“Something unknown is doing we don't know what.”
– Sir Arthur Eddington, English astronomer (1882 – 1944), comment on the Uncertainty Principle in quantum physics, 1927
Dutch filmmaker Renée Scheltema has chosen to use this quote as the tile of her new documentary film on the science behind psychic phenomena. Prompted by three seemingly mystical experiences in her own life within a short period of time, Scheltema decides to search for answers to how these things could have happened and if they could possibly be real or just coincidence. Armed with a camera and a tablespoon from her house that she watched a “Spoon Bender” twist like it was made of warm butter, she sets off to speak with some of the leading experts in the study of psychic phenomena.
Scheltema brings the viewer along to visit with scientists who expound on almost half a century of experiments demonstrating scientific evidence of psychic abilities. From experiments with flashcards and dice to modern MRI techniques, the evidence is impressive. Interspersed with the hard evidence are personal accounts of psychic experiences, psychic detectives used by the police to locate missing children and help solve cases, remote viewers drawing for the CIA during the cold war and the matching pictures of the sites they drew taken years after the fact, PK parties where people sit around in a circle and command silverware to bend with the will of their minds, and people healed by faith-healings or psychic-healers and the conventional Dr’s who were treating them.
In one of the most impressive pieces Scheltema captures on film, a Psychic Surgeon who has been practicing in India for years, inserts long forceps into the nasal cavity of a woman sitting in front of him, and less than a minute later pulls a tumor out of her brain. No anesthesia, no pain, not even sterilization of the instrument, and the woman stands up and walks away afterward. A slight of hand? Trick of the camera? A vast conspiracy? No, not at least as far as I can tell. Even though I was taught from childhood to believe in psychic phenomenon and healing as an everyday event, my mind had a difficult time wrapping around this one. Fact is stranger than fiction as they say, and as several of the experts note, there was a time when the human race accepted what we call “psychic phenomenon” as a fact of everyday life and nothing to even be noted as unusual. Somewhere in our history we taught ourselves not to believe, and it would seem that on that account, we have a lot to unlearn.
Something unknown is doing we don't know what… has perfect timing. On the heels of hit films like Push and The Knowing, and books like The Last Oracle by James Rollins and the new best-selling The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown, audiences are primed and hungry for just the type of evidence this film provides. Scheltema has delivered a wonderful film that I think will have even the most ardent skeptic thinking again.
Director Renée Scheltema
SOMETHING UNKNOWN is now available on DVD and can be purchased by visiting www.somethingunknown.com . Running time: 105 minutes.
ComicsOnline gives this documentary 3 ½ third eyes out of 5
