Psychokinesis

 Introduction

Psychokinesis, or PK for short, is the ability to use the mind to influence physical objects. A key researcher in the field was Dr William Roll. Another kind of PK is bio-PK.

William Roll says...

 A must-read for people interested in the phenomenon of PK is William Roll's book, The Poltergeist. AccordThe Poltergeist book, p.2, psychokinesis is "...made up of two Greek words, the word for mind or soul (psyche) and the word for movement (kinesis). This term for 'movement of the mind' was used by Dr. J. B. Rhine when tests at the Parapsychology Laboratory at Duke University seemed to show that people were able to influence the roll of the dice. The story about the PK tests begins in early 1934, when a young man claiming to be a professional gambler told Rhine he could influence dice by willpower alone. Rhine asked the gambler to show what he could do and the results were sufficiently impressive to suggest that something was really happening to the dice. By that time, ESP testing had been going on at Duke for several years, and Rhine's first book, Extrasensory Perception, was then at the printer's. The results of the ESP experiments had convinced Rhine and others connected with this work that a person is not limited to the known physiological organism but can reach beyond it and directly obtain information about distant events. Of course, claims for ESP did not originate at Duke. Such claims go back as far as man has left written records. What the tests at Duke and other laboratories showed was that there really is something which superstition, imagination, lucky coincidence, and the like cannot easily account for. When it seemed that ESP must be taken seriously, the parapsychologists began to consider another possibility: If a person can know without the senses, can he also affect his physical environment?"
ing to Roll in

Seriously psychokinetic!

 An intriguing example of PK is the following account by William Roll, taken from his The Poltergeist book, chapter four, p.43: "'It doesn't hit people,' I said incautiously. At that instant, a small bottle which had stood on an end table by a sofa hit me squarely on the head. This was during the evening of September 15, 1961, at my third visit to Mrs Maybelle Clark in her four-room apartment at the Felix Fuld Housing Project in Newark, New Jersey. Mrs Clark shared the apartment with her 13-year-old grandson, Ernest Rivers, and with an invisible force, apparently determined to destroy all her breakable belongings. To save what little was left, Ernie's uncle, William Hargwood, a draftsman, had taken the boy into his home: Objects only flew in Mrs Clark's apartment when Ernie was there. It was at my persuasion that Ernie had returned. I told Mrs Clark that these cases are usually short-lived - this one had begun in early May - but that the only way to find out would be to bring Ernie back. The case was active: Ernie had only been present for a short time when ash trays, plates, and so on again took to the air."
       Why do events such as the above happen? Psychokinetic events usually involves an "agent" who is a teenager, generally, but not always, a girl. In the above case, the poltergeist agent was the 13-year-old boy, Ernest Rivers. The poltergeist-type activity seemed to only happen in his presence. A problem with case reports of PK or poltergeist activity is their authenticity. The accounts may have been frauds, or the reported activity may have had a more mundane explanation and that the people concerned were merely deceiving themselves. Or the accounts were deliberately conjured up. The person involved may have been faking it all, in an attempt to get him or her more attention. Perhaps everyone else didn't see through the trick, or they were in on it too.
      Investigation of the case of examples such as Ernest Rivers were necessary in order to establish what was going on. Sometimes the poltergeist agents are taken into the laboratory to see if they can move certain objects under controlled conditions.

Film features

Episode 2 of series 2 of  Season 1, The X Files, in the episode 'Shadows', a character is featured as having PK abilities. Another episode involving PK-type abilities (although in fact is an example of bio-PK) is 'Miracle Man', from the same Season, series 5.