James Hydrick | |
---|---|
Born | |
Occupation | Self-proclaimed psychic |
James Alan Hydrick (born February 28, 1959) [1] is an American former stage performer and self-described psychic.
Hydrick claimed to be able to perform acts of telekinesis, such as his trademark trick of moving a pencil resting at the edge of a table. Following a nationally televised demonstration of his abilities on That's Incredible! , he was unable to prove his supernatural abilities on That's My Line , and later confessed the fraud.
Hydrick was imprisoned for child molestation in 1989; he remains in a psychiatric hospital.
Hydrick was born in South Carolina to 36-year-old father Billy Hydrick and 13-year-old mother Lois Hydrick. [2] [3] His father was allegedly abusive. [4] In 1989, he told an interviewer that he started learning karate at age six to protect himself from his father after seeing one of his brothers beaten to death. He and his other siblings later lived in a series of foster homes and orphanages. [5]
Hydrick was convicted of kidnapping and torture in 1977, for which he was imprisoned. [6] He escaped three times: he allegedly kicked through a concrete wall in a Georgia jail, broke through gates at a South Carolina prison, and finally, in 1982, he pole-vaulted over a fence at a state prison in Utah. [7]
Throughout the 1970s, Hydrick was arrested repeatedly for crimes ranging from burglary to assault. [7] Despite his difficult background and ongoing legal troubles, Hydrick gained prominence for his karate and sleight of hand tricks, earning national television exposure and a cult following. He claimed he was able to use psychokinesis to turn the pages of books and make pencils spin around on desks, among other feats. [8] [9] Hydrick also set up martial arts classes and claimed he could pass on the gift of psychokinesis to children through special training techniques, which was shown in 1989 to be a front for his coercing children into performing sexual favors for him, and was a factor in his conviction for sexual assault of a minor. [10] [11]
Hydrick's most visible demonstration of his purported skills was in an episode of the series That's Incredible! that originally aired in December 1980 and repeated in 1981. He performed the pencil-spinning trick with the host John Davidson's hand on his mouth to block him from exhaling (after Davidson suggested that he could hear Hydrick blowing). [10] However, Hydrick had readjusted the pencil beforehand so that it was as precarious as possible and would move with the slight manipulation of his hands. He also caused a page from a telephone book to turn over, allegedly by telekinesis. [10] Magician and paranormal skeptic James Randi awarded the program a 1980 Uri Award, later renamed the Pigasus Award, "for declaring a simple magic trick to be genuine." [12]
James Randi replicated the pencil trick on a similar show, That's My Line, hosted by Bob Barker, demonstrating that it was a simple illusion and not a product of telekinesis. [13] Hydrick and Randi both appeared in a follow-up episode of the show, Hydrick to demonstrate his telekinesis, while Randi was determined to prove it was only a trick. Barker and Randi offered $10,000 if Hydrick would be able to move the pages of a phone book under certain conditions. To do this, Randi placed foam peanuts on the table around the phone book to show if Hydrick was actually turning the pages by blowing on them. As Hydrick attempted to turn the page, his "powers" failed him; he claimed that the stage lights were causing the foam pieces to generate a static electric charge which, when added to the weight of the page, required more force than he was able to generate to turn the page; Randi and the judges countered that this hypothesis had no scientific basis. [8] After 45 minutes with no results, Hydrick finally conceded his inability to complete the challenge, and the judging panel, which included a parapsychologist, declared that no supernatural phenomenon had taken place. At the end of the episode, Randi, to further discredit Hydrick, performed the same trick, openly demonstrating the blowing technique Hydrick used. [10]
In 1981, Hydrick's so-called psychic powers were conclusively exposed as frauds by investigative journalist and professional magician Dan Korem. Hydrick confessed to Korem that he had developed his trick in prison, and that he had not learned it from a Chinese master as he originally claimed. [8] [4] [14] Hydrick confessed, "My whole idea behind this in the first place was to see how dumb America was. How dumb the world is." [15]
Wanted on an outstanding warrant, Hydrick was apprehended after police saw him discussing psychic powers on the Sally Jessy Raphael talk show. [7] In 1989, Hydrick was sentenced to 17 years for molesting five boys in Huntington Beach, California. [11] After serving his sentence, he was remanded to Atascadero State Hospital for treatment under the state's sexually violent predator law. Psychologist Jesus Padilla described Hydrick as "an extremely difficult patient" who suffers from pedophilia, paraphilia, and antisocial personality disorder. [16] Hydrick petitioned for release in May 2013, but a trial resulted in a hung jury. [6] As of 2021 [update] , he is housed at the Coalinga State Hospital. [6] [17] [18]
James Randi was a Canadian-American stage magician, author, and scientific skeptic who extensively challenged paranormal and pseudoscientific claims. He was the co-founder of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), and founder of the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF). Randi began his career as a magician under the stage name The Amazing Randi and later chose to devote most of his time to investigating paranormal, occult, and supernatural claims. Randi retired from practicing magic at age 60, and from his foundation at 87.
Uri Geller is an Israeli-British illusionist, magician, television personality, and self-proclaimed psychic. He is known for his trademark television performances of spoon bending and other illusions. Geller uses conjuring tricks to simulate the effects of psychokinesis and telepathy. Geller's career as an entertainer has spanned more than four decades, with television shows and appearances in many countries. Magicians have called Geller a fraud because of his claims of possessing psychic powers.
Psychic surgery is a pseudoscientific medical fraud in which practitioners create the illusion of performing surgery with their bare hands and use sleight of hand, fake blood, and animal parts to convince the patient that diseased lesions have been removed and that the incision has spontaneously healed.
Spoon bending is the deformation of objects, especially metal cutlery, purportedly by paranormal means. It is a common theme for magic tricks, which use a variety of methods to produce the effect. Performers commonly use misdirection to draw their audience's attention away while the spoon is manually bent. Another method uses a metal spoon that has been prepared by repeatedly bending the spoon back and forth, weakening the material. Applying light pressure will then cause it to bend or break.
Nina Kulagina, Ninel Sergeyevna Kulagina was a Russian woman who claimed to have psychic powers, particularly in psychokinesis. Academic research of her phenomenon was conducted in the USSR for the last 20 years of her life.
The Pigasus Award is the name of an annual tongue-in-cheek award, which was presented by the late James Randi, a skeptic. The purpose of the award was to expose parapsychological, paranormal, and psychic frauds whom Randi had noted over the previous year. Randi usually made his announcements of the awards from the previous year on April 1.
Mediumship is the pseudoscientific practice of purportedly mediating communication between familiar spirits or spirits of the dead and living human beings. Practitioners are known as "mediums" or "spirit mediums". There are different types of mediumship or spirit channelling, including séance tables, trance, and ouija. The practice is associated with spiritualism and spiritism. A similar New Age practice is known as channeling.
Judy "Zebra"Knight is an American spiritual teacher and author known for her purported channelling of a spiritual entity named Ramtha. Critics consider her to be a cult leader.
Morris Lamar Keene, was a spirit medium in Tampa, Florida and at Camp Chesterfield Indiana, where he was known as the "Prince of the Spiritualists". He was also the trustee of Universal Spiritualist Association. He is best known for his 1976 book The Psychic Mafia, in which he coined the term "true-believer syndrome".
In spiritualism, ectoplasm, also known as simply ecto, is a substance or spiritual energy "exteriorized" by physical mediums. It was coined in 1894 by psychical researcher Charles Richet. Although the term is widespread in popular culture, there is no scientific evidence that ectoplasm exists and many purported examples were exposed as hoaxes fashioned from cheesecloth, gauze or other natural substances.
An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural is a 1995 book by the conjuror and paranormal investigator James Randi, with a foreword by Arthur C. Clarke. It serves as a reference for a variety of topics within pseudoscience, the paranormal, and hoaxes. The Encyclopedia received generally positive reviews. In 2006, Randi made the work available free online.
"Secrets of the Psychics" is a 1993 episode of the PBS series NOVA, presented by retired illusionist and paranormal investigator James Randi. Also appearing in stock footage are Peter Popoff, Uri Geller, and many others. It contains historical footage of Randi's 25 years of testing claims of supernatural powers, as well as more current footage of his trip to Russia to investigate the people making paranormal claims there. Belief in the paranormal has thrived in Russia since the dissolution of the USSR.
Banachek is an English mentalist, magician, and "thought reader".
Telekinesis is a hypothetical psychic ability allowing an individual to influence a physical system without physical interaction. Experiments to prove the existence of telekinesis have historically been criticized for lack of proper controls and repeatability. There is no reliable evidence that telekinesis is a real phenomenon, and the topic is generally regarded as pseudoscience.
Dan Korem is an American investigative journalist, author, documentary producer, speaker, and researcher. His focus is issues and practical applications related to snapshot behavioral reads. He is the author of several books, including: Snapshot - Reading and Treating People Right the First Time (2015), The Art of Profiling: Reading People Right the First Time, Expanded 2nd Edition (2012), Rage of the Random Actor - Disarming Catastrophic Acts and Restoring Lives (2005), Suburban Gangs: The Affluent Rebels (1995), and Streetwise Parents, Foolproof Kids (1992)
Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, California carried out research on various phenomena characterized by the term parapsychology from 1972 until 1991. Early studies indicating that phenomena such as remote viewing and psychokinesis could be scientifically studied were published in such mainstream journals as Proceedings of the IEEE and Nature. This attracted the sponsorship of such groups as NASA and The Central Intelligence Agency.
Masuaki Kiyota is a Japanese psychic known for his alleged ability of thoughtography.
Antonio C. Agpaoa (1939-1982) most well known as Tony Agpaoa was a Filipino practitioner of psychic surgery.
Psychic Blues: Confessions of a Conflicted Medium is a memoir by Mark Edward about his time working as a psychic entertainer. Published in 2012, the book covers Edward's controversial career as both a performer and a skeptical activist.