A Magnetic Personality

If recent reports from Croatia can be believed, X-Men's Magneto may have some competition in about twenty years or so. Six-year-old Ivan Stoiljkovic seems to have the ability to magnetize his body to the extent that he can stick metal objects to his skin, including some that are relatively heavy.

When he takes off his shirt the youngster is able to stick metallic objects such as spoons, mobile phones and even frying pans to his body.

In total, his family says, he can carry up to 25kg of metal stuck to his torso.

The Soviets did some research on body magnetization back in the 1970's and considered it a paranormal power, but I've never heard of anyone who could do it with objects much heavier than a spoon or fork. Most skeptics believe that those cases involved people with oilier than usual skin that became slightly sticky when in contact with metal, but cooking pans are probably too heavy for that explanation to be plausible in this case. Ivan also is said to have some sort of psychic healing ability, though whether or not it's related to his "magnetism" is not clear.

According to his family Ivan has also used his 'healing' hands to alleviate his grandfather's stomach pains and take away the pain of a neighbour who hurt his leg in a tractor accident.

Ivo, Ivan's grandfather, said when his grandson laid his hands on his stomach they became extremely hot and the pain simply went away.

If that wasn't enough, Ivan, it is also claimed, is much stronger than other children his age and is able to easily carry bags of cement as heavy as 50lbs.

In Qigong someone with especially high levels of Qi might be able to do all of these things, so maybe that's what's going on here. I would love to see Ivan under a brain scanner while he's using his abilities - that is, if they wouldn't mess up the magnetic resonance.