Ted Serios was a regular guy, an alcoholic, a doorman at a local Chicago hotel.
He claimed to be able to create photographs on Polaroid film using his thoughts.
His claims were heard and then supported by psychiatrist Jule Eisenbud.
There were hundreds of strange gatherings that lasted all night.
Eisenbud would ply Ted Serios with liquor.
Sometimes physical acts of violence to property would ensue.
People invited to watch the process would find themselves harrangued.
But inevitably, several photgraphs would come out of the nights process, evidently made by Serios' thoughts, his grimaces towards the camera, and his gestures towards the lense with a small tube he called his Gizmo.
The Gizmo was shown to all as an empty metal tube.
These events came on the distant heels of a turn-of-the-century phenomenon known as the Spiritualist movement:
Ghosts, visits from the dead, automatic writing, ectoplasmic photography, knocking and tapping messages from Beyond.
The gap in those 40 or so years was capped by Ted Serios' thought photography.
Although much of the evidence that came out of the Spiritualist movement was proven to be fabrications, and there were many of the same claims toward Mr. Serios' work-
there has never been a succesful disprovement of the claims and the result of his work.
What is the story here?
These photographs are often identified as infrared, but that was not a process available during this time.
