He Cracked Reality: Ingo Swann, Project Stargate, and the…

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He Cracked Reality: Ingo Swann, Project Stargate, and the CIA’s Psychic Gamble

In the shadowy landscape where fringe science meets espionage, Ingo Swann’s story seems too wild for fiction. In the early 1970s, Swann—an artist and self-described psychic—impressed parapsychologists and intrigued the…

November 14, 2025 • 3 min read • Art Grindstone

Art Grindstone is the hard-nosed storyteller behind Unexplained.co, a veteran investigator whose life’s work sits at the crossroads of the paranormal, fringe science, and the shadows most people try not to look into. With decades spent chasing impossible stories — black-budget psychic programs, vanished Cold War experiments, desert rituals that sparked UFO waves, and the strange phenomena buried in America’s forgotten backroads — Art brings a rare combination of skepticism, awe, and journalistic precision. He’s not here to debunk. He’s not here to blindly believe. He follows the evidence wherever it leads — even when it leads someplace deeply uncomfortable. Known for his immersive, cinematic style and his ability to turn obscure research into gripping narrative, Art has built a devoted following across podcasts, long-form features, documentaries, and serialized investigations. His interviews are direct. His analysis is unflinching. His voice has become a staple in the modern paranormal renaissance — the guy people turn to when a story is too strange, too complex, or too dangerous for anyone else to touch. Off-mic, Art works with a distributed network of researchers, archivists, and field operatives who help surface the stories mainstream media ignores. On-mic, he transforms their findings into meticulous, high-impact reporting that refuses to insult the intelligence of true believers. His philosophy is simple: Take the phenomenon seriously. Treat the audience with respect. Tell the story as if the world depends on it — because sometimes it does. When Art Grindstone digs into a case, he isn’t just chasing a mystery. He’s tracing the fault lines of reality itself.

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In the shadowy landscape where fringe science meets espionage, Ingo Swann’s story seems too wild for fiction. In the early 1970s, Swann—an artist and self-described psychic—impressed parapsychologists and intrigued the intelligence community. He claimed an extraordinary ability: “remote view,” perceiving distant or hidden locations without sensory input. By 1972, Swann was bending reality under CIA scrutiny in shielded labs, prompting intelligence officials to wonder: could psychic spying be weaponized?

From Mind-Bending Feats to Top Secret: The Launch of Project Stargate

Despite skepticism, Swann authored bizarre lab moments. An archival report from Popular Mechanics details how Swann disrupted magnetic fields in a sealed underground container through mere intention—an outcome that amazed both observers and CIA scientists. The agency soon formalized research on psychic phenomena, creating what became known as Project Stargate. This program blended shadowy codewords and governmental games, uniting Army, DIA, and CIA resources to explore potential mind-over-matter intelligence collection.

The Cold War’s panic over alleged Soviet parapsychology breakthroughs fueled a frantic effort to test and train remote viewers, with Swann defining the protocols. As biographical records recount, project supporters praised Swann’s accuracy as high as 95 percent—though critics accused them of cherry-picking data. His remote-viewing descriptors—like those describing rings on Jupiter before NASA’s Pioneer 10 flyby confirmed them—ignited awe and skepticism in equal measure.

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Declassified Files: Inside the CIA’s Experiments with Nonlocal Perception

The declassification of millions of CIA files on Project Stargate—chronicled by CNET—revealed not only Swann’s exploits but also the extent of U.S. government investment in ‘reality manipulation’ research. Conducted over decades, Stargate included everything from missing person hunts to battlefield surveillance, with 26,000 remote viewing sessions reportedly performed by 227 individuals before its 1995 termination. While the CIA eventually deemed the project a failure for actionable intelligence, some evaluations—like the American Institutes for Research review—acknowledged statistically significant “above chance” results, but noted ambiguity and lack of operational utility hampered practical use.