Early work was conducted in Japan in the early 1900’s by an investigator named Fukurai. He worked with selected individuals who attempted and sometimes succeeded in imprinting sealed photographic plates with Japanese characters, faces and images of buildings.

In America, Hereward Carrington conducted similar experiments a bit later. Shafts of light and odd streaking effects appeared on the target photographic plates when care was taken to rule out conventional causes.

The most extensive "psychic photography" research was conducted by a Denver-based psychoanalyst named Jule Eisenbud. Eisenbud worked chiefly with a Chicago bellhop named Ted Serios. Eliminating darkroom trickery through the use of Polaroid film, Eisenbud showed that Serios could Indeed "impregnate" blank, light-shielded film with his own "mental images." Serios would vividly imagine some scene, and when it was strongly fixed in his mind, he or Eisenbud would snap the shutter release of the camera. When developed instantly, the film frequently showed things that shouldn’t be there according to the usually understood laws of optics. Sometimes the film would be abnormally black or abnormally white. Sometimes strange distortions and superimpositions were found. Sometimes very clear images could be seen on the film. In some cases, these images even matched targets that had been selected for that session, unknown to Serios.

Critics have assumed trickery was always involved in these tests, perhaps in the form of a tiny transparency projector that Serios was suspected of concealing. However, Serios was never caught in the act of trickery nor were such cheating props ever discovered. Many of the tests were well-witnessed by several qualified professionals who attested to the authenticity of the results.

Most difficult for the critics to explain are successful results obtained under conditions in which the investigators supplied all materials themselves (to prevent tampering) and in which Serios never came near the film or camera. Also embarrassing to the critic are cases in which Serios successfully influenced more than one camera at the same time, and cases in which Serios influenced video tape so that one can see the gradual development and fading of the images.

Despite claims by certain conjurors, no one met Eisenbud’s long-standing challenge to duplicate Serios’ feats through "normal" means.

Recently, other "thoughtographers" have been discovered and investigated by psychical researchers. These include an entire family of "psychic photographers" (the Veilleux family) in Waterville, Maine, a protege of Serios named Willy Schwanholz and a Japanese boy named Kiyota. In the case of Kiyota, not only do images appear on protected film, but light sensitive devices sealed inside a camera also show pulses of activity during Kiyota’s attempts.

The usual explanation of all these effects is that the influencers are somehow altering the chemistry of the photographic emulsions through some form of psychokinesis.

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