(Page 2 of 4)

About 30 people apply to be tested each month, Harter says. About a third of them claim to be dowsers — people who think they can find water, gold coins or drugs using a tool such as a forked stick.

Many folks are stepping forward these days to say they can manipulate TV personalities to say whatever they want. "This one guy kept saying, 'I can make Oprah say Randi's name.' And you couldn't convince him otherwise," Harter says. "Self-delusion can be very powerful."

When a man from Mexico knocked on the foundation's doors one day, he was so certain he could glow in the dark that he even brought a suitcase to take home the million-dollar award.

"He tried a few times, but just couldn't glow. He said he was tired and that he'd come back later," Randi said. "He never returned."

Spoon-Bending Psychic Still in Business

With National Psychic Week approaching, The Wolf Files called Michael Jackson's favorite medium, Uri Geller, who became world-famous for his self-proclaimed telekinetic abilities — which he demonstrated by ruining silverware (spoons especially) on virtually every TV show in the early 1970s.

"I know you, Buck Wolf, you are going to write something sarcastic about me," Geller said.

Was he reading my mind? Yowsa! Maybe he really is psychic.

Then Geller said that he had no idea that National Psychic Week was coming. So much for intuition.

Geller was once the most famous psychic in America. In the late 1960s, he impressed Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir at a party, she mentioned him on a radio show, and a legend was born.

In one instance he claimed he caused London's Big Ben to stop ticking. Another time, he claimed to stop a German cable car in mid-flight. At his high point, Geller suggested that he was working with the CIA and Israeli intelligence on psychic espionage programs to keep the Soviet Union in line.

But his career nose-dived after a 1972 Tonight Show appearance. Johnny Carson's staff consulted with Randi, who says he set up safeguards to prevent Geller from cheating.