CHAPTER 2

TELEKENISIS AND ESP

THE MIND CAN BE AS MYSTERIOUS AS IT IS POWERFUL. BUT WHAT CAN YOUR THOUGHTS REALLY DO?

A woman practices qigong, an ancient Chinese discipline that combines medicine, philosophy, and martial arts.

PARAPSYCHOLOGY BEYOND THE FIVE SENSES

AN EXPLORATION OF UNCONVENTIONAL HUMAN POWERS.

Near-death experiences can’t be explained by traditional science.

Parapsychology is the study of psi, the mysterious, unquantifiable factor in psychic phenomena. It can include everything from extrasensory perception and mind-matter interaction to brushes with mortality like near-death experiences and reincarnation. These phenomena can’t be explained by—and tend to conflict with—the principles of biology, physics, statistics, and general science. In fact, most scientists consider parapsychology a pseudoscience and say that parapsychologists have yet to prove the existence of psi.

The history of parapsychology studies includes debate both for and against the existence of parapsychological phenomena. Here is an overview.

CLAIRVOYANCE, ALSO REFERRED TO AS REMOTE VIEWING: Awareness of distant people, places, or events that can’t be seen, heard, or detected through the five physical senses.

ESP (EXTRA-SENSORY PERCEPTION): Encompasses the various ways of “seeing” things outside the range of the five senses, such as telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition.

HAUNTINGS: Ongoing presence of apparitions and unexplained sounds and moving objects at a given location.

MEDIUMSHIP: Opening a path of communication between the living and the dead.

NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES: Mysterious sensations, such as visions of lights and tunnels, experienced by people who are revived after they die.

OUT-OF-BODY EXPERIENCES: When the body separates from the mind or spirit and is able to observe the body and its surroundings from nearby.

PRECOGNITION OR PREMONITION: Sensing or foreseeing future events, but not through normal channels such as the news media or conversation.

REINCARNATION: The after-death survival of the spirit, which is transferred from a human or animal to other bodies over multiple lifetimes.

TELEKINESIS, ALSO KNOWN AS PSYCHOKINESIS OR MIND-MATTER INTERACTION: Mental control of physical objects, time, space, energy, or another person’s body or mind. Includes pyrokinesis and brainwashing.

TELEPATHY: Mental communication of thoughts or feelings between people.

THE FATHER OF ESP

J. B. RHINE EXPLORED TELEPATHY, CLAIRVOYANCE, AND OTHER PHENOMENA AT DUKE UNIVERSITY.

Rhine conducted ESP studies on dogs.

WHO KNEW?

J.B. Rhine conducted many ESP studies with animals, including horses and dogs. The U.S. military funded his research with homing pigeons.

In 1932, a young divinity student named Hubert Pearce fidgeted nervously as he listened to a lecture by J.B. Rhine, the director of the Duke Parapsychology Laboratory in Durham, North Carolina. Rhine had been searching for scientific evidence of what he called extrasensory perception (ESP), the ability of the mind to gain information from something other than the five senses.

When Rhine finished speaking, Pearce approached Rhine and told him that his mother had had psychic abilities. Pearce suspected that he had inherited her talents and the thought frightened him.

Rhine convinced Pearce to undergo an impromptu experiment. He pulled out a pack of 25 cards, each of which was marked with one of five symbols. One by one, Rhine placed the cards facedown on a table and asked Pearce to guess the symbols on them. Pearce got ten right—double the number predicted by pure chance.

Rhine repeated the test on Pearce thousands of times under different conditions. Sometimes, Pearce’s performance was average, but on many trials, he scored ten or higher.

It’s Scientific—and It Sells

Pearce became the star subject in Rhine’s Extrasensory Perception (1934), a book detailing and analyzing his experiments.

Rhine claimed he had scientifically proven that some people possessed ESP. Extrasensory Perception became an immediate bestseller, and magazines from Reader’s Digest to The New Yorker offered glowing accounts of Rhine’s work. Pearce’s celebrity status was sealed when some of the best-known personalities of the era—including Helen Keller, Aldous Huxley, Richard Nixon, and Carl Jung—visited his laboratory at Duke University. The workshop received tens of thousands of letters from people recounting their own experiences with ESP and other unexplained phenomena.

Attack of the Skeptics

Rhine’s discoveries were hailed as great scientific advances, but soon his work drew the attention of skeptics who insisted that parapsychology was a pseudoscience, similar to fortune-telling or faith-healing.

Mathematicians criticized Rhine’s statistical analysis and scientists attacked his methodology. Researchers who tried to duplicate his experiments found no evidence to support his conclusions, accusing Rhine of fixing his results. When Rhine retired in 1965, his research had fallen into such disrepute that Duke ended its affiliation with the lab. He died in 1980.

In recent years, there has been increased interest in parapsychology as part of the study of consciousness. At facilities in Europe and the United States, including the privately funded Rhine Research Center in Durham, researchers are reexamining Rhine’s experiments and reassessing what they might reveal about the human mind.

Hubert Pearce (left) with J.B. Rhine (right) at Duke University in the 1930s.

STUDYING PSI

The Duke Parapsychology Laboratory studied four separate psychic phenomena, which its researchers referred to as psi. Rhine is thought to have invented the term, along with parapsychology and extrasensory perception. The first three were collectively known as ESP:

Telepathy

Reading another person’s mind.

Clairvoyance

Obtaining extrasensory information from a non-human source.

Precognition

Predicting future events.

Psychokinesis

Moving objects with the mind.

WHAT ARE ZENER CARDS?

J.B. Rhine used these colorful cards to prove that ESP exists.

When J.B. Rhine wanted to create a special deck of cards for ESP testing, he turned to Karl Zener, a Duke psychology professor. The result was a 25-card deck that featured five simple symbols—a square, a circle, a star, a cross, and a trio of wavy lines.

Stores began selling Zener Cards that customers could use to test their own psychic abilities—but many of them were printed on stock so flimsy that, in the proper light, people could see through the card and cheat their way to astounding displays of ESP prowess.

Using a commercial pack of Zener Cards, famed behavior psychologist B.F. Skinner tried to discredit Rhine by making 100 consecutive correct “guesses.” The cards soon became so controversial that Zener disowned them, though they bear his name to this day.

RUSSIAN SUPERPOWERS

FROM COURT INTRIGUE TO COLD WAR TELEKINESIS, SPIRITUALISM FASCINATES AN EMPIRE.

WHO KNEW?

Often called the Mad Monk, Rasputin was widely known as a mystic and faith healer—and a formidable foe.

The Russian obsession with the unknowable is reflected not only in the writings of the country’s great novelists, but also in the influence of a mystical monk and in the legacy of a man of letters who popularized séances.

A Monk’s Strange Powers

To the world he is known as Rasputin, a master of court intrigue, and often he is credited with directing the fate of Imperial Russia. Yet this mysterious Siberian monk, Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin (1869–1916), was not a doctor, priest, or learned man. How did he wield such control? By gaining favor in the court of Czar Nicholas II and convincing the czar’s wife, Alexandra, of his supernatural powers.

The granddaughter of Queen Victoria, Alexandra, like many royals of the era, carried the gene for hemophilia, or “bleeder’s disease.” While Alexandra herself showed no signs of illness, she passed the gene on to her son, Alexei, heir to the Romanov throne. When Alexei was diagnosed with the illness, Alexandra feared for his life and turned to prayers—which Rasputin seemed to answer. She deeply believed the monk’s spiritual and hypnotic powers had saved Alexei. “The Little One will not die,” Rasputin pronounced during an excruciating attack the child suffered when he was eight. “Do not allow the doctors to bother him too much.” The next day, the bleeding stopped. To a desperate and grateful mother, Rasputin had worked a miracle and gained her complete confidence.

Czar Nicholas II, with his family: Duchess Olga, Duchess Marie, the Grand Duchess Anastasia, the Czarevitch Alexis, the Grand Duchess Tatiana, and the Czarina.

When Czar Nicholas left to fight in World War I in 1915, Alexandra turned to Rasputin as her domestic advisor. He made many enemies in the Romanov court and sought to protect himself, warning his rivals that if they killed him, the family would perish within two years.

Rasputin survived multiple assassination attempts, including one by poisoning, a shooting, and a stabbing. Finally, he was attacked and thrown into in a freezing river, where he drowned in 1916.

On July 17, 1918, the Czar and his family were executed.

Magnetic Attraction

Russian interest in spiritualism wasn’t limited to religious figures, as evidenced by the success of Alexander Aksakov (1832–1903). A so-called scientific spiritualist, Aksakov studied animal magnetism, also known as hypnosis, and wrote of it in his book, Animizm i spiritizm.

Aksakov came from an educated, elite background. At the University of Moscow he studied sciences and was fascinated by the idea of mind over matter, and by the apparent power of mediums. Aksakov coined the term “telekinesis” for the ability to move objects with thoughts alone. He popularized séances in Russia, and although many of the mediums he studied turned out to be frauds, he remained a believer.

Alexander Aksakov.

RUSSIAN DRAMA

Examples of Soviet deep interest in life’s mystical side appear in the country’s literature, science, and history books.

• Live souls: Many Russian writers have explored the nation’s spiritual side, including Fyodor Dostoevsky, who attended a séance conducted by scientific spiritualist Alexander Aksakov in 1876 and later described the experience in Diary of a Writer.

• A strong hand: In one experiment, the telekinetic Nina Kulagina reportedly was able to stop a frog’s heartbeat with only the electromagnetic energy from her hands. Her work is said to have been studied by Russian scientists.

• An iron constitution: Enemies of Rasputin, advisor to the Russian royal family, attempted to kill him by lacing his wine and food with deadly cyanide. Rasputin ate and drank—but nothing happened.

NINA KULAGINA: A MOVING EXPERIENCE

This one-time radio operator in the Red Army is said to have mastered mind over matter.

During the Soviet era, Nina Kulagina (1926–1990) was celebrated for her telekinetic powers. Kulagina served as a radio operator in the Red Army in World War II and also fought at the front. As the years passed, Kulagina developed a sharp pain in her back—an ache she said became a signal that her telekinetic powers were about to take over. During demonstrations, Kulagina was seen to make a compass needle spin around and to inch a matchbox across a table. Detractors dismissed her feats, maintaining that she was moving the objects with the help of nearly invisible threads. It’s been said that Soviet officials, determined to keep her powers secret, insisted that she use a false name. But the West discovered Kulagina in 1968, in film clips shown at the First Moscow Conference on Parapsychology. In one experiment, Kulagina was seen using her telekinetic powers to separate the white of a raw egg from the yolk.

THE PSHCHIC COLD WAR

IN AN INTERNATIONAL BATTLE OF THE MINDS, WHO WOULD EMERGE THE WINNER?

WHO KNEW?

Along with physical barriers such as the Berlin Wall, built in 1961, the Cold War generated new interest in psychic warfare.

“The discovery of the energy behind telepathy will be as important as the discovery of atomic energy!” exclaimed Leonid Vasilev, the Soviet Union’s leading telepathy expert, to his parapsychologist comrades in 1960. A decade later, a zealous U.S. congressman, Charles Rose, declared that psychic powers “[are] a low-cost radar system. And if the Russians have them, then we should have them too!” In the Cold War era, the psychic arms race was on.

Defense Mechanisms

Since ancient times, military commanders have sought the advice of soothsayers, fortune-tellers, and even genies when scoping out enemies and planning battle strategy. The Roman emperors Maxentius and Constantine I, Greek king Alexander the Great, and Napoleon Bonaparte are believed to have been among them.

More recently, during the Cold War tensions between the United States and the USSR, both countries conducted research into psi phenomena, hoping to develop new weapons and ways of spying. The efforts intensified in the late 1950s, as the CIA experimented with gathering information by mind-reading, aka ESP; remote viewing, aka clairvoyance; and paranormally planting disinformation in the minds of enemies, via telepathy. Both the Americans and the Soviets were interested in trying to communicate secret reports and orders directly from mind to mind, to control soldiers through hypnosis and brainwashing. They also wanted to mentally sabotage equipment and facilities—or even kill enemies—from a distance with telekinesis.

Racing Minds

The Soviets gave the field of parapsychology a new name: psychotronics. Governments on both sides funded laboratories staffed with physicists, engineers, and biologists who approached paranormal potential as a question of applied technology. They used strictly controlled experimental techniques aimed at discovering the scientific basis of psychic phenomena. For the most part, the Americans and the Soviets came at the challenge in the same way, but by the early 1970s, the Soviets were leading in the mind race; the American effort eventually fizzled out, while the Russians have reportedly picked up psychic research where the Soviets left off.

Sputnik, launched by the Soviet Union.

THE REAL MANCHURIAN CANDIDATES

Hypnotized assassins sound like science fiction, but in the psychic Cold War, both sides tried to produce such secret operatives.

The 1962 political thriller The Manchurian Candidate depicted the terrifying potential of psychic warfare in the Cold War years. The story followed U.S. Army Sergeant Raymond Shaw, who was brainwashed during the Korean War and turned into a Communist-controlled assassin.

In reality, both the U.S. and the USSR experimented with mind control, hoping to train operatives to execute certain orders and to forget their actions afterward.

In a 1966 experiment, Russian telepathy expert V.L. Raykov reportedly hypnotized a group of subjects and put them in a Faraday Cage, an enclosure that simulated the electromagnetic signal-blocking properties of a submarine hull. While the participants were sequestered, Raykov, from outside the cage, commanded them to wake up at specific times. Odds that the group members would have woken up at those times on their own were considered one in a million, but the results are unknown, as details of the experiment remain classified.

Similarly, the CIA, in one instance, allegedly tried to hypnotize a double agent so he would kill a Soviet KGB operative. It is also said that a CIA hypnotist attempted to send three Cuban exiles back to assassinate Fidel Castro. None of the purported experiments succeeded.

A scene from The Manchurian Candidate.

“Happy,” a computer storage device at CIA headquarters that holds 1.2 million megabytes of information.

THE STARGATE PROJECT

From 1972 to 1995, the federal government spent $20 million investigating psi phenomena like clairvoyance.

In 1972, worried about the Russians gaining the psychic edge in the Cold War, the U.S. government authorized The Stargate Project. Run by the CIA, the U.S. Army, and other government entities, Stargate investigated clairvoyance, which they thought could allow spies to “see” enemy locations, activities, and material, even from far away. Stargate details:

• Mission: Develop the human mind to reach out, locate, and describe remote targets.

• Subjects: 22-plus military personnel and civilian psychics.

• Accomplishments: Identified and described landscapes and buildings at specified geographical coordinates, detected nuclear material, explored building interiors.

• Outcome: Scrapped after an independent audit concluded that Stargate failed to adequately prove the existence of remote viewing.

COMMUNICATING WITH THE NAUTILUS

THE SUB COULDN’T COMMUNICATE WITH SHIPS ON THE SURFACE. COULD TELEPATHY BE THE SOLUTION?

The first atomic submarine, U.S.S. Nautilus, being launched at Groton, Connecticut, January 21, 1954.

WHO KNEW?

Reports of parapsychological experiments aboard the Nautilus led the USSR to conduct similar research.

The U.S.S. Nautilus SSN571, launched in 1954, was the world’s first nuclear-fueled submarine. Unlike conventional diesel-powered subs, which needed periodic fill-ups, the Nautilus could cruise for months or even years without surfacing. This made her ideal for Operation Sunshine, the U.S. Navy’s program to send a submarine to the North Pole. On August 3, 1958, the Nautilus became the first ship in history to reach the top of the world. It was a great achievement not only navigationally but militarily: While under the polar ice cap, the sub was invisible to enemy surveillance. The problem was, it also couldn’t communicate with American ships on the surface. Some suggested that mental telepathy was the only answer. Perhaps the U.S. military was desperate enough to look into the possibility.

As soon as the navy released news of its success—and problem—with the Nautilus, the press began discussing possible extrasensory solutions. Magazines printed sensational reports that President Dwight D. Eisenhower had authorized thought-transmission experiments aboard the Nautilus. Major corporations such as Westinghouse Electric, General Electric, and Bell Laboratories were said to have provided ESP intelligence to the military. When government officials and company executives denied the existence of such psychic experiments, the statements were treated as evidence of a coverup.

Sixteen Days with Smith and Jones

The navy’s probe of telepathy’s military potential reportedly began in 1959, when a mysterious passenger, identified only as Jones, secluded himself in a cabin on the Nautilus. For 16 days, no one saw Jones except the ship’s commander, Captain William R. Anderson, and the sailor who delivered Jones’ meals. Meanwhile, a man identified as Smith—allegedly a student at Duke University’s famous parapsychology laboratory—was isolated in a room at Westinghouse in Maryland, with Air Force Colonel William H. Bowers.

Using a deck of cards printed with various symbols, called Zener cards, a standard tool in ESP testing at the time, Smith was reportedly asked to concentrate twice a day on five cards pulled at random from a deck of 25. As Smith tried to transmit the images to Jones telepathically, Jones concentrated on receiving them. Both men wrote down the symbols they saw, sealed the session’s notes in an envelope, and gave them to Bowers or Anderson, who locked the information away.

At the end of the experiment, Jones and his envelopes were reportedly flown under military guard to Westinghouse in Maryland. Smith’s notes were compared to Jones’s, and were found to match 70 percent of the time. Bowers was quoted as saying, “For the first time ever, under conditions that precluded trickery, and with a precision great enough to open the way to its practical application, human thought has been transmitted through space, without any intermediary, from one brain to another.”

Con or Conspiracy?

As reports of the Nautilus project appeared, the navy denied the experiments. “Although the Nautilus engaged in a very wide variety of activities, certainly these did not include experiments in telepathy,” said Captain Anderson. Colonel Bowers did an about-face as well, stating, “The experiment in which I was alleged to have participated never took place.”

Under pressure, two media sources said they had relied on unverified reports. Some observers declared the story a hoax; others insisted it was a CIA deception to distract the Soviets from actual U.S. tactics in the Cold War. Believers still swear that the U.S. military was willing to try anything to communicate with the Nautilus—even ESP.

Electromagnetic waves.

NEW WAVES

Might the human brain be wired for biological radio communication?

Soviet scientists, including Ukrainian electrical engineer Bernard Kazhinsky, were fascinated by possible telepathic communication aboard the Nautilus.

In his 1962 book, Kazhinsky proposed that the human brain could emit “cerebral radiation” in the form of electromagnetic waves, allowing the “broadcast” of thoughts to others. Unlike conventional radio waves, organic human waves could travel through deep oceanic waters and a submarine’s hull, said Kazhinsky.

While no hard evidence of such waves has ever been established, Kazhinsky’s theories continue to be explored today.

STIRRING SOVIET WATERS

When news of Operation Sunshine spread, the KGB and Soviet military intelligence started building a network of institutes tasked with developing deadly psychic tools and weapons.

Site: Alma-Ata

Institute: Kazakh State University

Research Topics: bioenergetics

Site: Leningrad

Institute: Leningrad University

Research Topics: telepathy with twins, psychokinesis, telepathy and hypnosis

Site: Moscow

Institute: Popov Society

Research Topics: telepathy, electromagnetic forces, hypnosis

Site: Moscow

Institute: Department of Technical Parapsychology

Research Topics: underwater and long-distance telepathy, psychokinesis, precognition

CARL JUNG BLENDING SCIENCE AND MYSTICISM

A PIONEER OF PSYCHIATRY PAVES THE WAY FOR THE NEW AGE MOVEMENT.

Carl Jung, shown here in 1960, was renowned for his analysis of dreams.

At the turn of the 20th century, psychology was in its infancy. One of its earliest practitioners was psychiatrist Carl Jung, a scientist who, like many of his Swiss peers, believed in a world beyond science. During his long career, Jung explored both the medical and spiritual aspects of mental illness as well as parapsychology or spiritualism, as the field was then known.

Two profound experiences Jung had as a student helped shape his thinking. One day while studying at his parent’s house, Jung heard a loud bang that sounded like a gunshot. He ran to the dining room, where he found his mother. She told him that the sound had come from close by.

Looking around, the Jungs discovered that the solid oak dining room table had split wide open. Since the wood was aged, they concluded it was unlikely the top would have separated on its own. They ruled out weather as a catalyst since the temperature, air pressure, and humidity had been constant.

Jung explored the medical and spiritual aspects of mental illness.

A week later, Jung came home to find his whole family upset. An hour earlier, they had heard another loud explosion in the dining room. This time, Jung found a basket that contained the shattered pieces of a heavy steel bread knife. According to the family, the knife had been used a short time before the incident.

Jung took the pieces to a knife maker, who could find no flaws in the metal. The forger told Jung that it would have taken tremendous force to break the knife into shards. Jung began going to séances led by his 15-year-old cousin, who he believed might somehow be connected to the incidents.

Yet even as his interest in the séances waned, Jung became increasingly fascinated by the paranormal. He began to research Eastern and Western philosophy, religion, and psychic phenomena. He studied astrology and the I Ching, a Chinese oracle dating back thousands of years. Eventually, Jung developed what he described as a “philosophical, spiritual, and mystical” treatment for patients that was meant to match up an individual’s conscious mind—or ego—with his unconscious and to instill in patients a sense of fulfillment and harmony.

Jung’s work significantly influenced the 20th century’s New Age movement, which blended Eastern and Western spiritual and metaphysical traditions with psychology, self-help, holistic health, and the paranormal.

Sigmund Freud (front row left) and Carl Jung (front row right) with other analysts at Clark University in 1909.

JUNG’S PREMONITIONS

Did one of the world’s most amazing dream analysts have psychic dreams himself?

• In 1913, Jung experienced a disturbing vision of a flood covering Europe, with floating debris and bodies. When World War I broke out the next year, Jung concluded his vision had been a premonition.

• In 1944, Jung believed he had a near-death experience when he saw himself floating 1,000 miles above Earth. Jung’s physician appeared in the vision as the Greek god of medicine and insisted that Jung return to Earth. A few days later, the doctor became ill and died. Jung’s interpretation was that the doctor sacrificed his own life to save Jung’s.

THE RULE OF THREE

The relationship between the two founders of psychiatry deteriorated when they began to disagree on principles.

Psychiatry’s founding father, Sigmund Freud, and his protégé and collaborator Carl Jung agreed that the psyche was made up of three distinct parts. But the two men disagreed on what those divisions were and eventually had an acrimonious falling-out.

Freud:

Id: Basic human instinct, present from birth.

Superego: Internalized, learned cultural norms and behavior.

Ego: Mediates between the desires of the id and the brakes supplied by the ego.

Jung:

Ego: Conscious mind of an individual.

Personal unconscious: Forgotten or suppressed memories of an individual’s past.

Collective unconscious: Innate memories and experiences shared by all people.

PSYCHIC SURGERY

SHADY PRACTITIONERS CLAIM TO OPERATE WITHOUT LEAVING INTERNAL OR EXTERNAL WOUNDS.

WHO KNEW?

More than a dozen Filipinos claim to be God's surgeons in Baguio, 186 miles north of Manila.

It’s like a scene out of a science-fiction novel: A man in a white coat stands beside a young woman lying on a table with her shirt unbuttoned. Prodding her belly with his bare hands, the man seems to locate what he’s looking for and pushes his fingers into the woman’s body. Blood pools around his fingers, and after a moment he pulls back his hand, holding a small bloody mass. He tosses it into the trash and wipes the blood away; the patient sits up in a daze and looks down at her belly. There’s no incision and no scar. Could such an operation have taken place?

Practitioners of psychic surgery claim they can, and do, thanks to their abilities to channel the spirits of deceased doctors or other healers. Operating without anesthetics and often without instruments, these paranormal physicians say they remove tumors, organs, and foreign matter with no discernible aftereffect.

The centers of psychic surgery are Brazil and the Philippines—many tourist hotels employ house “surgeons” in those countries—but the practice can be found around the world, including in the United States. In the Philippines, practitioners generally use their bare hands to work on patients, while in Brazil they favor instruments such as scissors, kitchen knives, and forceps. The specialists perform in improvised clinics, hotel rooms, and homes, sometimes before an audience, finishing their procedures in just a few minutes. Hundreds of patients may pass under their hands in a single day.

Reputable scientists maintain that psychic surgery is a hoax, and a dangerous one at that. In 1976, a review of the research by the Federal Trade Commission concluded that it is “pure fakery. The body is not opened, no ’surgery’ is performed with the bare hands or with anything else, and nothing is removed from the body.”

Medical doctors and public-health officials warn that psychic surgery can be fatal for seriously ill patients who reject or delay conventional medical care. In the 1970s, the Canadian Embassy in Manila issued death certificates for three people who died while on “miracle tours” there. Canadian authorities have also convicted numerous psychic surgeons and tour operators of fraud or illegal medical activity, as have the governments of the United States, Australia, the Philippines, and Brazil. Bottom line: As appealing as the prospect of quick, non-invasive psychic surgery may sound, it should not be considered an alternative to more conventional treatments.

A Reiki master giving energy for a body healing in southern India.

TRICKS OF THE TRADE

Want to know how the debunkers say that psychic surgeons make it look so real? Read on.

THE INCISION: To create the illusion that he is inserting a hand into the patient’s body, the surgeon first presses his fingertips into the skin to create a hollow. His hand partially camouflaged, he slowly flexes his fingers back toward the palm of the hand so it looks as if they’re sliding into the flesh. Once he’s formed a fist, it looks like his fingers are knuckle-deep in the patient’s body.

THE BLOOD: Further camouflage for the hand’s activity is provided by “blood” that appears to be oozing from the incision. The surgeon might be wearing a false thumb—stock equipment for a magician—filled with animal blood or another red liquid that can be released when he chooses. Alternatively, his assistant might conceal tiny balloons or sponges filled with red liquid that she hands to him during the procedure.

THE GUTS: Animal entrails generally stand in for the tumors and other diseased tissue supposedly removed from the patient. The assistant might surreptitiously pass them to the surgeon or he might simply palm the material or take it from nearby hiding places. Once the material has been “removed” from the patient, the surgeon quickly discards it so the patient and audience can’t see exactly what it is.

Faith healers in Manila.

ANY WAY YOU SLICE IT

Skeptics and believers alike have come up with explanations of psychic surgery.

It’s the power of suggestion.

• Some clinicians who see an improvement in a patient’s condition after psychic surgery ascribe it to the placebo effect.

It’s the power of faith.

• Some compare psychic surgery to the laying on of hands often practiced by faith healers.

It’s the power of the body.

• Many alternative healing practices embrace the notion that illness arises from an imbalance in the body’s energy field. In this view, healing—by ancient techniques such as acupuncture or New Age ones such as Reiki—is achieved by rebalancing energy.

It’s the power of illusion.

• James Randi, an ex-illusionist who now works to debunk paranormal claims, says psychic surgery relies on standard magician’s tricks. Some former psychic surgeons admit to using sleight-of-hand to deceive patients and spectators.

MIND OVER METAL

PSYCHOKINESIS HAS LONG FASCINATED HUMANITY. IS IT REALLY POSSIBLE TO THINK A FORK OUT OF SHAPE?

Geller holds two spoons at a March 27, 1973, demonstration. One spoon is already slightly bent.

In the 1970s, all things paranormal went mainstream. Many people were proud to be into astrology, eager to talk to spirits during séances, and convinced that they possessed psychic powers.

The climate was perfect for Uri Geller. An ex-soldier in the Israeli army, Geller was handsome and charismatic, sporting a fashionable bush of black hair, patterned polyester suits, and enough of an accent to seem just a little exotic. Boasting about his extraordinary telepathic abilities, he became an international star, appearing on magazine covers and television shows around the world. Geller professed to be able to read minds and identify hidden objects—but what most excited his fans was his ability to bend metal with intense concentration. Before astonished audiences, he appeared to use psychokinetic powers to twist house keys, mangle the tines of forks, and, most famously, bend silver spoons in half.

Johnny Carson as Carnac the Magnificent, a spoof of the kind of psychics he often invited to his couch.

Psychic or Fraud?

In 1973, Geller appeared on The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson, who had begun his show-business career as a magician. Not wholly convinced of Geller’s psychic talents, Carson beforehand consulted with James “The Amazing” Randi, a onetime magician turned debunker. Following Randi’s advice, Carson presented Geller with spoons and other objects rather than allowing him to use his own props. The audience watched anxiously as Geller’s customary confidence melted away. He stammered and hesitated, fell silent for long stretches, and seemed to stall for time. Finally, he explained that he did not “feel strong” that evening, implying that Carson’s skepticism rendered him momentarily powerless.

In spite of this failure, Geller has remained popular as a performer and author and appeared on television in the United Kingdom on Noel’s House Party, in the United States on The View, and in Israel on The Successor, throughout the 1990s and 2000s.

Uri Geller bends a spoon.

SPOON-BENDING PARTIES

The public’s fascination with psychokinesis transformed the phenomenon into a party game.

Much of spoon-bending’s continuing appeal can be attributed to Jack Houck, a California aerospace engineer who in the 1980s began hosting “PK parties,” at which guests could test their PK, or psychokinetic, abilities. Participants each chose a spoon and rubbed the top of the handle between forefinger and thumb while chanting, “Bend, bend, bend.” The warmed handles became pliable, convincing partygoers that their mental energy had transformed physical matter.

WHO KNEW?

Spoonbending was featured in the blockbuster movie The Matrix (1999).

HOW TO BEND A SPOON WITHOUT USING YOUR MIND

The jury is out on whether spoon bending by psychokinesis is truly possible, but every magician knows how to pull off the illusion.

• Prepare the spoon by bending it back and forth at the point where the handle meets the bowl. Be careful to weaken but not break it.

• Straighten the spoon handle so it appears normal.

• Before your audience, rub the spoon between your forefinger and thumb where you have previously bent it. Pretend you are concentrating hard as your fingers heat the handle.

• When the handle is warm, use the fingers of your other hand to push down lightly on the bowl of the spoon, which will begin to droop—creating the illusion of psychic spoon bending.

PARANORMAL MILITARY INTELLIGENCE

The U.S. military establishment doesn’t seem like a natural home for New Age ideas, but it, too, was caught up in the spoon-bending craze.

In the early 1980s, the United States Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM), then headed by General Albert Stubblebine, also started investigating psychokinesis. Colonel John Alexander, one of INSCOM’s highest-ranking officers, began holding spoon-bending parties in his Virginia apartment for staff and invited psychics. Alexander was skeptical until he watched one guest’s spoon, held upright at the base with two fingertips, bend to a 90-degree angle. “At that instant,” he later wrote, “General Stubblebine and I knew for sure that the stories and results we had heard about the potential application of psychokinesis were, in fact, true.” While spoon-bending parties remained popular with INSCOM personnel, the U.S. Army never found a practical use for its psychokinesis research.

UNLOCKING THE MYSTERY OF QIGONG

THIS ANCIENT CHINESE PRACTICE COMBINES MEDICINE, PHILOSOPHY, AND MARTIAL ARTS.

A qigong practitioner uses a single movement of his palm to break a jar filled with ice.

Qigong is an ancient physical and philosophical practice that combines elements of martial arts with Chinese medicine. The term comes from the Chinese words gong, meaning “skill,” and qi, meaning “life force.” Studied throughout China for centuries, qigong is gaining new fans today as the mysterious powers of its masters are discussed on the internet and in social media.

Harmony of Opposites

Practitioners of qigong adhere to the Chinese philosophy of Tao (the way), the belief that harmony between opposites—yin and yang—is the energetic essence of the seen and unseen world. The physical practice requires intense concentration and focused breathing as the body progresses through a series of graceful, fluid motions to summon the yin-yang energy.

Qigong masters try to manipulate the yin-yang energies of others to treat a range of illnesses and conditions, from heart problems, cancer, and diabetes to migraines and insomnia. Many masters also administer acupuncture, the ancient Chinese practice of penetrating the skin with needles, to open up clogged energy channels and allow the qi to flow freely.

The practice of qigong is believed to promote good health and generate vitality, but many use it simply as a form of meditation and exercise. Others use it to produce sometimes astonishing feats of strength.

Qigong masters claim such strength is not merely muscular but comes from manipulating the qi—the body’s powerful subtle energy.

Master Zhou

The qigong star best known to Americans is Master Zhou Ting-Jue, who has appeared on Ripley’s Believe It or Not and That’s Incredible! and been featured on Stan Lee’s Superhumans on the History Channel. Zhou is said to be able to generate 202 degrees Fahrenheit from the palms of his hands and has appeared to slice through a brick with a sheet of paper in front of a live television audience. In recent years, Zhou has taught qigong in China and Tibet, where he has attracted crowds of more than 4,000, and treated the Dalai Lama. He is also in demand in the West and has treated members of the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team.

Hongyi Qiu

In China, one of the more controversial qigong masters is Hongyi Qiu, an 84-year-old from Wuhan, China, who has been accused of fakery and illusion for his televised antics. In one video, Qiu stands several feet from the end of a long table, his right arm outstretched, palm facing forward. He rocks back and forth, then lets out a guttural yell and thrusts his open palm out hard. As if on cue, a bowl filled with water slides down the length of the table. It appears Qiu has pushed it from several feet away without touching it.

In another video, Qiu wraps a glass in red cloth and places it on the table. He makes similar motions and lets out a yell. The glass shatters. In another performance, he runs a sharp cleaver across his bare stomach without leaving a mark. He claims to be manipulating the energy of qi to accomplish these feats.

Some insist that Qiu’s skills are well within the parameters of a qigong master’s power. Others say he is using fakery and illusion and that his yelling is evidence that he doesn’t understand the quiet, subtle practice of qigong.

Images of Qiu in action went viral globally, with more than 300,000 views, after a clip from Chinese TV was posted to YouTube in 2010. Numerous versions of the clip and others like it have generated millions of views.

Shaolin monk Shi Niliang meditates while hanging by the neck for nearly a minute.

LUMOKINESIS: THE BENDING OF LIGHT

Some qigong practitioners claim they can use their thoughts to manipulate light, heat, or fire, abilities known as lumokinesis and pyrokinesis. Believers in lumokinesis insist that the mind can bend and scatter photons, the tiny packets of electromagnetic radiation visible to the eye. Despite a number of homemade videos purporting to show people making flames and lightbulbs flicker with their mind, lumokinesis has a long way to go before physicists consider it anything except the stuff of science fiction.

SUPER HUMAN

HOW DO YOU DEVELOP EXTRAORDINARY POWERS? PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE.

Statuary outside a Hindu temple depicts the Hindu sage Patanjali, who wrote the Yoga Sutras, the foundational text of Ashtanga yoga.

In 1936, an Indian yogi named Subbayah Pullavar levitated off the ground in front of 150 witnesses. For a full four minutes, he hovered horizontally, only very lightly resting his hand on a stick. A photographer took shots of the yogi from numerous angles, and witnesses inspected him for signs that he was being supported by props or cables but could find nothing. A report of the event appeared later in a London newspaper.

Can a person become so literally enlightened that he or she can float in the air? Modern science says no, but ancient Eastern traditions insist otherwise. In Buddhism, one can obtain extraordinary power and understanding through meditation and other spiritual practices. Buddhist abhijnas, or supernatural abilities, include metamorphosing into any shape or form, hearing all sounds and understanding all languages, reading thoughts, and remembering one’s past lives. Another group of supposedly achievable powers includes the ability to pass through solid objects, walk on water, appear in various places at the same time, and fly through the air.

But these skills don’t come overnight. Achieving them takes years of practice, and one must be at an advanced stage of spiritual progress.

In the most miraculous stage, called an abhijna, the devotee experiences freedom and liberation through the renunciation of worldly passions, the understanding of the true nature of reality, and the certainty that one has attained awakening. This, the ultimate goal of the Buddhist practitioner, is achieved only by Buddhas, or Enlightened Ones, and saints.

Purushkara Yantra, a Jain cosmic figure, circa 1780.

WHO KNEW?

In the United States, modern Jains are expanding the tradition’s practice of nonviolence to include environmentalism, animal-rights activism, and corporate business ethics.

Hindu Superpowers

Some of the Buddhist abhijnas are related to the Hindu siddhis (“miraculous powers” in Sanskrit). According to this tradition, siddhis are magical virtues that one can acquire through the disciplined practice of meditation and yoga. They include the ability to make yourself bigger or smaller, lighter or heavier; the ability to travel anywhere; and power over the physical world. But in both Hinduism and Buddhism, striving for the attainment of these powers can tempt one to be proud and egotistical. They should never be seen as an end in themselves, but as steps—or even just by-products—of a journey toward enlightenment.

In a third ancient religious tradition, Jainism, the most enlightened practitioners allegedly achieve superhuman talents including invisibility, mind reading, faith healing, and shape-shifting. According to Jainism, these extraordinary abilities can be attained through spells and the chanting of mantras, but also through austerity, nonviolence, and strict self-discipline.

Biblical Levitation

It isn’t just Eastern philosophy. Christianity, too, is full of gravity-defying miracles. Here are four of them:

JESUS: In the book of Matthew, Jesus walks on water to meet his disciples, who are in a boat on a lake. Peter gets out of the boat and walks on water to meet him, but he begins to sink. When he cries out in fear, Jesus reaches for him and catches him.

TERESA OF AVILA: The 16th-century Spanish saint would supposedly become airborne during times of intense prayer, but viewed the experience as a reprimand from God.

SAINT JOSEPH OF CUPERTINO: This 17th-century Franciscan friar reportedly levitated or flew on 70 different occasions, staying aloft for as long as six or seven hours at a stretch.

SAINT ALPHONSO LIGUORI: This 18th-century Italian Catholic bishop was allegedly lifted several feet in the air in front of an entire congregation as he delivered a sermon.

HARD ON THE KNEES, GOOD FOR THE SOUL

Siddhasana, or “perfect pose,” is said to bring practitioners one step closer to enlightenment.

Sit down on the floor. Keep your spine straight and bring your legs out in front of you. Now bend your left knee and place your heel under your groin. Bend your right knee, and put your right foot on top of your left. Finally, place your hands, palms down, on your thighs. You are now in a pose considered by some yogis to be conducive to summoning your Kundalini Shakti, or divine spiritual power, at the base of the spine. Yogis also use this pose to meditate and to practice breathing exercises. A word of caution: Siddhasana is not for beginners. It is anything but comfortable for most people’s knees and hips. But who said enlightenment was easy?

FIRESTARTERS AND MATCHLESS MAYHEM

HUMAN TISSUE THAT HEATS ON ITS OWN? PEOPLE WHO CAN USE THEIR BRAIN WAVES TO IGNITE MATTER?

The character the Human Torch from the Fantastic Four.

WHO KNEW?

More than 200 news reports of spontaneous human combustion have appeared in the past 300 years.

THREE-MONTH-OLD BABY BURSTS INTO FLAMES WHENEVER HE SWEATS! FIRST IRISH CASE OF DEATH BY SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION! Modern tabloids love stories of people who are allegedly able to ignite objects with the power of their minds or combust spontaneously.

But tales of such phenomena date to the 1400s, when Polonus Vorstius, an Italian knight, was described as drinking very strong wine, vomiting fire, and setting himself ablaze. Centuries later, when critics accused Charles Dickens of killing off an alcoholic landlord via spontaneous human combustion (SHC) in his novel Bleak House, Dickens pointed to research showing 30 historical cases.

So is there anything to pyrokinesis, the ability to ignite objects with thought, or SHC? Believers claim that pyrokinetic practitioners are made, not born, developing their skill by channeling intense emotions such as anger and fear. When a pyrokinetic focuses these feelings on an individual object, they reportedly produce flames.

If pyrokinesis exists, it means that individuals can use their brain waves to increase the thermal energy within the atoms of an object to the point of ignition. Scientists dismiss such theories, since brain waves generate very little energy—not even enough to light a lightbulb. For wood to ignite, it needs to reach a temperature of about 660 degrees Fahrenheit; for a human body to burn to ashes, it would have to reach a temperature of roughly 3,000 degrees.

People who swear that SHC is real refer to a mysterious condition under which human tissue supposedly heats on its own to the point of combustion, consuming the victim in fire while leaving the surrounding area virtually untouched. Believers theorize that the reaction is caused by an extremely small but high-powered subatomic particle they’ve dubbed the pyroton. Under the right conditions, pyrotons supposedly undergo nuclear fusion and release enough energy to ignite a human. To date, modern physics has been unable to locate these particles.

THE WICK EFFECT

A gory scientific theory proposes that spontaneous human combustion turns people into human candles.

A possible explanation for spontaneous human combustion is called the wick effect. According to this theory, the body is accidentally ignited by a cigarette, smoldering ember, or other heat source. The victim’s hair and clothing catch fire and burn like a wick, while fatty acids act like candle wax, enabling the body to burn slowly without destroying surroundings.

HEATED DEBATE

Meet two real-life pyrokinetics, or “firestarters,” said to have used their mental powers to create flames.

Hanky Panky

In 1882, L.C. Woodman of Paw Paw, Michigan, claimed to have discovered a man with pyrokinetic abilities. In a brief article in the Michigan Medical News, he described the case of William Underwood (born c. 1855), who could take a handkerchief, rub it vigorously with his hands while breathing on it, and cause it to burn until consumed. “It is certainly no humbug, but what is it?” Woodman wrote, sparking a round of debate in some medical and scientific journals of the day.

Hot Toddler

In March 2011, the Philippine Daily Inquirer reported that hundreds of people were flocking to a small city in Antique Province to see a three-year-old girl who had the power to predict or create fires. The mayor of the town stated that he’d witnessed a pillow ignite after a command from the toddler. “I can’t explain it,” he said. “I don’t easily believe in this kind of thing, but I saw it.”

In 1966, the remains of a Pennsylvania man were said to display signs of SHC.

HOT OFF THE PRESSES

Spontaneous human combustion has been featured everywhere from the cartoon Calvin and Hobbes to the TV program ER. But the news media have also carried reports of purported real-life examples.

• In September 2011 in Ireland, a man’s burned body was found near his apartment furnace. According to the coroner, the furnace did not cause the blaze, nor was there any sign of foul play. The only burn marks were on the floor directly below the body and the ceiling directly above it—a common hallmark of spontaneous combustion.

• In 1967, a British woman on a bus noticed blue flames in an apartment building window. Fearing a gas fire, she got off the bus and called the fire department. When the firemen arrived at the scene, they found the body of a homeless man. One firefighter reported seeing blue flames coming from a slit in the man’s stomach.

• 1974, in Savannah, Georgia, Jack Angel claimed to have awoken from four days of sleep with strange burn marks on his body. His right hand, he said, appeared to be burned from wrist to fingertips, and he had “this big explosion in my chest. It left a hell of a hole. I was burned … on my ankle, and up and down my back, in spots.”