but said the color was "burnt orange." The photo in Figure 9 ended up having an orange hue to it (depending on your computer and monitor) and was taken after the session. We wondered where the "orange" impression came from. One possibility is a precognition of the photo.

Session 6

This time I asked Craig to tell me what was on my parents' dining room table and I gave him their first names. He described a bowl that looked like a "giant clam shell." A picture of their dining room table, with his descriptions below it, is shown in Figure 10 (you may need to scroll down to read the description). The photo¹ of the giant clam shell is included to compare his description to the actual bowl. Although he did not not get the color right (he said greenish) he correctly identified it as tinted glass. How many bowls are shaped like giant clam shells? Try to find one on the Internet.

NOTE: The bowl behind it in the photo was there only at the time the photo was taken. During the viewing session, only the center bowl was present.

The sketch of the semicircle pattern of lace is shown in the corner of the figure. This may match the portion of the table cloth where it is obscured by the corner of the straw placemat under the bowl.

He also made a deliberate attempt to see the dining room chairs. He said that he is usually not very successful when trying to view a particular item that he knows is actually there. I did not ask him why, but I assume that it is because his preconception or imagination might intefere. His sketch of the chair, along with an actual photo is shown in Figure 11. Although he did not draw the spindles exactly, he did get the prominent feature of the spindles being crossed. How many dining room chairs have that feature? Out of this large set of chairs, how many have crossed spindles?

Craig only had two other impressions in addition to the lace, bowl, and chair. He described another bowl with "white puffy things" in it. Although my mother often makes bowls of popcorn (the bowl behind the clam shell bowl has popcorn in it), it was not present when the viewing was done. He also described a blue cylinder with a white stripe on it. There was a blue pen with a silver stripe on the kitchen counter, but we could not determine if it was on the dining room table at the time of the viewing.

Session 7

UPDATE: Sessions 7 and 8 were added in December 2005, after the initial sessions were posted and after the summary section was written.

For this session Craig tried to view a photograph that I placed on the desk in my home office. I selected a picture taken about 20 years ago of myself and my German Shepherd. This session is a good example that demonstrates an aspect of remote viewing that is often misunderstood (especially by skeptics). Remote viewing is not like having a remote camera installed. The viewer is getting subtle impressions, via the subconscious, mixed with thoughts and images in his own mind. When Craig sent me his impressions of the photograph, I clearly recognized them as match, even though it was not exact. Most of my photos are of my family and kids, yet Craig wrote the phrase “Impression of hunting” (to me, the photo does call to mind a hunting scene), and sketched exactly one animal and one human form (note the arm position). This set of impressions, exactly as he sketched them are shown next to the actual photo in Figure 12.

There were two other impressions that did not match the target photo. I recognized one of them that closely resembled an object on my wife’s desk, about 10 feet from the target. This was a “bat house” that my son made (the same son who gave her the peach flower from session 4). It has a unique shape, and the sketch was close, except that the actual object had a single hole, and the sketch showed three circles in different locations. See in Figure 13.

Session 8

This was the only session that did not result in any matches. Craig attempted to view Christmas presents, in wrapped boxes in both my home and Don Watson’s home. The two common factors here were that the items were only in our homes for a short period of time, and neither Don nor I knew the contents. The latter tends to indicate that a component of telepathy (although unconscious) is involved with the matches described above. Don also commented that this is predicted by The Theory of Enformed Systems (TES) because neither SELF (Don or Bill) had “enformation” to share with Craig.

Summary

The descriptions above accurately described relatively unique items on the tables in my house. In most cases, these were on tables in the rooms that “the targets” were located in (with the exception of the living room, but as indicated, the living room and dining room are connected). In all sessions, the exact “targets” that he matched were the orb (even though it was not the "work" table that I had in mind), the kitchen table centerpiece, the plastic toy, and the bowl and chair at my parents' house. If I walked a total stranger through my house for five minutes and asked them to observer items on tables, then brought them outside and asked them to sketch what they remembered, I'd be surprised if they would be able to sketch eleven objects in as much detail as Craig did. Consider just Figure 1 alone. What are the odds that someone using random "guessing" would exactly describe a gold and silver metalic orb with a four leaf pattern on top?

As can be seen in some sketches, Craig was mixing images from his imagination with the actual images. For example, the "monkey bowl" he described had tassels only in a few places, but he saw them going all the way around the bowl. When he sketched the "animal" (giraffe), he correctly described the rear end as being to the left, as well as being able to see one eye and ear, but he "saw" the neck in different positions.

In all the other sketches, there were some that were vague and did not match anything specific that I could tell. There were also sketches and descriptions that could have matched items such as lamps in my home, but I did not count these because they were either very common items or were not specific enough. For example, he described “equal spaced lights shining down like columns,” and this could have matched the 4 equally spaced recessed lights in my dining room. He also sketched a lampshade that resembled a wall mounted lamp hanging over the chest (and he did say that he could not see the base).

1 The clam shell photo was obtained here.