Can Thoughts Kill?
Soon afterward they were told that it “would not be possible lo work at the university,” as “the physiologists there had said that the Kulagina claims were highly controversial and that such an investigation as we wished to do would need lo be arranged through official channels and registered in advance with the proper authorities.” Anything as elaborate as all this “could not be undertaken as a private enterprise by visiting tourists.”
Sergeyev also said that, under these circumstances, he could not “cooperate further” with the U.S. parapsychologist, but that they were “free lo see” if they could get Kulagina to work with them “directly.” But when Prati and Ransom tried lo gel in touch with Kulagina, they ran into a blank wall. They talked lo her through an interpreter over the telephone, but her polite apologies left them “in the dark regarding why she did not wish lo see them.”
Sergeyev and Ivanenko came lo the hotel a week later and told them that a Russian-language broadcast of the Voice of America had described Kulagina’s work with foreign scientists. This had prompted “the authorities” lo bring pressure on Kulagina, and “this was what had made it impossible for her to see us.” Pratt later identified this broadcast as a review of the book Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain, by Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder. (Pratt did not actually specify the book’s title and authors, but referred to it as “a popular book dealing with parapsychological investigations and other researches on the frontiers of science in the USSR.”) He commented:
“From our efforts that far, Keil and I had learned at least one way that a desire to carry out international research in the USSR could meet with frustration. We thought we might have gained some insight into what may be a successful approach. We began laying plans to find out whether any approach can be successful when the issue at stake is something as unusual as the phenomena demonstrated by Nina S. Kulagina.”
They went through all the proper and formal channels lo arrange a truly international series of tests, bringing together six researchers from four countries, and directing their inquiries through professional organizations. Their requests were turned down. Still Drs. Prati and Keil tried once again, on their own, in the fall of 1972. Kulagina came lo their hotel. During the experiment, she concentrated on a plastic cup placed between her hands on the table – it did not move, but a small wooden block, which the experimenters had placed about four inches behind a large guidebook lo the city of Prague, “slid about one-half inch toward Kulagina but angled toward her left, then moved again in the same way about five seconds later.”
Pratt and Keil had both seen the block’s movements. Dr. Pratt added: “We saw nothing in the least suspicious in her actions before the block moved.” Pratt had also brought a hollow four-inch plastic tube, with two dice and some aquarium gravel sealed inside it. He observed that Kulagina “seemed fascinated by this device and she immediately began to concentrate in what seemed to be an effort to make the dice move inside the tube.” Instead, the tube itself moved by about half an inch.
The two experimenters left the tube behind, showing Kulagina how it could be fastened to the table with tape, so she could practice trying to move the dice or gravel inside it. But there was no further experimental meeting. “The authorities,” Pratt wrote, “specifically prohibited Kulagina from keeping the appointment.” He concluded from this that “Soviet authorities have decided that the interest of foreign scientists in Kulagina is so strong that the Soviets cannot afford to ignore her claims.
Whether their interest, assuming it really exists, is a positive one or a negative one that will work in the direction of discrediting the claims, must be left to future developments.” He noted further that “Kulagina’s gift, if it is genuine, cannot be unique,” and that it should encourage work with other, similarly gifted subjects. Dr. Pratt died in 1979, and so did his hope that he might eventually undertake carefully controlled and repeated experiments with Nina Kulagina.
Larissa Vilenskaya, who left the USSR in 1979, has published a series of volumes on Parapsychology in the USSR (Washington Research Center, San Francisco); she summarized her conclusions on Kulagina’s work in the third volume of that series. In her paper “Psycho-Physical Effects of N. Kulagina: Remote Influence on Surrounding Objects,” she wrote that the subject had “produced the movement of objects weighing up to 380 grams, at distances of up to two meters from the objects, without touching them and without using any other known physical means.” Vilenskaya also reported that Kulagina “successfully moved objects of various shapes and materials placed on a flat surface” and “demonstrated lifting objects weighing up to 30 grams and ‘suspending’ them in the air.”
Miss Vilenskaya, who participated in experiments with Nina Kulagina from 1971 to 1976, listed nine different effects achieved by the Leningrad psychic, ranging from “the movement of single objects to desired or requested directions, with short stops and starts” to “moving one or two objects simultaneously” while they were “partly or entirely submerged in water.”
Vilenskaya listed methods used to place shields between Kulagina and the various objects: partial vacuum; constant magnetic fields; water; shields of various shapes, flat and three-dimensional, and made of paper, wood, glass, transparent plastic, ceramics, sheet lead, aluminum, copper sheeting, steel, etc. She reported that the psychokinetic effects were not impeded by these shields, except in the case of the vacuum, where “psychological reasons” may have been at work.
The Russian researcher also listed previously unreported biological experiments. She wrote that there had been “many observations of Kulagina’s influence on flies and other insects, placed in a box of transparent plastics.” She gave these details:
“When Kulagina, using her PR-influence, made an imaginary borderline intersecting the direction of their movement, they immediately changed their direction, as if they were encountering an invisible obstacle. The same phenomenon occurred with aquarium fish. After Kulagina’s influence, formerly sick, slow-moving aquarium fish became very active, and this activity remained for several hours. Aquarium plants began to grow more rapidly after the influence, emitting a number of air bubbles on the surface of their leaves (much more than before the influence).”
And she provided the following details concerning the famous frog heart experiment:
“The frog’s heart was placed in a physiological solution, with electrodes attached to it to record the heart’s activity. In normal conditions, an isolated frog’s heart will continue its activity for 30-40 minutes (in some cases up to 1.5 hours). When the heart stops, it can be activated by electrostimulation. When N.S. Kulagina was asked to increase the frog’s heart beating, the intensive systoles were recorded during the period of 1.5-2 minutes. Afterwards Kulagina was requested to stop the heart from a distance of about 1.5 m [meters] from it, evoking in herself the state analogous to that when she was able to demonstrate PK-movement of objects. Forty seconds after beginning her influence, the frog’s heart stopped, and the electrostimulation method appeared to be inefficient [ineffective] to activate it.”
Larissa Vilenskaya obviously regards the Kulagina phenomena as genuine. Why, then, did such Western researchers as Dr. Pratt come away with frustration and lingering doubts? Experiments left Kulagina in conditions of “great stress,” Vilenskaya recalls, with “considerable increase in heartbeat rate, blood pressure, content of sugar in her blood, loss of weight” and other symptoms of psycho-physiological tension. At times, she actually became unconscious. “This partly explains,” Miss Vilenskaya concludes, “why some experiments which had been skilfully designed, and gave good results, were not continued.”
