The Sense of Being Stared At: Fictional, Physical, Perceptual, or Attentional/Intentional

According to a well-known adage of folk psychology, “where there is smoke, there is fire.” In his two-part contribution to this symposium on “the sense of being stared at,” Rupert Sheldrake examines some of the smoke (fictional allusions, anecdotal observations and reports, and the persisting lore) surrounding this alleged phenomenon and attempts to determine whether such smoke might indeed be accompanied by some actual fire (valid and reliable evidence for the existence of the staring phenomenon). In this effort, he provides an extensive and inclusive account of his own research findings and those of other investigators.