If you or someone you know has paranormal abilities, you could win a cool million dollars just for demonstrating those abilities. Sadly, I don’t possess any supernatural abilities, and apparently neither does anyone else.
The site’s FAQ is actually pretty funny. For example: Has there ever been a time when you thought, “This is the one that will take the prize?” A: No. I wish there were some really challenging offers or claims, just to add some excitement to my job, but it’s pretty well the same old material, endlessly repeated. And never have I ever even been much surprised at a claim, though I’m often surprised at the fact that anyone is actually fooled by it, even for a moment.
And: We at JREF must offer to test any and every applicant, because we cannot be the judges of whether a claim is likely to be valid. Only occasionally we encounter a claim that is just so silly or dangerous that we do not offer to go ahead with negotiations. Example: a person claimed to be controlling every event in the world just by wagging his head back and forth, and he even sent us a video of himself in action. He also “fed” a spirit living in a black stone, through a hole in that stone. We are tolerant, but not quite naive enough to spend time discussing such a claim.
There are a bunch of interesting videos on YouTube of James Randi debunking paranormal claims. Of course you have your outright con artists: your spoon benders & faith healers and your telekinetics. But you also have people who seem to have honestly deluded themselves into believing that they have supernatural abilities. If you have a strong stomach for abject humiliation, witness the complete and total failure at seeing auras, crystal healing, and dowsing by people who had agreed beforehand to these exact tests.
If you want to see something truly astounding, check out the amazing color changing card trick. And speaking of magic, if you haven’t seen it you should check out this hilarious parody of David Blaine’s Street Magic.
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