Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery

The Jule Eisenbud collection on Ted Serios and thoughtographic photography contains Jule Eisenbud's collection of documents from his lifetime of research on a variety of subjects, with the bulk of material relating to his work on Ted Serios. Although the various documents span from as early as the late 1930s until his death in 1999, the bulk of the material is from the 1960s, the years of his most intensive work with Ted Serios. The series have been organized by document type, including impressive numbers of correspondence, legal and medical documents, financial documents, experimental data, Eisenbud's clippings, Non-Eisenbud clippings, multimedia, and photographs.

The first series, Correspondence, is indicative of Eisenbud's dedication as a correspondent. The colleagues he communicated with most include Steven Braude, R.A. McConnell, Emilio Servadio, and Ian Stevenson. This correspondence in particular contains a great deal about Eisenbud's work with Serios and his work in parapsychology. The correspondence between Serios and Eisenbud illustrates the unique relationship between the two, and the tension created by Serios's constant disappearances, periods of inability to produce, alcoholism, and frequent trouble with the law. "Doc", as Serios liked to call Eisenbud, spent a lifetime attempting to keep Serios in line, often bailing him out of tight financial situations and unpleasant circumstances.

The second and third series contain medical, legal, and financial documents relating to both Serios and Eisenbud. Particularly interesting is the legal documentation surrounding Serios, including his frequent arrests and medical expenses. A complete trust fund agreement belonging to Serios is included in the financial documents.

The fourth series contains a vast number of documents pertaining to Eisenbud's experiments, which have been divided between Ted Serios, and all other experiments. These other research projects include work on Susie Cottrell, a woman who believed she could predict cards before they were selected, Masuaki Kiyota, a man who claimed the ability to bend spoons with his mind, and the "handwriting experiments" conducted by a woman who felt her hand was "possessed" and wrote its own poetry, songs, and drawings. Also included is a large number of witness statements pertaining to the experiments with Serios.

Series five and six include Eisenbud's various clippings, and clippings of those of his colleagues. Eisenbud's book "The World of Ted Serios," is included in series five, along with conversation transcripts involving Carl Sagan and the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAAC). Also of interest is a screenplay, with the experimentation with Serios as the main plot, created by an unidentified author. Series seven contains Eisenbud's various awards and certificates accumulated throughout his professional career. Series eight contains a set of session notes from the 1930s, apparently created by Eisenbud during one of his psychoanalytic sessions with an unnamed patient. Series nine contains artwork, including unidentifiable drawings, advertisements, and cartoons.

Series ten contains most of the multimedia in the collection, including over 100 filmstrips of various formats, a number of VHS tapes, and DVDs, some of which are not duplicated in the other formats. There are several interviews with Dr. Eisenbud, including one during the last years of his life, discussing his lifetime of research and touching a good deal on his work with Ted Serios. There is also a VHS with coverage of Ted Serios in action creating thoughtographs, which is wonderful in illustrating precisely how the process worked. Experiments with Susie Cottrell (the psychic card reader) fill the majority of the cassettes, with the same experiment continuing over several cassettes. Filmstrips are of various sizes and formats, and may require special projectors to view them.

The final and largest series of the collection, photographs, is divided into five subseries: experimental, thoughtographs, numbered, Eisenbud's private collection, and Ted Serios' personal photographs. The experimental sub-series contains large numbers of photographs produced during the experimental process; the thoughtographs sub-series differs in that it contains selections from the experimental photographs and contains only thoughtographs. The photo binders put together by Jule Eisenbud are of particular interest, as they include captions and dates for a large number of successful thoughtographs. Mounted "thoughtographs" include some of his most famous photos, including those which are often put on display. The numbered sub-series contains photographs included in the two editions of Eisenbud's book, "The World of Ted Serios"; the container list specifies which edition contains the picture. Those photographs listed under Eisenbud's Private Collection are mainly pictures of fertility symbols and statues, an apparent interest of Eisenbud. Photographs labeled as Ted's personal photos show Ted in later years, and include shots of him with family members.

At this time, the only item in the twelfth and final series is Eisenbud's Polaroid camera.