Pieter van der Hurk (21 May 1911 – 1 June 1988) known as Peter Hurkos, was a Dutchman who claimed he manifested extrasensory perception (ESP) after recovering from a head injury and coma caused by a fall from a ladder when aged 30.

[3] With the help of businessman Henry Belk and parapsychologist Andrija Puharich, Hurkos became a popular entertainer known for performing psychic feats before live and television audiences.

[5][6] However, author and stage magician James Randi contended that Hurkos refused to allow his skill to be tested by scientists except for one session with the parapsychologist Charles Tart of the University of California, Davis.

[7] Other common techniques included guessing numbers of people in families (easy enough if one picks a typical number and allows himself to add frequent visitors or exclude family members who have relocated 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.

In 1964, Attorney General Edward W. Brooke of Massachusetts said Hurkos had come ''uncannily close'' to describing the person suspected in the Boston Strangler case.

In fact, Hurkos had been to the Tate residence to do a "reading," but his guesses, including descriptions of how the "killings erupted during a black magic ritual known as 'goona goona,'" were inaccurate.

[16] Authors Arthur Lyons and Marcello Truzzi PhD, also a founder of the International Remote Viewing Association,[17] wrote the Hurkos cases were "pure bunk" in their 1991 book The Blue Sense: Psychic Detectives and Crime.