School of Psychokinesis [with video]

I have given it a good search and didn't find any other posts relating to this and I'm quite surprised that no results were found. Why's that? Because the School of Psychokinesis is pretty popular apparently and the man behind it is none other than Jack Houck.

Jack Houck passed away earlier this year but he has hosted many, many, many spoon bending parties and have taught a lot of people how to bend spoons with his mind and allegedly has participated in government trials with remote viewing. Once a skeptic, he thought the ability to remote view was preposterous and eventually learned how to do it himself after seeing and believing in the mid-1970s.

I came across this guy by accident by seeing if there was anything about psychokinesis on TPB and there was a video of him teaching a room full of people how to bend spoons with their mind. Some people were able to bend spoons, forks, and other things relatively easily and you can see it yourself by either viewing the youtube video (below) or clicking here for the HD link at TPB. I looked around and it doesn't seem to be illegal to download due to the nature of the event. The torrent is the same video only there are no translations, it's strictly in English and the quality is much better than the youtube video.


(Other language on youtube. Not sure what language but the torrent is in English if you prefer)

There are a lot of skeptics that are claiming his teachings are false and bending spoons is just your physical body that bends the spoons, but the truth is that kids can't bend steel rods with their hands (and neither can most adults) and you can't bend spoons just by looking at it, which somehow it does. I don't see a reason to doubt him and his teachings, after all I've done spoon bending a few times before and it's not terribly hard, and just by focusing psi into a spoon, not physical force.

He died though, and it's a shame because I wanted to attend one of his spoon bending sessions one of these days too. I personally believe in him but what about you? Does ATS know more about him or have proof either way if he's legit or a fraud? He never charged for his lessons, only material fees (spoons/forks/rods) from my understanding.

You can visit his website at www.jackhouck.com...

reply to post by Em2013


My life goal now is too enroll my future-children in this school. I'm 110% serious.

On other words, I'm not too fond of the emoji choices on the right. They don't seem to fit my emotions on how serious I am of sending my children to a school of Psychokinesis.

As a believer in paranormal abilities, this is nothing impressive.

It is, in fact, just people bending cutlery with their hands. Get a bunch of people into a group, a bunch of people who want to see results, and they'll make the results happen. Not only that, but they'll convince themselves it was something special. Many of them are visibly using quite a bit of force. In theory, it should take very little physical force to bend them if some sort of paranormal ability is involved. Nothing more than very gently holding the instrument with two or three fingers at the tips, and very gently touching the other end with a finger. Not this whole hand brute forcing that's always present in these kinds of videos.

Spoon bending isn't the greatest way to experiment with telekinesis. Get a jar, suspend a plastic object, like a button, by a string glued to the lid. Exert your will upon the item to try and get it to move. If you experience results with that, then that is potentially impressive.

that is potentially impressive.

My sentiments exactly

The video that was shown is the more popular video that circulates and doesn't reflect what people learn in time. He states that there are various levels of psychokinesis and the first level involves physically using some force. Eventually you don't use your hands as you graduate up to higher levels.

This isn't really a school, the school aspect of it is just how he describes the various degrees in bending objects. You can notice also that growing seeds is something that they do as well there, but there are some videos available around the net that shows people bending ridiculously big metal bars without touching them when attending his sessions.

We all needed our training wheels at one time, bending objects with physical force as an aid is just that and nothing more.

Em2013
The video that was shown is the more popular video that circulates and doesn't reflect what people learn in time. He states that there are various levels of psychokinesis and the first level involves physically using some force. Eventually you don't use your hands as you graduate up to higher levels.

This explanation has been used for years in order to sucker people into the belief. "You'll get to the point where you won't have to use your hands!" And that level of success never comes. It never has to. By the time you are lecturing in someones living room, in front of 30 people getting worked into a tizzy over the spoons they are bending, the belief is already sealed. The cash has changed hands, and even more valuable, potential referrals have been created.

This isn't really a school, the school aspect of it is just how he describes the various degrees in bending objects. You can notice also that growing seeds is something that they do as well there, but there are some videos available around the net that shows people bending ridiculously big metal bars without touching them when attending his sessions.

We all needed our training wheels at one time, bending objects with physical force as an aid is just that and nothing more.

Bending objects with physical force as a stepping stone to bending them without physical contact doesn't make sense. And since it's such a contentious element of the phenomenon everyone's time would be better spent practicing in a different way.

reply to post by Morgenstern89


I suppose you didn't read the part that he never charged for his sessions, he had people bring their own spoons or could buy spoons from him. The stepping stones made sense as you can make a spoon go limp but requires touching it to mold it however. You don't need to use force, you can just barely tap it and it'll mode around. That's what I mean about using physical force. Also for skeptics, using more force than that could overcome their skepticism and allow them to actually do it right afterwards since skepticism is what prevents psychokinesis from working in the first place. Now, I'm not saying this guy is real or a fraud because there's still no proper evidence supporting either side but I don't see why a veteran in remote viewing that wants to open the minds of people free of charge would be considered a scam. Normally one could say that it's to sell a book but he never had a book to sell.

I just don't see a reason here why he'd go through all these lengths to teach classes for free if it's not legitimate is what I'm saying.

Em2013
reply to post by Morgenstern89

 

I suppose you didn't read the part that he never charged for his sessions, he had people bring their own spoons or could buy spoons from him.

Yes. I did read that. He probably bought spoons by the hundreds from thrift stores for dirt cheap. It says he gave 370 parties to 17,000 people over a 23 year period. There's an average of 45 people per party. Everyone probably comes with one or two spoons of their own, and then buys two or three once everyone gets excited about it and the party really gets going. Also, these kinds of gatherings typically have tip jars filled to the brim for the speaker. The person who hosts the party usually isn't doing it for free either. He may not be asking for payment, but he probably gets a wad of cash flipped to him afterwards by the host. Money -always- ends up changing hands during those kinds of things. I will concede though that yeah, not much is being made, and it may not be a primary motivator.

The stepping stones made sense as you can make a spoon go limp but requires touching it to mold it however. You don't need to use force, you can just barely tap it and it'll mode around. That's what I mean about using physical force. Also for skeptics, using more force than that could overcome their skepticism and allow them to actually do it right afterwards since skepticism is what prevents psychokinesis from working in the first place.

I get where you are coming from, and tend to agree with you in regards to the mental hurdles one has to overcome in order to achieve some kind of success. I think spoon bending is a bad example when trying to sway a skeptic though. I would think that having to use force would enforce a skeptics position. They would realize just from looking around how much force everyone else was using. Typically, PK parties are full of impressionable individuals who want to see results, as I mentioned earlier. It would be a much different party if everyone was staring at a jar with a button hanging inside. The excitable individuals would get bored, and the serious ones may take more interest. It's harder to perform since you can't "accidentally on purpose" make the button move the same way you can bend a spoon.

Now, I'm not saying this guy is real or a fraud because there's still no proper evidence supporting either side but I don't see why a veteran in remote viewing that wants to open the minds of people free of charge would be considered a scam. Normally one could say that it's to sell a book but he never had a book to sell.

I just don't see a reason here why he'd go through all these lengths to teach classes for free if it's not legitimate is what I'm saying.

Even if someone has legitimate information or experience (such as with RV), each of these "personalities" within the paranormal community have to have several different things in their repertoire. They want to attract as many people as possible and having several hooks in the water helps with that. Uri Geller was huge for a few decades, and spoon bending is usually "Paranormal 101", so everyone had spoon bending up their sleeves. The nature of the business kind of forces you to doubt by default.

Even if they aren't getting paid, they are benefiting in some way shape or form. It's usually through attention and notoriety. Their reputation is usually more valuable than any presentations they may give to groups of people.

Either way, I think it's safe to say that the results achieved during PK parties, that usually take place in an unsupervised, casual environment, are less reliable than tests conducted in a controlled environment.

I certainly think the phenomenon is real, I just think that PK parties are a poor way to gauge success.

reply to post by Morgenstern89


Ah, now I get what you're saying now. I've never attended a so called 'PK Party' so I wouldn't know based on experience, but I suppose doing it alone at home is a better environment than everyone hyped up at some party where simple observable mistakes can be overseen from all that excitement. I do agree that basic psychokinesis experiments would be better although more boring. Sure, maybe one person in a whole room would be able to move a picture frame but everyone else would struggle with a pendulum or a psiwheel and that wouldn't be exciting at all.

Hopefully he was doing it for the right reasons, but there's still a chance that he was a fraud and I really want to know whether or not he was or wasn't but since he's dead it would be rather hard to find that out. Also as for Yuri Geller, from my understanding is that he's doing it for entertainment purposes and his spoon bending tricks are just tricks.