A long time ago (1980ish maybe), on the grandaddy of reality shows, “That’s Incredible” I remember there was a guy who claimed he had telekinetic abilities. He would demonstrate his powers by making telephone book pages mysteriously turn, balanced pencils move, and plant fronds “shake” from several feet away, all apparently by willing it telekinetically.
They had him on the show a couple of times and even tried to debunk him with “controlled experiments”, all with dubious success. Eventually he was exposed, or exposed himself, I don’t remember. It turns out he had spent some time in jail and perfected a breath technique whereby he could direct strong puffs of air undetected and turn book pages and cause movement in other objects. My question is, does anyone remember him, and if so what was his name? Can’t find any information about his technique either…it’d be a great illusion to learn! (I’m a close-up magician.)
His name is James Hydrick.
i remember the guy and the funny thing is i was thinking about this exact same thing the other day.
I can rememeber his name but as far as i can remember he had a small moustache and longish dark brown hair.
I remeber they tried one of them with a glass container and he still made it move i think.
He was actually around in the seventies as far as i can remember but the exposure came out in the 80’s or later his hair was very seventies style, hmm i will try to fins out for you.
Zaphod
He was exposed/debunked by a chap named Dan Korem - he was able to make a folded dollar bill (balanced over a pin point) to turn, even when it was covered by a fishtank; Korem noticed that the tank wasn’t exactly snug to the table and taped up the gap with duct tape, whereupon Hydrick was unable to perform.
A similar situation occured with telephone directories - hydrick was able to turn the pages, but not when there were polystyrene chips scattered around it.
He eventually admitted what Korem had suspected all along - he has perfected a breathing technique that allowed him to deliver very precise and powerful puffs of air, without seeming to move or even open his mouth (apparently he would lie on his bunk in prison and blow air in such a way that the prison guard, on his way out of the door, thought someone had touched him on the back of the neck).
That was extremely cool for two reasons; first, a debunking where you don’t expect one, plus it was fun trick to practice.
I knew about this guy, the curious thing is that I did remember seeing Ripley’s believe it or not" (the one with Jack Palance) as the ones that showed how he was exposed as a fraud! (The most recent Ripley producers are more gullible)
This site points to James Randi as the one that showed James Hydrick to be a fraud in the “That’s My Line” show out of all places:
http://www.totse.com/en/fringe/dreams_auras_astral_projection/psi.html
Ok, now that I see Mangetout’s post, It looks to me that what I saw in Ripley, was the taped confession of Hydrick made by Korem’s team.
Although Randi showed how Hydrick was doing it, Hydrick did not confess then.
From the Ripley show, I do remember a microphone was attached to his chest, and Hydrick realized his breath blasts would be detected. After other tests proved he had no powers, he trashed things around and then confessed after calming down.
I have Korem’s book and the odd thing is that I don’t remember him even mentioning Randi - I’ll have to give it another read sometime.
I Re-read Korem’s book Powers on the train yesterday and he does mention Randi a few times, but mainly in the context of Hydrick’s hatred toward him - Randi - true to form - was pretty hard on Hydrick, although to be fair, he didn’t know about Hydrick’s psychological issues and history as a victim of child abuse - to his credit, on learning of this, Randi offered his full support.
Korem is something of an anomaly because, although he presents himself as a hard-nosed skeptic of Randi’s ilk, he is actually a Christian and has personal belief in the supernatural - the final one-third of the above mentioned book is an exploration of the resurrection of Christ, although there’s nothing particularly novel about what he says there - it’s the same arguments used by Josh McDowell and Simon Greenleaf.
Why did the idiot claim to be telekinetic? I mean, lets face it, that’s a damn good trick!