THOUGHTOGRAPHY

Too lazy to retranscript this post in my own terms, so here's the Wikipedia's take about Ted Serios, who's story will be brought to the big screen by Chris Carter, in hopefully a near future, cause it's been on ice since 1999.

Ted Serios was a Chicago bellhop, possibly alcoholic, who gained notoriety in the 1960s by producing "thoughtographs" on Polaroid film supposedly using only his psychic powers of imagination. His fame, was bolstered by the endorsement of a Denver based psychiatrist, Jule Eisenbud (1908-1999) who wrote a book called The World of Ted Serios: "Thoughtographic" studies of an extraordinary mind (1967) in which he argued for the reality of Serios's feats, which were dismissed as a simple hoax by most educated people. Eisenbud's faith in Serios was extreme, and even as late as the 1980s, Eisenbud claimed that previously unidentified thoughtographs were images of Ganymede, a moon of Jupiter. Pictures of Ganymede had only become available a year before thanks to Voyager 2. “Unfortunately,” wrote Eisenbud, “I couldn’t get an astronomer or optical scientist to agree.”
As Eisenbud's book readily admits, many of Serios's photographs were produced while Serios was drunk or at least drinking. According to Eisenbud, "Ted Serios exhibits a behavior pathology with many character disorders. He does not abide by the laws and customs of our society. He ignores social amenities and has been arrested many times. His psychopathic and sociopathic personality manifests itself in many other ways. He does not exhibit self-control and will blubber, wail and bang his head on the floor when things are not going his way." (as quoted in wildlife photographer Nile Root's own investigation into Serios.)
Serios' images, which often appeared surrounded by dark areas on the film, were often of typical postcard scenes. Serios eventually was only able to produce his photographs while holding "the gizmo" to his forehead. This device has been described as "a small section of tubing fitted with a piece of photo squeegee."
Stage magician and noted debunker James Randi took a special interest in discrediting and debunking Serios at one time. He once produced photographs similar to Serios's while on national television with Serios. Randi's Website now merely comments: "If Mr. Serios did not use a trick method, all the rules of physics, particularly of optics, everything developed by science over the past several centuries, must be rewritten to accommodate Eisenbud's opinion. No such revisions have been found necessary."

Serios's story has never totally gone away. Quite recently, it was alluded to in the fourth season episode of The X-files, Unruhe, and in 1999, The X-Files producer Chris Carter signed a deal to base an entire movie on Dr. Eisenbud's book.