Thoughtography is an ability that some people have claimed to possess and it allows them to use their mind to develop images on film. The people that claim to have it can knowingly affect the outcome of photographic film by making shapes and other things appear that were not there physically when the picture was taken. Others who have the ability but don’t know can apparently effect photos without even consciously realizing which could either lead to them thinking it is a problem with the camera itself or even think it could be some kind of haunting, like a ghost apparition, when it could just be their own mind or someone else in the vicinity or living with them that are manipulating the film unintentionally.
One particular case of this power was a man called Ted Serios, a bell-boy living in Chicago. He was able supposedly to use his mind to create anomalous black and white shadows and lights, which were often called “blackies” and “whities”, of which many other thoughtographers are often able to make, it is one of the most common among people with this alleged paranormal power and of which many can mistake as ghosts. Skeptics would often rule it out as some kind of malfunction, bug or dust on the camera lens or accidentally getting a finger in the way of the lens.
Serios’ powers though in this realm seemed to be much more as he was also able to create actual pictures of things, most commonly buildings, within photographic film simply by thinking of such a building and pointing the camera at his head and taking the picture, instead of a picture of his head appearing, a picture of a building would materialize. Skeptics such as James Randi, a paranormal debunker, claimed that he was using a trick to create such effects.
Serios would use something that he called his “gismo” when creating thoughtography, a small plastic cylinder covered at both ends with cellophane and a piece of blackened film or sometimes he would just use a rolled up piece of paper, and with either one of these he held them in front of the camera, which he claimed was to stop his fingers accidentally obscuring the lens.
Randi believed that this “gismo” was being used to hide a small lens and a microtransparency and with that in-front of the camera, the image on the transparency would be projected on to the polaroid film, causing the effect.
Researchers who had been working with Serios though disagreed and didn’t have any suspicions that he was using such a trick and they also said that they had taken steps to make sure no such device would have been hidden within the gismo that Serios was using, such as by having him be topless so there was nowhere to hide any such cheating device and also said he could still perform thoughtography without the gismo being involved at all. Researchers also said that Serios was able to re-create pictures from hidden photos in envelopes, which they called the “target building” that they wanted him to re-create through thoutography, the researchers said that he was able to do this, but that there would also be certain distortions and differences as well as misspellings of words on the building that proved it wasn’t a direct copy, ruling out any kind of trickery.
One of the last big experiments happened at the Denver Natural History Museum on 27th May 1967, the goal was that with Serios surrounded by paleolithic and neolithic artifacts he would be able to use thoughtography to produce an image from prehistoric times. Serios would focus on the impression of a primitive man lighting a fire, a number of pictures were taken which harbored unusual results but one of the best showed a Neanderthal man in a crouching position.
But there was once again suspicion that it was trickery, as the picture was recognized to be very similar to a life-sized model that resided in the Chicago Field Musuem of Natural History, and that there were postcards depicting the full exhibit for sale and that Serios could have used that within the gismo, to create the photo on the polaroid. But once again, closer examination of the two photos seemed to rule it out, as there were once again differences, such as in the posture of the primitive man, seemingly ruling out it being an exact copy, professionals also went on record saying that it could not have been recreated from a single microtransparency trick.
Eventually Serios would lose his power to recreate images of buildings and other objects/living things, his apparent thoughtography downgrading to only being able to make the blackies and whities.
So, what could it be? Is it simply malfunctions, interferences and trickery? Or is the mind actually sometimes capable of manipulating the outcome of photographic film? Maybe you should give it a go yourself, you never know.
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