BACK IN PRINT, SECOND EDITON with a FOREWORD by STEPHEN E. BRAUDE.
In this second edition of The World of Ted Serios: “Thoughtographic” Studies of an Extraordinary Mind by 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.

Jule Eisenbud was born in New York on November 20, 1908. He received his M.D. in 1934 from the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, and his D.Med.Sc. in 1939 from Columbia University. In 1938, he began private practice in psychiatry and psychoanalysis, and for 12 years served as associate in psychiatry at the Columbia University Medical School. In 1950 Eisenbud and his family moved to Denver, where he was appointed Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Colorado Medical School. Eisenbud also continued his private practice, and he was the first psychoanalyst to establish a private practice in Denver. Although he published extensively on psychiatry, psychoanalysis, and hypnosis,1 Eisenbud is perhaps best known for his pioneering investigations and theoretical writings in parapsychology, many of which explored the subtle manifestations of ESP in both clinical and everyday contexts. Eisenbud also conducted an extended series of careful experiments with Ted Serios, a Chicago bellhop who apparently projected his mental images onto photographic film.
Continued at Psi Encyclopedia.