Remote viewing · 12 MIN READ · 8 SOURCE QUOTES
The 1984 Mars session
The Mars session is a remote-viewing transcript dated May 22, 1984, later released through the CIA's reading room. The target was a 3x5 card in a sealed envelope reading, in effect, the planet Mars at about one million years B.C. During the session a monitor read out a series of map coordinates, and the subject described what he perceived at each. The document names no one: the participants appear only as monitor and subject.
What the subject describes is why the session spread so widely online. He reports a huge pyramid-like form in a depression and a great dust storm or geological disaster; before it, smooth flat surfaces, megalithic walls and faint shadows of very tall, thin people; carved canyons, a road ending at a tall obelisk-like marker, channels and basins; and finally pyramids used as shelters from storms, where very tall, thin, ancient people waited out a dying world. A group leaves in a rounded metal vessel for a volatile place of volcanoes, gas pockets and vegetation.
Joe McMoneagle, the Army's Remote Viewer 001, says he was the viewer and that the session took place in Robert Monroe's laboratory during his long weekends there, when Defense Department visitors arrived with the envelope. He tells a vivid story about it and says he later saw photographs of the coordinates that matched what he described. He also says he hates targets like this, because without feedback no one can tell real perception from invention. That is the right frame for the whole session.
A May 1984 remote-viewing transcript targeting Mars a million years ago: pyramids, storm shelters, tall dying people, and no way to check it.
Key points
What the document records
The header gives the method as a sealed envelope coupled with geographic coordinates. It says the envelope was handed to the subject just before the session and not opened until afterward, that the card inside named the planet Mars and a time of about one million years B.C., and that the coordinates were given verbally during the session. The transcript ends with the monitor bringing the subject back to the room on May 22, 1984, and a note that monitor comments marked with an asterisk were recorded but not heard by the subject.
First impressions: a pyramid and a disaster
At the first coordinates the subject describes a tall pyramid-like form standing in a large depressed area, and then something like a huge dust storm or geological catastrophe. Sent back to a time before the disaster, he reports smooth, flat surfaces, very large megalithic walls and the faint shadows of very tall, thin people. The monitor keeps the subject anchored to the coordinates and the time in the envelope throughout.
Canyons, roads and an obelisk
Later coordinates bring more architecture. The subject describes a deep canyon with carved walls and huge room-like structures, the end of a large road marked by a tall obelisk-like shape, a huge ringed circular basin with ragged mountains around it, squares set flush with the ground and something white and reflective, intersecting roads or channels radiating outward, and rounded aqueduct-like channels with pointed tops showing on a misty horizon.
The storm shelters and the people
The best-known passage comes at the last coordinates. The subject describes pyramids used as shelters from storms, with sparsely furnished chambers where people seem to sleep through the bad weather. The people are very tall and thin, ancient, dressed in light fitted clothing, and dying. He reports that a group had left to find a new home, and the monitor asks him to follow it.
A vessel and a new home
Following the departing group, the subject describes a rounded metal vessel and a destination that sounds hostile: volcanoes, pockets of gas and vegetation. Then the monitor brings him back. In later interviews the session is often summarized as a dying civilization sending survivors elsewhere, but the transcript itself is a sequence of short impressions prompted by coordinates and questions.
McMoneagle's account: woken in the black box
McMoneagle says the session happened in Monroe's lab, where the Army had sent him to shorten his cool-down between targets and learn to control his spontaneous out-of-body experiences. After a long day of 15-hour work he was napping in the black box when he was woken: visitors from the Defense Department had brought a target in an envelope and a list of coordinates. He assumed it was an ordinary Earth target, and his first impression was a pyramid big enough to hold three of Egypt's Great Pyramid.
Hibernation chambers and a source that answered
McMoneagle describes the chambers as places where people were put into an altered state and stored, hoping to survive long enough for someone to find them. Asked in a 2025 interview about interacting with the people, he says it felt less like talking to people than querying a technology they had built, which told him why they no longer existed and that he had come too late. His sense was that none of them existed anymore, like a hologram imprinted on his mind.
How he says he learned the target
In his retelling, partway through he said he was seeing people in the past who were like us but very different, and the monitor said he did not know where the target was. Someone pointed to the envelope, which was folded in a shirt pocket, and McMoneagle tore the end off and read "Mars 1 million BC." His first reaction, he says, was dislike: like UFO targets, a target with no feedback cannot be judged.
The photographs from JPL
McMoneagle says that once he knew the target was Mars, he decided he had to see the pictures. Someone had suggested the targets came from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, so on a later trip to California he took the card with the coordinates to JPL and asked for copies of the original negatives. He says the clerk glanced at the card, called it the old city on Mars and handed him a packet, and that he saw what he had described. Asked in 2021 whether his Mars work influenced missions, he said only that those areas are too hazardous for landers.
In their own words
Quotes are checked word for word against the recordings and documents they come from. Bracketed words correct transcription errors; “…” marks an omission.
“He woke me up and he said, "I have some people here from DoD. They've given me a target [in] an envelope. It's in my shirt pocket, and I have a list of GPS coordinates." My first assumption is GPS, it's [a] normal target. So he gives me the first target, and it was a, a pyramid. Really huge pyramid in comparison to the big pyramid in Egypt. You could put three of them inside this puppy …”
“It's got some kind of chambers that people are trying to survive in by being put in an altered state and stored, like, in case they can exist long enough for somebody to find them. Hibernation chambers of some kind.”
“I'm in the past somewhere, and I'm seeing some people, and they're like us but much different. And, and he says, "I don't know where this is." And he, he, he was surprised. I was surprised. I don't know where this is. So one of the people said, "It's on the, it's in the envelope." Oh, and he, oh, the envelope in my pocket. So he had it in his shirt pocket, folded over. So he, he didn't open it. He [handed] it to me, and I ripped the end off and pulled out a sheet of paper, and it said Mars, 1 million BC.”
“Now I got to tell you, I hate, I hate these targets. They're like UFO targets. I don't like UFO targets because how am I going to know whether I got something valid or invented it? You can't tell unless you have some form of feedback.”
“My sense of it was that they had some kind of a technology where you could interrogate it and it would give you answers. It would tell you why they're not existing anymore, that you came too late, that, that kind of thing. I was, I was getting some kind of information in a way that didn't feel like it was coming from people. It felt like it was coming from a source that they had engineered in some way. So my sense of it was that none of them existed, that they, they were just like a hologram of some kind imprinted on my mind.”
“When I, when I found out the target was Mars, I thought about it a long time, and I thought, I have to get the pictures. I have to see whether or not what I described is real or not real.”
“So I drove over to JPL, and I went in the room where they have all the photographs and stuff, and I said, he said, "How can I help you?" The guy at the desk. I said, "I'm looking for pictures of these coordinates, and I want the original, I want copies of the original negatives." And he just looked at the card and he said, "Oh, that's the old, the old city on Mars."”
“To land something in those areas is extremely hazardous because of the chunks of rocks and the many, many different things there that are hazardous to landing something. And so their preference is not to go to these places, because their lander won't make it.”
Important things to consider
There is nothing to score it against
An ordinary remote-viewing target is a real place or object that can be photographed and compared with the transcript, ideally by a blind judge. Mars a million years ago offers no such check. The transcript shows what the subject reported, not whether it was right, and McMoneagle says exactly this about targets without feedback.
The header and the retelling differ on the envelope
The 1984 header says the envelope was given to the subject before the session and not opened until afterward. McMoneagle's 2025 retelling has the envelope in someone's shirt pocket and opened partway through, after he said he saw people in the past. The transcript also logs the start at 10:09 AM, while he remembers being woken from a nap after a long day of work. Memories compress over forty years. If the retelling is right, the later descriptions were not blind; if the header is right, the retelling has merged events.
The coordinates carried information
The coordinates were read aloud. Six of them gave east longitudes between 198 and 354 degrees, past the 180-degree limit Earth maps use for east longitude, so a careful listener could tell the target was unusual even without the card. That does not explain the content, but it is one reason the session falls short of a fully blind design.
The JPL photographs are his recollection
No document here records the visit to JPL, which photographs McMoneagle received or what they showed. The phrase "the old city on Mars" comes from his memory of a clerk's remark. Treat the match he describes as his testimony, and look at the photographs and the transcript yourself before deciding what they show.
Who chose the target is unknown
The transcript does not say who set the target or why. McMoneagle says Defense Department visitors brought it and that someone suggested the coordinates came from JPL, which he doubted. These sources do not answer the question, so any story about a hidden purpose is speculation.
Dates drift
The transcript is dated May 22, 1984. McMoneagle places it in the middle of his fourteen months of long weekends in Monroe's lab and has dated his introduction to Monroe several years earlier, and he retired from the Army in 1984. A February 1984 Army chronology records a July 1983 contract with Monroe for one-on-one training of a Center Lane viewer at his institute, which fits a 1984 session. Use the document date and treat the surrounding chronology in his tellings as approximate.
Keep it apart from Explorer reports about Mars
Monroe's own Explorer sessions include reports of presences connected with Mars, and Monroe said in interviews that out-of-body consciousness could go and cruise around Mars. Those are out-of-body and Explorer reports from a different practice, with different aims. The 1984 session is a remote-viewing transcript and is the only one of these with a sealed target.
Online retellings add a lot
Podcasts often build on the session, turning it into proof of an earlier human civilization destroyed on Mars or of hidden government projects. None of that is in the transcript. The document is a few pages of short impressions; read it before the commentary.
Common questions
What does the May 1984 Mars session transcript actually record?
On May 22, 1984, a remote viewer was given a sealed envelope whose card read, in effect, the planet Mars, about one million years B.C., while a monitor read out a series of coordinates. The subject described a pyramid-like form and a great dust storm or disaster, smooth megalithic walls, carved canyons, a road ending at an obelisk-like marker, and pyramids used as storm shelters, where very tall, thin, ancient people waited as their world died. A group left in a rounded metal vessel for a volatile place with volcanoes and gas pockets. The transcript was declassified and released through the CIA's reading room.
Who was the remote viewer in the Mars session?
The transcript labels the participants only as monitor and subject. Joe McMoneagle, the Army's Remote Viewer 001, says he was the subject and has talked about it at the Monroe Institute and in podcast interviews. He says it took place in Robert Monroe's laboratory while the Army had him working there on long weekends, and that Defense Department visitors brought the target. The monitor is not named in the document, and this page does not guess who it was.
Did the viewer know the target was Mars?
According to the 1984 header, no: the card naming Mars was in a sealed envelope that was not opened until after the session. The coordinates, though, were read aloud, and six of them gave east longitudes above 180 degrees, a form Earth maps do not use. McMoneagle's own retelling in 2025 differs from the header: he says the envelope was opened partway through, after he reported seeing people in the past and the monitor said he did not know where the target was. If that memory is accurate, the later part of the session was not blind.
Was the Mars session done at the Monroe Institute?
By Joe McMoneagle's account, yes. He says the session happened during the period when the Army had arranged for him to spend long weekends in Robert Monroe's laboratory, working on shortening his cool-down between targets and on controlling his out-of-body experiences. He describes napping in the lab's black box after a long day when he was woken because Defense Department visitors had arrived with a target. The transcript itself does not name a location.
Did NASA or JPL confirm what was described?
No official confirmation appears in these sources. McMoneagle says that after learning the target was Mars he took the coordinate card to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, asked for copies of the original negatives, and was handed a packet by a clerk who called the area the old city on Mars, and that the photographs showed what he had described. That is his recollection. Asked in 2021 whether his Mars work influenced missions, he said only that the areas are too hazardous for landers.
Is the Mars session evidence of ancient life on Mars?
Not on its own. The target cannot be checked: there is no photograph of Mars a million years ago to compare with the transcript, and McMoneagle himself says he hates such targets because without feedback you cannot tell whether you got something valid or invented it. The session is a real government document recording what a trained viewer reported under a sealed-target protocol. Whether any of it reflects Mars depends on evidence the session cannot supply. The 1995 evaluation of the wider program found no case where remote viewing had guided an intelligence operation.
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