DENNIS ODA / DODA@STARBULLETIN.COM From left, Frankes Kuba, Betty Kamida and Alice Inoue show some of the utensiles they bent. They attended Jack Houck's 354th psychokinesis party at the Aloha Tower Marketplace.

Writer is bent out of shape by psychokinesis

He’d like to believe there
is more to mind over matter
than matter-of-fact physics

---

By Shawn "Speedy" Lopes
slopes@starbulletin.com

"We're going to try and have fun tonight," proclaimed paranormal researcher Jack Houck to a group of about 150 at Aloha Tower Marketplace's Mauka Lanai Saturday night.

As the celebrated guest of the Institute of Zen Studies -- a Honolulu nonprofit group whose pursuits can be traced back to the mid-'80s -- Houck promised to teach all in attendance to bend forks and spoons with the power of suggestion.

It would be a lesson in psychokinesis, or PK -- the ability to manipulate inanimate objects with one's mind. "If any of you are with skeptics, send them over to me," said Houck with a smile, "and I'll bend them."

The audience is first asked to consult a dowsing pendulum. Although it appeared to be a simple wooden bead attached to string, the pendulum exhibited a certain magnetic attraction to my spoon. Just as Houck explained, the pendulum seemed to move back and forth the more I concentrated on it, despite the fact that my hand was kept perfectly still.

"Get a point of concentration above your head, focus it, bring it down through your arms, hand and put it in your silverware," were Houck's next instructions. Within moments a woman in the first row turned her spoon over itself, as did the gentleman next to her, yet no matter how hard I concentrated, I got no response from my utensils. More and more excited giggles shot up around the room as audience members began bending their forks and spoons with relative ease.

DENNIS ODA / DODA@STARBULLETIN.COM Jack Houck holds bent spoons and forks from some of his previous psychokinesis parties, which he prefers to call PK parties.

I watched for several minutes as one woman struggled to manipulate her spoon, until suddenly, with only slight pressure from her free thumb, it began to curl forward. "At first it seemed very difficult," she explained to me. "But I kept redoing it in my mind, and finally it went. I was delighted."

Several feet away, attendee Zoltan Szabo even managed to bend a set of less pliable utensils borrowed from home, yet he remained cautious in his assessment. "Maybe I'm too excited and don't feel how hard I'm pushing down," reasoned Szabo, who came hoping to see a feat comparable to those exhibited by Uri Geller, the famed Israeli-born telepath and psychokinetic performer. "I'm not convinced," he said.

One of the few audience members who, like me, could not seem to make the utensils do his bidding was Douglas Rompasky, a 23-year-old science major from Manoa. "It's kind of frustrating because I don't know what I'm doing wrong," he said. "When I heard about this, I thought it sounded a little hoaxist, so maybe I came with the wrong frame of mind."

Minutes later, Houck implored every audience member to place a fork in each hand and will the utensils to bend strictly through suggestion. The experiment continued for several tense minutes with forks hoisted in the air and the entire room under heavy concentration. My utensils, again, did nothing. Finally a joyous holler resounded from the back of the room, followed by a proclamation: "We got a bender here!" Rushing through the audience to the hullabaloo, I found, to my disappointment, a false alarm. "I was just goofing around," admitted one guest to his group of friends. "And that lady in front of me thought I was serious."

DENNIS ODA / DODA@STARBULLETIN.COM Carol Yanagihara concentrates on making this bead spin above a spoon. She and others attended Houck's 354th psychokinesis party Saturday at the Aloha Tower Marketplace.

My encounter with this genial bunch would prove to be my breakthrough, however. Another member of his party would show me the proper technique to achieving a bent spoon. "It's really easy," she said with a shrug, pushing a spoon over itself and back again twice, with no trouble. "You can do it."

Following her exact instructions -- down to the precise placement of my fingers and hand -- I finally felt the spoon's natural resistance begin to give. The trick, I discovered, is to create more leverage by directing pressure from my palm to the spoon's handle -- a manual technique I'd overlooked in my previous attempts to rely only on mind power.

NOW I WAS even more unfulfilled. Wasn't there more to this spectacle than simple physics? For the answer, I would ask Houck, who would answer my question with a query of his own: "What do you think the importance of this is?"

The truth was, I wasn't sure. I just knew I could now bend a spoon by barely trying, and I wondered whether Houck could really bend a metal bar with his mind, Uri Geller style.

"People can bend them all the time," he insisted, picking up a small rod for emphasis. "I am not a performer like Geller. I'm a scientist. But what I'm finding is, what people say to themselves affects how they live, and that's pretty powerful stuff.

"Now, I'm not a power-of-positive-thinking guy, but it sounds like the same thing. It's people finding that they can apply their mind."

Houck then offered me a pen. "Let me give you something to remember this by," he said. "The instructions are on there."

"PK Party -- Jack Houck," the pen read. "Connect, Bend, Bend, Bend, Let Go!"

I'd done the bending, now the problem is, I can't let go. Although I'd seen nothing definitive in the way of psychokinesis, now more than ever, I'd like to believe there's more to the phenomenon than what I'd witnessed.

Szabo had already made up his mind. He asked for his money back.

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