type: subject
slug: remote-viewing
kind: idea
domain: consciousness
status: contested
also_known_as: psychic spying, RV, coordinate remote viewing
period: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s
evidence: documentary-record, firsthand-account
wikipedia: Remote_viewing
dek: The claim that a person can describe a distant place they have no ordinary way to know about — tested under contract for twenty-three years, and still unresolved.
The claim, stated narrowly
A viewer is given nothing but a set of coordinates or a sealed reference number. They report impressions — shapes, textures, function, sometimes sketches. A third party, who does not know the target either, later compares the report against the site.
The narrowness is the point. Ingo Swann coined the term in the early 1970s specifically to separate this protocol from clairvoyance as popularly practised: no client present, no reading of the person, no feedback until after