head as a blindfold. Then, following Zambendorf’s instructions, Jackson pointed
silently to select a woman in the audience, and the woman chose an item from
among the things she had with her and held it high for everyone to see. It
happened to be a green pen. She then pointed to another member of the audience—a
man sitting a half dozen or so rows farther back—to repeat the procedure. The
man held up a watch with a silver bracelet, and so it went. Jackson noted the
objects on the flip-chart. When he had listed five, he covered the chart, turned
the stand around to face the wall for good measure, and told Zambendorf he was
free to remove the blindfold.
“Remember, I’m relying on every one of you,” Zambendorf said. “You must all help
if we’re going to make this a success. Now, the first of the objects—recall it
and picture it in your minds. Now send it to me. . . .” He frowned,
concentrated, and pounded his brow. The audience redoubled its efforts. Viewers
at home joined in. “Writing . . . something to do with writing,” Zambendorf said
at last. “A pen! Now the color. The color is … green! I get green. Were you
sending green?” By the time he got the fifth item correctly, the audience was
wild.
For his finale Zambendorf produced his other prop—a solid-looking metal rod
about two feet long and well over an inch thick. Jackson couldn’t bend it when
challenged, and neither could three men from near the front of the audience.
“But the power of the mind overcomes matter,” Zambendorf declared. He gave
Jackson the rod to hold, and touched it lightly in the center with his fingers.
“This will require all of us,” Zambendorf called out. “All of us here, and
everybody at home. I want you all to help me concentrate on bending. Think
it—bending. Say it—bending! Bending!” He looked at Jackson and nodded in time
with the rhythm as he repeated the word.
Jackson caught on quickly and began motioning with a hand like a conductor
urging an orchestra. “Bending! Bending! Bending! Bending! . . .” he recited, his
voice growing louder and more insistent.
Gradually, the audience took up the chant. “Bending! Bending! Bending! Bending!”
Zambendorf turned fully toward them and threw his arms wide in exhortation. His
eyes gleamed in the spotlights; his teeth shone white. “Bending! Bending!
Bending!” He laid a hand on the rod. Jackson gasped and stared down wide-eyed as
the metal bowed. Some of the audience were staring ashen-faced. Zambendorf took
the rod and held it high over his head in one hand, gazing up at it triumphantly
while it continued to bend in full view while a thousand voices in unison raised
themselves to a frenzy. Women had started screaming. A number of people fled
along the aisles toward the exits. A bearded, hawk-faced man with an open Bible
in one hand climbed onto the stage, pointed an accusing finger at Zambendorf,
and began reading something unintelligible amid the pandemonium before security
guards grabbed him and hustled him away.
A frantic viewer in Delaware was trying to get past a jammed NBC switchboard to
report that her aluminum chair had buckled at the precise moment that Zambendorf
commanded the rod to bend. Another’s lighting circuits all blew at the same
instant. A hen coop in Wyoming was struck by lightning. A washing machine caught
fire in Alabama. Eight people had heart attacks. A clock began running backward
in California. Two expectant mothers had had spontaneous abortions. A nuclear
reactor shut itself down in Tennessee.
In the control room on a higher level behind the stage area, one of the video
engineers on duty stared incredulously at the scenes on the main panel monitor
screens. “My God!” he muttered to the technician munching a tuna sandwich in the
chair next to him. “If he told them to give him all their money, rip off their
clothes, and follow him to China, you know something, Chet—they’d do it.”
Chet continued eating and considered the statement. “Or to Mars, maybe,” he
replied after a long, thoughtful silence.
4
EARLY THE FOLLOWING EVENING, CONLON AND WHITTAKER arrived at Gerold Massey’s