Spoon bending party

You're releasing something more powerful than atomic weapons So here you are on a Friday evening with nothing to do. No work; no date; nothing on TV. So why not lighten up the evening and go to a Spoon bending party where you, yes, YOU can learn to bend cutlery with the power of your mind!

They're also called PK Parties, short for psychokinesis, and these hardcore raves were first thrown by Jack Houck (1939-2013) in 1981 after hearing about the exploits of Project Stargate (the same people that Uri Geller fooled in the 1970s) and became convinced that remote viewing is a real phenomenon. After this the crank magnetism kicked in and Houck also started believing in psychokinesis, dowsing, psychic healing, and brainwave woo, writing several papers on these subjects.

Party pooper
Anyone can throw a spoon bending party; Houck helpfully wrote a "how-to guide" and published it on his website which is successful for "over 85 percent" of the party goers (emphases added):

Based on this, we can see several much more likely reasons for the silverware to bend:


 * Due to the exhilarating group effect and shouting, people are likely to underestimate how much strength exactly they exert on the spoon, and bend it with their muscles when "testing" to "see if the object gives". In fact, in most PK parties the "testing" is done during the shouting, not after the shouting. Houck said that an "atmosphere of excitement and emotional arousal" was required and "encouraged people to be noisy and excited".
 * Most people attending these parties want to bend a spoon with their mind and already believe such a thing is possible, which will influence their judgement when judging whether it was mostly their mind or mostly their muscles doing the work.
 * People don't want to disappoint the party host, be "that guy" who wasn't able to bend a spoon, or be a boring party pooper. Maureen Caudill for example claims that spoon bending is significantly easier to achieve when performed in groups rather than alone.

Unfortunately, many of the videos on PK parties are of poor quality and don't focus on a single person more than a few seconds, but here's an example of the sort of "amazing" bending that you can see if you pay close attention. Look at the woman in the sunglasses, and how much force she is exerting on the fork. Does this really look supernatural?

Houck replies to this sort of argument with:

Lalalalalalalalaala! I can't hear you!

Other party animals
When just psychokinesis isn't enough for you, you can go QUANTUM for extra power! In—where else—Sedona, you can learn to bend spoons using time travel. Yes, really (emphasis and colour in original):

Michael Crichton describes attending a PK party in his 1988 book and apparently really believed he bent the spoon with his mind.

External parties

 * Jack Houck's full account of how PK parties came to be
 * Michael Crichton's account (hosted on Uri Geller's website)