Observations placeholder
Willie G – Cutlery being found to be bent after being thrown in the air
Identifier
026942
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
THE METAL-BENDERS” by PROFESSOR JOHN B. HASTED
There have been several reports of cutlery being found to be bent after being thrown in the air; Andrew G. has reported throwing paperclips in the air and watching them land in the shape of treble clefs. A stroboscopic photograph of a spoon bending in flight has been published by Japanese researchers.
Willie G. told me that he was able to bend metal in flight, but I soon found that it never happened when other people were present. It did not happen on video-camera either, so I arranged that Willie should be able to take his own stroboscopic flash photographs of swinging wires. Although he never succeeded in producing a photograph in which the metal specimen was straight in one flash and bent in the next, some of his photographs showed a bent specimen swinging from a thread, and bending more and more in consecutive flashes (ten per second). In one photograph the successive angles were 37.5°, 39.5° and 41.5°, in another 80°, 74°, 70.5° and 70°.
What interfered with Willie’s efforts to achieve a better photograph was his apparent production (very possibly by paranormal means) of unwanted effects on photographic film. When he felt he had timed his ‘power’ to coincide perfectly with the camera shutter operation, he would find he had produced a Polaroid print covered with inexplicable images.
I believe it is likely that Willie did in fact cause metal specimens to bend in flight, but the experimental proof is not as watertight as could be wished.
Willie and his family of course knew nothing of my proposed ‘surface of action’, but they did form an opinion that the bending in flight could be affected by placing a heavy piece of metal on the floor. The specimen seemed to bend as it flew past it, although this was impossible to see with any certainty.
It is tempting to interpret these reports in terms of a surface of action stationary over the heavy piece of metal; as the specimen flies through the stationary surface, it receives a strain pulse and may well be deformed. Most of the specimens used in these attempts were lengths of 2 mm diameter tinned copper wire, very easily deformed.