The Man Who Turned Blue

Paul's blue skin is no trick of lighting or makeup—it's really blue.

What caused it? Paul says it started when his friend who worked for years in a machine shop was diagnosed with petroleum poisoning. Paul says he saw an ad in a magazine for something called a colloidal silver generator that said colloidal silver was useful for treating conditions including petroleum poisoning. "So I ordered the generator and I'd go see [his friend] every day. We'd each make a glass of colloidal silver and we'd drink it," he says.

Paul says the drinks he and his friend had weren't particularly strong—a 10-ounce glass with no more than 10 parts per million of silver. Still, what made Paul—who didn't have petroleum poisoning—take a drink? "I figured I might as well drink it, too, if it was such wonderful stuff," he says. "I wasn't going to say, 'Here, take this.' I thought the kindest thing to do would be to take it with him just to make him more comfortable with the idea."

After he started his daily silver cocktail with his friend, Paul says his acid reflux disease disappeared. "In less than three days, that was just gone," he says. "I thought, 'That's good.' So I kept taking it."