Observations placeholder
Psychokinesis
Identifier
000567
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
Upton Beall invited a young foreign ‘psychic’ to their home having heard that he was astounding scientists in California with feats so beyond their understanding that they were content just to watch.
I have no evidence that the following was caused by anger, but if it was not anger it may have been angst or some other high emotion. It may have been the combined emotions of all those present that helped the experiment – especially Upton Beall’s wife who was in pain. The reason I have placed it in this category is because many people talented in this area find anger the easiest emotion to provoke and use it deliberately in feats of this kind. So this particular observation needs to be seen in the context of the likelihood of high emotion accompanying the experiment
A description of the experience
Mental Radio – Upton Beall Sinclair
In our home he gave what appeared to be a demonstration of levitation without contact. I do not say that it was levitation; I merely say that our friends who witnessed it – physicians, scientists, writers and their wives, fourteen persons in all – were unable even to suggest a normal method by which the event could have happened. There was no one present who could have been a confederate, and the psychic had been searched for apparatus; it was in our home, where he had no opportunity whatever for preparation. His wrists and ankles were firmly held by persons whom I know well; and there was sufficient light in the room so that I could see the outline of his figure slumped in a chair.
Under these circumstances a 34 pound table rose four feet into the air and moved slowly a distance of eight feet over my head.
We saw this, our friends saw this, yet in my mind, and likewise in theirs, the worm of doubt would always creep in. There are so many ways to fool people; so many conjuring tricks – think of Houdini, for example. I was unwilling to publish what I had seen; yet, also, I was unwilling not to publish it – for think of the possible importance of faculties such as this locked up in our minds. Here was my wife, ill, suffering pain; and these faculties might perhaps be used in healing.