Psychokinesis is the psychic ability to move objects through an exercise of the human mind, either consciously or unconsciously. The word, psychokinesis, literally means soul movement (psyche- soul; kinesis- movement).
Some of the earliest hard-core scientific research revolving around psychokinesis began at Duke University with the famed researcher, J. B. Rhine, who developed some of the first statistical protocols for analyzing ESP phenomena. His interest in psychokinesis began when he began to study the success of a gambler, whose talent appeared to be statistically successful rolls of the dice. Could PK be an influence in determining who was successful in gambling and who was not?
Rhine spent ten years before publishing his works on psychokinesis because, of all the various things he studied, such as telepathy and precognition, he felt that psychokinesis might be the most controversial. Besides, there were some problems when, after many experiments with hand-tossed dice, it became possible that the tiny embedded markings, appearing as black dots on the dice, could affect the ‘heaviness’ of the respective sides. Thus, perhaps the dice were loaded naturally by virtue of their manufacture and the psychokinesis effect was imaginary. To compensate for this possible natural effect, Rhine creating a dice-rolling machine that seemed to diminish the power of the original psychokinesis data.
One interesting experiment Rhine conducted pitted a team of professional gamblers against a team of divinity students in a statistically tabulated dice-rolling contest. The result was a toss-up between the two sides but with an over-powering collective result that meant that some unusual force was acting on behalf of both the gamblers and the divinity students.
Much has often been made of poltergeist phenomena, which involves the rapid transportation of objects during episodes often associated with a spirit. Influenced by research done by the Rhine Research Center, which continued the work of J.B. Rhine in the area of psychokinesis, many modern parapsychologists believe that the poltergeist phenomena and its concomitant psychokinesis, classically associated with rock-throwing spirits, is caused typically by presence of troubled adolescents, attributing the poltergeist phenomena to a human element, a young person with a disruptive emotional or mental state that can trigger events that actually cause psychokinesis.
Two relatively modern examples of people claimed to have psychokinesis in their paranormal arsenal are the Israeli psychic, Uri Geller and the Russian housewife, Nina Kulagina.
Geller was known primarily for his psychokinetic facility in bending spoons, although he did a lot of work with in repairing clocks psychokinetically as well. His psychokinesis was regularly challenged by the magician/skeptic James Randi, who claimed that his spoon-bending psychokinesis was so much trickery.
