Part participatory theatre, part experiment, The Alpha Project was conceived with psychologist and sceptic Professor Richard Wiseman to take the psychic pulse of the city.

Sadly for me and my dear colleague Nione, it seems our telepathic heartbeat is irretrievably, terminally weak.

Inspired by a hoax of the early 1980s, which saw two magicians use the tricks of the trade to convince an American university’s paranormal research department they had psychic abilities, the show goes to some lengths to create an eerie recreation of this environment.

The two of us were greeted by a suspiciously welcoming American research assistant, who gave us dot-matrix forms to fill out before asking us to swap our shoes for some spotlessly white non-static plimsolls (seemingly designed to inspire optimum humiliation in the wearer).

Led into the lab, I was the ‘doctor’ in the scenario, Nione my blindfolded test subject, and for the next 20 minutes I followed the prompts projected behind her to test her psychic abilities. I’ve replayed the episode many times over since and I’m almost entirely convinced I made a total pig’s ear of the instructions … but what can I say? The lights, the disorientating white noise played into the room, the pressure of performance – it got to me.

The experiments included an attempt by Nione to make a pendulum move (it did a bit), to bend a spoon (I still don’t know if it did or my mind was playing tricks on me), a rock/paper/scissors game in which the prompts were able to anticipate how she would play, and a visualisation exercise (the bit I almost certainly wrecked).

With no explanation we were then led out, blinking into the sunlight. Baffled and slightly nervous, I began my drive home trying to figure out just what had happened with my colleague in the darkened room with the blindfold. With its retro stylings and creepy atmosphere, the last half hour of my life had felt like a particularly opaque episode of Lost.

If the aim of the experience was to get people thinking, it worked. But it would’ve reached an infinitely more satisfying resolution if everyone were allowed to step out of character for a moment to offer some explanation of the psychological rationale behind the experiments.

I’d be very interested to hear from anyone else who took part on Tuesday – did you manage to get through without ruining it? Perhaps you liked the open-ended nature of it… Did you have any eerie, unexplained coincidences? Are you now convinced you have psychic abilities? Drop me a line at ian.ray@theargus.co.uk.