The_Info_Web/10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Steven Shaw.md

created	updated	title	aliases	category	tags	summary	born	location	relations
2026-05-15	2026-10-05	Steven Shaw	Steven Shaw Steve Shaw Banachek Steve "Banachek" Shaw Steven Banachek	Entertainment & Arts	Person Magician Mentalist ProjectAlpha McDonnellLaboratory JREF	Mentalist known as Banachek who, at 18, became a subject at the McDonnell Laboratory for Psychical Research as part of James Randi's Project Alpha and later directed the JREF million dollar challenge.	1960-11-30	England	type with start end role fn participant_in Project Alpha 1979 1983-01-28 posed as a psychic subject in Project Alpha at Randi's request; revealed January 28, 1983 2 type with start end role fn subject_of McDonnell Laboratory for Psychical Research 1979 1982 subject of metal-bending, telepathy and fuse experiments directed by Peter R. Phillips 2 type with start end role fn subject_of Berthold Schwarz 1981 1982 subject of the 51-page paper 'Taming the Poltergeist'; Schwarz and Shaw gave differing accounts of what Shaw said about healing 2 type with role fn member_of James Randi Educational Foundation director of its million dollar paranormal challenge, later president, as stated on his own website 1

Steven Shaw, who performs as Banachek, states on his own website that he was born in England on November 30, 1960, was educated in England, South Africa and the United States, saw magic first at fourteen at a school event in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, and moved to the United States in 1976. He credits a used copy of James Randi's book on Uri Geller with changing his life.¹ In 1983 Randi described him as "an English immigrant hospital employee in Washington, PA, and part time mentalist" who was eighteen when Project Alpha began.²

Before Project Alpha

Marcello Truzzi recorded that Shaw had presented himself as a genuine psychic since 1977, before he met Randi, citing a newspaper item of 1977 and a feature by Terry Hazlett, "Steve Shaw: Mentalist or Magician?," in the Pittsburgh Observer-Reporter of January 2, 1979. The Skeptical Inquirer of Fall 1980 had published "Downfall of a Would-Be Psychic" by Donald McBurney and Jack Greenberg about a young subject, and a later letter to the journal pointed out that this was Shaw. Truzzi wrote that Randi had told the McDonnell Laboratory about the article in late December 1981, that Peter R. Phillips replied the next month that the article showed only that Shaw failed to demonstrate psi when controls were introduced and that he "had not been caught cheating at all," and that Randi's explanation in the journal was that Shaw's presentation of himself as a psychic was part of his "cover."³

Project Alpha, 1979 to 1983

Randi wrote that when the McDonnell Laboratory for Psychical Research at Washington University announced in 1979 that it sought subjects, he asked two young conjurors who had written to him to apply, and that Shaw and Michael Edwards, 18 and 17, were the only two chosen of some 300 applicants. The two had agreed that if an experimenter asked directly whether they used tricks they would answer, "Yes, and we were sent here by James Randi." Randi wrote that they were never asked.²

According to Randi, Shaw and Edwards switched paper tags on measured spoons and keys, peeked into envelopes closed with staples and restapled them through the same holes, reinserted blown fuses, and turned the "target" control of a video camera to make the picture "bloom," which the laboratory included in its film. He wrote that Shaw removed a metal rod from a groove in an acrylic slab, bent it and replaced it, an experiment the laboratory deemed impossible by trickery. He also described a sealed aquarium that the pair opened at night through an unlocked window, and a rotor under a glass dome turned by air from blowing at the base. After Phillips's tightened protocol of late 1981, which Randi said removed the pair's ability to use simple trickery, they were tested or entertained by other investigators. The psychiatrist Berthold Schwarz wrote a 51-page paper, "Taming the Poltergeist," on experiments with Shaw; Randi wrote that "actually, the experimenter was Banachek; Schwarz was the subject." Randi wrote that Shaw explained a swirl on 8-mm film, in which Schwarz saw faces, a UFO and other forms, by saying "he'd simply spat on the lens."²

Truzzi recorded that Schwarz became involved with Shaw because he hoped Shaw might use psychokinesis to help Schwarz's seriously ill daughter, that Schwarz said Shaw encouraged both of them in the search for a paranormal cure, and that when Truzzi asked Shaw about this at the 1983 Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal conference, where Shaw was a featured speaker, Shaw "flatly denied this description of the events." Truzzi noted that Schwarz said a tape existed of Shaw's remarks about telekinetic therapy at the National Institute for Rehabilitation Engineering in New Jersey. He also recorded that Phillips issued a public statement on research with Steve Shaw on September 1, 1981, and that later experiments with Shaw and Edwards reported at the 1982 Parapsychological Association meetings used controls the authors regarded as adequate and produced results "not indicative of psi."³

At Randi's press conference on January 28, 1983, Annie Jacobsen wrote, Shaw walked to the microphone and said "I cheat." Jacobsen wrote that Shaw and Edwards spent a total of five weeks in the laboratory over a three-year period; Randi's account gives "more than 160 hours during the four years of their lives" devoted to the experiment.⁴²

After 1983

Walter Uphoff, whom Randi described as unable to explain his results after the exposure, asked a reporter, in Randi's quotation, "How do these kids know they're fakes?"² Stanley Krippner, quoted by Truzzi, was among parapsychologists who held that Alpha raised serious ethical issues.³

Shaw's website describes him as a former president of the James Randi Educational Foundation who oversaw its million dollar challenge, as having helped investigate the evangelist Peter Popoff, as the creator of the "magic bullet" bullet catch that Penn & Teller later performed in their Las Vegas show, and as the first person to be buried six feet underground in chains and handcuffs and escape. It lists consulting for Penn & Teller, Criss Angel and David Blaine.¹

Footnotes

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1. Banachek, "About," https://banachek.com/about/ (self-published biography; sole source for the passages so cited on birth, upbringing, JREF role, the bullet catch and the burial escape). ↩︎

2. Randi, James, "The Project Alpha Experiment: Part 1. The First Two Years," Skeptical Inquirer, Summer 1983, and "Part 2. Beyond the Laboratory," Fall 1983, https://archive.org/details/JamesRandiTheProjectAlpha ↩︎

3. Truzzi, Marcello, "Reflections on 'Project Alpha': Scientific Experiment or Conjuror's Illusion?," Zetetic Scholar, nos. 12 and 13 (issue numbers printed 11 and 12), August 1987, https://archive.org/details/alpha-project-zetetic-scholar-nos-12-13 ↩︎

4. Jacobsen, Annie. Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis. Little, Brown and Company, 2017. ↩︎