Nancy Ann Tappe
Nancy Ann Tappe (1931–2012) was an American author and parapsychologist best known for originating the concept of "Indigo Children" — a New Age belief that a new type of child with unusual psychological, spiritual, or supernatural characteristics began appearing in the late 1960s. Her 1982 book Understanding Your Life Through Color introduced the framework, which she linked to her claimed synesthetic ability to perceive human auras as colors, describing these children as emanating a distinctive indigo-colored aura.
| Role | Parapsychology author and concept originator |
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The Indigo Children Concept
Tappe claimed to have begun observing a new category of children in the late 1960s — children she described as having indigo-colored auras, which she interpreted as indicating heightened psychic sensitivity, non-conformity, resistance to authority, and in some cases telekinetic or other paranormal abilities. She proposed that these children represented a new phase of human evolution or spiritual development.
The concept gained wider cultural traction in the 1990s through the work of Lee Carroll and Jan Tober, whose 1998 book The Indigo Children brought the idea to a mainstream New Age audience. The framework has been used by some parents and alternative practitioners to reinterpret ADHD diagnoses in children as indicators of spiritual advancement rather than neurodevelopmental conditions — a characterization that mainstream psychology and medicine reject.
Relation to UAP Discourse
The inclusion of Indigo Children in UAP iceberg discussions is tenuous. Some proponents speculate that Indigo Children may be human-extraterrestrial hybrids or recipients of extraterrestrial genetic influence. The host of Video - The Alien and UFO Obscure Oddities Iceberg (Level 2) explicitly found this entry poorly connected to the UAP phenomenon and included it only because it appeared in the original iceberg compilation.