Ingo Swann was born September 14, 1933 in Telluride, Colorado. In 1955 he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Biology from Westminster College in Salt Lake City, Utah. After graduation Swann enlisted in the Army and served a tour of duty in Korea and the Far East. Upon returning to the United States Swann settled in New York City to work as an artist. Not able to financially thrive, he accepted a position at the Secretariat of the United Nations where he worked until 1968. Around 1968, Swann began writing erotic fiction and focusing on painting. Swann’s paintings were of the cosmic art genre, many of which are now part of the collections at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. Some paintings were sold into private collection, most notably to real-estate developer Trammel Crow. Swann also created gay-themed paintings (fourteen) and collages (hundreds), now in the permanent collection at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art in New York, NY.

In July 1971, Swann participated in an experimental photography session in which Bert and Sherri McCann which sought to capture people’s psychic energies in a blackened room at a party. Allegedly, a photograph of Swann showed a ball of light above his head. It was largely from his social interactions, particularly with a woman by the name of Zelda Suplee, and with Dr. Gertrude Schmeidler (PhD from Harvard, a faculty member of City University of New York, and President of the Parapsychology Association in 1971), that Swann became fully aware of his psi abilities, and eventually came to the attention of Dr. H. E. Puthoff at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI). Swann recalled in a 1997 fax to Dr. Hal Puthoff his recollection of working with him the week of June 5, 1972 "at Sylvania" where Puthoff introducted him to Russell Targ (Swann papers, Box 138, Folder 1).

Beginning in 1972 Swann worked with Dr. Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ at SRI in experiments that began with magnetometer psychokinesis. Swann was later involved in experiments, using a term he coined, “coordinate remote viewing,” where the subject visualizes locations based on geographical coordinates, work which was part of the United States’ “Project Star Gate” which investigated whether psychic phenomena had domestic and military applications. It was during this type of experiment in 1973 that Swann stated the planet Jupiter had rings prior to the Voyager probe’s visit there in 1979. While at SRI, in 1974 Swann also remote viewed Mercury and the Moon. SRI formally published an analysis of the Mercury and Jupiter RV sessions in 1980. Russell Targ and Hal Puthoff wrote further on Ingo’s Moon RV in their book, Mindreach (1976). Swann’s tenure at SRI was from 1972-1990. During that time Swann was also involved in attempts to solve criminal cases, from 1972-1979.

Swann authored numerous books including: To Kiss Earth Good-Bye (1975), Star Fire (1978), What Will Happen When the Soviets Take Over (1980), Natural ESP (1987), Everybody’s Guide to Natural ESP (1991), Your Nostradamus Factor (1993), The Great Apparitions of Mary (1996), Penetration: The Question of Extraterrestrial and Human Telepathy (1998), and Psychic Sexuality (1999). He wrote erotic fiction, published under imprints of Olympia Press under the pen names Defence Eakens, Bigger than Life (1971), Honeymoon Perversion (1971) and Hero Haubold, Golden Balls (1971). Swann also served as the editor of the book Cosmic Art (1975).

Ingo Swann died on January 31, 2013.