• Security incident: ISF was recently accessed by intruders. Please change your password, and change it anywhere else you used it. Read more

Demonstration of telekinetic fork-bending?

Andy_Ross said:
Not quite the same, but using the same techniques, Professor Denzil Dexter from the University of Southern California demonstrated how to pass his hand through a sheet of glass.
It's very convincing.

Click to expand...

Professor Dexter is much, much more believable. :thumbsup:
 
Harry Houdini had debunked this stuff a century ago.
Randi reminded us and made it clearer,.
 
That was one of those weird videos one could put in the, "What did I just see" thread. All that hooting and hollering was nuts.

But bend by telekinesis? Doesn't that guy running the show just twist the fork handle with his hands in plain view? I didn't want to watch it again to check if that is what I saw. What did other people see?
 
Last edited:
jsfisher said:
Towards the end, when the left window is garnering most of the attention, the guy on the right is obviously bending tines and then the entire fork handle. The "tada" presentation that follows is bloody stupid.
Click to expand...
So at least one of you also saw him just twist the handle, :thumbsup:
 
Darat said:
Looking at his website: www.mindpossible.com I'm again struck by the question of whether he believes in this stuff himself or not?
Click to expand...
There used to be workshops where people could learn to do it themselves, and even though they eventually did it in the conventional way, they usually managed to persuade themselves that they had used psychic powers.
 
Cat Not Included said:
I'm sure many of you have already seen this, but...

https://learninglink.oup.com/access/content/rothwellps3e-student-resources/rothwell-ps3e-chapter-14-video-6
Click to expand...

I've reported this before on this site but not for some time now. ;)

I once saw Randi on a Canadian TV show demonstrate how to bend a key. The camera was positioned to show Randi and the host sitting on oposit sides of a table with the camera at the side so you could see underneath the table. Randi took the unbent key from the host, did some slight misdirection, reached down with the key under his chair and give it a good twist in the frame of the chair. When the host's attention returned to Randi, Randi slowly revealed the "bending" key. The host was amazed and mystified but we, the audience, saw it all.

Those were the days when TV actually provided information rather than infotainment. :(
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
That was one of those weird videos one could put in the, "What did I just see" thread. All that hooting and hollering was nuts.

But bend by telekinesis? Doesn't that guy running the show just twist the fork handle with his hands in plain view? I didn't want to watch it again to check if that is what I saw. What did other people see?
Click to expand...
The same. I think he's bucking for reflected fame, because Uri Geller, when confronted with his nonsense, can say, "Well, at least I'm not him!"
 
Darat said:
And think of how precisely we can weigh things, an extremely sensitive scale with a sliver of metal in a sealed vacuum box, if you could move it and cause any kind of fluctuation on the scales it would be a breakthrough.

Yet time and time again all we see is magicians' tricks being passed off as paranormal powers.
Click to expand...


I remember reading an account, probably in one of the old issues of Skeptical Inquirer that were in my college library, of a test at ... I want to say Stanford Research Institute ... in which they placed a piece of metal in a meter that would measure any physical stress on the metal. And then they left the psychic alone and unmonitored in the room with the device while they went into another room to monitor the instrument's output. Amazingly, the instrument detected bending of the metal.
 
Armitage72 said:
I remember reading an account, probably in one of the old issues of Skeptical Inquirer that were in my college library, of a test at ... I want to say Stanford Research Institute ... in which they placed a piece of metal in a meter that would measure any physical stress on the metal. And then they left the psychic alone and unmonitored in the room with the device while they went into another room to monitor the instrument's output. Amazingly, the instrument detected bending of the metal.
Click to expand...
Yep, all that tech and they could not afford a CCTV camera and videotape machine. :rolleyes:
 
Norman Alexander said:
Yep, all that tech and they could not afford a CCTV camera and videotape machine. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

ISTR that this was a very long time ago. The time of Targ and Puthoff. The tech was not likely available and, I mean, surely we can trust our subjects? Why would they lie or try to fool us?
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
But bend by telekinesis? Doesn't that guy running the show just twist the fork handle with his hands in plain view? I didn't want to watch it again to check if that is what I saw. What did other people see?
Click to expand...
Yeah, the trick to spoon bending pretty much boils down to "do it when they're not looking".
 
So....Uri Geller became a household name in the 70's by bending silverware in front of people and telling them it was really magical? I feel like I could have made a lot of money in the 70's.
 
arthwollipot said:
He had like 2 or 3 other tricks, but yeah.
Click to expand...

Yeah, like he could influence a compass with is mind (while waving meaningfully with his hand holding a magnet around the compass).

It was all very impressive.
 
jsfisher said:
Yeah, like he could influence a compass with is mind (while waving meaningfully with his hand holding a magnet around the compass).

It was all very impressive.
Click to expand...
The other thing he did was to restart stopped watches (remember this was in the 70s when watches still needed to be manually wound). He got people in front of their TVs to hold stopped watches in their hands where they warmed up sufficiently to get a few more ticks out.

And that was pretty much his entire repertoire of magic. He was a very poor magician.
 
On the plus side, I remember seeing him on TV a number of years ago, reduced to performing his same tricks on an infomercial for a psychic hotline.
He also performed the classic trick of reproducing a drawing by watching the end of the drawer's pencil move, probably also assisted by the large very reflective lenses on the guy's glasses.
 
smartcooky said:
When my daughter was a high-school student, her chemistry teacher did a class demonstration where he bent a spoon that he held between his thumb an forefinger. He then asked the class to explain how he was able to do this, and he only gave them one clue.

"The trick will work better in summer than in winter"

Of course, he had made the spoon out of gallium, and kept it in the lab fridge until he was ready.
Click to expand...

Not sure that he would have had to get it 'made' as such.

Novelty spoons were freely available in magic shops when I was a kid.

(typically an allow that becomes very soft in a hot drink)

As another aside... I practiced Uri Geller's spoon bending techniques as a kid, and there are many ways to bend a piece of cutlery under someone's watchful eye. The simplest one I used was to briefly brush the object against my body (i.e. my hip or thigh) as I was moving around. As long as you keep the bend concealed in your hand, your mark is none the wiser.

The hardest part is gradually revealing the bend by allowing the object to slowly come out of your hand as you're rubbing with one finger.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

ISF - Join now!

Every member here is approved by hand. No bots, no spam, just people who care about evidence and honest debate.

Membership is free!

Create your free account

Back
Top Bottom