Out-of-Body Experience Study Finds No Better-Than-Chance Target Accuracy

A study testing out-of-body experiences found no better-than-chance ability to identify hidden images, though two participants later described researchers behind closed doors.

Mind

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A new study tested whether people who report out-of-body experiences could perceive something hidden from their normal senses. In the experiment, 21 participants attempted to identify randomly selected images displayed on a laptop in a separate room. Ten participants reported having an out-of-body experience, while 13 supplied descriptions that could be analyzed. The descriptions did not match the hidden targets better than would be expected from guessing. The main experiment therefore did not provide evidence that participants could accurately perceive the concealed images from outside their bodies. The intriguing part came afterward, when two participants independently described researchers in another room, including where they were positioned and what they appeared to be doing. Records showed that those details matched the researchers actual locations and activities during the sessions. The researchers emphasize that these observations were not planned outcome measures, so they cannot be treated as evidence that out-of-body perception is real. Instead, they may suggest a different way to design future experiments, such as testing whether participants can describe unseen people, distinctive objects, or other environmental details under tightly controlled conditions. The result is therefore less a demonstration of psychic perception than an unusual finding that researchers say deserves a more carefully designed follow-up.

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