A Filmed Experiment on Telephone Telepathy with the Nolan Sisters
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Plain English Summary
Ever wonder if you just *know* who's calling before you pick up? Researchers put that feeling to the test with a twist — their subjects were the Nolan Sisters, a famous 1980s British pop group, filmed for a TV documentary. Colleen Nolan sat alone in a hotel room about a kilometer from her four sisters in a bar. A casino-quality die randomly picked which sister would call on a landline with no caller ID, and Colleen had to guess who was ringing before answering. She nailed it 6 out of 12 times — a 50% hit rate when luck gives you just 25%. That's statistically significant. Even after removing two trials where she picked up too quickly, she still hit 50%. A fun detail: her favorite sister Linda was identified every time (2 for 2), while her one skeptical sister scored lowest (1 of 4, 25%). Both locations were filmed on time-coded video throughout, and tapes were reviewed by an independent observer who wasn't present during testing — a strong safeguard against cheating. The researchers ruled out hidden phones, timing patterns, and sensory leakage. This replicates a pattern from over 850 earlier trials where people guessed correctly about 42% of the time, well above the 25% chance rate. The sisters' deep emotional bonds add nice real-world credibility.
Abstract
The ability of people to guess who is calling on the telephone has recently been tested experimentally in more than 850 trials. The results were positive and hugely significant statistically. Participants had four potential callers in distant locations. At the beginning of each trial, remote from the participant, the experimenter randomly selected one of the callers by the throw of a die, and asked the chosen caller to ring the participant. When the phone rang, the participant guessed who the caller was before picking up the receiver. By chance, about 25% of the guesses would have been correct. In fact, on average 42% were correct. The present experiment was an attempt to replicate previous tests, and was filmed for television. The participant and her callers were all sisters, formerly members of the Nolan Sisters band, popular in Britain in the 1980s. We conducted 12 trials in which the participant and her callers were 1 km apart. Six out of 12 guesses (50%) were correct. The results were significant at the p=0.05 level.
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📋 Cite this paper
Sheldrake, Rupert, Godwin, Hugo, Rockell, Simon (2004). A Filmed Experiment on Telephone Telepathy with the Nolan Sisters. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research.
@article{sheldrake_2004_nolan_telephone,
title = {A Filmed Experiment on Telephone Telepathy with the Nolan Sisters},
author = {Sheldrake, Rupert and Godwin, Hugo and Rockell, Simon},
year = {2004},
journal = {Journal of the Society for Psychical Research},
}