The Men on Magic Carpets: Searching for the superhuman sports star

The bizarre true story about the cosmic side of sports.

In the 1970s the US military believed they could create a '"super soldier"–one who could use psychic powers to walk through walls, disarm the enemy through telepathy, or kill a goat by staring at it. The brain behind these techniques was Michael Murphy, one of the founders of "New Age" spiritualism in the hippy enclaves of San Francisco. But Murphy's primary goal was to use these powers to create a supreme athlete capable of extraordinary sporting feats.

Murphy and his protégés have dedicated their lives to teaching athletes and coaches to use his methods. Runners locked in huts until they believed they were dead saints, spies using mind control to win chess matches, Russian Olympians "shape shifting," and golfers imagining they were Darth Vader–coaches and athletes soon began to trust in very weird things.

So weird, in fact, that sport's burgeoning obsession with money and image meant the hippies went underground and the superhuman powers became mythical. But the trailblazers are making a comeback, influencing some of the world's top teams.

Award-winning investigative journalist Ed Hawkins meets Murphy and his protégés as well as a cast of athletes and coaches convinced by their methods as he immerses himself in a world shrouded in secrecy and weirdness. In a simultaneously hilarious and unsettling tale, he experiences first-hand the techniques as he endeavors to reveal the truth about sports psychology.