Table Tipping

This is the same guy in another experiment, similar to the one I was talking about.
There are five sensitives with Muti around the table and two researchers. One is a parapsychologist and the other is a doctor.
During the experiment the latter is measuring Muti's EEG and comments on it later in the video. The whole thing is pretty long and they all speak Italian.



At around 5':00" the parapsychologists comments on the phenomenon. He talks about his inspection of the table, the weigth, the possibility for "normal" explanations of the movement or how it could be faked concluding that the motion of the chair and table seemed anomalous at least in certain points of the experiment.

Then they spend some time talking about how the experiment feels, for the participants. They agree that when all hands are in contact with the table there's a certain amount of palpable "electricity" going through it.

Finally the doctor comments on the EEG saying that there's a sharp difference when Muti is talking and when he's concentrating on the experiment. In the former state the EEG reading looks like expected but during the PK phases there's an off the chart delta state, around 2Hz. Specifically he says that the instrument can measure up to 400 microvolts but the reading is off the scale, this in turn indicates a strong coherence of all neurons.

He also notes that it seems anomalous to see such high delta synchronization while Muti has his eyes open and is either speaking or singing during the experiment.

Finally the doc says that when Muti concentrates on moving the chair, rather than the table, the EEG shows high alpha synchronization. Here Muti comments on the fact that he needs visual contact with the chair to establish "a connection", while for the table he doesn't as he's resting his hands on it.

That's pretty much the gist of the discussion in the video.

cheers

Do you believe there is some anomalous phenomena going on here?

Do you believe there is some anomalous phenomena going on here?

No idea. The experiment was pretty informal. There may be something interesting going on but I don't have sufficient elements to come to any conclusions. I find the movement of the lady on the chair pretty strange. Her feet don't touch the floor and her posture doesn't suggest any effort in her arms and hands, suggesting she's not pushing or pulling.

There could be fraud going on: the chair might have been modified so that it takes little effort to be pushed around (by reducing its friction somehow). Then again why inviting scientists to check the room, the table, the chair etc...? It would have been spotted immediately.

Right now I am sitting on an office chair with 5 wheels and in front of a table. I can put both hands on the table, rest my feet on the chair's legs and try to push myself back and forth like in the video, but it's not that easy. I have to plant my palms very firmly on the table and I must use the strength in my arms and shoulders to move. Even with a slippery floor the motion is not very smooth and my hands and arms look tense.
I would need a way to reduce the effort by 50% at least to make it less obvious that I am pushing and pulling. Especially the pulling back towards the table is very obvious.

The correlation between anomalous EEG activity and the table/chair movement seems to corroborate the comments of the parapsychologist who admits there might be something anomalous going on.

I've seen the "table fight" experiment done in multiple occasions (see b/w video posted earlier) and it looks even more difficult to fake. I can't exclude fraud there too but on every instance they invited an expert to check the setup and the environment, before proceeding.

Generally speaking Muti has always been very open to all sort of instrumental tests and verifications of his feats. He was actually the one who was pestering physicists, parapsychologists and the like to participate to his demonstrations and find ways to document the reality of the phenomena. As far as I know he's never been caught cheating in those demos.

I've found one more "table fight" demonstration by Muti.
This is an infamous demo that I remember seeing on TV when I was a kid. It must have been 1983-84.
http://www.lucianomuti.it/video7.html
(you need the Flash Player installed)

The position of the table is baffling, but these demonstration always leave you with a sense of ambiguity. It's definitely weird but there could be ways to fake it. At the page above the first part of the video is cut. Before the experiment there was a discussion about the weight of the table and the fact that people in the TV studio had inspected the table to check if there was anything strange with it, to no avail.

And here's an old article from National Enquirer talking about a similar experiment. This one is in English.
it's grainy as heck but still readable.
http://www.lucianomuti.it/images/p033_1_00.jpg

I suppose the National Enquirer isn't/wasn't a primary source of scientific material, so take it with as many grains of salt as you wish.

There could be fraud going on...

Not the tiniest doubt in my mind that it's fake... but if you want evidence, open up youtube as large as you can, then on the chair slides with greater acceleration (more force needed), you can see her hands move towards her slightly as she pulls herself towards the table, and see her hands move away from her slightly as she pushes herself away from the table. On the slow slides the effect looks better, the lady has got quite good at it.

My mum and her father used to do telepathy tricks down at Newcastle Quayside on a weekend when she was a little girl. Damn effective trick too, they made a lot of money off punters. The punter picked a card from a large selection of cards, which her father saw, then mum, whilst completely blindfolded, miraculously chose the correct duplicate card from a large box and held it up. It turns out she and her father had memorized a highly elaborate code, so he could continue to talk freely and innocuously after the punter had picked the card. But the words he actually used were coded, and gave her exact coordinates within the box, so she could locate the correct card whilst blindfolded. One day she got every card wrong, her father was furious, and she was really upset because she couldn't understand why she was getting them wrong, and they lost a lot of money to punters. At the end of the show as they were packing up, her father suddenly realized he had put the card box out for her the wrong way round. So all the locations had been reversed. It wasn't my mum's fault after all, it was her fathers, but she didn't get an apology. She had a hard life.

I've never watched this stuff before, and I gotta say, I felt pretty uncomfortable watching this... I soothed myself somewhat, by accepting that the table was really just a very large Ouija board puck being moved over the floor, rather than over a Ouija board. But still felt a little freaked out, seeing apparently normal adults engaging in this sort of behavior.

For me, I'm OK with the adults engaging in the behavior  : ) ,,, it's just that I don't find the demonstration very convincing. If the table lifted off the ground? now that would be interesting... The fact that people could drag a light table around the room with a bit of finger pressure doesn't mean much to me. 

I'll admit, I didn't watch the whole video,,, did I miss anything that was actually convincing to anyone?

"medium Cathy Gibb proves life after death by table turning" 
That title has some involuntary Python-esque humor in it....

"philosoper Bill Smith proves free will by dish washing"

But other than that cool video.
I've seen a very similar thing done over here by a rather famous sensitive. He gathered a group of people, they started joking singing creating a very upbeat atomsphere and things (tables, chairs) started moving around.

In that case the claim was PK, rather than spirit intervention. I think it's pretty hard to distinguish among the two.
I'll see if I can find the video(s).

True- PK and spirit intervention are different things,,, but demonstrating either one is a big deal I think. 

As I said earlier,,, I just don't see this as a very good demonstration of either.

I might be wrong but I thought the purpose of table-tipping was communication? If there is nothing communicated, even if it's not deliberately faked, what's the point?

I've found one more "table fight" demonstration by Muti.
This is an infamous demo that I remember seeing on TV when I was a kid. It must have been 1983-84.
http://www.lucianomuti.it/video7.html
(you need the Flash Player installed)

The position of the table is baffling, but these demonstration always leave you with a sense of ambiguity. It's definitely weird but there could be ways to fake it. At the page above the first part of the video is cut. Before the experiment there was a discussion about the weight of the table and the fact that people in the TV studio had inspected the table to check if there was anything strange with it, to no avail.

Most of the time the table seems to be close to the balance point, where virtually no effort is required  to keep it in place.

At the start Muti on the left leans heavily over the table in order to tilt it towards himself. Later, the woman with the red sleeves has her wrists angled behind the edge of the table, not on top, so she can push it away from herself.
Most of the time the camera angle doesn't even show much, with one person hidden behind the next, anything could be taking place (stray thumbs underneath - if necessary?).
   
   

Pretty unimpressive. Too many ways to fake this.