Report On E.S.P. by CBS Radio Workshop

Strange Tales (Old Time Radio)

This 1956 CBS Radio Workshop drama explores extrasensory perception through a series of historical anecdotes, scientific debates, and case studies ranging from

Key takeaways

• Water dowser Henry Gross accurately located a dry spring within one yard of its true distance (458 yards) using only a goldenrod branch and verbal questioning.
• Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) vividly dreamed of his brother Henry's death in a metal coffin with a single red rose, which matched the reality weeks later after a steamboat explosion.

Main topics

• Extrasensory Perception (ESP)
• Water Dowsing & Divining Rods

Notable quotes

"The day may be not far distant when science will establish the principles of extrasensory perception and its operation as firmly as the laws which govern nuclear fission."

Conclusion

The episode masterfully blends mid-century scientific inquiry with com

Transcript preview

Speaker 7 (0:00) Strange Tales! Speaker 6 (0:20) PublicRadio.com presents tales of the strange and bizarre, the weird and the wicked. Stories not necessarily of the supernatural, but of the unnatural. Speaker 6 (0:38) Now for Strange Tales, featuring radio drama at its most mysterious and unusual. Speaker 6 (0:51) Welcome back to Strange Tales, Weird Stories from the Golden Age of Radio, every Sunday at relicradio.com. If you'd like to help support this show, visit donate.relicradio.com or click on the support link in the show notes. Thanks to those who have, thanks for joining me today. We're going to hear from the CBS Radio Workshop this week, a series of 85 episodes that aired over CBS from January of 1956 to September of 1957. We'll hear the seventh episode from March 9th, 1956. It's titled Report on ESP, A Study in Clairvoyance, Telepathy, and Extrasensory Perception. Speaker 3 (1:42) Wavy lines. Square. Seven. Speaker 3 (1:48) Seven. Speaker 3 (1:50) free Speaker 1 (1:55) CBS Radio and its 217 affiliated stations present the CBS Radio Workshop, radio's distinguished series dedicated to man's imagination, the theater of the mind. Tonight, report on ESP, a study of clairvoyance, telepathy, and extrasensory perception taken from actual case records. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. John McIntyre. Extrasensory perception. Clarivoyance. Telepathy. Precognition. These are the laboratory words. But in everyday life, you and I are faced with a multitude of strange occurrences. Item. A man is about to board a certain airliner. Suddenly, on a hunch, he turns back to the ticket window and changes to another flight. An hour later, the plane he would have been on crashes into a mountainside. Item. A mother suddenly and unaccountably breaks into tears at the moment her son is killed a thousand miles away. Reason? Unknown. Unexplained. Speaker 3 (3:08) Today, Speaker 1 (3:09) modern scientists are delving deeper and deeper into these mysteries. In the science laboratory of a great university, a girl sits at a table and draws cards from an automatic shuffling machine. On the face of each card is one of five possible designs. A star, a circle, a cross, a square, three wavy lines. Without looking at the cards, the girl tries to identify the designs by mental impressions. By clairvoyance. At another table, a man watches dice tumble about in a revolving cage. The man calls out a number. Six. The dice are cast. The number is six. At still another table, an experimenter stares at a photograph of a tree and tries to project the mental image of this tree to an artist at a drawing board in the next room. Speaker 1 (4:03) These are only a few of the experiments by which modern science hopes to probe into these unexplained phenomena. to solve one of life's greatest riddles. Speaker 7 (4:16) Mr. McIntyre, may I interrupt for just a moment? Speaker 1 (4:19) Certainly. Speaker 7 (4:20) My name is Lawrence Dobkin, Mr. Dobkin. Now, it's my contention most of these things can be explained. Properly investigated with adequate controls, science can show a perfectly normal logical explanation for almost any of these so-called psychic phenomena. I see. Excuse me, Mr. McIntyre. I'm Russell Thorson, and I'd like to ask Mr. Dobkin a question. Go right ahead, Mr. Thorson. Mr. Dabkin, do you feel that science has been able to determine by what means certain men and women are able to consult a forked stick and discover water far underground? You mean a water dowser? Yes. Oh, that's a superstition that goes back to the Middle Ages. I believe it's more than a superstition. I believe it's extrasensory perception. Speaker 1 (5:02) Oh. Gentlemen, may I make a suggestion? Certainly, Mr. Dabkin. The workshop has included the case of a water dowser in tonight's report. For case number one, we have invited a gentleman who can give us an eyewitness account of how a water dowser works, Mr. Robert Ballard. Speaker 2 (5:20) To begin with, let me say that my experience is limited to the method used by one particular dowser, Mr. Henry Gross, game warden of Biddeford, Maine, probably the country's best-known dowser. Two books have been written about him by Kenneth Roberts, author of such bestsellers as Northwest Passage and Oliver Wiswell. As a result of reading of Mr. Roberts' books on Henry Gross, I decided to employ him to find water on my farm, which is just outside Manchester, Vermont. Shortly after I bought the farm, in the fall of 1954, the spring that supplied all my water suddenly went dry. Some of my neighbors said nothing could be done about it. Some said I should call in a geologist and try to drill a well. Instead, I got in touch with Kenneth Roberts and Mr. Henry Gross. I asked if Mr. Gross would be willing to come over from Maine and douse my farm. He said he would for a fee of $500 in expenses, and a day or so later, he drove up to my front door. He was a man of about 60, a little less than medium height, quiet, soft-spoken country gentleman. I invited him into the house for a cup of coffee, and Mr. Gross explained the conditions that I must agree to. Speaker 5 (6:33) Now, Mr. Ballin, if I tell you where to dig your well, you must dig right there at that spot, and not maybe off a few feet north or south. Yes, I understand that, Mr. Russell. And don't bring in one of those big bulldozers for the digging. Oh, the machine's too heavy. It makes the earth down so tight it could crush the veins and the water off in a new direction. Yes, I could see that I might. All right, we can get started. Speaker 2 (6:57) Most of my farm is on a hillside with a good deal of natural growth. As we walked along, Mr. Gross pulled up a goldenrod plant and bent it into the shape of a letter V. He took one fork of the branch in each hand and held the point directly in front of him in a horizontal position. He aimed slowly to the right and to the left. Suddenly, the branch dipped down. Speaker 5 (7:20) Huh? Yes, looks like your old spring, the one that dried out, is straight up the hill. I didn't tell you where it was, did I? Oh, didn't need to. That's where my rod says it is. That's why it dipped. Speaker 2 (7:32) In other words, if the rod points down, that indicates water? Speaker 5 (7:35) Hmm. Or if I'm asking the rod a question, a dip means yes. If it doesn't dip, that's no. Speaker 2 (7:42) Can the rod tell how near we are to the spring? Speaker 5 (7:45) I'll, uh, I'll ask it. Speaker 5 (7:48) How far away is the old spring? More than a hundred yards. Speaker 2 (7:52) We waited a moment, Speaker 5 (7:53) and then the rod Speaker 2 (7:55) dipped again. Speaker 5 (7:56) More than two hundred yards. Speaker 2 (7:58) Another pause. And another dip. Speaker 5 (8:03) This Speaker 2 (8:03) time