Light Touch
“Thoughtographs” and Stanhope Lenses
A 1960s personality wowed audiences with his supposedly paranormal images—but magicians detected optical illusions, not sorcery.
Ted Serios during experiment in mind photography for Life magazine. [Gerald R. Brimacombe/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images]
In its 22 September 1967 issue, the popular U.S. magazine Life ran a four-page article by Paul Welch titled, “A man who thinks pictures: The baffling case of Ted Serios and his ‘Thoughtographs.’” The story featured six photographs, including an opener of an overwrought Ted Serios grimacing into a camera and another showing him exhausted in a chair. But the other four photographs were eerie anomalies: a building, a statue, a car and what appeared to be a U.S. Revolutionary War-era soldier with crossed straps.
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