#36 11/03/14

     Stories about how people somehow know when they are being watched have been going around for years. However, few attempts have been made to investigate the phenomenon scientifically. Now, with the completion of the largest ever study of the so-called staring effect. There is impressive evidence that this is a recognizable and genuine sixth sense. The study involved hundreds of children. For the experiments, they sat with their eyes covered and with their backs to other children, who were told to either stare at them or look away. The results consistently showed that the children who could not see were able to tell when they were being stared at. In a total of 18,000 trials carried out worldwide, the children correctly sensed when they were being watched almost 70% of the time. The experiment was repeated with the added precaution of putting the children who were being watched outside the room, separated from the starers by the windows. This was done just in case there was some cheating going on, with the children telling each other whether they were looking or not. This prevented the possibility of sounds being transmitted between the children. The results, though less impressive, were more or less the same. Dr. Sheldrake, the biologist who designed the study, believes that the results are convincing enough to find out through further experiments precisely how the staring effect might actually come about.