  We study the effect of the non-Gaussian clustering of galaxies on the
statistics of pencil beam surveys. We find that the higher order moments of the
galaxy distribution play an important role in the probability distribution for
the power spectrum peaks. Taking into account the observed values for the
kurtosis of galaxy distribution we derive the general probability distribution
for the power spectrum modes in non-Gaussian models and show that the
probability to obtain the 128$\hm$ periodicity found in pencil beam surveys is
raised by roughly one order of magnitude. The non-Gaussianity of the galaxy
distribution is however still insufficient to explain the reported
peak-to-noise ratio of the periodicity, so that extra power on large scales
seems required.
