Dr. Louisa Rhine's letters revisited: The children

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

In looking at relationship, importance of event, and type of psi, LER found that "ESP about one's own life tended to deal with unimportant events, whereas ESP about friends and family members pertained to serious events" (Weiner & Haight, 1986, p. 20). In addition, "ESP about the death of a family member or friend tended to be precognitive, whereas ESP about the accidents and illnesses of these persons tended to be contemporaneous" (Weiner & Haight, 1986, p. 20).

It appears from the school-age letters that the precognitive dream material was highly emotionally laden, which certainly allows for easy remembrance upon awakening, and often becomes readily embedded in long-term memory. Because of the unusual nature of the material and the emotions felt, it is very likely that the precognitive dreams were qualitatively different for the letter writer, and therefore more readily attended to. Often such dreams feel "unshakeable," resulting in unsettling feelings because there is no certain time frame with which one could know when the events would occur, whereas there is often a feeling of immediacy in precognitive waking experiences and telepathic events, when events seem to occur closer in time to the experience. Unfortunately, the letters from school-age children did not report when the dream occurred versus the lag time to the actualization of the events. Without individual follow-up to letters to obtain missing data, such analyses cannot be conducted.

It would also be interesting for future analyses of children's experiences to look at the complete versus incomplete messages that LER had analyzed, or even the number of details per experience that Schouten had looked at. Experientially, it appeared to me that many of the school-age letters were rich with many specific details. It would be interesting to further examine if they have more complete messages and a higher number of details than the adults' letters. A more thorough review of the letters would need to be done to determine if they have the necessary information for comparisons.

Additional Experiences When Younger

Of notable interest was that 17% of the school-age letters specifically included having had psychic experiences when even younger, besides the most recent event being reported. Several of the children reported recalling incidents, mostly precognitive in nature, that had occurred when they were as young as 5 years of age. Others reported remembering ESP experiences when they were 8 or 10 years of age, compared with being 12 or 16 at the time they wrote.

Consequently, as seen with this small sampling, children are able to have and remember psychic experiences from quite young ages. Most adult memories for events occurring during childhood tend to go back to around age 5. For events occurring under age 5, reports are often from others (parents, caregivers, relatives) who chronicle such events, such as past-life memories (Barker, 1979) or personal journals of family members growing up (Schwarz, 1961). It appears, therefore, from this limited account that psychic experiences appear to occur and can be remembered at quite young ages.