The Atticus Institute

Good.

My dad had three kids.

Me, my sister, and the institute.

That's just the way it was.

You knew that if you had a baseball game or,

I don't know,

some sort of special event,

there was always a good chance

he might not be there.

I mean, don't get me wrong,

he was there a good amount of the time.

Just not all the time.

I remember I tried to trick him

into thinking I had ESP.

Or that I was moving stuff

around with my mind,

hoping it might get him to pay

a little more attention.

And he'd play along

for a few minutes, but...

then he'd leave for work.

I was four... when it happened.

So I don't have too many memories

of my father.

I kinda remember

what it felt like to be with him.

Talking with me, holding me.

One thing I've always remembered

is this game we used to play

on nights when he'd put me to bed.

He'd ask all these questions

about animals.

How many eyes does a fish have?

And I'd say, "Two."

How many noses does a monkey have?

How many ears does a gopher have?

That's really all there was to it.

I remember thinking it was fun.

We got married in 1965.

I wanted children right away,

but Henry wanted to wait.

'Cause it was about that time

that he was starting the institute.

And then he had a different

research lab job

at the same time so we could make rent.

He worked a lot.

Even after we had both kids.

But he loved it.

You know?

A man has the right to love his work.

Our goal was to conduct unbiased,

empirical research

on exceptional human abilities.

Psychokinesis, ESP, precognition.

Things that are typically considered

fringe science or parapsychology.

Dr. West, and the rest of us,

quite frankly,

all believed that there was real science

to be discovered in these areas.

We had a good time doing

what we were doing.

We were underfunded, of course,

but we were still relatively young,

so it didn't matter.

In the first few years alone,

we published close

to 30 journal articles between us.

And there were some

truly exceptional cases.

All documented.

Well, we did a lot of different

kinds of tests, but...

probably the most effective one

to measure clairvoyant abilities

were the Zener cards.

This one?

It's the lines. The wavy lines.

Well, if you select each card at random,

then the success ratio

will be close to 20%.

But we had several subjects

whose ratio was closer to 30%.

And that might not seem like very much,

but if you realize that we

did each test over 200 times,

you begin to understand

the virtual impossibility of that figure.

I think we were all secretly

hoping to discover the next Nina Kulagina.

She was a woman

from the former Soviet Union.

Truly remarkable.

Nina's psychokinetic abilities were

probably the most well-documented

and they stood up

to the strictest of scrutiny.

The closest we encountered

to that level was Norman LeClair.

French-Canadian man.

Norman's PK abilities

were astounding at times.

That's how it works. Pretty simple?

Yeah.

Try to vibrate the game board.

It's all right. Take your time.

That's all right. You gave it your best shot.

We can try again later.

Dr. West brought in colleagues,

some well-known and esteemed

researchers at the time,

to observe Norman.

All the necessary steps were taken

to prevent any claims of researcher bias

or improper testing methods.

All outside variables were controlled,

for this was to be the moment the snickering,

the talking behind hands

would finally stop.

This was proof.

- God, I can't believe that.

- Explain that.

- As we said.

- How do you explain that one?

How do you explain that?

- What do you guys think?

- Oh, my God.

Oh, they were clearly impressed.

Even though, I'd have to say,

they didn't really allow themselves

to show it.

I was happy. I was happy for Henry.

He had worked so hard for that moment.

But then, just before

the researchers left...

one of them noticed something odd

on the wristwatch

of one of our research assistants.

And it turned out that this watch

had been rigged with a small

neodymium magnet.

And every one of our tests

involved metal in some capacity.

Even the trace amounts of iron

in the cereal.

And this guy had been complicit

with Norman's ruse right from the start.

Right under our noses. It was...

it was a crushing blow.

For the institute's credibility

and for Henry's reputation.

It was... it was awful.

Is there...

something else we should know about?

Judith? With you?

It's like...

it's like being in a well sometimes.

I can see it, I can hear it,

but nobody knows I'm there.

I'd... I'd like to help you.

Whatever is going on.

Judith was first brought

to the institute

in September of 1976 by her sister...

sister Margaret. She had been reading

about the work we were doing

in a small magazine or something.

And she thought we would be interested

in testing Judith.

The first thing she did

when she walked in

was she told me it was my birthday.

Which caught me a bit off guard.

Not because it was my birthday.

It wasn't, it was the day before.

Maybe it was a guess.

You see, that's something you always have

to guard against with the work we did.

Lucky guesses. False positives.

If you let yourself fall victim

to a belief bias of any kind,

that's when you start forcing

the pieces together.

Even when they don't fit at all.

Judith...

she seemed average.

She's in her early 40s.

Can't say there's anything particularly

remarkable about her appearance.

She was kind of the type of person that you

would pass by on the street in any town.

You might say hello, smile,

but that's about it.

You would have no idea

that Judith was what she was.

I was older than her by seven years.

She was a silly kid.

And we had a lot of fun.

There was one day, she was around 35,

she slipped on a patch of ice

on the sidewalk

and hurt her back pretty badly.

And after that,

she had a little trouble moving,

and getting around.

And her pain was consistent.

It was chronic.

It was enough

that my husband and I decided

that she shouldn't be

living alone anymore.

So she moved in with us and the kids.

About a year after Judith moved in,

she began to withdraw.

I mean, she would stay

in her room for days.

I'm not sure she would even eat.

I don't know what she did

when she was alone.

She was reading some very unusual books.

And that's when it all started.

And I knew things weren't right.

There were things...

there were things that I saw her do

that I just...

I had to do something.

And to this day, part of me still regrets

doing what I did, but I had to.

But Dr. West was intrigued with Judith

almost immediately. We all were.

By this point, we'd researched

hundreds of cases,

brought in almost as many

subjects into the lab.

Judith was different, though.

We just had no idea

how different at this point.

Can you tell us your name, please?

- Judith Winstead.

- And what's your date of birth, Judith?

February 18th, 1935.

And your marital status?

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