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Journal
of the Society for Psychical Research - Volume 48 number 768 - June
1976 - pp. 322-328
P.K Reports From Various Countries
 Oracle
Bens the Sword
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Canada
New Horizons
Toronto vol. 1, No 4, July 1974 is an epoch making issue. Dr. A.R.G
Owen (pp. 172-73) describes various experiments conducted to test
the PK faculty of Matthew Manning and Uri Geller in June 1974.
Manning gave informal demonstrations of his ability to move a compass
needle by passing his hand to and fro at a distance of 9-12 inches
above it. Though Owen concedes that the prevailing conditions were
not scientifically strict enough completely to prove that PK was
at work, still the results did suggest to those present that Manning
possessed an unusual power to influence the compass needle.
"A complete film record was made of the bending of a key. It
gives an uninterrupted view of M's hands. The key is seen out the
outset to be perfectly straight. After being held for about a minute
in Matthew's lightly closed hand it is seen to be in the process
of bending. It continues visibly to bend in full view of the camera,
with the haft only being held by Matthew."
Matthew participated in an experiment to compare his EEG records
under conditions of (a) mental relaxation, and (b) concentration
(as when trying to bend a key). When in state (b) his EEG contained
a remarkable amount of low frequencies.
Psi subjects seem to imitate one another. Uri Geller started the
vogue for bending metal objects by PK and Matthew Manning has followed
suit. In D.D Homes time, he might well have levitated heavy tables
and produced loud raps all over the room.
On pp. 174-183 Dr. J. L. whitten notes remarkable and characteristic
changes in individuals who are experiencing authentic psi manifestations.
These contrast with the EEG's of persons mentally concentrating
or undergoing inconclusive psi tests. He calls the EEG patterns
obtained during genuinely paranormal manifestations "Ramp Functions".
Dr. W. investigated the EEG readings of two putatively psi subjects;
Mr Manning himself, a good PK subject, and Dr. A. Tanous, a good
subject for out-of-the-body experiences - a term which could be
a little misleading in this connection. "Travelling clairvoyance"
or "ESP projection" might be more accurately applied to
Dr. Tanous' experiences, since no evidence is given that he appeared
as a phantasm at the place two miles from where he was locked in
a test chamber.
The subjects
with whom these tests were conducted simultainiously with EEG recordings
all showed during psi manifestations the ramp functions, i.e. a
significant increased percentage of energy in the lower EEG frequencies.
The author claims that the ramp function appears to be a unique
physiological correlate of paranormal behaviour in the psychics
tested, and that it is distinguished by a peak in the delta or low
theta band. It does indeed seem to be correlated with the production
of authentic paranormal phenomena.
To support his
conclusion that Uri Geller's metal bending and breaking were truly
paranormal, Dr. A.R.G. Owen notes that out of the many metal objects
present in a room where he was tested "the objects - a fork
and two keys - which were bent or divided were ones that my wife
and I had brought, we knew their condition right up to the moment
when Uri's presentation commenced. The nature of the objects was
also so highly individual that there was no possibility of anyone
having substituted like, but prepared, objects, for them without
the substitution having been subsequently detected. Thus from the
viewpoint of my wife and myself the presentation constituted an
experiment in which beyond reasonable doubt Mr. Geller's metal phenomena
were genuine and paranormal."
The experiments
took place during an interview with U.G. at the City -TV studio,
Toronto. Some 11 persons were present. Geller was first asked to
comment on his ESP gifts. Then, during the first commercial break,
Mrs Owen took out her purse to inspect a bunch of six keys which
had previously been seen by several ladies present and had then
been normal. There had been no contact between Mrs Owen and Uri,
but "to her surprise she found one of the keys, a Reilly, noticeably
bent at a point a quarter inch from the haft. The angle of bending
appeared to me to be about 25 degrees".
During the further
demonstration Geller choose a fork about seven inches long and "asked
Pat Murphy to hold it in such a way that the whole stem would be
visible…Uri then, using the tip of the thumb and forefinger
of his right hand, gently "massaged" a section of the
stem of the fork." In the beginning he thought nothing was
going to happen, then smiling said something like "It's going!…"
"With the
thumb and forefinger of his right hand he held the bottom of the
stem and gently waggled it. The stem moved relative to the blade…showing
that the section he was stroking had lost it's rigidity…the
total angle traversed between extreme positions appeared to me to
exceed 40 degrees. After five or six wagglings he released the bottom
of the stem and pushed it lightly with his fingertip. The stem suddenly
parted at a point in the portion Uri had stroked, and fell to the
floor. Uri picked it up and handed the two parts to Pat Murphy…at
this stage I realised the fork was one that I had myself brought
from home."
Dr.Owen had
also brought along two unique keys, issued to him many years ago
when he was a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. They were fastened
together by a piece of string to which a label was attached with
an annotation in Dr. Owen's own handwriting. "Uri picked them
up by the label without touching the keys themselves. It was then
noticed that one was bending. This was actually seen by the audience
and by the TV cameras in close-up. Uri supported this key with a
finger of his other hand. It continued to bend and finally stopped
at about 15 degrees."
At the second
commercial break "Uri suggested that the bunch of keys, including
the bent Reilly key from Mrs Owen's purse be put, together with
other material from the pockets of the audience in a pile on the
back seat between myself and Mrs Sparrow." Uri answered three
questions from the audience, and then suggested that the pile be
looked at. "Only the top half of the Reilly key was still attached
to the bunch. The blade had separated from it, the metal being divided
at a point close to the original bend, an operation that would normally
require either a hacksaw or a cold chisel and mallet. The blade
was found among the other keys in the pile."
Dr. Owen suggests
that Uri's choice of his fork and pair of keys, could in the former
case be put down to chance, and in the latter to their eye-catching
effect. Could it not be that Uri, having heard that Dr. Owen was
an authority on experimental PK research, especially wanted to impress
him, and therefore selected by ESP his contribution to the metal
objects offered. His performances could thus convince Dr. Owen.
In the same way it was Mrs Owen's key that was bent, rather than
those of other women in the audience. The Owen couple could be considered
by Geller the most worth convincing of his paranormal powers.
May I stress
Dr. Owen's call to all investigators of the Geller case to report
and make public the results of their investigations, so that present,
as well as future generations may know exactly what happened, and
how far his phenomena may be considered paranormal. Otherwise we
shall commit an error like that of our Victorian forefathers vis-à-vis
D.D. Home. Contemporary reports of D.D. Home's phenomena are comparatively
rare. Within ten years of his death he was virtually forgotten,
and only in the last decade have we started to collect what was
left in print concerning his extraordinary powers. Compared with
Home of course Uri is but an infant just beginning to walk but it
is essential that all the Geller matter should be collected and
stored by some trustworthy institution that will sort out the case
material, make it ready for publication, and be open to all who
want personally to study the reports etc. We should make the most
of Uri Geller - and of Mathew Manning - while we canfor it may be
another 50 years before their successors appear.
It should be
added that vol. 1 No 5 of New Horizons, not available to our correspondent
in time for discussion, contains a full report of the proceedings
of the First Canadian Conference on Psychokinesis and related Phenomena
in June 1974.
Copies of these
issues of New Horizons may be obtained by sending a cheque or money
order for 3 Canadian dollars each to the New Horizons Research Foundation,
PO Box 427, Station F, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4Y 2L8.
France and Spain
Yvonne Duplessis
& Paul Bardot, Rencontre avec Uri Geller.
Revue Metapsychique,
Parapsychologie, No.18 Nouvelle Serie. 1973. Pp. 47-55.
This issue seems
to be the last one published. As it only came to hand in 1974, I
feel that it deserves to be quoted here.
The authors
visited Uri Geller in Paris on august 30, 1973. They sat together
at the tea table in the hall of an hotel in a buzz of conversation
and movement among visitors and hotel guests. In this atmosphere
Geller conducted some informal experiments.
"U.G placed
one of the spoons we had brought with us in the palm of one of his
hands, holding it in position by the light pressure of his thumb
and all the while stroking it with two fingers of his other hand.
During this procedure he kept his eyes closed. After about 30 seconds
we saw the spoon starting to bend…when placed on the table
in front of us, it continued, though untouched, to bend for some
two minutes. All the while U.G went on talking without once glancing
at it."
Geller then
asked his visitors to hand him large metal objects such as a pair
of iron tongs, pokers, etc. As they were not carrying articles of
this kind, they handed Geller a small patent key, which he bent
as he had bent the spoon. The key too continued to bend without
being touched after it was put down. A photograph clearly shows
that the bowl part of the spoon was bent so as to form an angle
of 90 degrees to the handle, when laid flat on the table. More or
less the same held good of the small key; its bow, when lying flat
on the table formed an angle of about 90 degrees with its stem and
bit. All this was observed at five on a clear August afternoon.
M. Bardot's
watch had been going well for at least three weeks. Geller held
his fist above it for three seconds, and both authors saw that the
watch's hands had been put back 1 hour and 15 minutes, and that
the watch's second-hand had stopped. Simply by holding his clenched
fist above the watch again (without touching it) U.G. made the second-hand
function once more. The original position of the watch's alarm pointer,
too, had been changed. Instead of pointing to 6.45, as it had for
many months, it now indicated 5.13.
Mme. Duplessis
too had brought a watch. It had not been wound up for two months.
As soon as Geller placed his clenched fist an inch or so above it,
both authors heard the watch start ticking. Without being wound
the watch continued to run for over four hours.
It is remarkable
to note how stereotyped Geller's phenomena are; they are always
concerned with bending metal objects, influencing watches, clocks
and the like. The experiences recorded by Mme. Duplessis and M.
Bardot in Paris in 1973 were practically identical with those of
the editors and photographer of the Spanish periodical La Actualidad,
who tested U.G. in a Madrid hotel in September 1975.
After some conversation
in the brilliantly illuminated hotel room Geller requested one editor,
Sr. Pelaez, to hand him his bunch of keys. Pelaez pretended to have
left them at home. The photographer, Sr. Nieto, willingly offered
his front door key. While the three visitors were watching him closely,
Geller stroked the key with his index-finger, as it lay before him
on the table. After a few seconds he left the key alone, but kept
staring at it, while he cracked his fingers once or twice. Suddenly
the key broke in two pieces! The keys bit with a length of about
an inch and a half was broken in the middle. The bits fracture was
not clear-cut since the two pieces did not fit together any longer,
it was as if some of the keys matter had disolved into nothing.
The photographer
offered his watch for another PK test. Geller held his fist above
it, and suddenly all present heard the watch emit a crunching noise.
Sr. Nieto shouted "Damn it, you are ruining my £100 watch!"
Geller said "Don't worry. I only turned the hands backwards,
that is all." And indeed, the watch showed a regression of
1 hour and 15 minutes.
It is a curious
fact that M. Bardot's watch was also put back 1 hour and 15 minutes
two years previously in Paris.
Switzerland
Th. Locher,
der Oltner Spuk 1974. (The 1974 Oltner poltergeist). Schweizerisches
Bulletin fur Parapsychologie, 8, 1974, pp. 8-12.
The enourmous
publicity Uri Geller received among the millions of people who watched
him demonstrating on TV his powers of metal bending and breaking
has lead to the coining of the term psi-induction: to indicate that
some of those who watched him suddenly found themselves capable
of producing the same phenomena.
In 1974, for
instance, while a middle aged lady, Frau Scheid, living in Germany,
was watching U.G. on T.V., she suddenly heard sounds in the sideboard.
Opening its drawer she saw her valuable silver spoons, forks, etc,
wriggling and twisting like so many eels! A police- inspector accompanied
by a detective-sargent were both able to observe with their own
eyes the same remarkable phenomena still going on. They publicly
testified to what they had seen.
A similar case,
this time accompanied by typical poltrgeist phenomena, i.e. spontaneous
recurrent PK, continuing for some weeks, happened in a Swiss town
in the spring of 1974. A rare and curious feature of this case was
that psi-induction manifested itself in two persons at once so that
poltergeist phenomena were triggered off by two poltergeist mediums,
(PK subjects) of whom the girl was the more powerful and versatile.
On Jan 23, 1974,
Herr Christian (39) and his girlfriend, Fraulein Carolina (19),
had watched U.G. on T.V. soon afterwards knives, forks, spoons,
etc. started to bend or break into pieces in the sideboard drawers
without anyone touching them. About the same time, bags, plates,
crockery, a glass and other objects flew about the room, following
trajectories in complete contradiction to the known laws of ballistics.
A clock, which had been nailed to the wall, described a large arc
as it fell to the floor. The same phenomena occurred in two other
houses, that of a woman neighbor and that of Herr B., in the presence
of Frl. Carolina who was followed by poltergeist phenomena for many
hours by day and by night. Electric bulbs were screwed out of their
sockets, a dinner plate floated slowly through the room, and three
ash-trays, which had been put under a piece of furniture, returned
to their former places all by themselves.
The three investigators
of the case were Dr. Locher, president of the swiss Parapsychological
Society, and two psychologists, Meier and Richiger, who submitted
the two poltergeist mediums to various psychological tests. All
observed the bending of metal objects after the manner of Geller.
Meier and Richiger
reported that after one test three spoons, held in C.'s hand, were
bent one after another while they were constantly watching her.
They write: "While we kept her under continual observation,
the first spoon started to bend, finally it formed an arc of 180
degrees. During a time interval of about two hours the same occurred
with two coffee-spoons, a thick metal rod and a pair of steel nail-scissors.
C. held the spoons in her right hand, and rubbed them with her thumbs".
(The bent spoons may be examined in the archives of the Swiss Parapsychological
Society, near Berne.) To remove all remaining doubts about the authenticity
of Frl. C.'s paranormal activities, Dr. Locher sacrificed a silver
pencil inscribed with his name, which had been in his possession
for 40 years. Frl C. took hold of it and within a few moments Locher
saw with his own eyes that her PK powers had completely wrecked
it.
It is curious
to note that the Geller-effect seems to begin with the bending or
breaking of metal cutlery. The so called mini Gellers too start
in this way but seldom seem to continue in the more general poltergeist
mode, as happened in the case of the two Swiss subjects, with whom
"psi-induction" lead to a down-right poltergeist explosion
which did not calm down for several weeks. In Frau scheid's case
it never got any further, if we except a grandfather-clock that
suddenly stopped after ticking without a break for two centuries.
In connection
with this Geller effect, it is surprising to note that cases of
psi-induction in our own day seem to occur only in connection with
the Geller TV shows (such a kind of induction is also reported to
have occurred during D.D Home's sittings), but do not appear to
be reported after the seemingly far more "miraculous"
TV performances of master illusionists. We never hear about mini-Houdinis
(producing apports of rabbits, breaking heavy chains etc.). It is
unlikely that children between six and ten know the difference between
psi phenomena and those produced in a normal way by illusionists.
Why then mini-Gellers but never mini-Houdinis? In psi induction
there is perhaps something more than just the stimulation of latent
psi (PK) powers to activity. On the other hand, there are no mini-Gellers
that excel in ESP performances, though Geller demonstrates his Excellent
ESP capacities on the stage as often as he does his PK powers. Why?
George Zorab
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Reproduced with
the permission of The Society for Psychical Research
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