Altered Children

When the fall semester started in September 2022, University of Washington Psychology Professor Dennis Murphy began a research project to correlate intelligence, creative talents and paranormal abilities among the general population. He assigned his graduate assistant Ramaraju Gupta to the project. Rama, to his friends and associates, had a brilliant mind and was preparing to defend his doctoral dissertation in psychology.

Dr. Murphy was a good teacher who did his best to be fair and flexible. Well liked and respected, his students frequently volunteered to assist him with experiments and filled his classrooms. He’d cut his undergraduate teaching schedule for the current semester so he could concentrate on his graduate students and research.

On this wintry Monday afternoon, November fourteenth, Dennis Murphy was at his office desk at the UW campus revising the mid-term tests for his one undergraduate psychology class. The clamorous ring of the telephone jolted him away from his deliberations. Another interruption! he thought with a deep sigh It was his research assistant.

“I’ve been reviewing the feedback from our website,” Rama said. “Over the last two months, we’ve been receiving some unusual queries about parapsychology and paranormal abilities. Lately, a greater number than at any time since we set up the website.”

“Have they been filling out the questionnaire as well?”

“For the most part, yes. I already added them to our database. However, I think you’ll find a number of these new responses quite interesting. They’re different than the majority of the ones submitted.”

Rama waited while Dr. Murphy brought up their website on his PC and logged in. He skimmed some of the recent comments and queries they had received. They‘d created the website to attract and identify people who either had been or were now child prodigies, were highly intelligent, or who believed they had paranormal abilities.

The professor planned to contact the most promising candidates, or their parents if they were minors, for follow-up interviews. The website also provided information and links to other sites where people could get additional information.

Rama continued. “Some of the oddest responses are from children around four years old or their parents, and other responses are from clinicians and physicians who’re treating these children or children like them.”

After arranging to review the material together later in his office, Dennis Murphy leaned back and put his feet up on his desk, closing his eyes. This project is becoming much more interesting. Four-year-old children. I wonder what that means.

Rama arrived just before three o’clock, wearing blue denim trousers and a University of Washington sweatshirt with a Huskies’ emblem. His parents had emigrated from Delhi, India when he was three years old. This gangly, dark-skinned young Hindu with a square face below a head of black hair and bushy eyebrows over dark eyes had become a citizen as soon as he graduated from high school.

Rama’s appearance was a sharp contrast to round-faced Dennis Murphy’s fair complexion, red hair, and solid frame wrapped in a casual brown sport suit and plain yellow shirt typical of his style.

They sat at a table in the corner and pushed aside several neatly stacked folders and pages of research notes spread across its surface. Rama logged onto their research database. They scrolled through the questionnaires and e-mails they’d received through the website. Rama twirled a pencil between his fingers.

Rama put his pencil on the desk. “I’m going to stop here. I particularly wanted to show you this questionnaire. It’s from the parents of two four-year-old children in Rabat, Morocco. They claim their children have genuine telepathic ability, particularly with each other. They also say the boy is strongly psychokinetic.”

Dr. Murphy sighed. “You know, these types of claims invariably turn out to be false or highly exaggerated.”

“Yes. But what makes this even more interesting is the e-mail we received from a Dr. Ben Nafi concerning those same children. He confirms what the parents say.” Rama leaned back and crossed his arms.

“Umm . . . name sounds familiar, but I can’t place it,” Dr. Murphy commented.

Rama handed Dennis Murphy a piece of paper. “Here’s a short bio. He’s chairman of the Psychology Department at the Mohammed V University in Rabat and has published the three books listed in the bio.”

“Okay, I remember seeing this one,” The professor tapped his finger on one of the books in the list. “It’s coming back to me. Ben Nafi’s done good work on early childhood development.” He sat back and stared out the window for a few moments, his brow furrowed with concentration. “Let’s tag his e-mail so I can reply to him. What’s next?”

Engrossed in their work, they hardly noticed the time until the bell in the clock tower struck five. Darkness slithered through the window and shadows crept across the desk. They turned on more lights and continued to review the responses. They had tagged for follow-up almost two dozen completed questionnaires and e-mails when they came across one of a surprising number of questionnaires from children.

“I’ll be damned!” Dr. Murphy declared, tugging on his left earlobe. “Here’s a new one that came in Saturday. It’s from identical twins claiming telepathic abilities. They added comments regarding their dreams of being examined by doctors in space. Extraordinary! It’s the sixth—or maybe the seventh—we’ve seen today describing similar dreams. Tag this one too. They provided an e-mail address and said they live in Port Townsend, but gave no further contact information.”

Rama took a big sip of coffee and brushed back his hair. “And look at their ages, four years old like the others. Since they’re located not far from here, we might be able to arrange a meeting with them and their parents.”

“They are cautious about identifying themselves,” Dennis Murphy observed. “It’s quite mature for four-year-olds.”

Rama opened the file he’d created from the database program. “Check this graph. Covers the period from the start of our site on September 17 through last Saturday. In those eight weeks, the number of hits per week has gone up steadily. You can see from the two lines here, the number of unusual responses we’ve received dealing with four-year-old children has increased at a much faster rate than other responses.”

Dr. Murphy took over the mouse and put the cursor at the end point of a line on the graph and five numbers displayed above the line. “Let’s see . . .” He pointed to the top number. “This says we’ve received a total of 478 responses. I know the next one is the average weekly response rate. What are those bottom three numbers?”

“I added counts of the responses by children, parents and clinicians—whether physicians, psychologists or whatever.” Rama regained the mouse and moved the cursor to the end of another line and two different numbers displayed. “This line represents the normal, expected kind of responses. They total 266. Looks like they should be growing at a steady twenty to twenty-five per week, after an initial burst.”

Rama moved the cursor again. “I’ve gone through 212 responses—quite strange responses. What’s notable is they’ve increased at an accelerating rate each week, especially the last few weeks. Our website has aroused uncommon interest.”

Dennis Murphy sat back and turned toward his research assistant. “Rama, there’s a definite pattern here, and we need to find out more as soon as possible.”

“Some of these responses are incredible—hard to believe,” Rama added, twirling the pencil in his fingers again. “We’d better check the credentials of each of those clinicians before we contact them, don’t you think?”

“That would be prudent,” Dr. Murphy agreed. “But something definitely seems to be going on. What we’ve seen this afternoon confirms what you told me on the phone this morning. It looks like the unusual group we tagged all involve children around four years old. Do you know how many more there are like these?”

Rama ran a count of the responses they’d received so far. “We’ve reviewed roughly two-thirds of them. If I make an educated guess, . . . I’d say there might be another forty to sixty through today.”

Dr. Murphy pulled on his earlobe, got up and paced for a while. “You know, Rama, I think the focus of this project just changed!”