Florida Forteana: The PK Man

In the 1970s, the unexplained was never absent from the table — especially in Florida, where strange weather and stranger claims sometimes met. Psychokinesis, or “psi,” the ability to alter either the internal or external environment by mental effort alone, or “mind over matter” was discussed on television, tested in laboratories, and debated in newspapers. Cold War anxieties quietly fueled interest and created government-funded research programs to study whether consciousness itself might be harnessed, measured, or even weaponized.

It was in this cultural atmosphere that Ted Owens, known as “The PK Man,” positioned himself not as an entertainer but as an intermediary. His most visible demonstrations would eventually center on Florida, where he claimed macro-psychokinetic ability — not the bending of spoons, but the bending of storm systems: hurricanes, droughts, lightning strikes, and electrical disturbances through his contacts with “Space Intelligences.” Though the name Ted Owens, or his self-given moniker “The PK Man,” may be less frequently repeated within parapsychological circles today, he stands at the intersection of the early contactee movement, governmental research into remote viewing, the evolution of ancient practices in weather modification, and the enduring question of human ability.

Psychologist Jeffrey Mishlove spent ten years studying Owens in the seventies, eventually writing “The PK Man” about the experience. In interviews, he provides the contextual framework for a time when cultural belief held that we were on the precipice of improvement in human development through new understandings of human ability and personal computing. The reverberations of possibility are powerful enough to be felt even when only trace amounts survive in faded print or archival scans, especially when juxtaposed with the ethical concerns pinned to the shirt of technological advance and our ever-material current cultural mindset.

The phenomenon of Ted Owens is inseparable from those years. He was a mixed bag, a case that couldn’t easily be ignored and would likely still make strange days stranger today — a man who wrote letters about his contacts with space intelligences to the FBI.

Born in Bedford, Indiana in 1920, Owens described a childhood shaped by instability but also by what he believed was inherited psychic sensitivity. He spoke often about relatives who practiced dowsing or claimed prophetic abilities, framing his own development as less an anomaly and more a continuation.

By his account, his earliest experiences included spontaneous levitation and vivid internal communications that he later interpreted as early contact attempts. After serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II — where he trained in electronics before deployment to the South Pacific — Owens became increasingly interested in the relationship between mind and matter.

His association with parapsychologist J. B. Rhine at Duke University placed him near one of the few academic environments taking extrasensory perception seriously. That proximity reinforced his belief that psychic ability was measurable and documentable.

By the mid-1960s, Owens’ framework shifted from personal psychic development to extraterrestrial collaboration. He claimed that “space intelligences” had been attempting contact since childhood and were now using him as an experimental intermediary — a human capable of channeling unusually high levels of psychokinetic force. He described himself as a test case through whom non-human intelligence could determine how much PK power a human could absorb and withstand.

He began attempting larger and more public manifestations: influencing storms, directing UFO displays, predicting disasters, and mailing advance warnings to authorities and researchers. His interest in using his ability for good was as strong as his insult when he felt proper thanks or acknowledgment were withheld.

Owens’ claims were not confined to conversation. For decades, he mailed letters outlining predictions and demonstrations to scientists, journalists, and government offices, leaving behind a paper trail of thousands of pages.

According to Mishlove, Owens would spend a Saturday with a bottle of Scotch and multiple television sets playing games that he believed he could manipulate by causing the team slated to win to fumble the ball. By the time he abandoned conventional employment in 1969 to focus entirely on psychokinetic work, Owens was no longer trying simply to prove he had abilities. He was trying to prove he had a role.

The most cited Florida episode occurred in 1979, when southern portions of the state were suffering from the worst drought in decades.

Owens proposed what he described as a yearlong demonstration of weather control beginning March 1, coordinated with tabloid journalist Wayne Grover of the National Enquirer. In letters sent that month, Owens outlined phenomena he intended to produce violent storms, electromagnetic disturbances, blackouts, heat waves, hurricanes, and UFO appearances.

On April 15, after Grover reportedly asked him to intervene and end the drought, Owens promised rainfall within weeks. Roughly ten days later, heavy storms moved through the region. Owens cited the timing as evidence of psychokinetic influence. Skeptics noted that Florida’s spring weather patterns are complex and that storms are not uncommon, though the correspondence had been documented in advance.

The relationship between Owens and the tabloid deteriorated after a failed attempt to capture UFO footage connected to the demonstration. Feeling betrayed, Owens wrote on May 15 that he would restore drought conditions to Florida. That summer saw dramatically reduced precipitation in parts of the state, and water rationing was implemented in areas including the Florida Keys. Once again, Owens claimed responsibility.

Later that year, he made one of his boldest Floridalinked assertions. On August 22, 1979, Owens phoned Grover, stating that a hurricane he had forecast months earlier was forming but would be moderated to prevent unnecessary deaths. That storm became Hurricane David.

Owens later wrote that he had “cooled the cane,” suggesting he had psychokinetically weakened the storm. Hurricane David did diminish in strength before impacting Florida and shifted elements of its projected path. Meteorologists attributed the changes to atmospheric conditions. Owens attributed them to extraterrestrial collaboration.

Whether one sees coincidence, confirmation bias, self-mythologizing, or something genuinely unexplained, Owens’ Florida years remain the most vivid intersection between his claims and observable environmental events. In a decade when many Americans were willing to entertain the possibility that consciousness itself might influence matter, his insistence that droughts and hurricanes could respond to intention did not feel entirely detached from the shared imagination.

Our cultural moment is often closer to something we’d call unfathomable, unimaginable, and unprecedented than merely unexplainable.

The world we know is replaced daily by one that would make Nostradamus choose his words carefully. But if we could hear the watercooler conversations and newspaper reactions of the seventies — the era of Vietnam, Kent State, Watergate, the anti-war protests, civil rights movements, disco, punk rock, and new experiments in film — we might hear sentiments that sound remarkably familiar.

The difference between decade past and present is that the seat we once reserved at our shared table — the one for the unexplained — sits empty more often than occupied.

Belief being no prerequisite to the art of wonder, we owe the perplexities of today an invitation — if only to bring us back to the same table, where we may become closer companions in our confusion in a tradition older than our moment.

More than a century ago, writer Charles Fort collected reports of unusual events that appeared in newspapers and public records — including accounts of frog rain and objects falling from the sky. He believed that if something happened, and someone wrote it down, it was worth remembering, especially if it was not invited into the everyday. His work gave rise to a tradition of documenting unusual occurrences now known as the “Fortean.”

Join IV Horn in an exploration of the strange behind our sunshine, where Florida’s curious histories, unexplained events, and enduring mysteries are revisited in the spirit of Fort’s archive of the unusual.