Did the CIA use psychics to locate the Ark of the Covenant, one of the world’s holiest objects, lost for thousands of years? The claim made in declassified documents has resurfaced recently, drawing attention online.
The Daily Mail recently reported on a CIA program to use people who claimed psychic abilities to locate the Ark of the Covenant, the chest described in the book of Exodus of the Old Testament of the Bible that contained the Ten Commandments God gave to Moses.
Finding the biblical ark containing the Ten Commandments
As detailed in the biblical account, the holy object was once housed within the temple that King Solomon built during his reign over the ancient kingdom of Israel, with only the high priest allowed to view the ark once per year during the Day of Atonement. The ark has been lost for thousands of years, with the circumstances of its disappearance or eventual fate uncertain. There have been numerous legends and speculations about its location, ranging from it being hidden in Ethiopia or somewhere in the Middle East to the fictional account that placed the object in a government warehouse after being recovered by Indiana Jones in the Raiders of the Lost Ark film.
A psychic claimed to find the ark through visions
According to CIA documents initially declassified in 2000, the agency employed purported psychics during the 1980s to conduct “remote viewings,” the use of extrasensory perception to find distant or hidden targets, The Daily Beast reported. One of these psychics claimed to have seen visions of the ark “somewhere in the Middle East” in the vicinity of Arabic-speaking individuals. According to this psychic viewer, the ark was hidden in an “underground, dark and wet” location, guarded by mysterious “entities,” with drawings of people and other creatures accompanying the report in the CIA files. Project Sun Streak, the program that used these psychics, was discontinued in 1995.
Social media reacts with interest and suspicion
The fact that this information is decades old did not stop it from becoming a trending topic on social media on Thursday. Some people naturally referenced Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Some saw the trending story about the ark as a distraction from current scandals, such as Trump officials’ accidental leak of secret military plans.
Even though the CIA did not recover the Ark of the Covenant based on these psychic reports, the story that the top U.S. spy agency used such unusual means fuels speculation and interest online. As the Trump administration continues to release previously secret information, from sharing files on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy to transmitting attack plans to journalists accidentally, such speculation will continue about what other secrets the government holds.
