Profile of Peter Hurkos on Famous Like Me

Peter Hurkos (real name Pieter Van der Hurk, 5/21/1911 - 6/1/1988) was a Dutch man who claimed to have fallen from a ladder at the age of thirty, landing on his head and granting himself psychic powers. With the help of businessman Henry Belk and parapsychologist Andrija Puharich, Kurkos became a popular public psychic performer on television and before live audiences, in a manner similar to Uri Geller.

"I see pictures in my mind like a television screen. When I touch something, I can then tell what I see." - Peter Hurkos

According to James Randi, Hurkos refused to allow his skill to be tested by scientists except for one session with Dr. Charles Tart of the University of California at Davis. Dr. Tart's tests were negative.

In the early part of his career, Hurkos gave performances in which he claimed to use his psychic powers to discern things about audience members that he could not otherwise have known. An example, transcribed in the Fall 1978 issue of The Skeptical Inquirer

 Hurkos: I see an operation.
 Subject: (no response)
 Hurkos: Long time ago.
 Subject: No. We have been lucky.
 Hurkos: (somewhat agrily) Think! When you were a little girl. I see worried parents, and doctor, and scurrying about.
 Subject: (no response)
 Hurkos: (confidently) Long time ago.
 Subject: (yielding) I cannot remember for certain. Maybe you are right. I'm not sure.

James Randi analyzes this, and other transcripts of Hurkos performing, and identifies a number of standard cold reading techniques. Among them, he starts with something seemingly personal, but actually quite common, an operation. He does not say that it is the subject's operation, any operation would have given him a 'hit'. When that fails, he extends the domain with long time ago. At this point, any operation to any family member or friend in the subjects's own life would have been a 'hit', and yet would have looked psychic because an operation is thought of as a private matter. His tone is also important, presenting himself as confident and knowning, and the subject as obstinant, even when he has been wrong.

Other common techniques included guessing numbers of people in families (easy enough if you pick a typical number, and allow yourself to add frequent visitors or exclude famiy members who have moved away from home as needed to match the target, as Hurkos did), including nonsense words in his presentation that could be interpreted by the subject to have any one of many meanings, and guessing on the importance of common names, which could be permutated as needed until he got a hit. (He most commonly used the name "Ann," which would give him a hit with anybody who had a relative or friend or teacher or boss or co-worker named Ann or Anna, or Anastasia, etc., at any point in his or her life.)

Hurkos and his supporters claimed him to be a great psychic detective, and by 1969, he listed his success in solving 27 murders in 17 countries. However, when the police investigating these cases are asked, they typically respond that Hurkos contributed nothing that would not have been known from reading the newspapers and, in some cases, that he was never present at investigations at all. Where he claimed to have found the stolen "Stone of Scone", for example, according to U.K. Home Secretary, Mr. Chuter Edge ,

The gentleman in question whose activities have been publicized (though not by the police) was among a number of persons authorized to come to Westminster Abbey to examine the scene of the crime. He was not invited by the police, his expenses have not been refunded by the Government, and he did not obtain any result whatsoever.

Hurkos claimed to have identified the Boston Strangler, and he did in fact travel to Boston and spend time with the police there. However, he was not of help to them, and several days after his consultation was completed, he was arrested for impersonating a police officer (and later convicted for this crime). It seems that he had ben posing as a cop to gather information he could later pass off as psychically revealed.

In the case of John Norman Collins, he sometimes claimed the killer was blond, other times brown-haired, so that he could claim victory either way. He made other claims about the killer that were simply wrong. He claimed to have identified Charles Manson to police, but this was not true; Manson was identified by his supporter Susan Atkins to a cellmate while she was in jail for a different crime.

However, Hurkos remains famous, perhaps because of his successful television specials. Among these, Japan/ six hours for TV-TOKYO and NET-TV "The Greatest Psychic in The World . . . Peter Hurkos" (-a two-parter, filmed at Dr. Puharich's lab in Dobson, NC where Hurkos was specifically tested for this special, and also on location in Japan), The Netherlands/nine hours for TROST-TV "Peter Hurkos"( - four-part special highlighting Hurkos' finding the kidnapped Dutch millionaire, Maup Cransa), Canada/two and a half hour special for CBC "Psych-Out with Peter Hurkos" (-which created a circuit overflow when Hurkos began speaking with the home audiences by telephone).

He also appeared in several motion pictures as himself: "The Amazing World of Psychic Phenomena" [Sunn International]; "Mysterious Monsters" [David Wolper]; and "Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep" [Paramount]. 20th Century Fox portrayed him in the motion picture "THE BOSTON STRANGLER" which starred Tony Curtis, Henry Fonda and George Kennedy and directed by Richard Fleisher.

Various prominent, worldwide publications reported his exploits throughout his lifetime: TIME, NEWSWEEK, OMNI, LIFE, TRUE, READER'S DIGEST, PLAYBOY, THE NATIONAL ENQUIRER, LADIES HOME JOURNAL, etc.

Hurkos published three books: PSYCHIC [Bobbs-Merrill], THE PSYCHIC WORLD OF PETER HURKOS [Doubleday], and PETER HURKOS: I HAVE MANY LIVES [Doubleday]. His exploits have been the focal points of more than seventy-five books.

Hurkos resided in Studio City at the time of his death. His hobbies included oil painting and, according to the Hurkos website, one of his paintings is currently on display at New York's Museum of Modern Art, and others adorn the residences of former President Ronald Reagan, and The General Omar N. Bradley Museum in Carlisle, Penn.

Among his failed prediction, Hurkos prophesied that he would die on November 17, 1961. He lived another 27 years.

Source

• James Randi, An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural
• http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/predators/collins/psych_6.html?sect=2
• James Randi, Flim Flam, 1982, p. 270-272

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