Declassified documents released online reveal US Central Intelligence Agency interest in Scottish research into the paranormal.

Almost 930,000 files containing around 13million pages have finally been released to the public.

And the information found within the files shows that the CIA was looking into paranormal research at Edinburgh University.

Pieces of research from the university's para-psychic department were kept by the CIA under its Stargate programme.

This included a paper by parapsychologist Deborah Delanoy in which she debunked the claims of a teenage metal-bending fraudster in the 1980s.

The teenager, a 17-year-old known as Tim, was deemed to be an ideal subject for Deborah's team's research.

Her report read: "Tim claimed to have started bending metal, mostly cutlery, at the age of four and to have been doing so ever since."

The teenager was exposed as a fraud after more than seven months of tests and a hidden camera was used.

The report added: "Tim confessed to deceptive behaviour.

"He said that he was a practising magician who had wished to see if it were possible for a magician to pose successfully as a psychic in a laboratory."

A spokesman for the university said: "We conduct research into a wide range of areas and it's understandable major global institutions take an interest in it."

Drew McAdam, a psychologist from Edinburgh, said he was not surprised by the CIA's interest in what was going on at the university.

He said: "This doesn't surprise me. They were interested in anything because they got information that the Russians were into it.

"It was a case of if they're doing it, we should be doing it.

"I'm not a dyed-in-the-wool sceptic. Just because they don't understand it, people label it 'psychic' but it's just stuff the human mind can do."

The documents were released online by the CIA after two-year freedom of information campaign by information groups and American journalists.