Theodore Judd Serios (November 27, 1918 – December 30, 2006)[1] was a Chicago bellhop known for his production of "thoughtographs" on Polaroid film.

[4][5] Serios was an unemployed bellhop when his claims that he had the ability to put images on film with his mind came to the attention of psychiatrist Jule Eisenbud.

[6] Serios usually held a small cylinder or tube he called a "gizmo" up to the lens of an instant camera, which was then pointed at his forehead and the shutter released.

Another photograph depicted part of a building identified later as a hangar belonging to the Air Division of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

[13] In an article in the October 1967 issue of the magazine Popular Photography, Charlie Reynolds and David Eisendrath, both amateur magicians and professional photographers, claimed to have exposed Serios as a fraud after spending a weekend with him and Eisenbud.

Rushton successfully replicated the Serios phenomenon by holding a little reflecting prism that contained a microfilm picture against the camera lens.

Lined up properly, this device projected the image on the cut piece of transparency onto the film of the Polaroid camera.

[4] In an article in New Scientist titled "The Chance of a Lifetime" (24 March 2007), an interview appears with the noted mathematician and magician Persi Diaconis.

[22] Serios was also featured and interviewed (along with Eisenbud, Reynolds and Eisendrath) on the seventh episode of Arthur C. Clarke's World of Strange Powers in 1985, where he unsuccessfully tried to replicate his earlier thoughtography sessions - albeit without the use of his "gizmo".