The Truth About Uri Geller

by James Randi

  That night, the show featured James Pyczynski, a self-styled “psychic” from Pittsburgh who had just returned from a visit to Canada, where the Toronto Daily Star interviewed him and he was part of a startling demonstration on CBL radio. During the broadcast, people had phoned in reporting that strange things were happening. And he was at WMCA to see if the same results would be forthcoming. I was to arrive an hour later to meet this boy wonder.

  Pyczynski was one of those innocent victims of supernatural gifts who didn’t understand what was happening, but he told the audience he’d had to drop out of X-ray school because weird things kept happening to the films and machinery and he was afraid of what might befall the other students if he continued there.

  Almost as soon as Pyczynski started talking, the telephone lit upon all its six lines. Here is a list of some of the wonderful things reported by listeners to that May 16 program:

  1. A shower head bent out of shape.

  2. A container of milk burst.

  3. Several cats began howling and running about in an agitated manner.

  4. A clock began running at superfast speed.

  5. A television set turned on by itself

  6. Parts fell off a stuffed animal.

  7. A refrigerator stopped operating.

  8. Two mirrors cracked.

  9. A clock, not running for years, had begun running when Geller was on television the day before; it had then stopped again. It started running once more as Pyczynski began talking.

  10. Two reports came in of flickering lights.

  11. Two calls reported loud noises, one saying a radiator had begun knocking though it was turned off.

  12. A spaniel started sneezing loudly.

  13. A window cracked.

  14. A watchband fell off a watch.

  15. A crucifix and a religious picture fell off a wall.

  16. A light-bulb exploded.

  17. An air-conditioner quit dead.

  18. A toilet bowl was reporting gurgling for the entire time Jim was on.

  19. Toilet paper fell off the roll.

  20. In one report, a record turntable started going, a dog began howling, and a neighbor’s chandelier fell.

  21. All the lights in one house went out.

  22. A radio tuner moved from another station to the WMCA frequency.

  23. A piggy-bank cracked open and pennies rolled out.

  24. An alarm clock was being wound, and the spring broke. And much more.

  When, an hour into the program, I made my official speaking entrance, the telephone board went dark instantly as I revealed the whole thing had been a hoax to prove a point. Jim Pyczynski is my full-time assistant, and had posed as a psychic.

  It was now very evident how Geller had obtained such wonderful results with remote-control methods. First, people were calling in to “get in on a good thing.” Second, some were reporting perfectly ordinary events that now took on the dress of supernatural happenings. Third, others were reporting events that had already taken place but had gone unnoticed until now. The cracked mirrors and windows were probably in this latter group.

  The very next day, Jim and I were sitting in a New York restaurant eating breakfast when the coffee urn beside him gave a roar and expired with great bursts of steam and lots of hissing. Jim just looked at me with a shrug.

  “Can’t help it,” he said, “these things just seem to happen when I’m around!”

  I didn’t humor him with an answer. But the following day, when my car lost its fan belt on the New Jersey Turnpike—while Jim was driving—I began to have second thoughts!

  Early in 1975, the well-known magician and writer Milbourne Christopher, appearing on television and radio across the United States to plug his latest book, Mediums, Mystics and the Occult (Crowell, 1975) tried his own hand at creating havoc at home. Says Christopher:

  During a radio interview in Chicago on June 15, I announced that broken watches would start in many listeners’ homes at my command. The response was immediate. Ed Swartz, host of the WIND phone-in show, was amazed. He took careful notes as twenty-two callers described what had happened. Not only had broken wristwatches been activated, but antique timepieces, untouched for as long as thirty-five years, started ticking, and a long-silent grandfather clock in an attic chimed. An excited man reported the pilot light on his oven had gone out earlier; his landlord refused to fix it over the weekend. “When Mr. Christopher said ‘Start,’ I ran to the kitchen, and the light was burning brightly!”

  Thirty-three calls reporting phenomena came to WGR-TV in Buffalo when I appeared on the midday news. One grateful listener thanked me during a show with David Newman at WXYZ-Radio in Detroit for repairing the broken fan-timer in his car. A caller told Mel Martin at WTOL-TV in Toledo that, as I spoke, the frame of his bicycle, which had been twisted in an accident, suddenly straightened.

  Forty-five watches started and twenty-six spoons bent in Cleveland while 1 was a guest on the WEWS-TV “Morning Exchange.” Similar occurrences took place in the homes of Pittsburghers tuned to Jack Wheeler on WEEP-Radio and Marie Torre on KDKA-TV. A woman phoned Mike Levine at KDKA-Radio to report that when I said “Bend,” her grandmother’s golden wedding ring, misshapened for years, became round again.

  To date I seem to have triggered “phenomena” in more than a thousand homes. At the start of every show I stated emphatically that I was not a psychic and did not have any supernormal powers.

  That last sentence is most significant. The believers were so desperate that they even accepted miracles by a confessed conjuror! I think the point is well proven by Mr. Christopher.

  In Der Spiegel, a West German publication, the “remote-control” mystery has been further explained. I quote from a translation published in the Hong Kong Standard of March 4, 1974: “Human gullibility plays a major role in all psi-demonstrations such as Uri Geller’s. This was clearly proven in another recent television program where an actor simply played about with a fork in front of the camera. Promptly from all over the reception area viewers phoned and wrote in with reports of knitting needles and false teeth being bent, piles of pennies falling over and cats getting excited—just as happened when 13 million television sets were tune in to the Geller programme.”

  During May 1975, millions of television viewers in the United States saw Geller on the Mike Douglas show plugging his “autobiography.” During the program, he ventured into the audience to bend keys, and without his even approaching the owners, some keys bent over. Though I’d appeared on the Douglas show some time before, to duplicate some of Uri’s “miracles,” I hadn’t done anything like “remote control” bending, and I was deluged with the usual let’s-see-you-do-that letters and calls. Accordingly, I began injecting a spot in my college and personal appearance shows wherein I asked the audience to grasp their keys between their palms, repeat the magic words “Geller Lives!” and then examine their keys for bends. Fully one-tenth of the spectators report bends they were not previously aware of. How come? Do I have the mysterious power to bend keys by some psychic force? I think not. If my reader will examine his or her keys, the probability is about 1 in 10 that a key or two will show at least some small deformation. The fact that Geller produces an occasional dramatic 30- or 40-degree bend under the same circumstances merely provides further proof that some people will go along with a good thing. Bending a key is, after all, not too difficult. I should know. I’ve been doing it for the past two years.

  Geller’s miracles travel well. On a whirlwind visit to Japan in February 1974, he taped a program for the Nippon Television Network in which he suggested that spoons would bend and watches start ticking again.

  So swamped was the switch board at NTV after the tape was played that its fuses blew out from the overload. Geller had called in live via long=distance telephone from Canada during the airing of its show, and when the local announcer declared, “His mind power is on,” many Japanese viewers called in to say that their own teaspoons had bent and wrist watch
es long out of order had begun running again. But just as many other viewers called to say that nothing had happened to their spoons and watches; they called to say that Geller was nothing but an impostor.

  But the television network was ecstatic. One of its officials raved, “Such a great show!” Ratings were 24.1 percent—the highest for that week. Japanese psychologist Soji Otani mused, “Whatever he does, the fantastic Japanese reaction underlines a very restless current state of Japanese mind.”

  One of Geller’s latest wonders (though he was doing it long ago in his early Israeli stint, he has brought it back in full force now) is the old “starting-a-stopped-watch” gimmick. Mind you, that’s not what he calls it. He says it is a demonstration of psychokinesis, whereby he can “fix” any “broken” watches. Can he, really? Let’s see.

  In May 1975, plugging his imaginatively, titled book, My Story, Geller appeared on the “A.M. America” show on ABC television. I had been told that I would be given a three-minute telephone spot on the show (Geller insisted that no magician be present in the studio) and at the time I was told this—the day before—Geller had not been informed of the arrangement. Later that same day, I was called and told that my participation was canceled; Geller had threatened to do a walk-off if they went through with it. Again, Geller had bullied the media into doing things his way or not at all.

  Since I was due in New York that day anyway on business, I dropped by the offices of ABC after the show to see what I could find out about conditions existing during his performance that morning.The staff was full of wonder. Obviously they had never seen any of my television appearances (I’d been refused on another ABC show where Geller had appeared) and knew even less about my exposures of his tricks. I bent some keys for them, did some “telepathic” stuff a la Geller, and then made just one hand of a borrowed watch advance one hour exactly. They were impressed.

  Then I asked them about the watches Geller had “fixed” on the show that morning. Where did they come from? There was a pause while everyone looked around.

  One girl piped up, “We got them from around the studio.” Another nodded in assent.

  Then a third young lady offered: “Lots of people brought them in. They were really broken!”

  But another interrupted with, “No, the prop department got them.”

  There was eventual agreement that the prop men indeed supplied the watches for Geller to work on. But the important thing was this: No one really knew where the watches had originated! And they didn’t seem to have made any effort to find out!

  Later, playing a videotape of that same show, I heard the hostess say, “These have been gathered throughout the studio from a variety of sources.” She was wrong, obviously, but quite innocently so.

  Geller then tried “putting energy” into a watch after asking the hostess to assist by rubbing the watch with him. After a moment or two, he excitedly announced, “Yes! It’s working.”

  The hostess was thunderstruck. She gasped and jammed it against her ear. “It’s ticking!” she cried in a strangled whisper.

  But then the host asking a bring-down question. “The big question here is, what was wrong with it?”

  Uri quickly interjected, “These watches were brought by somebody else. They’re not mine!” Then. “You see, it’s very strange that they didn’t start to work before you [the hostess] helped me.”

  Notice? Suddenly all the watches are said to be working, and at no time did anyone check to listen to any of them to see if they were already ticking!

  “Now, there’s no possibility that simply jarring the watch could, in a sense, cause it to wind internally without touching the stem?” the hostess asked.

  “Well, let me tell you this,” countered Uri. “Some people, mainly the magicians who are against me, say that if you shake a watch it will start ticking, or if you warm up the oil inside. It’s really a ridiculous thing. But some watches—I mean—are with me—I mean, many of them. I don’t know

  What was wrong with this watch. Maybe it has missing parts, or maybe it was totally broken inside, and it did start working! You see? So . . . ”

  The hostess interrupted. She had been picking up the other watches, and had listened to one. “This one is ticking*.” she said, looking a bit bewildered. “It started?” Geller exclaimed with an expansive smile. She still looked as if she had missed something important in the process. They were interrupted by a phone call from a viewer. But Uri wasn’t to be put off. He hastened to take advantage of her discovery that a watch still on the table was already ticking.

  “Let me see it. Look! This is totally—I mean, there’s no glass on it—Ah—Ah—It’s totally squashed in. You can see it yourself!” No one looked very enthusiastic over the miracle. (Later, the office at ABC informed me that this watch only ticked for a few seconds, then stopped.)

  Finally the caller was on the air. She reported that a fifty-five-year-old watch she had been stroking had started ticking just then. She explained that it had been fixed about a year ago, but kept “quitting,” and had been sitting in a drawer for six months. Now it was ticking!

  Okay, how does he do it? A few questions of your local watch repairman would reveal the “secret” right away. Any watch that has been lying still until it stopped, or any watch that has the balance wheel and escapement intact, will start ticking as soon as it is jarred at all. Whether it will continue to work is a different matter altogether. Uri doesn’t fix watches; he just does what any child can do by picking up the watch. It’s that easy. He refers to them as “broken” and says they are now “fixed.” Not so.

  Notice that he tried to produce the impression that the first watch might have parts missing or be smashed inside. But on many television spots he has insisted that he cannot start watches that have missing parts and has become quite angry when supplied with such watches.

  It remained for David Marks and Richard Kammann, writing for the official organ of the New Zealand Broadcasting Company, to properly test the watch nonsense. They reported in the May 17, 1975, issue of the New Zealand Listener:

  . . . we interviewed six jewelers in Dunedin. It turns out that many or most stopped watches and clocks are not really broken, but are jammed in some way. Perhaps the oil has flowed to one side, or there is dust in the oil, or there is some other minor fault that only requires a cleaning and overhaul.

  The watch-men told us that a little winding, shaking, rotating, and especially warming the oil by holding the watch in your hand may be all that is needed to get it going again—temporarily.

  These seem to be just the same physical things that a person would normally do when he got out a watch to concentrate on it, thinking “work, work, work” as Uri instructs him over the radio.

  We challenged the jewelers to see how many watches they could start this way, without opening the watch. In one week, and with over 100 watches, they reported an astonishing success rate of 57 percent. Could the jewelers have been exaggerating or using some special expertise? We sent out a few students to “fix” broken watches, and out of 16 watches tried, 14 of them started, and seven have kept going for at least four to five days.

  I congratulate these two gentlemen. They have applied a little common sense and a few well-placed questions to solve a simple problem.

  The “A.M. America” show, on ABC-TV out of New York, has used Geller as a guest frequently before. When the psychic superstar made an appearance on an earlier broadcast, Felix Greenfield of New York, one of Geller’s major detractors, was consulted by the people at ABC-TV on how to design controls for the tests.

  When a young lady named Donna, who was in change of arrangements for the early-morning show, arrived at the studio at 5:50, Geller was already there! The show didn’t start until 7:00, but Geller told her he wanted to supervise the “can” test, in which ten film cans were to be carefully sealed, one containing a simple object. Geller sat there while she taped the cans shut, and it was obvious to her that he knew which can was the special one. She ex
cused herself and called Greenfield.

  Greenfield’s answer was simple. He told her to switch the special can, and retape them all, without letting Geller know that she had done so. She did, and when the program went on the air Geller failed to find the right can.

  But there’s more to it than that. You see, Geller was supposed to find all of the empty cans, one after the other. The drama in determining nine empty cans and ending up with the one full one is obvious. But the second can he pointed to and said was empty turned out to be the full one. Obviously a bad failure? It would seem so, but we have forgotten to use the convoluted logic applicable in these matters. You see, as a caller soon informed the host of the show, that had to be considered a success or more correctly, a “negative success”—because chances were very small that Geller would fail so early in the guessing game! Remember: When he wins, he wins; when he loses, he wins! After all, if astronaut Edgar Mitchell can use this logic, why can’t everyone?

  On the Channel 9 (WOR-TV) “Straight Talk” show in May 1975, Geller “fixed” a watch belonging to co-hostess Fran Rothstein, who was wearing the watch at the time simply as a piece of jewelry. She gave it to Geller to use on the show, and sure enough, though the stem was missing altogether and the watch did not run, it began working regularly, she thought, after a treatment by the wonder-worker. Fran reports that she wore it for several days, and it continued to work for that period until she took it in to Sidney Siegel, a watchmaker in the area whom she knew well. He repaired it properly by installing a new winding stem and mainspring.