Archaeology can be frustratingly hit or miss — years of tedious digging can lead to nothing. Many discoveries occur during construction excavation, road building, and recently, by drone photography that reveals soil and vegetation disruption over ancient sites.

While most academic archaeologists dismiss psychic research methods for locating ancient objects and sites, others use them with great success, pinpointing exact locations for excavation. Below are examples of successful automatic writing, psychometry, and remote viewing in archaeological research.

Frederick Bligh Bond

Frederick Bligh Bond was a 19th-century British architect, archaeologist, and illustrator. The son of an Anglican minister, Bond was also a member of the London-based Society for Psychical Research (SPR), dedicated to understanding paranormal phenomena such as telepathy and ghosts.

Bond designed school and university buildings, a hospital, and once, a pub, over time becoming the U.K.’s foremost expert in church architecture and restoration. He was also fascinated with gematria, a Kabbalistic system based on the esoteric numerical value of Hebrew letters and words. By applying gematria to measurements of medieval religious structures, Bond discovered sacred symbolism designed into ancient churches, chapels, and abbeys, even if they were little more than ruins.

Bond’s Glastonbury Edgar Chapel Discovery

Glastonbury, in Somerset, is home to the ruins of a magnificent seventh-century abbey. Archaeological investigations show the area had been used or inhabited by occupying Romans and Saxons. While the site has a significant place in church history, it is also connected to Arthurian legends and is said to be the site of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere’s tombs.

The Anglican Church invited Bond, with his deep knowledge of church restoration, to direct archaeological digs at Glastonbury in 1908 — thus began the paranormal field of psychic archaeology in modern times. By combining his two passions, ancient religious sites and psychic exploration, Bond invented the controversial discipline, much to the dismay of academics and scientific method-based archaeologists.

Bond and his friend John Bartlett, another SPR member, devised a plan — to attempt to make contact with long-dead abbey residents via automatic writing. Glastonbury, the supposed site of the mythic Avalon, held other mysteries.

After his crucifixion, the gospels state that Christ’s body was entombed by his disciple Joseph of Arimathea. A wealthy man, Joseph had kept his devotion to his teacher hidden from authorities. Centuries later, legends placing him in the midst of Arthurian grail legends and Glastonbury history emerged. Some believed Joseph accompanied Mary Magdalene, said to be Jesus’s widow, and their child Judah, to the British Isles. Those legends continue to swirl around Glastonbury to this day.

Bond wanted to find evidence of the lost Edgar Chapel, founded by Joseph of Arimathea, on the site of the abbey ruins. In November 1907, he and Bartlett, using the automatic writing method, stated the question, “Can you tell us anything about Glastonbury?” They had no idea who might respond, but an answer came back; “All knowledge is eternal and available to mental sympathy.”

Many sittings and conversations later, Bond and Bartlett had coordinates for where to dig for the chapel foundation. In fact, there was a building foundation precisely where Bond directed workers to dig.

Eventually, Bond’s methods and discovery exploded into a maelstrom of controversy; church and academic communities turned their collective attention on debunking and denying the truth of Bond’s discovery. Blasting Bond for employing “pseudoscience,” the facts of the discovery were overlooked in favor of campaigning to discredit Bond and his methods.