Psychic/Social Experiment in Elementary School?

Elementary school in 2nd grade (1990/91 or so), our class is instructed to attend some sort of "surprise assembly" in our gymnasium. The details were sparse, but the assembly was something to do with social skills. We were playing duck-duck-goose and other games of that nature. It was pretty fun.

Towards the end of this assembly, we are all instructed to sit in a large circle. We do so, and then a well-dressed black man with short dreadlocks and glasses walks into the gymnasium. He says some words, and then teaches us the classic game of "telephone" (where you whisper a message to the person next to you, and by the time the message is passed along the entire circle, it ends up being a completely different message.) I never really understood the significance of this game until later in life, but that's another topic (or is it?) We play this game, I can't remember what the message was, but we had some laughs at the end.

Afterwards, this man says: "I'll give $2 to anybody who can guess my name." I'm not sure how or why, but I immediately raised my hand and gave it a shot. Nobody else even had a chance to raise their hand. (Note I've never been the hand-raising type.) My first guess: "Dana." Apparently I was spot on and the man gave me the $2. I don't remember being particularly impressed, praised, or anything. I can't remember how I knew his name either. It's certainly possible I overheard it somehow, or it could've been a lucky guess, but I think his name was specifically kept hidden for what I'm now classifying as a social experiment. Maybe I just really wanted the money. After school, I told my parents about this - they didn't seem too interested in what had happened. I wasn't really interested either - not until later in life. But this event stuck in my mind until I was a young adult.

Fast forward to my teenage years. This is where it starts to get really weird (to the point of delusion). Sometimes, for reasons unknown to me, I'll encounter a complete stranger on the street and something happens to me. My mind goes completely blank and I enter this sort of "trance" which I'm powerless to stop. My vision gets blurry, almost like tunnel vision - the entire world goes blurry, except for this person's face (specifiically their eyes, eyebrows, nose, and mouth) - almost like their face is floating inches in front of their head. I'm drawn to this person, and somehow, I "know" this person. I know their name and I begin talking to them like I've known them my entire life. It's a extremely joyful event, like seeing an old friend with whom you've lost touch. Clearly this is disturbing to the stranger, who clearly doesn't know me but usually sticks around to figure out how I know them. It's exponentially more disturbing to myself (after the "episode" ends, anyway.)

This "trance" happens seemingly at random. I'll just be minding my business, and I'll glance at a person, usually in passing, and that's when it begins. I don't really see any pattern in it, other than the people being complete strangers. Additionally, I've noticed for a short time after one of these episodes (a few days to a week), I seem to have a sort of heightened "psychic" ability...I'm able to guess names, but not always accurately. I'll meet a new person, and I'm secretly thinking to myself..."this guy's name is X," and then that "guess" is usually confirmed as I'm introduced to the person. Eventually this "ability" fades out completely and I return to a normal state of mind.

Anyway, I always just chalked this up to my mind playing tricks on me. That was until last year when I recalled the initial "surprise assembly" from 2nd grade and began putting pieces together. At this point, I had forgotten the name I had originally guessed. It had stuck with me for the longest, but now I struggled hard to remember, but couldn't. Eventually I phone my mother, and asked her if she remembered me telling her about the $2 I had "won" in 2nd grade. She remembered, saying "Oh yea, his name was Dana."

This is where I start thinking: Dana is a fairly uncommon name for a man. In fact, I never really knew that Dana was used as a man's name until I was a young adult. There's no way, being 7-8 years old, that I would've just simply guessed that this man had a "feminine name (no offense.)

So I'm wondering, is it possible this man was testing my class for individuals with certain "abilities"? Was there any significance between my "lucky guess" and the game of telephone?

Does anybody remember anything like this from elementary school? Anybody else ever have "episodes" or "trances" like these?

Just curious. I'm pretty sure I'm sane, but that doesn't mean I'm not crazy.

i think you guessing his name right was a test of memory, possibly his name was mentioned beforehand and you don't remember..

As for telephone, that game is used for teaching kids to not always believe what you hear, gossip and hearsay are usually grossly inaccurate. you could either hear the message wrong, and pass it on wrong, or someone could decide to switch the word for fun.

I remember a time when I was in 5th grad, a guy came to our school for a surprise performance. He was in the library with a guitar, and asked everyone to suggest songs. When we said one he knew he would play it for a minute, never really finished a song that I remember. I don’t remember any sort of guess my name type of thing. But I would say the whole thing was just strange, no educational value what so ever.
oh yeah.. the whole spaced out face thing. that is a form of sezure, called petit mal.

we had somthing like this when i was in school but this was more about trust i think

the fella that held the assembley got a kid up and asked him to eat a tin of dog food and the kid ran and sat back down bt when one did eat it, it was choc moose...

Have you tried to access information in other situations? I mean deliberately. Like now, could you attempt to look at someone and gather info about them? Give it a try. You don't know me at all. Have a look.

We all have lots of abilities we just don't know about because we believe they are somehow supernatural or paranormal. They are not. We just simply have to tap them. We don't do it because it's "abnormal". Isn't it abnormal to have a skill or ability and not use it? Seems we're willing victims of our own fear. We must wonder why we would condone such a thing.

So go ahead and look. See what you can see. Post what you find here but send a u2u if you get anything personal, okay?

oh yeah.. the whole spaced out face thing. that is a form of sezure, called petit mal.

Symptoms of Simple Partial Seizures:

Symptoms may be motor, sensory, psychic (states of consciousness)...

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Psychic symptoms include the following:

Detachment, depersonalization
Dreamy state
Memory distortion: flashback, deja vu (feeling that one has seen something before), deja entendu (feeling that one has heard something before), jamais vu (feeling that one has never seen something that is familiar), jamais entendu (feeling that one has never heard something that is familiar), panoramic vision (rapid recall of past events)
Time distortion
Unprovoked emotion: fear, pleasure, displeasure, depression, anger, elation, eroticism

source

Maybe it could be a form of petit mal...?

It could explain you feeling as if you know the person and it being a pleasurable sensation as you described.

who knows, maybe epilepsy can really evoke pyschic ability/events for some...?

Not saying you are epileptic or that these trances you are having are even petit mals.. but, it's an interesting thought. Seizures are signals misfiring in the brain, so who knows what kind of altered consciousness could take place during.

First of all, just because the man said that you guessed his name right doesn't mean that you did. Maybe him telling you that you got his name right was a part of this "experiment."

Secondly, if this person wasn't a member of the school faculty then there is a good chance that it was an experiment of sorts.

It's funny, but I remember back when I was in the first or second grade (1972 or so) we played the telephone game as well. This was conducted by our Sunday school teacher though and it was a part of the lesson plan they had for that week. I guess my point is that when adults have a group of children do this sort of thing, there is larger purpose behind it other than just having some fun.

There was no stranger behind any of this, but in that same time frame, second or third grade, my brother and I used to ride our bicycles down a hill, across the street and into an alley that was the at end of the street that we lived on. There was a cross street at the end, and a row of large shrubbery on the right of our street to where you couldn't see traffic coming from the cross street. To say that we were tempting fate is an understatement.

One day, after a few weeks of that nonsense, my luck ran out and I got plowed down by an oncoming car. It was a residential neighborhood so he wasn't going that fast. He was going fast enough though, and I'll remember this 'till the day I die, to where I remember flying over the stop sign. I was looking down at the stop sign, and everything seemed like it was moving in slow motion. The bike was totaled and my arm was in a cast few a few weeks after that because that's what I landed on. I also remember that the car that hit me never stopped.

A few weeks after that my mom went in my room and told me there was a man outside who wanted to see me. I asked her who it was and she said she didn't know. I had never seen the man before, he was dressed in a suit and he asked me about 4 or 5 questions. I don't remember exactly how many or what type of questions they were but I remember that he wasn't there long. I also remember, for some reason, that the look on his face while he was asking me these questions was a mix of bewilderment and amusement.

I've asked my mom on a number of occasions who that man was and she always tells me that she didn't know. There are only two possibilities here: she either didn't know, or she knew and never told me. There is nothing good about either one of those. Those are the basics of one such, out of many, incidents like that which have happened to me in my lifetime. To go into more detail about more of them would be getting too personal and off topic. Let's just say that I've had my fair share of cheating death experiences and Deja Vu scenes in the past 46 years to keep my speculation juices flowing. My point is, that if you felt that you were a part of a social experiment and you feel that you were singled out because of something you did, go with those feelings.

There are things going on around us that concern us personally that we may not understand, have control of or maybe not even be aware of. But they are going on nonetheless. Growing up I always felt like a mushroom because I always got the feeling that I was being fed sh*t and kept in the dark. As I got older I started to realize that I'm not the only one. And I'm not just talking about political or religious stuff either. There's something bigger than that out here in the world but I haven't quite put my finger on it yet. It's kind of like that fleeting glimpse of something that you see out of the corner of your eye. You know it's there, you just don't know what it is.

This is a very good topic for this web site my friend, S and F for that. My advice to you is to keep questioning this sort of thing and keep talking about it on boards like this. I know personally, this is the only outlet I have for this sort of thing. Hopefully someday we'll find the answers to things like this. We'll be able to actually identify those fleeting glimpses.




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reply to post by OUNjahhryn

i think you guessing his name right was a test of memory, possibly his name was mentioned beforehand and you don't remember..

That's possible, but he specifically said "guess my name" rather than "remember my name." The time between him walking into the room and him asking this question couldn't have been more than 5 minutes - so I'm pretty sure we would've remembered his name had he mentioned it. The thought occurred to me that maybe his name was mentioned beforehand (in our classroom) so that one of us would overhear it. Could've been part of the "experiment."

As for telephone, that game is used for teaching kids to not always believe what you hear, gossip and hearsay are usually grossly inaccurate. you could either hear the message wrong, and pass it on wrong, or someone could decide to switch the word for fun.

Precisely. Something seems odd about this game in the context of this assembly. This is the first time we had ever played it in this school.

reply to post by CosmicEgg

Have you tried to access information in other situations? I mean deliberately. Like now, could you attempt to look at someone and gather info about them? Give it a try. You don't know me at all. Have a look.

It's hard to explain. I never really realized I was doing anything abnormal until early 2010. It was always a subconscious thing - sort of like when you know what song is going to play next on the radio (did you really know, or do you just want to believe that you knew?) Like I mentioned, it only "kicks in" for a short time after one of these "episodes." I could give it a try here on ATS next time it happens, which is maybe 5-6 times a year.

reply to post by deanGI5


Peitit Mal seems like an eerily accurate description. The only thing is that it doesn't seem like a seizure. I'm not like shaking or drooling or anything. It's more like I become a different person for a minute, almost like a hallucination, and then I snap out of it. During this "trance" I have no control over my words, and I'm unable to "let go" or "give up" - like I am forced to talk to this person. Very creepy.

Thanks for that info guys. I'm convinced there's definitely some link between these occurrences and epileptic conditions.

reply to post by Taupin Desciple

First of all, just because the man said that you guessed his name right doesn't mean that you did. Maybe him telling you that you got his name right was a part of this "experiment."

That's a possibility, but like I mentioned, why would I guess the name "Dana" and not "Mark" or "John" or a more masculine name? There has to be a reason why I chose "Dana," whether I overheard it or genuinely accessed his name somehow.

reply to post by xiphias


You're right, there's a reason. But the answer to that question is an answer to a question of the ages. Some people say that Dec. 21, 2012 will begin the age of awakening rather than one of mass destruction. Maybe that awakening will allow us to answer questions such as these.

One can only hope.

He didn't say guess my name right.. he just said guess my name. He may have paid you no matter what name you guessed, just so long as you guessed.