Observations placeholder

THE METAL-BENDERS” by JOHN B. HASTED

I determined to apply the technical experience I had gained to experiments, using the metal-bending children [and micro psychokinesis].

I imagined at first that the task should not be difficult for paranormal metal-benders. Nevertheless they did not have great success in moving pointers under domes. Andrew and Willie G. both produced very little pointer movement, but Julie Knowles has produced sudden rotations of the pointer through as much as 90°; evacuation of the dome was not possible, but care was taken to avoid thermal convection.

No metal-bender came near the performance of Dr Krmessky, who produced rotations in either direction at will for the Czech physicist Dr Adamec and myself.

Dr Krmessky almost (but not quite) induced me to believe that in his presence I was myself having some effect on the pointer. When l asked him if this ability induced in others persisted after he had left them, he gave the opinion that as soon as they were completely alone the induced ability left them.

Suzanne Padfield, the English girl who has several years’ experience of being able to move pointers, told me that she once induced the ability in another person in such a way that it lasted for several hours after she herself had departed.

One feature I have noticed with Dr Krmessky and Uri Geller is that the psychic cannot be certain of the direction in which the pointer will start to move when he begins his concentration. But once the movement has started, in either direction, he is able to change the direction at will; he is uncertain which way it will go in the first place, and there is sometimes a very small oscillation before the movement takes place.

When Jan Merta applied his pointer movement device, which was made of two horizontal chicken feathers, to the interruption of a light beam falling on a photocell and thereby closing an electrical circuit for a remote control ‘wish-switch’, he was careful to design it bi-directionally so as to allow for this effect. Application for patent rights to the ‘wish-switch’ was attempted, but abandoned.

Another feature of the ballistic pointer motion produced by psychics is that we cannot be certain how jerky is the quasi-force producing it. With both Julius Krmessky and Julie Knowles I had the impression that the force was produced in bursts or pulses; but it is very difficult to be certain of this because the suspended pointer behaves in a ballistic manner; it moves freely, with a very long period of oscillation (perhaps 15 sec) when it receives just one short pulse of torque. Only with accurate recording of the motion is it possible to make some analysis of the time-dependence of the quasi-forces…………………

Lest we should be lulled into a complacent attitude to our understanding of this particular psychic phenomenon in terms of a relatively simple ‘paranormal quasi-force field’, a report by Suzanne Padfield suggests that there is more complication.

She reported that she could deflect a compass for comparatively long periods of time (minutes); moreover the compass experienced long periods of deflection only when it was placed in certain areas of the room. Although this sounds exactly like the action of local anomalous magnetic fields, I am assured that this explanation was examined and rejected. The proposed phenomenon opens up interesting new possibilities.