As the old Mark Twain expression goes “Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.”
This week a story came out in a type written letter that back in 1988 the CIA assembled some people with special powers to locate things with their minds. Project Sunstreak assembled people gifted in abilities in psychoenergetics. Project Sunstreak was to use these people to do “remote viewing” to try to see where the Ark of the Covenant was so that it could be found. The CIA used 32 people for 90 minutes on December 5 of 1988.
Back in 1988 the CIA was on a mission to find the Ark of the Covenant as portrayed in the 1981 Indiana Jones movie “Raiders of the Lost Ark”. Given the timing of the release of this movie and the date on this CIA memo one was to wonder if this wasn’t an example of “Life imitating art.”
At the time of the movie, most of us just assumed the Ark of the Covenant was just a Bible story and myth. Some, like myself, figured that even if the Ark did once exist, it would be long gone now due to the passage of time unless an antiquities collector was in possession of it and keeping it hidden. But since then news of both the Shroud of Turin and Dead Sea Scrolls came out with both known to be authentic so perhaps the Ark of the Covenant is somewhere to be found, too!
The Ark of the Covenant is documented in the Bible book of Exodus where God instructed Moses to build the Ark during his 40-day stay upon Mount Sinai. Moses was said to be given the plans by God for the tabernacle and furnishings of the Ark. He was told it was to be made of shittim wood (also known as acacia wood). Moses instructed Bezalel and Aholiab to construct the Ark.
The Book of Exodus gives instructions how the Ark was to be constructed. It was to be 2+1⁄2 cubits in length, 1+1⁄2 cubits breadth, and 1+1⁄2 cubits height (131×79×79 cm or 52×31×31 in) of acacia wood. It was to then be gilded (gold plated) with a crown or molding around the top of it. Four rings of gold were to be attached at its four corners, two on each side, where through these rings gelded staves (rods) of shittim wood would be used to carry the Ark.
So what is in this Ark?
Legend holds that the Ark contains two stone tablets inscribed with the original Ten Commandments in God’s own handwriting, a pot the miraculous food God provided to the Israelites in the wilderness called manna, and Aaron’s rod which miraculously budded and blossomed as a symbol of the authority of the priesthood of the tribe of Levi.
So what is the significance of this Ark and its contents?
Again, legend holds that just the right person or people appointed by God are the only ones who will be allowed to open the Ark after it is found and only at the right moment in time. If these conditions are not met, those who either attempt to open it or destroy it trying to open it will suffer doom.
“CIA confirmed Ark of the Covenant’s existence using remote viewing, resurfaced declassified docs claim” – The Washington Post
CONCLUSION:
I really valued hearing from Jason Shurka on this episode of Redacted as this story sent chills down my spine.
You see on Sunday June 2, 1985 my son was getting baptized in our church at the very moment a 7 year old girl 2 towns, 8 miles, west of our town was kidnapped. Her name was Melissa Ackerman. She was not located until Tuesday June 18 when her deceased body was found in a farm drainage ditch about 30 miles west of where she was taken. She had been sexually assaulted before she was strangled to death. The perpetrator was captured, tried, and imprisoned thereafter.
So the reason why this story means so much to me is at the time I was a high school teacher and had inside information into both the search and conclusion of same by way of one of my students. To be blunt, in the game of Colder/Hotter, law enforcement was nowhere near finding the missing girl. But then a woman came forward to help law enforcement. She said she gladly would help, if she could. She asked for an article of Melissa’s clothing. She wanted something that she had worn that had not been laundered.
I was not present to witness this but my student said the psychic woman went into a trance and sat motionless for a moment clutching Melissa’s article of clothing up near her chest and when she came out of her trance she looked up at law enforcement and said something like, “You will find her body about 30 miles west of here in a drainage ditch in a field under some rocks.”
Law enforcement got a helicopter up in the air and found the body of the girl almost immediately and by accident. They saw the rocks in a ditch and assumed at first it was like a manmade dam for some agricultural purpose until they hovered closer and saw the body.
What was most interesting, to me, was this woman asked for no money but was given a reward for her time and service. Law enforcement never wanted this known and it was never reported by the media.
One of my other male students at the time asked the critical thinking question, “How do the cops know she (the psychic) wasn’t in on it?” It turned out this woman came with a long resume of having helped out other law enforcement agencies in closing their cases all around the nation. She had no connection to the perpetrator.
I asked my student if she could ask the psychic why she doesn’t use her power to win the lottery or something like that. She did this for me and was told that this woman felt to do so would result in the loss of her powers and she valued her powers more than materialism.
I also later found out that law enforcement uses these people all the time but do not talk about it as, to them, it is akin to talking about sightings of UFOs or Big Foot.
From Google AI and Wikipedia:
“A psychic detective is a person who purports to investigate crimes using paranormal psychic abilities. Claimed techniques and abilities have included post-cognition (paranormal perception of the past), psychometry (information psychically gained from objects), telepathy, dowsing, clairvoyance, and remote viewing.”
This story about the CIA looking for the Ark of the Covenant is not just possible, it is plausible.
© 2025 by Mark S. Schwendau
