Dr. Louisa Rhine's letters revisited: The children

Journal of Parapsychology, The, Dec, 2002 by Athena A. Drewes

Greg, age 12, from Pennsylvania, wrote:

I recently read your article in the Reader's Digest on ESP. I decided to write to you. Every now and then, during the day or night, I suddenly see a picture in my mind. Then a few days later, no more than a week, that same "picture" happens to me in real life. The event I see has never been of very much importance. I sometimes see a picture of what I am going to see on a television program within a week. Before, I never knew what it was. After I read your article, I decided I probably have ESP.

Nancy, from New York, wrote:

I read your story in McCall's magazine, "The Sixth Sense Called ESP." My mother and I both believe about the sixth sense. 1 am only eleven years, but I have a problem. It is not quite the same as you wrote about, but I dream I do something or said something and then do it and not in a dream but really. Sometimes I say something and think I said it before.

Or some of the children wrote career questions, such as Bill, 12 years old, from Indiana:

I have always been interested in strange happenings. Then I read your article in the June Reader's Digest about Parapsychology. I didn't know such a course was offered in our colleges, but since it is would there be a future in it as a career? I am 12 years old and thought if there were any courses I could take in the next 5 years to prepare myself, you might give me a few suggestions.

Psychic Experience Letters

The 157 psychic experiences reported were categorized into Precognitive Dreams, Precognitive Intuitions and Impressions, Clairvoyance, and Telepathy. These categories appeared comparable with several categories used by Schouten (1982) and might allow for ease of comparison between these data and Schouten's (1982). The Precognitive Dreams category is comparable with Rhine's Realistic and Unrealistic Dreams, and the Precognitive Intuitions and Impressions category would be comparable with Rhine's Intuitive Experiences. Stokes (1997) clarified Rhine's classification system by defining "realistic dreams, which correspond closely in detail to the confirming event" (p. 8), and unrealistic dreams, which Rhine (1977) defined as containing "a bit of imagination, fantasy and even symbolism" (p. 61).

Types and Frequency of Experiences

The data collected from the children's letters are compared below with results of a study conducted by Schouten (1982) of the larger Rhine collection. Schouten nonsystematically took 15% of the cases from each folder containing only adult letters of experiences from a total of 10,772 letters that were made available to him and analyzed the results. The 15% of the 10,772 adult letters yielded a total of 1,620 cases, which he analyzed. Consequently, he hoped for an equal representation of all the types of cases classified by LER. To compare the children's letters with those selected and analyzed in Schouten's data, I felt it made the most sense to compare the children's letters using Schouten's classification as well as tables in his 1982 article. In the present article, data collected from the children's letters are listed under "Drewes," with "Schouten" referring to the 1,620 Rhine collection cases that were analyzed and published. Schouten did not report the sample sizes for his subcategories, but these cou ld be deduced by multiplying the total N by the subcategory percentages. The percentages for the two samples were found to differ significantly for Precognitive Dreams, [chi square](1, N=1777) = 6.43, p < .02, Precognitive Intuitions and Impressions, [chi square](1, N=1777) 6.45, p < .02, and Waking Sensory Images, [chi square](1, N=1777) = 10.35, p <. 005.