Pat Price

Early Career and Introduction to Remote Viewing

Patrick Harold "Pat" Price (1918–1975) was a police commissioner for Burbank, California, before becoming one of the first and most successful remote viewers in U.S. government history. Price first encountered paranormal research through Scientology, where he met pioneering remote viewing researchers Hal Puthoff and Ingo Swann in the late 1960s. This chance meeting catalyzed his entry into classified intelligence work that would span over a decade.

After participating in early SCANATE experiments, Price formally joined the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) remote viewing program in the early 1970s. Unlike most remote viewers of that era, Price distinguished himself through an unusual ability: he could reportedly read numbers and text during remote viewing sessions, a capability that set him apart from peers like Joseph McMoneagle and Ingo Swann.

Intelligence Work and Soviet Facilities

Price's remote viewing sessions directly served CIA intelligence operations under handler Ken Kress. In June 1973, Price remote viewed a sensitive National Security Agency facility, producing detailed verbal and graphic descriptions that included overhead layouts, underground office configurations, and classified code-word labels found on file folders—details that matched classified intelligence the CIA already possessed. His sketches of Soviet missile facilities, including cranes and gantries, aligned with independent CIA photography and helped validate remote viewing as a viable intelligence-gathering technique.

These successes cemented remote viewing's credibility within the Defense Intelligence Agency and CIA, contributing to the broader Stargate Project that would formally organize psychic intelligence work through the 1980s.

UFO Bases and Extraterrestrial Claims

In 1973, Price walked into Hal Puthoff's office and submitted an informal document describing four underground bases allegedly established by extraterrestrials on Earth. This was not an official government assignment, but rather Price's independent remote viewing of what he believed to be extraterrestrial installations. The document detailed locations and functions of these bases, representing a unique intersection between classified remote viewing and UFO speculation. Price also believed that aliens had established bases on Mars and that he possessed unusual psychokinetic abilities, including the power to control weather and alter traffic signals through mental effort.

While his UFO bases claims were never validated or formally investigated by government agencies, they remain documented in historical records and have sparked ongoing debate about the intersection of government remote viewing programs and UAP research.

Mysterious Death and Legacy

On July 14, 1975, Pat Price died in a Stardust Hotel room in Las Vegas, Nevada, officially ruled a heart attack. However, the circumstances surrounding his death have remained controversial and disputed within remote viewing and UFO research communities. Price had a documented history of heart disease and unhealthy habits—Puthoff noted he smoked heavily and subsisted on Pop-Tarts and Coca-Cola—yet the abruptness of his death, coupled with the secretive nature of his intelligence work and his recent involvement in additional classified tasking, raised immediate suspicions. Some theorists have speculated about KGB involvement or assassination, though credible evidence for foul play remains absent.

Price's sudden removal from active work deprived the remote viewing program of its most consistently accurate viewer. He remains one of remote viewing's most enigmatic figures: simultaneously a validated intelligence asset whose government work confirmed psychic functioning, and a speculative voice on extraterrestrial bases whose claims have never been independently corroborated.