Nail Pulling Technology

[Deep Knight]

The real person who pretends to be Deep Knight here, and his wife hosted a BBQ on Labor Day and saw some friends who had been gone part of last spring and summer visiting a new granddaughter and 2-year-old grandson near Las Vegas (oh yeah, they saw their son and daughter-in-law too). They told us an interesting new-age-emerging-technology-linked scam story I would like to share (sounds like the sort of thing MacHaffie or Bellringer would promote).

While taking a day trip to Red Rock Canyon and eastern Death Valley, they stopped at a small gas station/convenience store/gift shop in the middle of nowhere California desert. Some eccentrically-dressed people were waiting in the parking lot, and came over to ask if there were part of the flying saucer technology expedition. A van pulled up and the people waiting all got in, driving off as my friends were going into the store to pay for their gas. The store owners told them the following story when they asked what was going on.

Apparently, some “new age technology” scam had used a nearby abandoned ore-loading platform (Borax? Rare Earth minerals?) to look like it had been the site of a levitation technology experiment. The line was that by rotating some special magnets in a special way using a small motor, huge fields would be generated and magnetic materials levitated. This was best done near certain mineral crystals, hence the site in the middle of the mineral-filled desert. What they had actually done was driven a whole bunch (“many hundreds”) of large nails into the platform, most of them only partially so they looked like they had been somehow been pulled up by the levitation forces. This was done in a “wave pattern,” because all of these new-age forces are based on vibrations and waves. There was also some sort of frame mounted for the motor and magnetic rotor, which wasn’t there (and had maybe had never been there) because it was “sensitive secret technology.” The scammers had brought out possible investors or whomever to see the “results of the experiment,” claiming that the nails had originally been driven all the way in but had been pulled out by the magnetic levitation flux, by different amounts depending on its wavy level. The technology could be used for flying saucers or whatever in the future. The status of this scam was unknown (the people at the store had only heard of it after-the-fact), but someone else of indeterminate relation to the original scam was taking groups of “spiritual seekers” and “aliens-are-in-contact-with-us believers” out to this site to show them the nails as some sort of “proof” of suppressed paranormal technologies. They would meet in the parking lot, which the owners really didn’t mind because they ended up selling gas and cold drinks to the participants (even though the organizers had never asked permission). The people at the store seemed amused by this, having a live-and-let-live attitude and not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth. Our friends considered asking where this was to check it out themselves, but it was starting to get hot out and they didn’t want any delays getting to and from even-hotter Death Valley.

After the party I looked this up on the internet but only found some Chris Angel Mindfreak stuff about levitation and being driven over by an SUV while on a bed of nails. If you haven’t run across this performer, he’s a magician who has discovered that magic is easier if you can edit video tape and get testimony from shills who swear they didn’t see any wires or stands from their viewing angle. Nothing else of note, perhaps I’m using the wrong keywords or it’s something being passed by word of mouth or those free weekly papers instead of on the internet.

I wonder if the same technology could be used to bend spoons. Someone should check with Uri Geller.

[JamesVincent]

So... their selling what? A tour of a place where a supposed "alien", using similar technology to mag-lev landed and possibly pulled some nails out of boards? Bet Pat McManus wishes he had heard of that as a child... lol.

[Deep Knight]

I agree that this is one of the strangest stories I have come across – the reason it’s included here even though it’s not really relevant (now, if it had been pulling Dinars from boards…). How exactly this all played out would certainly be a good story, but this is the only tidbit I have. Perhaps, like Lord Rama and Lady Tara, the people involved have taken pains to keep it off the internet – while it widens the audience it also opens the door to ridicule. It reminded me a bit about the stories of people charging $100 to be taken next to Area 51 north of there and stare at the sky hoping to see a flying saucer. See http://www.ufowatchdog.com/sean_david_morton.htm

The claims of Uri Geller in the 70’s are no less strange than this. At one time he was the most famous “psychic” in the world based on bending spoons. Critics contend that he was just a somewhat skilled magician who claimed parlor tricks were due to paranormal powers, not slight of hand. My favorite Uri Geller story involves a woman and her IUD (a birth control device implanted in the uterus). Geller was telling people to bring keys, spoons, or stopped watches in front of their TV while he was bending spoons, keys, or starting stopped watches with his mind, and that the psychic forces would be transferred to their living room. He said that “anything metal” would be moved. A woman who got pregnant because her copper-core IUD moved from its intended home sued him for paternity, under the theory that what he said was true and those metal-moving forces were at fault. His lawyer got this dismissed by telling the court (in the UK if memory serves) that he was only an entertainer and that none of this was real. Now-a-days he sometimes mentions this in interviews, framed under different circumstances and without his lawyer’s admission, of course.

I will grant Geller credit for being an entertaining guest. He is light and funny, laughs a lot, has a big toothy smile--all the stuff TV talkshows like. And I will confess to laughing out loud with his little story about how he got a letter from a woman who said she got pregnant because Uri psychically bent her IUD. I even suspect Uri may be telling the truth about getting such a letter since, although it is possible he made it up, there are enough goofy people out there that someone might just have written him such a letter.

All of this is the stuff many involved in the various aspects of the NESARA scam would latch onto to “prove” that there’s more out there than meets the eye. I latched onto it to show that when people want to believe, they will.

[Pottapaug1938]

It's interesting how bunkum-peddlers of many varying stripes fall back on the "I'm only an entertainer" when they are caught in the act....

[Kestrel]

Speaking of Uri Geller and using your psi-force:

Star Wars Force Trainer Jedi Training Headset

This device works so well that the price went... um... down...

70% down...

'cuz all the psi-forces the retailer could muster couldn't clear the inventory warehouse.

[texino]

The James Randi web page is a wealth of skeptical inquiry exposing the likes of Geller and so-called psychics.

[Omne]

Speaking of Uri Geller and using your psi-force:

Star Wars Force Trainer Jedi Training Headset

This device works so well that the price went... um... down...

70% down...

'cuz all the psi-forces the retailer could muster couldn't clear the inventory warehouse.

Actually the science behind it is fine. Allegedly it monitors beta waves and that is what changes the ball height. However, I'm skeptical that they could produce a working contact EEG monitor for $100. Mindball seems to work but it costs $23,000 or so.

[Deep Knight]

The “pulling nails” story brought out another story from a friend who had referenced it to me years ago after he read it in Wired magazine. Never looked it up until last night. Some of you may have heard about the JATO-powered car crashing into story that was believable enough to get the 1995 Darwin award. In brief, it concerned somebody who somehow got a Jet Assisted Take Off rocket, put it on the back of his car, fired it off in the desert somewhere, went so fast he couldn’t stop, didn’t make a curve, and crashed into a cliff. The Darwin award is to “commemorate those who improve our gene pool by removing themselves from it.” Well, it turned out to be a hoax, but at least one that captured the public imagination. See http://www.darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin1995-04.html

The story referenced from Wired was by someone who claimed to have done something slightly different (on an old mine car railroad track) that may have been the source of this urban myth. http://www.the-clearing.org/Jato/rockit.htm (warning, it's long). I was dubious about this when I read it Monday night, mostly because it seemed the structures and devices mentioned wouldn't hold up to the g forces, and also because the description of the mine track was unlike how these actually worked (the mine tracks would just go to entrance of the mine, where the ore would be separated from the waste and loaded into bigger cars). Then again, I wouldn't have believed my nail pulling story either because it was so crazy and until getting into this NESARA et al stuff I wouldn't have believed people could be so stupid. Anyway, a bit of digging found others didn't believe it either and dug into find out who wrote it. Some say it was the brother of the person who hosted the website it was originally posted on ("Cardhouse," it's often called the "Cardhouse story"). If you look him up, you'll find he died in 2007 and his online obit shows he didn't grow up in the desert as the story says, but in Pennsylvania.

Anyway, it was a bit of a lesson in internet hoaxes, people believing what they want to believe, and other people spending time debunking hoaxes because it pisses them off.