The World of Ted Serios: "Thoughtographic" Studies of an Extraordinary Mind

SECOND EDITION.

In The World of Ted Serios, Jule Eisenbud, a Denver based psychiatrist and psychical researcher, examined anomalous "thoughtographic" phenomena ostensibly produced by Ted Serios, a Chicago hotel elevator operator who claimed he could mentally produce images on unused Polaroid film. Because "instant" Polaroids were developed immediately, skeptics could not easily attribute success to darkroom chicanery.

Eisenbud, a seasoned investigator of anomalous phenomena, conducted thousands of trials with Serios over a three-year period between 1964 and 1967. Hundreds of images were produced as well as so-called blackies and whities-Polaroids that were massively under or overexposed, produced either when the film hadn't been unwrapped or under other conditions clearly ruling out under or overexposure.

Eisenbud and multiple witnesses tested Serios in different locations, often under conditions that seemed clearly to rule out fraud-for example, separated at considerable distance from the film or camera. Nevertheless, the images continued to appear, and sometimes they bore striking similarities to sealed "target" images Serios had been challenged to duplicate with his mind.

Magician and debunker James Randi, as expected, claimed it was all fraudulent. But despite Eisenbud's substantial financial incentives to magicians to produce the same phenomena under the same conditions, neither Randi or others accepted the challenge.

More than fifty years on, Jule Eisenbud's investigation into Ted Serios' thoughtography is one of the most intriguing cases in the annals of anomalous phenomena.