Street Magic in the Bronx

Maureen Seaberg
4 min readJul 11, 2019

Savant “Psychic X” displays inexplicable abilities

Psychic X in silhouette.

A man with kind green eyes and freckles can be found in Galileo Playground in the Bronx most days, performing his brand of street magic among children, addicts and the homeless who gather in or near the cosmic statuary there. In his early fifties, he is tall, thin and bald.

“If you stopped using drugs you’d be more intuitive,” he tells one man hooked on heroin. The next day, the guy tells him he’s clean. And several days later he texts him a photo from rehab.

A woman in an abusive relationship confides in this angel of the streets about her situation. He takes his last dollar and buys her a lottery ticket. With the four dollars she wins, she buys something to eat. He does it again a few days later and with the $1,300 prize, she begins making escape plans.

He wants to be known as “Psychic X”. What he practices on the street — readings and prayers for healing which have earned him a local following — are only part of his story.

I met with him in person recently and witnessed him bend the metal shaft of a screwdriver using his mind. He also demonstrated his brain waves with a MUSE meditation device connected to his laptop like the ones seen here: https://choosemuse.com/ . One by one, he increased the alpha, beta, gamma or theta waves — which were…

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Maureen Seaberg
Maureen Seaberg

Written by Maureen Seaberg

Coauthor of Struck by Genius: How a Brain Injury Made Me a Mathematical Marvel (HMH). Published in the New York Times, National Geographic, Psychology Today.