Paranormality: Why we see what isn't there

by Richard Wiseman

  In short, Blackmore’s data suggests that people who experience OBEs are much better than others at naturally generating the type of imagery associated with the experience, and struggle to tell the difference between reality and imagination. Put these people in a situation where their bodies receive only a small amount of unchanging information about where they actually are and, just like the people taking part in the dummy hand and virtual reality experiments, they can end up believing that they are no longer located inside their bodies.

  HOW TO LEAVE YOUR BODY

  Understanding the real causes of out-of-body experiences can help you become a frequent flyer. The first part of the process involves developing three key psychological skills: relaxation, visualization and concentration. Let's examine each in turn.

  Relaxation

  'Progressive Muscle Relaxation' involves deliberately tensing various muscle groups and then releasing the tension. To try the technique, remove your shoes, loosen any tight clothing and sit in a comfortable chair in a quiet room. Focus your attention on your right foot. Gently inhale and clench the muscles in your foot as hard as possible for about five seconds. Next, exhale and release all of the tension, allowing the muscles to become loose and limp. Work your way around your body performing the procedure in the following order:

  1.

  Right foot

  7.

  Right hand

  13.

  Abdomen

  2.

  Right lower leg

  8.

  Right forearm

  14.

  Chest

  3.

  Entire right leg

  9.

  Entire right arm

  15.

  Neck and

  4.

  Left foot

  10.

  Left hand

  shoulders

  5.

  Left lower leg

  11.

  Left forearm

  16.

  Face

  6.

  Entire left leg

  12.

  Entire left arm

  Each time, tense the appropriate body part for about five seconds and then release the tension.

  Visualization

  Inducing an out-of-body experience requires good visualization skills. If you are naturally good at imagining scenes and pictures in your head then that is great. If not, try the following exercise.

  Imagine walking into your kitchen, taking an orange out of the cupboard and placing it on a green plate. Next, think about digging your nails into the smooth skin of the orange and starting to peel it. Think about how the orange would feel and smell. Visualize the juice coming out of the orange and onto your fingers. Imagine pulling all of the peel away and placing it on the plate. In your mind's eye, separate each of the segments and place them on the plate as well. Now look at the juicy segments. Are you salivating? Are the colours bright and sharp? Was each stage of the process vivid and did it involve all of your senses?

  Repeat the exercise once every few days, trying to make it seem more realistic each time.

  Concentration

  The ability to focus your thoughts is also key to creating an out-of-body experience. This simple exercise will help assess and, if necessary, improve your concentration skills.

  Try to count from 1 to 20 in your mind, moving onto each new number after a few seconds. However, the moment that any other thought or image enters your mind, start the count again. Initially, you will probably find this simple task surprisingly difficult, but over time you will learn how to focus your thoughts and will soon find yourself counting to 20 with no distractions.

  Putting it all together

  OK, it's time to try and induce an out-of-body experience. Sit in the most comfortable chair in your house. Next, stand up and take a look around. How does the room look from this perspective? Remember as many details as possible including, for example, the position of any furniture, the scene outside the window, and any pictures on the walls. Next, slowly make your way to another room. Once again, notice as much as possible on the way, including the colour of the walls, the furniture and objects that you encounter, and the type of flooring that you are walking on. To help with the process, choose four key points along the route and remember them in as much detail as possible.

  Now return to the original room and sit down in the chair. Carry out the 'Progressive Relaxation Exercise'. When you feel completely relaxed, imagine a duplicate of yourself standing in front of you. To avoid the difficult (and for many, unpleasant) task of visualizing your face, imagine that your doppelganger is standing with their back to you. Try to form an image of their clothes and the way they are standing. Now, think back to what you saw when you were actually standing in that position, and imagine moving from your body into theirs. Don't worry if you don't succeed at first. This is tricky stuff and usually requires some practice.

  Once you manage to feel as though you have left your own body and entered the mind of your imaginary doppelganger, try to take a few steps along the route that you mapped out, stopping at each of the four points to admire the view. If you are struggling with the movement, some researchers recommend increasing your motivation by not drinking any liquid for a few hours before the experience, and placing a glass of water in the room that you intend to visit. Also, don't be afraid of the experience - remember, you can snap back into your body at any point. After you have got the hang of inducing an out-of-body experience, you should be able to fly around the world at will, limited only by your imagination and without feeling guilty about your carbon footprint.

  For decades a small number of devoted scientists attempted to prove that the soul is able to leave the body. They took photographs of recently deceased family members, weighed the dying, and asked those having out-of-body experiences to try to see pictures hidden in distant locations. The enterprise failed because you are a product of your brain and so cannot exist outside of your skull. Subsequent research into out-of-body experiences focused on finding a psychological explanation for these strange sensations. This work revealed that your brain constantly relies on information from your senses to construct the feeling that you are inside your body. Fool your senses with the help of rubber hands and virtual reality systems, and suddenly you can feel as if you are part of a table or standing a few feet in front of your body. Rob your brain of these signals and it has no idea where you are. Couple this sense of being lost with vivid imagery of flying around, and your brain convinces itself that you are floating away from your body.

  Your brain automatically and unconsciously carries out the vitally important ‘where am I?’ task every moment of your waking life. Without it, you would feel that you are part of the chair you are sitting on one moment and in the floor the next. With it, you have the stable sense of constantly being inside your body. Out-of-body experiences are not paranormal and do not provide evidence for the soul. Instead, they reveal something far more remarkable about the everyday workings of your brain and body.

  3. MIND OVER MATTER

  In which we discover how one man fooled the world,

  learn how to bend metal with the power of our minds,

  investigate gurus in India and find out why we

  sometimes cannot see what is happening

  right in front of our eyes.

  Born in New Jersey in 1959, James Alan Hydrick had a tough childhood.1 When he was three years old his alcoholic mother ran away from the family, leaving her equally alcoholic husband to bring up Hydrick on his own. When Hydrick was six years old a bad situation became even worse when his father was convicted of armed robbery and sentenced to two years in prison. This, combined with rumours that Hydrick was a victim of physical abuse, caused social services to move him into foster care. Unfortunately, Hydrick’s behaviour proved problematic, and he was moved from one foster family to another.

  When he was eighteen, he was convicted of kidnapping and robbery, and spent time in the Los Angeles County Jail.
While behind bars, he developed an avid interest in martial arts and worked hard to master various fighting techniques. Around the same time he also appeared to manifest psycho-kinetic powers. In what was to become his best-known demonstration, Hydrick would balance a pencil lengthways over the edge of a table and ‘will’ it to move. With his head turned in the opposite direction and hands away from the table, the pencil would slowly rotate, then stop and reverse direction. On other occasions he would open the prison Bible and ask Jesus to make his presence known. The pages of the good book would turn over one after another as if being turned by a ghostly hand.

  When he was released from prison, Hydrick travelled to Salt Lake City, set up the ‘Institute of Shaolin Gung Fu’, and offered to help others learn martial arts and develop their psychokinetic abilities. In addition to moving pencils and fluttering the pages of Bibles, Hydrick added other stunts to his psychic repertoire, including making heavy punch bags in his Institute’s gym swing without touching them.

  In December 1980 he was invited to demonstrate his powers on ABC’s TV programme That’s Incredible!. Each week the show featured a bizarre mix of stunts and performers, including a record-breaking sword-swallower, a group of rats that played basketball in a specially constructed mini-court, and a man who was prepared to be dragged along the ground on a metal tray at over a hundred miles per hour. The programme attracted a huge audience and represented a golden opportunity for Hydrick to hit the big time.

  Hydrick (who by this time had adopted the mysterious-sounding stage name ‘Song Chai’) opened the segment by performing his psychokinetic page-turning stunt. All went well, with the studio audience shouting ‘That’s Incredible!’ on cue, and the phrase appearing in large block capitals across the screen for the hard of thinking. He then chatted about his abilities with the hosts and performed the pencil stunt. The audience were impressed.

  Then it happened. Host John Davidson, who was sitting closest to Hydrick during the pencil demonstration, said that he thought he had heard Hydrick blowing on the pencil. Hydrick looked hurt and denied the accusation. A dramatic hush spread over the audience, presumably as they readied themselves to shout ‘Actually, If That Is The Case, That’s Not Quite So Incredible!’ With his back against the wall, Hydrick turned to Davidson and asked, ‘Do you want to put your hand over my mouth?’ Davidson agreed, and the studio audience held their breath as Hydrick focused on moving the pencil. A few seconds later the pencil slowly rotated around. Davidson looked stunned and the audience went wild.

  Word of Hydrick’s remarkable abilities quickly spread, with one national tabloid going so far as to label him ‘The World’s Top Psychic’. He seemed destined for a place in the psychic hall of fame. And he might well have achieved it if it hadn’t been for James ‘The Amazing’ Randi.

  That’s My Line

  In chapter one we learned how magician and arch-sceptic James Randi has devoted his life to paranormal myth-busting, offering a million dollars to anyone who can demonstrate the existence of paranormal abilities under scientifically controlled conditions (his money remains unclaimed).

  Hydrick’s show-stopping demonstrations on That’s Incredible! caught Randi’s eye and he challenged the young psychic to perform his feats under more controlled conditions. In February 1981, the two of them crossed swords on another light entertainment television programme called That’s My Line. At the start of the segment host Bob Barker introduced Hydrick and asked him how he had developed his psychic powers. Hydrick seemed to forget about his time behind bars, explaining that a wise old Chinese man called Master Wu had taught him how to reach the fourth level of consciousness (which, it seems, also involved the ability to be highly economical with the truth about his alleged psychic powers). Hydrick then demonstrated his amazing pencil-moving abilities and the audience applauded. Next, Barker placed an open telephone directory on the table and Hydrick called upon the great operator in the sky to help turn the pages. After several aborted attempts, and 25 minutes of less than riveting television, he caused a page in the book to flip over.

  In the second part of the segment, Barker introduced Randi, who unlocked a large trunk at the back of the stage and removed his secret weapon – a tube of Styrofoam chips. Randi scattered the chips all around the open telephone book and challenged Hydrick to again turn over one of the pages using the power of his mind. Randi explained that he suspected Hydrick had been turning the pages by secretly blowing on them and that if he tried this again the Styrofoam chips would go flying.

  Under the watchful eyes of three independent scientific experts Hydrick tried to move a page. After 40 minutes of hand-waving and brow-furrowing, and with the audience getting increasingly hungry and restless, he admitted defeat. According to Hydrick the Styrofoam chips and studio lights were forming static electricity which was pulling the page down and disrupting his psychic performance. Both Randi and the panel of experts agreed that this sounded like total tosh. Hydrick was adamant that his feats were not due to trickery and again tried to move the page using his psycho-kinetic powers. Once again, his abilities deserted him. Barker, Randi and the independent panel gave Hydrick the thumbs down, and the audience finally got to eat.

  Hydrick’s appearance on That’s My Line was not a great career move. Although his most devout supporters might have been able to convince themselves that their hero was simply unnerved by the sudden introduction of sceptical observers and Styrofoam chips, most viewers came away with the distinct impression that Hydrick’s line was one of trickery. He knew that he needed a saviour. A man who could both promote his abilities and cleanse his public soul of alleged deception. Enter the third and final character in the story – Danny Korem: one-time magician, psychic investigator and self-professed Messianic Jew.

  Psychic Puffery

  Nowadays, Danny Korem is president of Korem & Associates, a company specializing in ‘rapid-fire on-the-spot behavioural profiling’. According to the company’s website, their unique training programme can help people accurately judge the motivation, personality and communication style of others in seconds. However, in the 1980s Korem was leading a somewhat different life.

  Korem had gained a considerable reputation as a skilled magician and had, according to his current online résumé, ‘read or reviewed over 10,000 books, manuscripts, and periodicals on deception’. He had also developed a keen interest in the paranormal and, like Randi, had written extensively about the tricks of the psychic trade. However, unlike Randi, Korem was a strong believer in God and had co-authored a book, entitled Fakers, to help people separate fake supernatural phenomena from the real stuff. (In one section, Korem writes: ‘As stated in Chapter 10, spirits of the dead cannot come back, because of the spiritual laws the Lord has set up’2.)

  In the first part of this genuinely informative but deeply odd book, Korem explains the psychological basis for lots of seemingly paranormal phenomena, including table-tipping, the Ouija board and fire-walking. In the second part he discusses ‘genuine’ supernatural phenomena, explaining, for example, that demons are scattered over the face of the planet and so may appear to be able to predict the future by drawing information from a great many sources (‘Angels were never given this power’). On a more down-to-earth level, Korem also offers practical advice to those trying to separate cases of genuine possession from instances in which a person requires psychiatric care (as Korem notes, ‘The key word is balance’).

  Korem became fascinated with Hydrick and arranged to meet him. He decided not to tell Hydrick about his background in magic (‘Thou shalt not bear false witness’), and instead posed as a documentary maker keen to shoot a film about Hydrick’s life and powers. No doubt eager to recover from the damage inflicted by his appearance on That’s My Line, Hydrick agreed to be involved. After carefully observing Hydrick performing his page-turning and pencil-moving demonstrations, Korem became convinced that Randi was right: Hydrick was not using any form of psychokinetic ability but rather blowing on the objects in a highly d
eceptive and skilful way. Instead of confronting him straight away, Korem returned home and worked hard to duplicate all of Hydrick’s methods (‘Thou shalt not steal’). After much huffing and puffing, Korem felt ready to move onto the next stage of his cunning plan.

  Korem asked whether he could film Hydrick exhibiting his powers. Hydrick agreed, and happily came along to a taping session and demonstrated his pencil-moving and page-turning abilities. Hydrick was then asked whether he would mind trying to transfer his remarkable powers to Korem. This was not a novel request to Hydrick. In fact, he frequently told people that he could bring out their latent psychic powers, and would then blow as the person moved their hands around the object, thus giving the impression that they did have abilities. Hydrick placed his hands above Korem’s hands and concentrated for a few moments. Korem then leant forward and used the power of breath to move a pencil. Hydrick looked confused and stunned.

  Korem then arranged to interview Hydrick. Taking his life in his hands, Korem told the martial arts expert that he had figured out his methods and that the game was up. Hydrick calmly confessed all. He explained that as a nine-year-old he had seen an American magician named Harry Blackstone Junior, and became fascinated by the psychology of deception. Around the same time his father repeatedly locked him in a cupboard as a punishment for bad behaviour, and so he created the imaginary Master Wu to keep him company. Hydrick went on to admit that Korem and Randi were right – all of his supposedly psychokinetic demonstrations were achieved by air currents. (The only exception was the movement of the punchbags – that was due to them hanging from a metal roof that expanded under the heat of the sun.) Towards the end of the interview Korem asked Hydrick why he had felt the need to fake psychic powers. Hydrick explained that he longed for the attention that he didn’t receive as a child and, after a lifetime of being told that he was stupid, wanted to show that he was capable of fooling the world.