Within Remote Viewing
What Remote Viewers Try to Describe
Targets can be places, photos, objects, or future-selected images, and each target type creates different testing problems.
On this page
- Places and Sites
- Photographs and Objects
- Future Selected Targets
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Introduction
Remote viewing studies have not used one single kind of “target”. A target might be a real place visited by an outbound experimenter, a photograph sealed away from the viewer, a physical object, a short video clip, or an image selected only after the session has ended. That choice is not a minor detail. It changes what the viewer is asked to describe, how the session is blinded, how judges score the response, and which criticisms become most serious.
The target is therefore one of the main pressure points in remote-viewing research. Real sites make sessions vivid but introduce risks of travel cues, maps, ordering clues and judging leakage. Photographs and objects are easier to randomise and archive, but they can turn a rich verbal report into a forced match against a target pool. Future-selected targets try to test precognition, but they add problems of feedback, displacement and statistical interpretation. The scientific dispute is not only “can remote viewing work?” but also “what exactly was the viewer trying to describe, and how securely was that target handled?”
Why the Target Type Changes the Experiment
In laboratory descriptions of remote viewing, the viewer normally produces free-response material: spoken impressions, written notes, sketches, or sometimes maps and three-dimensional models. Jessica Utts’s review of the U.S. government-sponsored SRI and SAIC work describes viewers attempting to draw or describe a target location, photograph, object or short video segment while ordinary sensory channels were blocked; in some sessions a monitor questioned the viewer while also being blind to the target.[UC Irvine Bren School]ics.uci.eduUC Irvine Bren Schoolics.uci.eduUC Irvine Bren Schoolics.uci.edu
That variety matters because free-response material is elastic. A phrase such as “open space”, “arched shape”, “water”, “metal”, or “movement” can fit many possible targets unless the target pool and judging procedure are carefully designed. Researchers therefore have to decide not only what target to use, but also what counts as a match. A beach photograph, a bridge, a church, a silver-market outcome represented by an image, and a concealed object on a table all demand different safeguards.
The basic design questions are practical:
- Is the target spatial or pictorial? A real location has geography, scale, noise, weather and surrounding context. A photograph compresses a scene into a bounded image.
- Is the target present or future-selected? A present target tests claimed access to hidden information; a future target is usually framed as a precognition task.
- Is the target judged directly or by comparison? A judge may compare a transcript with several possible targets, or score separate features.
- How distinctive is the target pool? If all targets are visually similar, judging becomes harder; if they are too different, accidental generic matches can still look impressive.
The target is not just the object of the experiment. It is part of the measurement instrument.
Places and Sites
The early remote-viewing work most associated with Stanford Research Institute used “natural targets”: real-world sites selected for an experiment. A declassified SRI paper describes a subject being asked to describe a remote site chosen by experimenters and unknown to the subject.[CIA]cia.govOpen source on cia.gov. In this style of test, an outbound person or “beacon” might travel to a selected location while the viewer, elsewhere, records impressions.
Real sites have an obvious appeal. They give the viewer something complex and concrete to describe: a bridge, a church, a courtyard, a railway feature, a playground, a waterfront or a building. They also seem closer to the intelligence-world fantasy of remote viewing: describing an actual place rather than choosing between cards or abstract symbols. That is one reason the early literature and later popular accounts made site targets central.
But site targets created some of the sharpest methodological disputes. David Marks’s critique of SRI-style remote viewing argued that judging could be contaminated by cues in transcripts and target lists rather than by paranormal information. In his Skeptical Inquirer review, Marks described “remote judges” matching transcripts to targets using cues such as dates, order clues, references to previous sessions and target-list information, without visiting the sites themselves.[Center for Inquiry]centerforinquiry.s3.amazonaws.comCenter for Inquiry
The Hammid series became a concrete example of the problem. Marks reported that some transcripts and materials contained clues pointing to sequence or location: a reference to “church”, a mention of a motorcycle, timing clues, and comments implying whether a target was first, second or later in a series. He argued that these clues could allow correct matching even when the descriptive content itself was weak.[Center for Inquiry]centerforinquiry.s3.amazonaws.comCenter for Inquiry
This does not mean every site-target experiment had the same flaw. It does show why real places are difficult targets. A remote site is embedded in logistics: someone chooses it, travels to it, records the session, lists the target options, prepares judging material and gives feedback. Each step can leak information unless roles are separated and records are stripped of dates, order, names, maps and incidental comments.
For site targets, the strongest protocol lessons are clear. The viewer must not know the target pool; the monitor must be blind; outbound travellers must not communicate cues; transcripts must be cleaned of administrative hints before judging; and judges must receive target alternatives in a randomised form. The target is a place, but the vulnerability is the paperwork around the place.
Photographs and Objects
As remote-viewing studies moved into more controlled laboratory formats, photographs became especially common targets. Utts’s review notes that the SAIC laboratory often used a large set of National Geographic photographs as targets, and CIA-hosted evaluations of the programme state that recent laboratory experiments reviewed for the government used National Geographic photographs as the target pool.[CIA]cia.govOpen source on cia.gov.
Photographs solve several problems at once. They can be stored, randomised, sealed, duplicated and shown to judges without requiring anyone to travel. They also make it easier to run many trials with the same general procedure. A viewer can be asked to describe the hidden picture; later, a judge can compare the transcript against the correct image and several decoys.
Objects work similarly, though they are less visually standardised. A concealed object can be placed in a box, envelope or separate room; the viewer describes shape, texture, colour, function or associated impressions. Objects are attractive because they are tangible and bounded, but they can be harder to score unless the target pool is carefully chosen. A “small hard object”, for example, may fit too many possible items.
The photograph format created a different kind of debate: target-pool design. If the pool contains visually rich and highly distinct images, a viewer’s report may be easier to judge. But if the wrong decoy image is more dramatic or emotionally engaging than the actual target, some researchers and practitioners argue that the viewer may appear to describe the decoy instead. A 2021 paper on associative remote viewing discusses this problem under the label “displacement”, noting that judging sets can become a source of noise when extra photos compete with the selected target.[Koestler Parapsychology Unit]koestler-parapsychology.psy.ed.ac.ukKoestler Parapsychology Unit
Some researchers tried to treat target selection itself as a variable. Work discussed under “target-pool bandwidth” asked whether the number and distinctiveness of cognitive elements in a target pool could affect anomalous-cognition performance. A CIA-indexed report summarises this idea by defining target-pool bandwidth as the number of differentiable cognitive elements in the target pool.[CIA]cia.govOpen source on cia.gov. The underlying point is simple: a remote-viewing target is not neutral if some targets are far easier to describe, remember or distinguish than others.
Photographs also changed judging. Instead of asking whether a report accurately described a known site, experiments often used blind matching: the judge ranked several images according to how well each matched the transcript. That helps produce a statistical result, but it can compress a messy human description into a single hit-or-miss outcome. The 2021 associative remote-viewing paper notes this tradeoff: photo-matching supports statistical analysis but may reduce rich qualitative material to one result.[Koestler Parapsychology Unit]koestler-parapsychology.psy.ed.ac.ukKoestler Parapsychology Unit
The core problem with photo and object targets is therefore not only concealment. It is comparability. A good pool needs targets that are different enough to be judged, but not so uneven that one spectacular volcano, cathedral or explosion dominates a set of dull alternatives.
Future-Selected Targets
Some remote-viewing studies use targets that are not selected until after the viewer has completed the session. This changes the claim being tested. The viewer is not merely describing a hidden present target; the experiment is framed as apparent access to future information. Utts’s review explains the logic clearly: apparent precognition can be studied by asking someone to describe something for which the correct answer is not known until later.[UC Irvine Bren School]ics.uci.eduUC Irvine Bren Schoolics.uci.eduUC Irvine Bren Schoolics.uci.edu
Future-selected targets are especially important in associative remote viewing, often shortened to ARV. In ARV, researchers do not ask a viewer to describe an event directly, such as whether a market will rise or which team will win. Instead, each possible outcome is associated with a different feedback image or object. After the outcome is known, the viewer receives the image linked to the actual outcome. If the viewer’s earlier transcript matches one image better than the other, practitioners treat that as a prediction.
This approach exists because many real-world outcomes are poor direct targets. “Team A wins” and “Team B wins” may look too similar: crowds, players, stadiums, scoreboards, noise and excitement. The ARV workaround uses more distinct sensory targets, such as a waterfall versus a desert scene, and links them to the possible outcomes. The 2021 ARV reliability study describes ARV as a method used to predict sporting-event outcomes, stock-market moves and other future events, using blind judging of transcripts against target photo sets.[Koestler Parapsychology Unit]koestler-parapsychology.psy.ed.ac.ukKoestler Parapsychology Unit
The method also exposes a major weakness: judging variability. In the same 2021 study, 86 completed ARV trials involving 220 transcripts were rejudged by three teams. Judges were in complete agreement in only 6.9% of trials, while stronger agreement among eight of nine judges occurred in 19.7% of trials. The authors concluded that rater variance was clearly demonstrated and that judging factors needed further testing.[Koestler Parapsychology Unit]koestler-parapsychology.psy.ed.ac.ukKoestler Parapsychology Unit
This matters because ARV often depends on a small difference between two or more possible target images. If judges disagree about which image a transcript matches, the prediction can change. The target is “future-selected”, but the practical hinge is the present-day scoring system.
Precognitive remote-viewing experiments have also been run in altered-state contexts, including ganzfeld procedures. A 2020 paper by Chris Roe and colleagues compared remote-viewing performance in waking and ganzfeld conditions across three experiments. It reported 110 participants producing 43 hits in the ganzfeld condition and 30 hits in the waking condition, with the authors interpreting the ganzfeld result as a significant positive deviation from chance.[NECTAR]nectar.northampton.ac.ukOpen source on northampton.ac.uk. Whatever one makes of that claim, the design shows how target timing and target judging can be combined with another experimental variable: the viewer’s state of consciousness.
Future-selected targets are therefore appealing because they offer a clean story about precognition, but they are not methodologically simple. They require secure randomisation, clear feedback rules, pre-specified judging, and safeguards against changing the target or interpretation after the outcome is known.
What Makes a Target Good or Bad?
A good remote-viewing target is not simply interesting. It must be usable in a controlled comparison. The strongest target sets tend to have several features:
- Sensory richness: The target has describable shapes, textures, colours, movement, scale or atmosphere.
- Distinctiveness: It differs from decoys in more than one obvious way.
- Balanced interest: No single target in the set is so emotionally or visually dominant that it attracts loose matches.
- Recordability: The target can be archived and presented consistently to judges.
- Blind handling: The target can be selected, stored, judged and fed back without leaking ordinary clues.
Bad targets are often vague, repetitive or administratively messy. A set of four similar city streets may be hard to distinguish. A set where one image is a burning building and the others are ordinary landscapes may create judging bias. A real-world site whose transcript includes dates, travel details or comments about previous targets can become compromised even if the viewer never saw the site.
This is why target choice sits at the centre of both supportive and sceptical interpretations. Supporters often argue that remote-viewing effects appear most clearly in free-response tasks with meaningful, information-rich targets. Critics argue that the more complex and meaningful the target, the more room there is for subjective matching, cueing and post-hoc interpretation.
The tension is built into the method. Remote viewing performs worst as a sterile forced-choice task, according to many parapsychology discussions, because viewers are not simply selecting one symbol from a small set. Yet the richer the target and transcript, the harder it becomes to prove that a match is not due to flexible judging. Utts’s review notes that forced-choice experiments are easier to evaluate statistically but have traditionally been less successful than free-response experiments.[UC Irvine Bren School]ics.uci.eduUC Irvine Bren Schoolics.uci.eduUC Irvine Bren Schoolics.uci.edu
The Target Is Where the Evidence Is Won or Lost
Remote-viewing research often sounds as though it is about unusual perception, but in practice it is equally about experimental design. The viewer’s report is only half the evidence. The other half is the target: how it was selected, what alternatives existed, who knew about it, how it was stored, how it was judged and when feedback occurred.
Places and sites made remote viewing famous because they resembled the real-world claim: a person describing somewhere they could not see. They also produced some of the most damaging criticisms because travel routines, target lists and transcripts could contain ordinary cues. Photographs and objects made laboratory control easier, especially through standardised target pools, but shifted the difficulty into image selection and blind judging. Future-selected targets opened the door to precognition-style designs and ARV prediction claims, but made feedback, displacement and rater agreement central problems.
The most useful way to read remote-viewing evidence is therefore target-first. Before asking whether a session was impressive, ask what the target was, how many alternatives existed, who selected it, who knew it, how the transcript was cleaned, and how the judging was done. In remote-viewing research, the target is not just what the viewer tries to describe. It is the place where ordinary explanation, statistical design and extraordinary claim meet.
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Endnotes
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