Rupert Sheldrake and Teachers Secretly Tested Elementary Kids for Psychic Powers – The Jaw-Dropping Results They Never Told Parents About

Rupert Sheldrake, a British biologist born on June 28, 1942, developed the hypothesis of morphic resonance. He has conducted extensive research on perceptual phenomena that challenge conventional scientific explanations, including the sense of being stared at, also known as scopaesthesia. This refers to the common experience of feeling that someone is looking at you from behind, prompting you to turn around. While much of his work involves adults and animals, Sheldrake has placed particular emphasis on experiments with school-aged children, whom he observes often score higher than adults, possibly due to less cultural skepticism.

Sheldrake designed a straightforward, replicable protocol suitable for classroom settings. In each trial, a subject sits with their back to a looker positioned at least two meters away. The looker either stares at the back of the subject's neck or looks away while thinking of something else, following a randomized sequence (often determined by coin tosses or similar methods). The subject then guesses whether they were being stared at. Trials typically last one to two minutes, with immediate feedback provided in many cases.

Key School Experiments: Dates, Locations, and Participants

Sheldrake detailed many of these efforts in his 1998 paper titled "The Sense of Being Stared At: Experiments in Schools," published in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, volume 62, pages 311 to 323. Additional results appeared in a 1997 article in the Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society.

United States (1995-1997): Coordinated through the LEARNscience program at Southern Connecticut State University under James Trifone.

• MaryEllen McKee led tests at Old Greenwich School, Greenwich, Connecticut.

• Bonnie Maur directed grade 6 students (ages 11-12) at Chalk Hill Middle School, Monroe, Connecticut.

• Kathleen Robinson involved grade 3 students (ages 8-9) at Stepney Elementary School, Monroe, Connecticut.

German Experiments (1990s): Helmut Lasarcyk organized tests at Stormarnschule in Ahrensburg, Schleswig-Holstein. One session involved grade 8 students (ages 13 to 14), and three involved grade 12 students (ages 17 to 18). Another notable series took place in a German school with 8- to 9-year-old students. The teacher knew the children well, having taught them since kindergarten. Repeated testing of sensitive young subjects yielded striking results, with overall accuracy reaching 71.2 percent correct guesses and some individual children scoring approximately 90 percent.

Aggregated data from these school experiments (Germany and the United States) showed 56.9 percent correct guesses overall, compared to the 50 percent expected by chance. The effect was statistically significant, with stronger performance during actual staring trials and near-chance results during non-staring control trials.

Scale and Student-Led Projects

Across broader school and college efforts, Sheldrake documented tens of thousands of trials involving many thousands of participants, mostly children. At least 20 separate student-led projects contributed data. Notable examples include:

• 1991: Eighth-grader Michael Mastrandrea at Nueva Middle School, Hillsborough, California, achieved 54.1 percent accuracy.

• 1996: High school seniors Jasmine James and Elaine Yau in Port Hope, Ontario, won first prize at their Durham science fair with 55.0 percent correct guesses.

Younger children under age 9 repeatedly showed the strongest effects.

How Consent Was Handled

• Teacher-Led Classroom Integration: Teachers in the United States (Connecticut schools) and Germany (Stormarnschule in Ahrensburg) organized and supervised the sessions as part of regular school activities or science projects. This suggests consent was managed at the school level rather than through centralized ethics boards.

• Student Projects: Experiments like Michael Mastrandrea’s 1991 project at Nueva Middle School (Hillsborough, California) and Jasmine James and Elaine Yau’s 1996 science fair project in Port Hope, Ontario, were carried out under direct science teacher guidance. School science fair and classroom project rules typically required teacher oversight, which implicitly included standard school participation norms.

• Parental and Student Involvement: There is no explicit documentation in Sheldrake’s reports of mandatory written parental consent forms or formal IRB/ethics committee approvals for the main school datasets (160 subjects, 3,240 trials). Participation appears to have relied on standard educational practices: teacher approval, voluntary student involvement within class time, and general school policies for low-risk activities.

In the 1990s, especially for non-invasive, educational psychology-style classroom exercises (no physical risk, short duration, conducted openly in pairs), many schools operated under implicit consent through routine activity participation. Sheldrake emphasized the simplicity of the protocol to make it accessible for teachers and students.

Context and Limitations

Sheldrake’s work, published in psychical research journals, did not follow the same rigorous modern biomedical ethics standards (e.g., detailed informed consent, parental opt-in forms, or university IRB review) that would be expected today for research involving minors. Critics have noted this as part of broader methodological debates, but no major ethical controversies or complaints from participants/parents are documented in public records.

For his own experiments in English schools (e.g., University College School Junior Branch in London, 1997), similar teacher-led approaches applied.

References

• Sheldrake, R. (1998). The Sense of Being Stared At: Experiments in Schools. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 62, 311-323.

• Sheldrake, R. (1997). Research in Schools on the Sense of Being Stared At. Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society, 17(4), 175-178.

• Sheldrake, R. (1999, 2000). Follow-up papers in Biology Forum.

• Details archived on sheldrake.org.