Andrija Puharich was a medical doctor and pioneering parapsychologist who began researching psychic phenomena in the mid-1940s at Northwestern Medical School, decades before such work gained any mainstream traction. He operated at the intersection of science, intelligence agencies, and the occult, discovering Uri Geller, collaborating with Israeli inventor Itzhak Bentov, and running experiments funded by the CIA, the Army, and the Atomic Energy Commission. His life’s work centered on extrasensory perception, channeling non-human entities, and developing technology to enhance or protect human consciousness — and it ultimately made him a target. His house was burned down in a professional arson attack, likely to suppress his research into ELF (extremely low frequency) mind-control technology, and he spent his final years in hiding, convinced the CIA was after him.
Puharich’s early career and intelligence connections
Puharich was drafted into the US Army in the 1950s and assigned to a chemical research division where he experimented with LSD, marijuana, cocaine, and other substances to enhance soldiers’ psychic abilities — he had official order forms to procure these drugs for experiments.
He founded the Round Table Foundation in Maine, a private lab where he conducted early ESP research, including documented experiments with psychic twins funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research in the 1950s.
He maintained correspondence with Allen Dulles’s assistant at the CIA and received a $300,000 grant from the Atomic Energy Commission (roughly $1 million today) in 1968 after demonstrating his TD-100 hearing device — a machine that allowed deaf people to hear by transmitting signals through facial nerves.
His early invention work began when he discovered a dentist with metal fillings was picking up radio signals; this led him to develop implantable devices and the transdermal hearing technology that attracted government funding.
The discovery of Uri Geller
Puharich initially researched a Brazilian healer named Arigo, who died unexpectedly, leaving him without a research subject.
Itzhak Bentov, an Israeli scientist and intelligence-connected researcher, tipped off Puharich about a young Israeli man named Uri Geller who appeared to have genuine psychic abilities.
Puharich traveled to Israel, attended one of Geller’s performances, conducted preliminary experiments in a hotel room, and confirmed enough to bring Geller to the United States for formal testing at Stanford Research Institute (SRI) under Hal Puthoff and others.
Geller’s career as a celebrity psychic launched from this partnership, though Puharich was primarily interested in the science while Geller wanted fame.
Geller claimed the CIA sent Puharich, but the evidence suggests Bentov was the original connection; early photographs show experiments conducted in Bentov’s living room in Tel Aviv.
Itzhak Bentov and the Israeli connection
Bentov was an Israeli citizen, inventor, and intelligence asset who wrote Stalking the Wild Pendulum, a complex work on consciousness, resonance, and how reality at higher frequencies “filters down” to our base perception.
He and Puharich were close collaborators and friends, spending significant time together in Israel, where the culture was more open to spiritual and psychic research than the US.
Bentov died in a plane crash in the 1970s under mysterious circumstances.
Late in life, Puharich publicly dismissed Bentov as insignificant at a conference, a sharp reversal that neither Andy nor Greg can fully explain.
The entity known as “The Nine”
In 1953, an Indian man who called himself Dr. Vinod walked into Puharich’s lab, demonstrated psychic abilities, and began channeling an entity calling itself “The Nine” — described as a group of cosmic intelligences overseeing the universe as part of a cosmic plan.
Roughly two decades later, in the early 1970s, the same entity began channeling through Phyllis Schlemmer, a woman with powerful channeling abilities, and allegedly through Geller as well (who channeled an entity called Spectra).
Puharich founded Lab Nine around these communications, organizing group meditation sessions and attempting to receive what he called “higher physics” — equations and technological information channeled through psychics.
The Nine communicated through a spokesman called Tom and never identified themselves as coming from a specific star system; they were described more as divine spirits or universal overseers.
Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, attended channeling sessions at Puharich’s home, leading to conspiracy theories that the Nine influenced the show (including the name Deep Space Nine) and broader cultural programming.
The Space Kids program
Puharich recruited young people with apparent psychic abilities — called “Space Kids” — to his home in Ossining, New York, where he educated them in meditation, hypnosis, dream work, and the nature of the soul.
The goal was to develop their abilities and, through group “mind link” sessions, create a collective psychic field strong enough to establish contact with entities in other dimensions.
During one intense mind link session, the woman designated as the receiver in the center of the circle fainted and required medical attention, so a younger person replaced her.
Under hypnosis, some Space Kids described past lives on other planets, paralleling modern UFO abduction narratives.
Sharron: the most gifted and mysterious Space Kid
Sharron (maiden name McCann, later Jacobson) was a woman in her late 20s who was considered the most talented psychic among the Space Kids — the “Eleven” of the group, referencing Stranger Things.
She was the primary channel for complex scientific and mathematical information that Puharich believed constituted “higher physics” from another dimension.
During one intense channeling session in the Faraday cage, Sharron collapsed and nearly died; Puharich, as a medical doctor, rushed her to the hospital. The incident was attributed to her body being taken over by an outside entity, similar to what was reported with Phyllis Schlemmer.
After approximately 1976, Sharron vanished completely. Despite extensive efforts by Greg (including hiring a private investigator), no one from the original group has been able to locate or contact her. She changed her name multiple times, and her addresses lead to abandoned or run-down properties. She has never appeared in any public records or obituaries, and her fate remains one of the story’s deepest mysteries.
The Faraday cage and channeling technology
Puharich built a copper-lined Faraday cage at his lab — a fully sealed metal enclosure that blocks all external electromagnetic signals, creating an environment of total sensory isolation.
He believed that modern electromagnetic noise (cell towers, power lines, radio waves) dims human psychic senses and keeps consciousness in a docile, closed state; the Faraday cage removed this interference.
The Nine specifically instructed that copper was the key metal for psychic communication — psychics wore copper bracelets with a small rectangle touching their skin to improve transmission.
Puharich combined the Faraday cage with his TD-100 hearing device (which transmitted audible signals through facial nerves) and claimed this combination was a reliable method for communicating with extraterrestrial or interdimensional entities.
On his deathbed in 1995, in a tape recorded by researcher Dick Russell, Puharich stated that the Faraday cage method combined with the TD-100 was the one genuine discovery the government had tried to suppress — the thing “they were all over me about.”
Uri Geller’s teleportation claim
In the 1970s, Geller claimed he was walking on Fifth Avenue in New York City when he felt himself being pulled backward, and the next moment he crashed through the screen door of Puharich’s house in Ossining, roughly 50 miles away.
Super 8 footage exists of the damaged screen door and a shattered glass table, with Geller lying on the floor. He had a store receipt in his hand timestamped minutes earlier from a location 50 miles away.
Greg theorizes that Geller may have been used as a test subject for human teleportation experiments, though he cannot identify who “they” were.
Puharich’s 1974 bestselling book about Geller included this story and others (such as a pen teleported to a UFO and returned, and channeling tapes that dematerialized) — material so extraordinary that it completely discredited Puharich in the scientific community. Greg theorizes this may have been intentional: either Puharich was fed disinformation to include in the book so he would be dismissed as a kook, or the intelligence agencies wanted him neutralized as a credible voice.
ELF research and the house fire
In his later years, Puharich became obsessed with extremely low frequency (ELF) technology, which he believed the US and Russian governments were using for mass mind control.
ELF signals at certain frequencies can make populations tired, disoriented, trance-like (low frequencies) or agitated and aggressive (higher frequencies). The Russian ELF antenna array was described as the size of a football stadium.
Puharich could pick up ELF signals on his radio as a chopping sound, wrote a manuscript called Tesla’s Magnifying Transmitter and the ELF, and began lecturing publicly to warn people.
He also built a protective device — a watch-like gadget — that he claimed could shield individuals from ELF signals.
His house in Devotion, North Carolina, was burned down in a professional arson attack: both the front and back porches were doused with an unusual flammable liquid, blocking all escape routes. Three people were inside; one (Heidi, a Space Kid) had to jump from the second floor. The arson report noted the pour lines were perfectly straight, indicating a professional with steady hands.
Puharich was in California at the time; Andy had left just two days earlier. Most documents were saved because a fire alarm in the street alerted trucks quickly.
After the fire, Puharich fled to Mexico for several years, became deeply paranoid, and spent the rest of his life convinced the CIA was pursuing him.
Puharich’s death and the Jacobo Grinberg connection
Puharich died in 1995 at age 76 at the bottom of his stairs in Devotion, North Carolina, with a large head wound. The cause was never definitively determined — either a heart attack or a fall. Andy believes it was natural.
Jacobo Grinberg, a Mexican neurophysiologist who worked closely with Puharich on telepathy and ESP research, disappeared in January 1995 — less than a month before Puharich’s death — and has never been found. His case remains an open missing persons investigation.
The Stargate program (the government’s psychic espionage research) was also publicly disclosed in 1995, creating a cluster of events around that time that Greg finds suspicious, though he has found no direct evidence of foul play in Puharich’s death.
Psychedelics, the sacred mushroom, and consciousness research
Puharich’s interest in altered states began in the 1950s with Amanita muscaria (the sacred mushroom). After a psychic named Harry Stone channeled information about the mushroom’s consciousness-expanding properties while writing hieroglyphs, Puharich traveled to Mexico to film brujas using it in rituals.
He published The Sacred Mushroom: Key to the Door of Eternity in 1959 and experimented with applying the mushroom’s oil to the forehead to increase psychic receptivity.
He was also involved in early LSD research during his Army days and was close friends with John Lilly (the inventor of the sensory deprivation tank and dolphin communication researcher) and Aldous Huxley, who reportedly held Andy as a baby.
Psychedelics were not used in the Faraday cage channeling sessions, though marijuana use was common among visitors to Puharich’s home.
Nikola Tesla, free energy, and the pyramid research
Puharich was deeply influenced by Nikola Tesla’s work, particularly the magnifying transmitter, which became the basis for his ELF research.
He attempted to build a water-splitting device that would use his TD-100 technology to split water into hydrogen and oxygen using less energy than conventional electrolysis — essentially a free energy device. He claimed to have powered his RV with it, but Andy, who worked on the project, confirmed the calibrated university tests showed the results fell short of claims. Puharich had been exaggerating to maintain funding, a pattern Andy also observed in Tesla’s own pursuit of investment.
Puharich spent nights alone inside the Great Pyramid of Giza, where he recorded channeling sessions with a Space Kid in the King’s Chamber. He believed the pyramid acted as a massive Faraday cage, amplifying psychic receptivity. He also noted that the pyramid was originally covered in copper casing stones (since stolen) and was an early proponent of theories connecting pyramids worldwide.
The Montauk Project comparison
The Montauk Project — a conspiracy theory about a secret government facility on Long Island experimenting with psychic kids, teleportation, and time travel — was popularized by Preston Nichols and inspired Stranger Things.
Unlike the Montauk claims, which lack documented proof, Puharich’s Round Table Foundation was a real, documented facility where the Air Funded psychic research on children as far back as the 1950s, with contracts and records to prove it.
The Telepathy Tapes and modern psychic research
The Telepathy Tapes is a popular podcast about nonverbal autistic children who allegedly communicate telepathically with their parents — the parent sees an image or word, and the child types it on a tablet without any sensory access to the information.
Andy and Greg find some of the evidence compelling but share frustrations: the researchers refuse to allow stage magicians like Oz Pearlman (who claims he can replicate the feats) to observe, citing concerns about “energy in the room.”
Puharich’s first book was titled Beyond Telepathy, and he is referenced in the Telepathy Tapes as a foundational figure in the field.
The documentary: Mind Traveler
Greg directed a documentary called Mind Traveler about Andrija Puharich, released in summer 2025, available for rent or purchase on Amazon and iTunes.
The film took years to complete, partly because many Space Kids were difficult to locate and reluctant to speak publicly. Sharron was the most important person Greg could not reach.
Andy donated all of Puharich’s archives — tapes, documents, correspondence — to Northwestern University, where they are being made publicly accessible.
Puharich’s core philosophical belief, passed to Andy, was that consciousness is the fundamental substance of the universe — it creates matter, not the other way around — and that the soul is the part of us capable of psychic phenomena, imprisoned in the body but capable of extraordinary things when freed.
