Observations placeholder

THE METAL-BENDERS” by JOHN B. HASTED

I now summarize some important features of the teleportation phenomenon; these are based on my own observations.

1. For obvious reasons, it is much more usual for the appearance than for the disappearance to be observed. Indeed, it would be very difficult to be certain that both things happen at exactly the same moment (say within 0.2 sec) without some instrumentation. On rare occasions the disappearance and reappearance locations are both within the field of vision.
2. The reappearance can take place either in the air or on a surface such as floor or table. The reappearance of an object in liquid was described above, but I have not observed an object actually falling into liquid. Accounts exist of reappearance inside solids, particularly fruit. Teleportations into identified hens’ eggs have also been reported.
3. Reappearing objects have often been observed to appear with their own angular momentum. I have seen objects spin rapidly as they fall to, or appear on, the floor. It is difficult to make generalizations about direction of rotation or orientation of the axis of spin.
4. In many poltergeist flyings, linear momentum is reported to be associated with an object at the moment of its reappearance. At first I did not reaise that this feature was common, since nearly all the poltergeist flyings in my home had been just appearances and falls. But I heard detailed accounts by Maurice Gross, the Society for Psychical Research investigator of the Enfield poltergeist, where events became violent in the autumn of 1977. A feature was the glass marbles which flew about the room. There was no question that these marbles were simply teleporting, and did not have flight trajectories; they could be seen in flight; but the problem of where their trajectories started was more difficult. They seemed to start from the closed window, yet there were no marbles on the windowsill. The most likely alternative was that they had teleported to the window and appeared with linear momentum into the room.
   This feature might offer a clue to the ‘dog-leg’ flight-paths which are sometimes observed in poltergeist cases, and were seen at Enfield. In these paths there is a sudden change of direction in mid-flight. We might interpret this as a teleportation in mid-flight, to a position almost identical with the point of disappearance, but with the appearance associated with a new linear momentum vector. All this is somewhat speculative.
5. Occasionally a clicking sound (more of an unnatural ‘ping’) accompanies an event. I am almost certain about my hearing such a sound on several occasions.
6. Sometimes the object which appears is warm (say about 45 Celsius). On the first occasion on which I noticed such a feature, I assumed that the object might have been in contact with a hot stove; however there was no evidence for this, and similar events have been observed with no hot stove in the house. Reports of the appearance of warm objects have appeared fairly frequently in the literature of poltergeist phenomena, but I did not know of this until after my own observations.
7. On rare occasions the disappearance of an object is observed several minutes or even hours before its reappearance. A disappearance is noticed, and at a later time the reappearance of the object is also observed. There is no question that the object was at the location of the reappearance for all of the interim period; this location remained exposed to the field of view of observers, and was usually an obvious one. When I have been certain of this feature, I have assumed that there were in reality at least two consecutive teleportations, the end-point of the first teleportation being unknown – perhaps in a cupboard or even outside the house. But there is no evidence justifying this assumption; some other interpretation of the observations may be correct.
8. In my experience there is seldom very much vertical separation between the locations of disappearance and reappearance. I have observed no unequivocal events starting on one storey of a house and finishing on another. In few events has the vertical separation been more than 1 m. In other words, there is very little change of gravitational potential.
9. The sizes and shapes of the objects that undergo teleportation can be the subject of only cautious generalizations. I have never observed object dimensions greater than about six inches; a statistical survey of sizes might only reflect the size distribution of domestic objects. In my experience sharp-edged objects are found less commonly than rounded objects. Indeed the collection of about thirty items which have travelled around Uri Geller’s New York apartment contains mostly ellipsoids and spheres.
10. The inconvenience and embarrassment caused by teleportations often leads to the question: How can these things be halted? The literature of poltergeist cases has often stressed the psychological contradictions and frustrations of the ‘epicentre’ ‘responsible’ for the phenomena. The psychiatrist may see these angers and frustrations as manifesting themselves physically as teleportation events. When relief is experienced and the tension is relaxed, the phenomena cease. One way of reducing the tension is for the subject to concentrate on the production of a controlled psychokinetic event, a movement rather than a teleportation. Whether there is success or failure in producing movement, the spontaneous phenomena can be halted, at least temporarily, perhaps because of the ‘psychical energy’ drained from the subject. I have also applied this method to halting bad attacks of spontaneous metal-bending.
11. Very little has been observed which supports the hypothesis of gradual rather than sudden appearance. The gradual appearance and gradual disappearance of apparitions, reported among others by Crookes,(50) would seem to be a different phenomenon, at least as regards the long times of appearance. At the Stanford Research Institute,(51) during Uri Geller’s visit, an interesting video-tape was made of a wristwatch falling through the field of view onto a table. Although it seems that the appearance took place above the field of view, the watch is seen to flicker as it descends; in consecutive frames the light reflected from the watch increases and decreases. One might be tempted to regard this as an ‘oscillation in the intensity of the appearance’, but a more likely interpretation is that the presence of angular momentum causes the light reflected from the watch to vary periodically. A very interesting claim has been made by Dr Miyauchi that Masuaki Kiyota has materialised (or teleported) a full Coca-Cola bottle in stages; the bottom first, and then the top.
12. An attempt has been made by Roll 12 to assess the dependence of frequency of poltergeist events (appearances) upon their distance from the subject. He proposes that this is an exponential fall-off. It has been claimed by German researchers (53) that events from their recent cases do not fit this behaviour. Although Roll is a most experienced and skilled investigator, one might question the applicability of such quantitative analysis at this time. Clearly there must be some falling-off with distance, since there are few ‘apports’ or teleportations with the subject miles away from the event. Nevertheless, both the number and density of household objects and the dimensions of the rooms could affect the statistics. The distance effect, if it were possible to separate with any accuracy, would probably turn out to be psychological rather than physical in nature; the notions of territory and even Gestalt could be relevant.
13. After each object reappeared I made a superficial optical examination, sometimes using a low magnification microscope; but no unexplained signs of damage have been detected. On one occasion the neck of a wine-glass snapped on falling, after its reappearance above a steel radiator. The objects seemed all to be physically unaffected by the experience of being teleported. Some accurate weighings of laboratory objects teleported (e.g. the crystals exposed to Nicholas Williams) showed no change.
14. Some teleportations of volumes of liquid have been reported in several poltergeist cases investigated by Professor Bender and other German psychic researchers. In the Schachter case, a ‘globe of water’ was actually seen to appear in mid-air by the plumber who was summoned. The description included the statement that it was as though an invisible rubber balloon filled with visible water had suddenly come to occupy a position in mid-air, and immediately burst. The globe of water fell immediately to the floor, where splashes and a puddle were made. Many puddles appeared in these cases, although the appearances were not usually observed.
    Chemical analyses were made of the water puddles, and the composition was found to correspond with that of the water in the plumbing system of the house. A reasonably likely interpretation of such an event is that a mass of water from a part of the system teleported into the room. Nevertheless it has not yet been possible to show by measurement whether when one of these events occurs the volume of the water in the system is decreased. Did an air-lock appear? No information is yet available about temperature, linear or angular momentum, turbulence, or explosive energy, at the moment of appearance. Water appearances are fairly frequent in the poltergeist literature, one of the most unexpected being at the British Embassy in The Hague.
15. Information is slowly accumulating about teleportations of living creatures, including human beings. I have never witnessed such events myself, but I have received reports from various victims and from their families. What might be conjectured to be teleportations of insects into closed rooms have been described in the literature. Very little information is available about larger creatures, but I once received a detailed report from Matthew Thompson, a poultry farmer in Dorset, which he summarized as follows:
    I have within recent weeks had two separate instances of birds (caged chickens) disappearing and reappearing some hours later. I am talking about birds disappearing literally into thin air and being neither visible nor audible. Any possibility of them being removed by some other persons and then returned can be completely ruled out.
    I have had no opportunity to check in detail on Matthew Thompson’s information, but I think it worthy of notice.
    Similarly, the teleportation of living humans is something which I have not observed in my own field of view, but about which I have studied a number of reports and have been able to question the observers and teleportees. An account(6) has appeared of an event in which Uri Geller found himself transported in an instant from New York City to the suburb of Ossining, where he fell through the roof of a sun-lounge. The shock experienced was considerable, and the event was never repeated. Nothing inconsistent has appeared in the answers that Uri Geller has given me about the details of this event.
    Although Uri Geller did not keep the event a secret, news of it did not at first make an impression in England: one of the metal-bending families knew nothing of it when they reported the strange behaviour of their son. They would continually find him in unnatural places, wedged in between wardrobe-top and ceiling, and so on. They would be running a hot bath for him, and suddenly a scream would announce his ‘transportation’ from his bedroom into the overheated bath, for which he was totally unprepared. The affliction of this family lasted for several months, but eventually grew less serious.
    Nicholas Williams also claims to have been teleported out of a locked room. When his father pointed out that this left them with a problem of the key remaining on the inside, Nicholas teleported back again to unlock the door! He has described the experience as something like being in a blizzard. Mrs Greta Woodrue of New England has reported delayed teleportation, similar to those described for inanimate objects in section 7 above. It was about eight minutes before she was again with her family, who were already frantic with worry. She had no experience of the passage of this time. Recently I have been present at what may have been the delayed teleportation of a boy. The period of delay was three minutes, and there was very little experience of the passage of time. A few similar events, concerning the medium Mrs Guppy, are to be found in the literature of psychic research.
16. It is not yet possible to unravel differences which may exist between ‘apports’ and orthodox teleportation events. Obviously the validation of such events is almost impossible unless the arrival is actually observed. I outline three incidents from my experience.
    In one incident I returned to my locked office to find in the centre of my desk what looked like a silver paperknife. I had just returned from the stately home of Longleat where I had observed Uri Geller soften and bend an item of the family silver; so I immediately contacted the Marquess of Bath to find whether the silver was his, but it was not. Neither had it apparently any connection with my colleagues or with Geller himself; in fact he has not seen it to this day. Experts later identified it as a Mexican hair ornament such as might be used in the ceremonies of the dead – ‘Los dios de los muertes’. It was not a mere piece of tourist silver. Neither I nor my colleagues had ever had any connection with Mexico, but it may be significant that Geller’s first Mexican visit took place several weeks later. On the other hand, it may not.
    The second incident took place in 1977 in the house of Gill Costin, whose attempts to teleport letters to Uri Geller will be mentioned in chapter 23. Although he never received these letters, some letters which appeared ‘in reply’ – themselves conceivably ‘apports’ – seemed significant to me. One day a crucifix on a chain appeared in Gill’s room; it was a souvenir of Lourdes. Gill is not a Roman Catholic, or indeed strongly religious at all, neither had she nor any of her friends or family any connection with the pilgrimage centre of Lourdes, or with France. It may be significant that my daughter Annie visited Lourdes with a rather spiritual pop group several weeks later; but again, it may not.
    In the spring of 1979 I was lecturing on the same platform as Guru Raj Ananda at a meeting whose title was ‘Mystics and Scientists’. Answering a question from the audience about teleportations, I tried to arouse the Guru’s interest in teleporting some ‘vibuthi’ or sacred ash for me; reports have been published describing such events brought about by Sai Baba and other mystics.
    What I got, deposited into my hand from Guru Raj’s apparently empty hand, was a hard black brittle object about the size of a pea. I understand that Guru Raj does not know where these objects come from, but believes they might be sweets teleported from Indian children. I immediately double-wrapped the black object in paper and placed it in my inside pocket inside a smaller wooden box with a tight-fitting lid. For further security two rubber bands were fastened round the box. I intended to analyse the black object, but when the rubber bands were removed and box and wrappings opened four hours later, no black object was there.
    Guru Raj gave the opinion that it is very difficult to produce an ‘apport’ which will not vanish within a matter of hours or days. But this is out of keeping with the permanence of the Mexican silver pin and Lourdes cross. Hopefully the Indian child will enjoy the return of his sweet!
    Even as brief an account as this illustrates the sort of difficulties which are faced by investigators of ‘apports’. It may be a long haul.

I will return to some theoretical speculation about teleportation later; it should be clear from the foregoing that some serious modification of modern physical theory may be necessary. The reason for devoting so much space to this subject in a book about metal-bending is that sometimes the same people are involved in ‘causing’ both types of phenomenon; also there are interesting, if speculative, physical similarities, in that a teleportation of atoms within a crystal lattice would cause the propagation of a dislocation; we noted in chapter 13 the importance of loop dislocations in metal-bending, and I am currently researching the density profiles of impurities implanted into single crystals by particle accelerators.