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7pm ET (NYC time)
Monday, May 11, 2026
PLEASE NOTE: A link to a recording of this talk will be sent out to ticket holders after its conclusion. It will also be archived for our Patreon members. Become a Member HERE.
Ticket holders: A Zoom invite is sent out two hours before the event to the email used at checkout. Please check your spam folder and if not received, email hello@morbidanayomy.org. A temporary streaming link will be emailed after the event concludes.
Can thoughts be captured on film? Can images from the imagination be captured in tangible form? Although widely dismissed as a fraud, the fascinating and peculiar “psychic photographer” Ted Serios apparently produced Polaroid images by staring into a camera, giving access to his thoughts, emotions, preoccupations, and the abyss of the unconscious mind. The images he produced are—like dreams—composite enigmas, merging id and ego, blending and distorting space and time.
In this lecture, we will plunge into the strange world of Ted Serios and his amazing “thoughtographs,” examples of external emanations that have always been part of esoteric tradition, with various forms and names: ectoplasm, tulpas, auras, egregores. In Ted’s case, they take the form of haunting, puzzling, and compelling images, apparently directly from the id. It complicates matters that Serios was an alcoholic elevator-operator and petty criminal with no formal education. We will also meet his companion, mentor, explicator and champion, the psychoanalyst and investigator Jule Eisenbud, whose belief in Ted’s extraordinary ability never waned.
Among the scientific community, Jule Eisenbud is usually remembered as credulous and starry-eyed, a scientist who meddled with specters, but the truth is far more complicated. Through Eisenbud’s promotion, Ted’s spooky “thoughtographs” have been reborn as archival curiosities, haunting artefacts with an intriguing backstory. In their new role as aesthetic objects, they are lovingly handled, carefully organized, and widely appreciated. We adumbrate subtleties of light and dark, scrying the surface of these images, overlooking the breathtaking revelation they contain: If a man can take photographs with his mind, then the world is not the place we believe it to be.
Mikita Brottman, PhD, NCPsyA, is an Oxford-educated true crime author, psychoanalyst, and professor of literature at the Maryland Institute College of Art. She is the author of 16 books. Her latest, Guilty Creatures: Sex, Death and Murder in Tallahassee, Florida, was published by Simon & Schuster in 2025.
7pm ET (NYC time)
Monday, May 11, 2026
PLEASE NOTE: A link to a recording of this talk will be sent out to ticket holders after its conclusion. It will also be archived for our Patreon members. Become a Member HERE.
Ticket holders: A Zoom invite is sent out two hours before the event to the email used at checkout. Please check your spam folder and if not received, email hello@morbidanayomy.org. A temporary streaming link will be emailed after the event concludes.
Can thoughts be captured on film? Can images from the imagination be captured in tangible form? Although widely dismissed as a fraud, the fascinating and peculiar “psychic photographer” Ted Serios apparently produced Polaroid images by staring into a camera, giving access to his thoughts, emotions, preoccupations, and the abyss of the unconscious mind. The images he produced are—like dreams—composite enigmas, merging id and ego, blending and distorting space and time.
In this lecture, we will plunge into the strange world of Ted Serios and his amazing “thoughtographs,” examples of external emanations that have always been part of esoteric tradition, with various forms and names: ectoplasm, tulpas, auras, egregores. In Ted’s case, they take the form of haunting, puzzling, and compelling images, apparently directly from the id. It complicates matters that Serios was an alcoholic elevator-operator and petty criminal with no formal education. We will also meet his companion, mentor, explicator and champion, the psychoanalyst and investigator Jule Eisenbud, whose belief in Ted’s extraordinary ability never waned.
Among the scientific community, Jule Eisenbud is usually remembered as credulous and starry-eyed, a scientist who meddled with specters, but the truth is far more complicated. Through Eisenbud’s promotion, Ted’s spooky “thoughtographs” have been reborn as archival curiosities, haunting artefacts with an intriguing backstory. In their new role as aesthetic objects, they are lovingly handled, carefully organized, and widely appreciated. We adumbrate subtleties of light and dark, scrying the surface of these images, overlooking the breathtaking revelation they contain: If a man can take photographs with his mind, then the world is not the place we believe it to be.
Mikita Brottman, PhD, NCPsyA, is an Oxford-educated true crime author, psychoanalyst, and professor of literature at the Maryland Institute College of Art. She is the author of 16 books. Her latest, Guilty Creatures: Sex, Death and Murder in Tallahassee, Florida, was published by Simon & Schuster in 2025.