1. Pieter van der Hurk known as Peter Hurkos, was a Dutchman who claimed he manifested extrasensory perception after recovering from a head injury and coma caused by a fall from a ladder when aged 30.
19 Facts About Peter Hurkos
1. 2.
Peter Hurkos went to the United States in 1956 for psychic experiments, later becoming a professional psychic who sought clues in the Manson Family murders and the Boston Strangler case.
3.
Peter Hurkos stated in a 1960 episode of the television series One Step Beyond, after giving a lecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology to a scientific panel, that he would participate in any scientific experiment under any circumstances.
4.
However, author and stage magician James Randi contended that Peter Hurkos refused to allow his skill to be tested by scientists except for one session with the parapsychologist Charles Tart of the University of California, Davis.
5.
The parapsychologist Andrija Puharich was impressed by the stories about Peter Hurkos and invited him to the USA in 1956 to investigate his alleged psychic abilities.
6.
Peter Hurkos was studied at Puharich's Glen Cove, Maine, medical research laboratory under what Dr Puharich considered to be controlled conditions.
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The results convinced Puharich that Peter Hurkos had genuine psychic abilities.
8.
However, the psychologist Ronald Schwartz wrote in the magazine Skeptical Inquirer that Peter Hurkos used cold reading methods and published a transcription of such a reading in their autumn 1978 issue.
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For example, Peter Hurkos might begin with something seemingly personal but actually quite common: a surgery.
10.
Randi added that the tone in Peter Hurkos's voice was significant: Peter Hurkos presented himself as confident and knowing and characterized the subject as obstinate.
11.
Peter Hurkos and his supporters maintained that he was a great psychic detective.
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However, in some cases the detectives assigned to these cases countered that Peter Hurkos contributed no information unobtainable from newspapers and, in some cases, that he had no part in the investigations whatsoever.
13.
Peter Hurkos was not invited by the police, his expenses have not been refunded by the Government, and he did not obtain any result whatsoever.
14.
Peter Hurkos made notable claims contrary to popular belief such as the claim that Adolf Hitler was alive and living in Argentina.
15.
In 1964, Peter Hurkos was put on trial on the charge of impersonating a federal agent, found guilty, and fined $1,000.
16.
Peter Hurkos posed as the police officer in order to gather information that he could later claim to be psychic revelations.
17.
Peter Hurkos claimed to have identified Charles Manson to police; Manson was identified by his devotee Susan Atkins to a cellmate while she was in jail for a different crime.
18.
Peter Hurkos had been to the Tate residence to do a "reading," but his guesses, including descriptions of how the "killings erupted during a black magic ritual known as 'goona goona,'" were inaccurate.
19.
Authors Arthur Lyons and Marcello Truzzi PhD, a founder of the International Remote Viewing Association, wrote the Peter Hurkos cases were "pure bunk" in their 1991 book The Blue Sense: Psychic Detectives and Crime.