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Ted Serios (Psychically Induced Photographs; 'Thoughtographs')

GNC

GNC

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Can anyone tell me whatever happened to Ted Serios, the bloke who could make images appear on photographs by the power of his mind (supposedly)?

I searched for info on him on the internet, but all I could find were brief articles about what he did in the 60's, and stuff about how Chris Carter is making a film about him.

Is Ted still alive? Were his "powers" ever satisfactorily explained?
 
I think it was James Randi, in his 1982 book 'Flim-Flam', explained quite well how Serios faked it - it was a combination of sleight-of-hand and sloppy observing. Serio's standard method was to get drunk, then spend two or three hours fooling around with his "gizmo" - the little tube that helped him produce the pictures. In that time, the observers often relaxed enough to let him get away with moving around the room, handling stuff etc. The pictures he produced were, I believe, often proven to be blurred copies of photos from book that he had had access to.
There is an interesting sounding 1999 book on the whole subject of fake photography: "Photo Fakery : The History and Techniques of Photographic Deception and Manipulation" by Dino A. Brugioni. I haven't seen the book, so don't know if it deals with Serios, but the author is a CIA-trained expert on faking photographs, so anybody interested in the subject should read it.
 
I think I remember Colin Wilson mentioning a man who could take remote photographs repeatedly under laboratory conditions. I can't recall his name or any other details of him except that Wilson made the claim that his work was deliberately ignored because it didn't fit with any current scientific theory.

Does anyone remember it in better detail - I have lost my copy of Mysteries so I can't even find his name to search the interweb for more about him - and was he actually able to generate accurate and reproduceable results as wilson maintained?
 
Anyone know what happened to Ted Serios? Is he still alive?
 
I think he must now be dead, although he was still alive in the
early nineteen eighties. He retired from making his strange
photographs long before that, claiming he had lost the power.

I enjoyed reading the highly sceptical article that Rrose linked to
above, though the author does not mention one of the most
curious aspects of Ted's Thoughtographs: things were wrong
in the images. Notably a building belonging to to the Canadian
Mounted Police had the word spelled "Cainadian". There were
other examples.

There were also said to be examples which recorded places at
periods of their history when there were no known photographs.

He's an odd case though his behaviour certainly suggests misdirection
and fraud! :rolleyes:
 
Yeah, it's a fascinating case. You could make a good documentary on him, it's about time there was one on BBC2 or something. I hope he's still with us.
 
"Charlie Reynolds and David Eisendrath, both amateur magicians and professional photographers exposed Serios as a fraud after spending a weekend with him and Eisenbud. Serios claimed he needed a little tube in front of the camera lens to help him concentrate, but he was spotted slipping something into the tube. Most likely it was a picture of something that the camera would take an image of, but which Serios would claim came from his mind rather than his hand. Their exposé appeared in the October 1967 issue of Popular Photography. Serios' psychokinetic powers began to fade after the exposure and he has remained virtually unheard from for the past thirty years."

http://www.skepdic.com/pphotog.html

But as long as there are people willing to believe, cases like this will keep coming up...
 
As Mr. Whitehead points out, there were some odd things going on with Serios alleged thought photos. As for the events with the two magicians, IIRC this did occur later in his career - apparently he used to drink vast amounts of alcohol before creating such photos, and by all accounts he was pretty much half-dead by the time his 'powers' became well-known. So, yes, he was probably cheating then.

But the aforementioned pecularities of his earlier photos still stand.
 
"But the aforementioned pecularities of his earlier photos still stand."

Have we got any pictures on this?

But that old cry of - "yes, you might have caught me faking this time, but before it was all real..." - yeah, yeah, yeah, tell it to the judge
:)
 
Very interesting. I thought it sounded a bit too good to be true as a piece of evidence. I seem to recall Wilson relying on it quite heavily as the sort of thing that is ignored because it can't be explained...
 
This trick was revealed on the recent channel five series about psychic secrets - basically a small tube with a slide of the "mental image" at one end and a small lens at the other was palmed and sneakily held in front of the polaroid camera lens to one side. To make the trick more spectacular a passer by was asked to think of a famous London landmark (Big Ben obviously) and this was the image that appeared to be bursting out of their head when a picture was taken of them, great effect, simple technique.
 
pi23 said:
This trick was revealed on the recent channel five series about psychic secrets - basically a small tube with a slide of the "mental image" at one end and a small lens at the other was palmed and sneakily held in front of the polaroid camera lens to one side. To make the trick more spectacular a passer by was asked to think of a famous London landmark (Big Ben obviously) and this was the image that appeared to be bursting out of their head when a picture was taken of them, great effect, simple technique.
Click to expand...

Yes, and when the passer by placed the camera to their eye and pressed the shutter, they were not able to see the magician place the slide and tube in front of the camera lens to produce the image.
 
With Serios, the camera was held by him or was on a tripod, with no-one looking through the viewfinder.
 
But it was pointing at him right? In that case you could get the same effect using the technique I described above.
 
He used a small cardboard tube to "focus himself" held in front of the camera. He could easily slip the described apparatus inside, using his frenetic and over the top behaviour to misdirect the audience attention. Rrose Selavy's link has a detailed description and explanation of his methods.
 
I don't know if Ted Serios had genuine paranormal ability or was an arrant fraud. But before the skeptics crow too loudly I'd like them to explain two things:

1. Serios produced photographs of specific locations ON DEMAND. Do you believe that he carried several million film slides around with him to carry off the scam?

2. There are things WRONG with Serios' photogrqaphs - painted signs mis-spelled, doors and windows in specifically-requested buildings where no doors and windows have ever existed. Please explain to me how Serios ACCOMLISHED this.
 
JamesWhitehead said:
"...the author does not mention one of the most
curious aspects of Ted's Thoughtographs: things were wrong
in the images."

Forteans in the main attempt to examine all sides of a given issue, including evidence which conflicts with their own theories. But the Skeptics studiously exclude any positive evidence in favor of a paranormal explanation.
Click to expand...
 
wembley8 said:
"But that old cry of - 'yes, you might have caught me faking this time, but before it was all real...' - yeah, yeah, yeah, tell it to the judge :)"
Click to expand...

But that, alas, is the very history of psychic research. Many of the most powerful mediums and psychics have not been adverse to putting "a little extra icing on the cake," as I recently posted to the "Bad Psychics" list here on FTMBs. Either that or the Skeptics are one hundred percent correct and all these people have been nothing more than absolute frauds.

One classic example is the turn-of-the-20th-Century medium Eusapia Palladino. The numerous and different teams of psychic investigators who sat with her constantly caught her attempting to pull off aenemic little grade school-level conjuring tricks....at the same time that "psychic" winds swept the seance chamber, moving the furniture and rattling the windows.
 
annasdottir said:
"I think it was James Randi, in his 1982 book 'Flim-Flam', explained quite well how Serios faked it - it was a combination of sleight-of-hand and sloppy observing."

I dunno about that:

1. Serios was able to produce photographs of various locations ON DEMAND, something which his' stage magician imitators have NEVER been able to accomplish.

2. Seriors' photographs of these locations are not completely accurate representations of the origininals. It is as if his FAULTY MEMORIES were being transferred to film.

3. Signs in Serios' phographs are often woefully mis-spelled. Ditto my previous comment.

Serios was a drunken ex-bellhop who seems to have exploited his "wild talent" to cadge money for booze. Iit wasn't exactly the high life.
Click to expand...
 
Having a look around YouTube I found this episode of Arthur C. Clarke's World of Strange Powers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JNzvOQ529g

I was surprised to see they'd tracked Ted down some fifteen to twenty years after his burst of fame. Watch the first five minutes to see Ted try to recreate his talent, with tragicomic results. He doesn't look very well there.

Though they don't explain the misspellings and variations on the doc, it could have been that he previously doctored the images before he placed them in the gizmo. How does that sound? They were very similar to existing photographs.
 
gncxx said:
... Is Ted still alive? ...
Click to expand...

Not any more (since the query was originally posted).

Serios died on 30 December 2006 at the age of 85.
 
Pretty surprised he made it to that age. I don't suppose he blabbed the truth about his tricks before he went, did he?
 
He was for a while, and certainly tricked people into giving him drinks.
 
Does anyone know if anyone other than Ted Serios was ever able to produce thoughtographs?

Had a quick look online but couldn't find anything, but I'd assume, if Serios was not a hoaxer, that others would have attempted thoughtography, or that if he had faked his pics, that someone would have been able to produce similar fakes, but I can't find any evidence of either.

Its always been strange that Serios wouldn't allow anyone to examine his gizmo, which (if no trickery were found) would have proved him genuine, but his early photos are genuinely perplexing: there is one where he thoughtographed a building called the Old Gold Store, but the image showed the sign as " the Wld Gold Store". Investigation later showed that the building had formerly been a branch of Wells Fargo, with the W of Wells in exactly the same place that the O of Old would later be.
 
If Ted was not genuine, he was probably at least a talented performance artist.
As it was all done on Polaroid film, it would be difficult to fake - you'd think.
But he could have had 2 cameras - one for taking the shakycam shots, and the other with vital parts of the mechanism re-engineered.
Placing already-developed pictures back in the cartridge would be easy - and sealing it all back up so it looks like a new film would also be easy.
I can't remember - did anybody try it with a brand new film pack that Ted hadn't supplied?
 
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