My experience with telekinesis 40 years ago

[IDemo]

Telekinesis means movement of objects with mind power.

I've never relayed this story to anyone, friend or family. This seems like as good a place as any. If the woo factor makes you laugh, I'd probably be the first to join you. Except that it really did happen to me.

When I was about 12, the mother of my best friend across the street from us in Southern California had us experimenting with an Ouija Board-like device. It consisted of an arc of alphabetic characters on a flat board, and a wooden pendant on a thin chain. The intent was to ask "it" a question and allow the device to swing back and forth over letters to spell out a response. Like most everything at that age, it was a source of great fascination, but only for a short while.

My father died that summer and Mom moved us out of state, away from pendant-thing and friends. One day, about a year later, I remembered the device and thought I would attempt to duplicate its effects, even without the blessing of the game's manufacturer. I took a needle and thread, sat at my small bedroom desk, and focused. Sure enough, the needle began moving right and left. I tried to make it move in circles and it did. I then "made" it change direction. I felt an overwhelming sense within me as this was happening, and it wasn't a good feeling. Quite black, as a matter of fact.

Since I had always had an interest in science, I decided at least a bit of scientific method was justified. I taped the thread to the edge of the bookshelf to eliminate the effects of any subtle hand movements on the string. Still, it moved as I willed it to. I then covered my nose with a book to eliminate any possible interference from my breath, and again it moved. By this time I was worried about the effect the whole thing was having on me and didn't make any other attempts for many years.

About ten years later or so, I decided to try again just to see if the ability was still there. Nothing. Sorry I can't post a YouTube for you, but that was long before PC's and wouldn't be particularly convincing in this day and age anyway. I can't begin to explain the effect, how it happened or why.

[laconicsax]

1. If you can still replicate the results, James Randi has $1,000,000 for you

http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/1m-challenge.html

[WhollyHeretic]

2. So you moved things with your mind once but never bothered to try again until 10 years later?

[IDemo]

3. No, I did this two or three times at least

This was 40 years ago, as I said. I don't remember the details of dates and the exact number of times. I do remember that it didn't leave me with a good feeling and simply decided to leave it behind. I think after a number of years, when I was in my early twenties, I thought the negative feeling I had experienced may have been a side effect of guilt over living in a Christian household and conducting what no doubt would have been viewed as a Satanic practice. By that time I had become an atheist and didn't feel the conflict, but wanted to see if the experiment still worked. Try as I might, the needle wouldn't budge.

Would be nice getting a million bucks or even a hundred for being able to demonstrate this, but no chance now. I don't think I'd want the recognition, anyway.

[trotsky]

4. Who cares about the recognition?

Go influence a roulette wheel or two. Not enough to tip off the casino, but just enough to emerge with a fair amount more money than you went in. Easy income. Remember to leave with less money once in a while though.

[frogmarch]

5. I too once had the power.

When I was a teenager, I once made a housefly crawl across the living room floor and stop under my lifted foot so I could squash it with my shoe.

I couldn't figure out if it was a case of telekinesis, if I had exerted mind control over the fly, or if the fly just happened to have been feeling suicidal.

EDIT: I thought I'd better add here that I don't believe any of those "explanations." I realize that the fly crawling under my ready foot was just a coincidence.

As for your needle and thread experiment, could you have confused cause and effect because maybe only a split second had separated the needle starting to move and your willing it to? What I mean is, could the needle have started to move and then you willed it to?

[Iggo]

6. When I was a teenager, I could move things with my mind.

Well, one thing.

[Orrex]

7. In an in-class experiment in 9th grade, I was able to "read" nine cards in a row that I couldn't see

Basically, one student sat at the front of the class, facing the board, and someone else stood behind them holding up the famous "ESP picture cards" for the class to see. The idea was that the class would try to "send" the image to the "reader" who would call out the image. Each student's turn would last until they missed one.

Of the five (or seven) cards, I had nine "hits" in a row, with each one after the second eliciting a startled gasp from the class.

Many things were wrong with the methodology, and I knew this even at the time. Still, it was fun having my classmates attribute some kind of "psychic" power to me, even if I didn't believe it myself.


Similarly, I don't believe that your story is an accurate account of any sort of paranormal experience.

[IDemo]

8. Not sure what you mean by "accurate account "?

If you mean I may have been missing a factor which might have caused the needle to move: air-conditioning, magnetic field, subtle vibration of the house for whatever reason, I think those can all be eliminated from the equation pretty easily. Mainly because such external factors wouldn't have cooperated with me on the direction of rotation or the duration. In any event, magnetism can be dismissed; the only possible source might have been a strongly varying current in the room's electrical wiring, but that wouldn't be near powerful enough or at the correct frequency to cause any affect such as this (I'm a degreed electronics tech and familiar with electromagnetic fields).

Again, I made sure to remove any influence coming from myself physically. I suppose one possibility would have to be mentioned: that I was simply "under the spell" of a self-induced hypnosis and willed myself to see what wasn't really happening. The best I can offer on that would be the same thing often heard from UFO attestants - I know I saw what I saw. Plus, there was my friend and his mother back in Orange County who apparently were seeing the same effect taking place with the game board.

If by not believing my story is an "accurate account" you think I may simply have confused myself with the circumstances or just be telling a campfire ghost story, that's your prerogative, and as I said, I probably wouldn't believe it either had it not happened to me.

Peace - :hi:

[Orrex]

9. Well, at the risk of making too pointed a statement, I simply don't believe you.

Nothing personal, but if your magical thread-influencing power is real as described, then you've completely destroyed everything that we know about physics and biology. I'm afraid that I need something a little more concrete than your account of the purported event before I abandon many decades of human understanding. No offense, and I mean that sincerely. If the identical thing had happened to me, I would dismiss it as a fluke and/or a misperception before I'd be willing to believe that a supernatural event had occurred.

You may dismiss this as "my preroggative," but really that's nothing more than an attempt to trivialize a quite reasonable objection, as if the reality or unreality of your world-shattering experience is simply a matter of personal preference. Even falling back on the old "I know I saw what I saw" is simply an attempt to render one's own experience off-limits to inquiry.

In the absence of controlled (or at least independently verifiable) observation, you can't credit your experience as anything more than a quirky event or perception. In fact, you can't even say with any certainty that "you know you saw what you saw." All you can say is "I think I know what I think I thought I saw." In supernatural matters lacking any other evidence, you simply can't give a more absolute declaration than that.

[IDemo]

11. I don't recall terming it an actual "supernatural event"

It wasn't a "world-shattering experience", though it did give me pause.

As I mentioned, I tried to apply some science to the environment in the hope of eliminating the effects of any physical inputs by myself. And I also stated, I simply don't know the why or how of what was causing the needle to move. But to say I simply think I thought etc. that I saw this isn't completely applicable in this case. If that's true, you could say the same about every single thing you believe you've seen. This was not conducted in a darkened room with loud music or other distractions, in a generally nebulous or confusing setting. There was just me, sitting on a chair, observing a needle and thread in a quiet well-lighted room. There were no cellphones, internet or video games at that time. My biggest forms of mental distraction then would probably have been my hardbound copies of Mark Twain and Sherlock Holmes. I had painted and drawn tightly controlled pencil sketches for years and tend to think I was more observant than the normal thirteen year old.

What I saw was a needle hanging from roughly a foot of thread; rotating in about the circumference of a baseball, which would slow to a swinging motion and rotate in the opposite direction seemingly when I willed it to. Nothing too complicated.

I didn't mean to trivialize a quite reasonable objection, if that's what it sounded like. I did say in the OP that the whole story should probably rate as "woo" (where'd that term come from, anyway?) except that I'm involved in this one.

If you think I crafted this tale just to have a little fun here, I can't think of what my motivation would be. It's 40 years after the fact, I have nothing to gain by telling a story, and have to believe there are multiple outlets online with a much more accepting audience for this sort of thing. I tend to give DU'ers a bit more credit than most when it comes to scientific topics and do not mean to disrespect anyone with this post. I don't think an experiment could be done that would prove anything conclusively. Maybe using a wooden toothpick inside a closed jar on a motion-isolated platform? But that would have to wait for another person who still had "the ability".

[Orrex]

12. Whether or not you called it a supernatural event isn't really important

What you're describing--telekinesis--is expressly supernatural, and the mechanisms by which you might effect such action are directly at odds with biology and physics. As such, for your experience to be true as described, it would indeed have to be a world-shattering supernatural event.

I don't mean to seem petty, but there are plenty of people out there who take their anecdotal experiences as inviolable proof of the supernatural. Your own account of your experience exactly fits that mold, so I responded to it as I would to any similar claim.

[mr blur]

13. Such was/is the implication. (n/t)

[laconicsax]

10. The problem with anecdotes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPqerbz8KDc