A woman in Brooklyn had, what seemed to her, an inexplicable urge to telephone a friend. Even though she was very tired, and, as she says,

"did not feel like talking to anyone, and it was after ten p.m. when normally I never phoned after nine o'clock, still finally the compulsion won. The phone rang a long time before my friend answered, and when she did her voice was thick, and she sounded sort of choked and far away.

"I yelled, 'Are you all right?' She said hoarsely she thought so, but was very tired and had lain down and must have fallen asleep. I felt foolish for having disturbed her but--in spite of all the rules--I felt compelled to keep her on the phone. I asked her a question about some anthropological data in which we are both interested. I begged her to answer just this one question before she hung up, though I really had no need for the information at the time at all. She hesitated, then said she'd have to go into another room for a reference book. She was gone some time, but then returned and in a voice overcome with emotion, said, 'My God, Ruthie, your call saved my life.'

"It had been cold that evening, and she had shut the windows and turned on the gas oven for heat. Her husband was away and not to return till late. She had gone to lie down, and forgotten to turn off the oven. The burners were faulty and fumes were escaping, oxygen being used up.

"The insistent ringing of the phone had finally gotten through, but she was sure she'd answered the first ring. And so, if I had not felt compelled to call, and then gone on to ask the question which made her go to the other room for an answer, she'd never have noticed the forgotten oven--she'd have slept not for a little while--but forever."

--Louisa E. Rhine

EDITOR'S NOTES

Ruthie got only an incomplete warning: "Call your friend no matter what." Yet that was still enough to save a life.

Nearly half Louisa Rhine's examples of ESP have at least a whiff of this practicality. The insight is often partial, even severely flawed--yet the warnings are still good enough to improve our chances of survival. Nor are the other half of her cases mysterious. They carry news about loved ones. Lovers, friends, or parents and kids seem bonded like particle pairs in physics. A crisis resonates--you react, even if you can't help.

Ignore the thorny question of how ESP gets news. Look past off our culturally influenced censoring and rejection of that news. What does ESP look out for? What we look out for: mostly our individual and tribal wellbeing! Just like our other senses.

--Chris Wayan

SOURCE: Hidden Channels of the Mind by Louisa E. Rhine, 1961, p. 71-72. Account untitled, author's name witheld; title & byline added to aid searching & indexing.

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