The Randi Million-Dollar Paranormal Challenge
📜 On record1,000+ applicants (mediums, dowsers, qigong masters, homeopaths) tested under mutually agreed conditions.
VerdictNone passed the preliminary.
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Magic / Sorcery
Using occult arts to achieve various effects
Reality checkNo ‘spell’ has ever passed a test — Randi’s million dollars went unclaimed for 50 years; but history has real judicial and scientific files: the Salem witch trials, Britain’s last ‘witch’ conviction in 1944, a Harvard physiologist’s study of ‘voodoo death’.
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The Salem witch trials
🏛️ Official record200+ accused of witchcraft, 20 executed; the colony formally exonerated them in 1711.
VerdictThe most complete judicial file about ‘magic’.
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Helen Duncan: the last ‘witch’ convicted
🏛️ Official recordMedium Duncan was jailed 9 months under the Witchcraft Act for ‘revealing’ a warship sinking at a séance; the Act was repealed in 1951.
VerdictA 20th-century judicial file.
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‘Voodoo death’ research
🎓 Academic researchAs in the Mind Control entry.
VerdictThe mechanism is psycho-physiological.
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The £10,000 Indian rope-trick reward
📜 On recordOffered a reward to anyone performing ‘the rope stands, the boy climbs and vanishes’ in the open.
VerdictUnclaimed; in 1996 scholar Lamont traced the legend to an 1890 ‘Chicago Tribune’ hoax.
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Ted Serios ‘thoughtography’
📜 On recordA drunken hotel bellhop ‘projected’ building images onto a Polaroid; in 1967 two magicians found he could hide film in a small tube he held.
VerdictThe trick is reproducible.
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Sathya Sai Baba ‘materialising’ holy ash
✕ DebunkedThe Hindu guru ‘materialised’ holy ash and gold chains in public; slow motion showed items hidden between his fingers.
VerdictMagic trickery.
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