The mysterious discovery of LSD and the impact of psychedelics on parapsychology
A little over sixty years ago the Swiss chemist Dr Albert Hofmann, following a ‘peculiar presentiment’, broke strict laboratory protocol and went back and investigated an apparently medically-ineffective chemical he had created...
An entire generation of people became open to the possibility of untapped psychic powers and, ensuing from common experiences, the psychedelic counter-culture lifestyle simply promulgated the paranormal as something actually quite normal. Such pro-paranormal attitudes stimulated a keen interest in parapsychology, and other fringe sciences and esoteric branches of religion also blossomed at this time. California became a hub for boundary research and subsequently transpersonal psychology and ‘Silicon Valley’s’ computer industry launched themselves off the crest of this wave of expanded thought. However, the impact of LSD on parapsychology was much more immediate and direct than the later surge in alternative culture, and direct psi research had actually begun in earnest even before the movement of the 1960’s, built on a plethora of anecdotal reports of paranormal experiences amongst the earliest psychedelic researchers.