CIA Psychic Files: 'Boom Times on the Psychic Frontier'

COVER STORY 
Boom Times on the Psychic Frontier 
Glendower: I can call spirits from the 
vasty deep. 
Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can 
any man; 
But will they come vhen you do call 
for them? 
—Henry [V 
For all the enormous achievements 
of science in posting the universe that 
man inhabits, odd things keep slipping 
past the sentries. The tap on the shoul- 
der may be fleeting, the brush across the 
cheek gone sooner than it is felt, but 
the momentary effect is unmistakable: 
an unwilling suspension of belief in the 
HENRY GROSKINSKY 
amr 
Shay, Sa 
rational. An old friend suddenly remem- 
bered, and as suddenly the telephone 
rings and the friend is on the line. A 
vivid dream that becomes the morning 
reality. The sense of bumping into one’s 
self around a corner of time, of having 
done and said just this, in this place, 
once before in precisely this fashion. A 
stab of anguish for a distant loved one, 
and next day, the telegram. 
Hardly a person lives who can deny 
some such experience, some such seem- 
ing visitation from across the psychic 
frontier. For most of man’s history, those 
intrusions were mainsprings of action, 
the very life of Greck epic and biblical 
saga, of medicval tale and Eastern 
chronicle. Modern science and psychol- 
‘ogy have learned to explain much of 
what was once inexplicable, but mys- 
teries remain. The workings of the mind 
still resist rational analysis; reports of 
psychic phenomena persist. Are they all 
DEVICE SET UP TO RECORD OUT-OF-BODY TRIP AT AMERICAN SOCI 
Questionable procedures costumed in the prim gown of laboratory respectability, 
and memory? Could there be a para- 
normal world exempt from known nat- 
ural law? 
Both in America and abroad, those 
questions are being asked by increasing 
numbers of laymen and scientists hun- 
gry for answers. The diverse manifes- 
tations of interest in so-called psychic 
phenomena are everywhere: 
> In the US., The Secret Life of 
Plants becomes a bestseller by offering 
an astonishing and heretical thesis: 
greenery can feel the thoughts of 
humans. 
» At Maimonides Medical Center in 
New York City, the image of a paint- 
ing is transmitted by Esp, and seems to 
enter the dreams of a laboratory sub- 
ject sleeping in another room, ‘ 
> In England, a poll of its readers 
by the New Screnrist indicates that near- 
ly 70% of the respondents (mainly sci- 
entists and technicians) believe in the 
possibility of extrasensory perception. 
» At the University of California, 
Psychologist Charles Tart reports that 
his subjects showed a marked increase 
in ESP scores after working with his new 
teaching machine. 
» In Los Angeles, a leaf is cut in 
half, then photographed by a special 
process. The picture miraculously shows 
the “aura” or outline of the whole leaf. 
» In Washington, the Defense De- 
partment’s Advanced Research Projects 
Agency assigns a team to investigate 
seemingly authentic psychic phenome- 
na at the Stanford Research Institute. 
spoons and keys apparently with the 
force of his thoughts. 
> In the Philippines, Tennis Star 
Tony Roche is relieved of painful “ten- 
nis elbow” when an incision is made and 
three blood clots are apparently re- 
moved by the touch of a psychic healer, 
who knows nothing of surgery or of mod- 
ern sanitation. 
>» In the U.S., the number of col- 
leges offering courses in parapsychology 
increases to more than 100. 
» In the U.S.S.R., researchers file 
reports on blindfolded women who can 
“sec” colors with their hands. 
» In California, ex-Astronaut Edgar 
Mitchell, who while on the Apollo 14 
moon mission conducted telepathy ex- 
periments with friends on earth, founds 
the Institute of Noetic Sciences. His new 
mission: investigate occurrences that 
will not yield to rational explanation. 
>» In London, Arthur Koestler ex- 
amines psychic research with the zeal 
of the believer. Koestler, one of the fore- 
most explicators of Establishment sci- 
ence (The Sleepwalkers, The Act of Cre- 
ation), speaks of “synchronized” events 
that lie outside the expectations of prob- 
ability. In anecdotes of foresight and ex- 
trasensory perception, in the repetition 
of events and the strange behavior of 
random samplings, Koestler spots what 
he calls the roots of coincidence. In his 
unforgettable metaphor, modern scien- 
lists are “Peeping Toms at the keyhole 
of eternity.” That keyhole is stuffed with 
ancient biases toward the materialistic 
accident, illusion? Or are Aprrewed FarReleasessou saat Mf RIA RDPSEDAT ERO GH HON aD Aas: field 
planes and dimensions of experience 
TIME, MARCH 4, 1974 
laymen and scientists alike by bending of psychic research. Once skeptics aban- 
y Ae 24

CLOCKWISE. FROM LEFT: At Durham’s Psychical Re- Medical Center in New York City: Artist and Psychic Ingo 
search Foundation, Robert Morris displays test in which Swann with painting completed after his “out of body” ad- 
subject outside of room “influences” movement of a cat: venture in ouler space: gerbil in tests for precognitive pow- 
sensory-isolation and telepathy experiment at Maimonides crs al The Institute for Parapsychology in Durham, N.C. 
z Approved For Release 2003/04/18 : CIA-RDP96-00787R000100030002-8 
ut

eknaViOk 
don those prejudices, says Koestler “ey some extent in the existence of some iitted to finding phenomena. And few 
will be free Apptovédsk omRalgase 2003/04/48 noClALRDR8O0078 K0003O00ABcontrols necessary in a 
new categorics. 
That exploration is already being 
conducted by a number of serious para- 
normalists in a wide range of disciplines. 
In his Foundation for the Research on 
the Nature of Man, in Durham, N.C.,, 
the grand old man of paranormal stud- 
ics, J.B. Rhine (see box page 70), still 
keeps watch on test animals for precog- 
nitive powers. At the nearby Psychical 
Research Foundation, William Roll and 
a research staff investigates “survival af- 
ter bodily death.” In studies with a “sen- 
sitive” and his pet cat, Roll finds ev- 
idence for a human ability “to leave” 
VALERY SRUSTOV 
THEN 
RUSSIAN FINGER-READING TEST 
Basically show biz. 
the body and “visit” the animal. At the 
University of Virginia Medical School, 
Psychiatrist lan Stevenson also studies 
the plausibilities of reincarnation. 
At the Division of Parapsychology 
and Psychophysics of the Maimonides 
Medical Center, Dr. Montague Ullman 
directs tests in which message senders 
“think” images into the brains of sleep- 
ing subjects. “If we had adequate fund- 
ing.” says Ullman, “we could have a 
major breakthrough in this decade.” In 
Connecticut, Businessman Robert Nel- 
son directs the Central Premonitions 
Registry, meticulously recording the 
prophecies of the dreams and visions 
that people send him. 
All of these researchers believe to 
the forms are open to wide debate. Says 
Psychologist Gardner Murphy, profes- 
sor at the District af Columbia's George 
Washington University, and a dean of 
psychic researchers, “lt may well turn 
out that parapsychology will be a mul- 
tidisciplinary thing, owing much to psy- 
chiatry, neurology ... medicine, bio- 
chemistry, social sciences.” One of 
parapsychology’s most famous propo- 
nents, in fact, is an anthropologist: Mar- 
garet Mead. It was her passionate ad- 
vocacy that helped give the Parapsycho- 
logical Association its greatest claim to 
legitimacy. After several vain attempts 
to enter the eminent American Asso- 
ciation for the Advancement of Science, 
the P.A..won membership in 1969—af- 
ter a speech by Mead. Her argument: 
“The whole history of scientific advance 
is full of scientists investigating phenom- 
ena that the Establishment did not be- 
lieve were there. I submit that we vote 
in favor of this association's work.” The 
final vote: 6 to 1 in favor of admission. 
Immense Claims. As parapsychol- 
ogy gains new respectabilily, so do its 
terms gain wide currency: “psi” for any 
psychic phenomenon; “clairvoyance” 
for the awarencss of events and objects 
that lie outside the perimeters of the five 
senses; “out-of-body” expericnce for 
seeming to journey to a place that may 
be miles from the body; “psychokinesis” 
for the mental ability to influence phys- 
ical objects; “precognition” for the 
foreknowledge of events, from the fall 
of dice to the prediction of political as- 
sassinations; and the wide-ranging term 
ESP for extrasensory perception. 
For all its articulate spokesmen and 
scientific terminology, however, the new 
world of psi still has a serious credibil- 
ity problem. Once reason is that like any 
growth industry or pop phenomenon, it 
has altracted a fair share of hustlers. In- 
deed, the psychic-phenomena boom 
may contain more charlatans and con- 
jurers, more naifs and gullibles than can 
be found on the stage and in the au- 
dience of ten Ringling Brothers circus- 
es. The situation is not helped at all by 
the “proofs” that fail to satisfy tradition- 
al canons of scientific investigations, De- 
spite the published discoveries, despite 
the indefatigable explorations of the 
psychic researchers, no one has yet been 
able to document experiments suffi- 
cienly to convince the infidel. For 
many, doubt grows larger with each ex- 
travagant claim. 
To Science and Mathematics Ana- 
lyst Martin Gardner (Relativity for the 
Million, Aimbidextrous Universe), an- 
nouncements of psychic phenomena be- 
long not to the march of science but to 
the pageant of publicity. “Uri Geller, 
The Secret Life of Plants, telepathy, ESP, 
the incomplete conclusions of Koestler 
—all seem part of a new uncritical en- 
thusiasm for pseudo science,” says Gard- 
ner. “The claims are immense, the proof 
nonexistent. The researchers, almost 
without exception, are emotionally com- 
eld in which deception, conscious or 
unconscious, is all too familiar.” 
Daniel Cohen, former managing ed- 
itor of Sefence Digest and author of the 
debunking volume Myths of the Space 
Age, remains unpersuaded by what he 
sees through the Koestlerian keyhole. 
“After decades of research and exper- 
iments,” Cohen observes, “the parapsy- 
chologists are not one step closer to ac- 
ceptable scientific proof of psychic 
phenomena, Examining the slipshod 
work of the modern researchers, one be- 
gins to wonder if any proof exists.” 
The criticism that psychics find 
hardest to counter comes not from sci- 
enlists but from conjurers. Theoretically, 
magicians have no place in serious sci- 
ence. But they are entertainers whose 
business it is to deceive; thus they fecl 
. that they are better qualified to spot chi- 
canery than scientists, who can be woe- 
fully naive about the gimmicks and tech- 
niques that charlatans may use for 
mystical effects. Jamcs Randi, who ap- 
pears on television as “the Amazing 
Randi,” duplicates many of Uri Geller’s 
achievements with a combination of 
sleight of hand, misdirected attention 
and patented paraphernalia, then calls 
them feats of clay. “Scientists who fall 
for the paranormal go through the most 
devious reasoning,” Randi says. “For- 
tunes are squandered annually in pur- 
suit of mystical forces that are actually 
the result of clever deceits. The moncy 
would be better spent investigating the 
tooth fairy or Santa Claus. There is more 
evidence for their reality.” 
Pure Deception. Charles Reyn- 
olds, editor and member of the Psychic 
Investigating Committee of the Amer- 
ican Society of Magicians, agrees. 
“When evaluating the research, we have 
found that the researcher's will to be- 
lieve is all powerful. It’s a will that has 
nothing to do with religion; there are 
Marxists, atheists, agnostics who cling 
stubbornly to the ancient faith in 
black magic. Only now it’s called ‘the 
paranormal.’ ” 
That faith is nowhere more evident 
than in the U.S.S.R., which has been 
beset in recent years with controversial 
sensitives. One, Ninel Kulagina, was ap- 
‘praised as capable of causing objects to 
float in mid-air. As Martin Gardner 
notes, “She is a pretty, plump, dark- 
eyed little charlatan who took the stage 
name of Ninel because it is Lenin spelled 
backward. She is no more a sensitive . 
than Kreskin, and like that amiable 
American television humbug, she is 
basically show biz.” Indeed, Ninel 
has been caught cheating more than 
U.C.L.A. Psychologist Thelma Moss ex- 
plores the mysteries of Kirlian photog- 
raphy—pictures believed by some to 
show the “aura” of living things. Insert: 
Kirlian photos of normal elbow (/eft) and 
same elbow while experiencing mild 
electrical shock, 
56 Approved For Release 2003/04/18 : CIA-RDP96-007874RB001 000300028 <«. scar: on. 1. moss a xenoart sonnson

CLOCKWISE FROM LiApproved.For. Rekgasec2008/04/18 4: GIAcRRRI6-QOA8TROOOANNGSQNAZSI fraud 
the Menninger Foundation prepares a biofeedback test fora who duplicates psychic feats with a combination of sleight- ; 
yogi on bed of nails; Ex-Astronaut Edgar Mitchell, who of-hand. psychology and theatrical gimmicks checks set of 
experienced “altered state of consciousness” in outer space, “ESP” cards: Trinidadian “sensitive” performing card clair 
at his Institute for Noetic Sciences in Palo Alto, Cal:  voyance experiment al The Institute for Parapsychology. 
iil 
AQ 
hit 
“\ 
Y ee 	Mee a 
1/18 : Cl 	00030002-8

| 
LL. UL 
BEHAVIOR 
‘once by Sovict Estgp, AppEYS 
Another Russia osa a ForRe 
ova, can “read” with her fingertips while 
securely blindfolded. James Randi, an- 
alyzing photographs of Kuleshova, 
promptly announced that her act was 
“a fraud.” To prove his point, he invit- 
ed testers to blindfold him with pizza 
dough. a mask and a hood. Then he pro- 
ceeded to drive a car in traffic. “L won't 
tell you how [ did it,” he says. “But it 
was not parapsychologically. It was pure 
deception, just as hers was.” Such rev- 
clations have not deterred the parapsy- 
chologists in the U.S.S.R. or elsewhere. 
They freely concede that many of their 
subjects do sometimes cheat, but still 
may have paranormal powers, 
In and out of the laboratory, many 
paranormalist investigators conduct ex- 
periments that mock rigorous and log- 
ical procedure. Claims are made, and 
the burden of proof is shifted to the 
doubter, Ground rules are laid down by 
the psychic subject and are all too 
eagerly accepted by his examiner. Hf the 
venture proves unsuccessful, a wide 
range of excuses are proffered: an un- 
believer provided hostile vibrations: the 
subject was not receiving well; negative 
influences were present; testing rules 
were too restrictive. It is all reminiscent 
of the laws in Through the Looking- 
Glass, where people approach objects by 
walking away from them. And it cre- 
ales an atmosphere in which even a gen- 
uine paranormal subject might have a 
hard time certifying his abilities. 
No one has contributed more to the 
paranormal explosion than Uri Geller, 
the handsome, 26-ycar-old Israeli for- 
mer nightclub magician who seems 
equally adept at telepathy, psychokine- 
sis and precognition. “Lf don't want to 
spend my whole life in laboratories,” 
Geller recently told TIME London Cor- 
respondent Lawrence Malkin. “Eve just 
done a whole year at Stanford Research 
Institute [TIME, March 12]. Now I'll go 
on to other countries, and let them see 
if they know what it is I've got.” , 
Death Threats. At the Stanford 
Research Institute Geller successfully 
worked most of his repertoire of mir- 
acles. In a film made by §.R.L, Geller 
picks the can containing an object from 
a group of identical empty cans, influ- 
ences laboratory scales, reproduces 
drawings sealed in opaque envelopes, 
deflects a magnetometer and correctly 
calls the upper face of a die in a closed 
box—-eight times in eight tries. If Gel- 
ler’s prowess with dice is indeed para- 
normal, it raises serious and disturbing 
CLOCKWISE FROM UPPER LEFT: 
Psychic Uri Geller, whose reputed abil- 
ity to bend objects with his mind has 
stirred sharp debate; ESP test at the 
American Society for Psychical Re- 
search; Lie Detector Expert Cleve Back- 
ster with plant that he believes can 
“read” his thoughts; in psychokinesis 
test, subject tries to influence sequence 
in which bulbs will light. 
po OOSHOa $6 7 ChE RDN 097 SRRNQGAAA INNER meets the in- 
S.R.1’s tests were indced conducted 
with what University of Oregon Profes- 
sor Ray Hyman calls “incredible slop- 
piness,” then other disturbing questions 
may be raised. Assigned by the Depart- 
ment of Defense to report on the won- 
drous happenings at S.R.I., Hyman, ac- 
companied by George Lawrence, DoD 
projects manager for the Advanced Re- 
search Projects Agency, caught Geller 
in some outright deceptions. 
Unhappily for Geller, his powers 
have a tendency to vanish in the pres- 
ence of sleight-of-hand men. On the 7o- 
night Show, where Johnny Carson in- 
stituted airtight controls at Randi’'s 
suggestion, nothing that Geller attempt- 
ed (during an embarrassing 20 minutes) 
seemed to work, After a group of Eng- 
lish magicians made plans to catch him 
BILL EPPRIOGE 
PSYCHOLOGIST TART WORKING ESP MACHINE 
Searching for a wider kind of self. 
in the act during a British tour, Geller 
abruptly canceled out, citing mysterious 
“death threats.” 
In the long run, however, Geller's 
friends may well be more damaging to 
his cause than are his detractors. This 
spring the reputable old firm of Dou- 
bleday will publish a book entitled Uri 
by Dr. Andrija Puharich, who brought 
Geller to the U.S. from Israel. In a crude 
mishmash of Mission: Impossible, 2001 
and the James Bond series, Puharich 
(author of a previous volume on the psy- 
chedelic effects of mushrooms) soberly 
describes his adventures with Geller. 
From outer space, highly intelligent 
computers called SPECTRA communi- 
cate through taped messages, which dis- 
appear. “We can only talk to you 
through Uri’s power,” says the mystical 
voice, “It is a shame that for such a bril- 
liant mind we cannot contact you di- 
vestigators from S.R.I., he confesses that 
outer-space intelligence directs his 
work. But the S.R.I. scientists are not 
taken aback. One, Russell Targ, plac- 
idly remarks, “The things you are tell- 
ing us agree very well with things that 
Tial (S.R.I. Colleague Harold Puthoff] 
and I believe but we can't prove.” Adds 
Astronaut Ed Mitchell: “Uri, you're not 
Saying anything to us we don’t in some 
way already sense or understand.” The 
text raises some troubling questions. Is 
Puharich indeed in touch with what he 
calls “my editor in the sky”? Is his ac- 
count of the S.R.I. mecting as true as 
his reasonably accurate report of Uri’s 
mecting a year ago with the editors of 
TIME? If it is, why have the S.R.1, sci- 
entists failed to mention Uri Geller’s 
contacts with outer space? Are they 
properly fearful of that mast 
irrefutable antidote to non- 
sense: laughter? Or were 
they, as they now claim, 
merely “humoring” their 
subject? 
Almost as impressive as 
Geller’s rise to fame is the 
phenomenal success of The 
Secret Life of Plants (Har- 
per & Row; $8.95), a vol- 
ume that is unaccountably 
placed on the nonfiction 
shelves of bookstores. The 
work of two occult journal- 
ists, Secret Life is an anthol- 
ogy of the absurd, costumed 
in the prim gown of labo- 
ratory respectability. In it 
are researchers like Cleve 
Backster, a lie-dcetector ex- 
pert who attached the ter- 
minals of his machines to 
plants. Behold! The vegeta- 
tion reacted to his thoughts. 
Most scientists have greeted 
the experiments with open 
skepticism—with good rea- 
son. After his plants would 
not respond for a visiting 
Canadian plant physiolo- 
gist, for example, Backster 
offered an interesting hy- 
pothesis: the plants “fainted” because 
they sensed that she routinely inciner- 
ated her own plants and then weighed 
the ashes after her experiments. 
Backster is the essence of conserva- 
lism compared with the book's more ad- 
venturous researchers. A New Jersey 
electronics buff, Pierre Paul Sauvin, at- 
tached a Rube Goldbergian machine to 
his plants, and then spent the weekend 
with his girl friend at a place 80 miles 
away. He found that even at that dis- 
tance the plants had responded to his 
sexual relations with the girl. The tone 
oscillators went “right off the top,” he 
says, at the moment of orgasm. 
In Japan, Ken Hashimoto, another 
polygraph expert, discovered that his 
cactus could count and add up to 20. 
George De La Warr, a British engincer, 
insisted that young plants grew better if 
their “mother” were kept alive. [roni- 
COLOR SFREAO: (TOP) DON snvven—-non AP RLOVEM.F 	OF, Release,2003/04/18 	.GIA-RDP96-00787R000100030002-8 	69

BEHAVIOR 
cally, the ay Baye, 
selves to some significant facts about 
botany. Plants do respond physiological- 
ly to certain sound waves. Talking to a 
plant may indeed make it healthier, be- 
cause it thrives on the carbon dioxide ex- 
haled by the speaker. 
Many psychics and their followers 
believe that paranormal powers may be 
dependent on mysterious auras or “en- 
ergy flows,” phenomena that they say 
can be recorded by Kirlian photogra- 
phy. The technique, developed in the 
late 1930s by Russian Electronics Ex- 
pert Semyon Kirlian and his wife Va- 
lentina, involves introducing a small 
amount of high-voltage, high-frequency 
current into the subject and recording 
the subsequent discharge on photo- 
graphic film. The result is a photograph 
showing an “energy body"—-a weird 
aura—around the plant, animal or hu- 
man part being photographed. 
Soon, Kirlians claimed that photo- 
graphing a portion of a leaf, for exam- 
pic, would produce the aura of the en- 
tire leaf on film. Some psychics claim 
that in time the aura of a missing limb 
might be discernible with Kirlian pho- 
tography. Today the process is an in- 
legral part of paranormal exploration. 
In the US. the leading proponent of the 
SVERPFo! Ritledse 2003/04/18.:. CILRDPIO6s00TBT7: 
Moss, who has taken more Kirlian pho- 
tographs and done more experimental 
work with them than anyone outside 
Russia. 
Moss, a former Broadway actress, 
found her interest in parapsychological 
phenomena kindled afler LSD therapy. 
“From the first,” she recalls, “1 intend- 
ed lo specialize in parapsychology be- 
cause of the glimpses of psychic phe- 
nomena I experienced during the Lsp 
treatments. But [ certainly don't feel the 
need to use drugs any more... When 
you've gotten the message, you hang up 
the phone.” For Moss, the message is 
that Kirlian photography clearly dem- 
onstrates a human aura. “We have done 
work with acupuncturists and [psychic] 
healers,” she says, “and we find that the 
corona of the healer becomes intense be- 
fore healing, and then afterward is more 
relaxed and less strong. We think we're 
looking at a transfer of energy from the 
healer to the injured person.” 
Others are less certain. Writing in 
the Photographic Society of America 
journal, Bill Zalud concluded, “All spec- 
ulation hinges on obtaining photographs 
of normal tissue patterns for compar- 
ative purposes and, so far, no one has 
really determined what a normal Kir- 
: is.” Stanford Professor 
illiam Tiller, an enthusiast of the 
paranormal, is more assured about the 
technical cause of Kirlian phenomena 
on film. “What we're looking at,” he 
maintains, “is cold electron discharge.” 
Sickly Tissue. Says L. Jerome Stan- 
ton, author of a forthcoming book on 
auras and Kirlian photography: “Per- 
haps some day the technique will be a 
valuable diagnostic tool. Maybe sick 
people do have different ‘auras.’ But as 
of now, there is no assurance that it is at 
all useful.” Though not accusing Kirlian 
researchers of faking effects, Stanton 
notes that the famous “phantom leaf” is 
casy to duplicate by double-cx posing the 
film, first with the whole leaf, again af- | 
tera portion has been removed, and that 
different voltages and conditions can 
change the picture in incalculable ways. 
“Working with advanced equipment,” 
he says, “I could produce Kirlian effects 
that would astound the unsophisticated, 
and that includes a lot of scientists and 
physicists. Remember, electronics and 
photography are two very complicated 
70 
The first professional organization to 
study paranormal phenomena was the 
British Society for Psychical Research, 
founded in 1882. Among its membership 
were prominent scholars and scientists 
—men of unimpeachable credentials 
and high moral character. They soon 
discovered and enthusiastically reported 
on the telepathic abilitics of five little 
girls, daughters of the Rev. A.M. Creery, 
The mentalist millennium was at hand. 
Six years later, the girls were caught 
cheating and shamefacedly admitted 
that they had fooled the investigators. 
They were the first in a long series of de- 
ceivers of scientists. 
The society's next major project was 
an investigation of two “sensilives” from 
Brighton, G.A. Smith and Douglas 
Blackburn. Smith would allow himself 
to be blindfolded, his ears to be plugged, 
his body to be thoroughly blanketed; yet 
somehow the thoughts of Blackburn 
reached him. This time, it seemed, the 
S.P.R. had really justified its existence. 
When Smith left the S.P.R. in 1892, 
no other comparable sensitive could be 
found. Still, the members had secn the 
telepathy performed with their own 
eyes; the evidence was held acceptable. 
Tt was not until 1908 that Blackburn ad- 
mitted deceit. “The whole of these al- 
leged experiments were bogus,” he later 
wrote. The remainder of his statement 
has echoed to this day: “[Our hoax] orig- 
inated in the honest desire of two youths 
to show how easily men of scientific 
Approved For Release 2003/04/18 : CIA-RDP96-00787R000100030002-8 
A Long History of Hoaxes 
rie 
COMING OF THE FAIRIES 
mind and training could be deceived 
when seeking for evidence in support of 
a theory they were wishful to establish.” 
The American Society for Psychical 
Research, organized with the help of 
Philosopher William James in 1885, suf- 
fered similar cmbarrassments. Yet it 
pursued its quarry with vigor. As James 
had noted, “To upset the conclusion that 
all crows are black, there is no need to 
seck demonstration that no crow is 
black, it is sufficient to produce one 
white crow.” But after 25 years of read- 
ing psychic literature and witnessing 
phenomena, James admitted that he was 
“theoretically no further than I was at 
the beginning, and I confess that at times 
[ have been tempted to believe that the 
EXPERIMENTER J.B. RHINE & VOLUNTEERS 
Creator has eternally intended this de- 
parture of nature to remain baffling.” 
Other researchers had not been 
humble or uncertain. Late in the cen- 
tury, a self-styled sensitive named Henry 
Slade toured the U.S. and Europe mak- 
ing objects vanish and swinging com- 
pass needles without the aid of a mag- 
net. He was so convincing that a 
German scientist published a_ book, 
Transcendental Physics, devoted to 
Slade’s accomplishments. Again, the 
psychic millennium scemed imminent. 
But in his biography, A Magician Among 
the Spirits, Uarry Houdini reported that 
the conjurer was simply a fraud with 
a dazzling technique; Slade later con- 
fessed that it was indeed all an act. 
TIME, MARCH 4, 1974

fields, Mix them and aABRraved. le r RMeang AIDSLP Al Bin AR RE 25-0078 gR Seer tnicligence as- 
will remain in the dark.” 
The most irresponsible and odious 
niche in the world of the paranormal is 
occupied by the psychic healers, who 
cannot operate legally in the U.S. but 
lure unfortunate Americans overseas 
with claims of spectacular cures. Diag- 
nosing tllnesses and locating diseased or- 
gans by purely psychic means, they per- 
form operations by plunging their hands 
through what appear to be deep inci- 
sions to grasp and remove sickly tissue. 
In the Philippines, currently the center 
for psychic surgery, a number of con- 
jurers use sleight of hand and buckets 
of blood and animal parts to work their 
wonders. Surrounded by adherents who 
have been “cured,” the ill-educated and 
often filthy surgeons perform “opera- 
tions” —slashes of the epidermis, knives 
in the eye cavity, fingers in the abdomen 
—sometimes painlessly and always with 
great flourish. 
As one witness to such “surgery” de- 
scribes it: “The healer pulled some tis- 
sue from the area of the ‘operation’ ... 
ELIOT ELISOFON 
from Tony's hand ... 1 wanted to have 
valid medical tests performed on it. The 
tests, conducted in Seattle, showed that 
the tissue was ‘consistent with origin 
from a small animal ... there is no ev- 
idence in any of this tissue to suggest 
that this represents metastatic carcino- 
ma from the breast of the patient.’ ” 
Tom Valentine, author of a book on per- 
haps the best known of the psychic sur- 
geons, Tony Agpaoa, documents the ex- 
perience of a Mrs. Raymond Steinberg 
of Two Rivers, Wis. Tony “made a ma- 
jor production” of removing a piece of 
metal and several screws that had been 
surgically placed in her hip after an au- 
tomobile accident. X rays later showed 
that Agpaoa had removed nothing. 
True Believer. But the psychics, 
and those who profit from them, remain 
undaunted. In a few months, the respect- 
able publishing firm of Thomas Y. 
Crowell will publish the story of yet an- 
other psychic healer, the late great Bra- 
zilian Arigo, Surgeon of the Rusty Knife. 
The author: John Fuller, whose pro-fly- 
ing-saucer books Jacident at Exeter and 
The Interrupted Journey were big sellers 
during the UFO craze of the 1960s. The 
afterword is written by Geller Biogra- 
pher Puharich, who in Uri incidentally 
suring him that Arigo was not hurt in his . 
fatal car accident in 1971: “There was no 
pain. He left his body before the crash.” 
No amount of demonstrable fraudu- 
lence, no exposure of the fake, the ma- 
nipulator, the unscrupulous, ever scems 
capable of dissuading the truc believer 
in paranormality. James Fadiman, of 
the Stanford School of Enginecring, be- 
lieves that “most (but not all) para- 
psychologist demoristrators are also 
frauds,” then gives the classic rationale: 
“Look at it this way. You think you have 
powers of clairvoyance, and finally you 
become a celebrity because of it. You’re 
on the stage or in an experimental sit- 
uation and sometimes your powers fail 
you. They do very often for most of these 
guys. So what do they do? They cheat.” 
Robert Benchley once separated 
people into two categories: those who 
separate people into two categories and 
those who do not. Parapsychologist Ger- 
trude Schmeidler of New York’s City 
College is in the first category. Her stud- 
ies show that on the issue of pata- 
psychology her subjects divide into be- 
lieving sheep and doubting goats. The 
sheep almost invariably score higher 
in tests of paranormal powers. Will 
the sheep ever convince the ruminating 
IN EARLY ESP TEST (1940) 
Perhaps parapsychology’s most gul- 
lible proponent was Sir Arthur Conan 
Doyle, creator of the superrationalist 
detective Sherlock Holmes. Doyle re- 
mains the greatest proof that intelli- 
gence and scruple cannot compete with 
naiveté and the desire to accept the par- 
anormal as demonstrable fact. After the 
death of his son in the Great War, he 
turned to spiritualism for solace. This 
led, in time, to investigations of spirits, 
and eventually to little winged creatures 
in the bottoms of gardens. in his 1922 
volume The Coming of the Fairies, Doyle 
reproduced photographs of a tiny gob- 
lin and elves caught by a child's cam- 
cra. The pictures were manifestly staged; 
the entire project made all but the blind- 
ne 
YUAE, MARCH 4, 1974 
TED SERIOS PROJECTING PICTURES 
est believers wince. One who did not 
was a young American botanist named 
J.B. Rhine. After an inspiring Doyle 
lecture on spiritualism, Rhine and his 
wife Louisa immersed themselves in [it- 
erature published by the Society for 
Psychical Research. When Rhine later 
joined the faculty of Duke University, 
he began a lifelong devotion to psychic 
research. It was he who coined the 
terms extrasensory perception and psi 
(for psychic phenomena); it was he 
who gave his specialty an academic 
imprimatur by compiling mountains of 
stalistics about psychic subjects who 
could “read” cards that they could 
not see. 
From the start, Rhine was criticized 
BaWODYWISE GTydad 
for juggling numbers. (Subsequent re- 
searchers have also used questionable 
procedures, citing “negative ESP” when 
the number of correct guesses fall bo- 
low average and “displacement” when 
subjects call the card before or after the 
one they are trying to guess.) H.L. Menc- 
ken summarized the early views of the 
dubious when he wrote, “In plain lan- 
guage, Professor Rhine segregates all 
those persons who, in guessing the cards, 
enjoy noteworthy runs of luck, and then 
adduces those noteworthy runs of luck 
as proof that they must possess myste- 
rious powers.” Rhine tightened his lab- 
oratory conditions in the 1930s, and 
much of the criticism withered—but so 
did his ESP stars. 
In the 1960s a psychic superstar 
came along in the person of Ted Serios, 
a hard-drinking, onetime bellhop from 
Chicago. Serios’ gift was definitely off- 
beat: he produced pictures inside a Po- 
laroid camera using nothing but his 
mind and a little hollow tube he called 
his “gismo.” Reporters Charles Reyn- 
olds and David Eisendrath, who ob- 
served Serios at work in Denver, had 
little trouble constructing a device that 
could be secreted inside a gismo to pro- 
duce all of Serios’ effects. The instru- 
ment contained a minuscule lens at one 
end and a photographic transparency at 
the other. When the device was pointed 
at the camera lens and the shutter was 
clicked, an image was recorded on film. 
The Reynolds-Eisendrath story was 
printed in Popular Photography and 
many of Serios’ followers were shattered. 
Again the millennium was deferred. 
Approved For Release 2003/04/18 : CIA-RDP96-00787R000100030002-8 
71 
RO TE TN TTS TEN PPT ea

BEHAVIOR 
" goats? Will the goats ever_underr. 
the faith of Appiavedchowd 
events have occurred. 
Just a few years ago what smug 
Western rationalist would have accred- 
ited acupuncture? Yet the ethnocentric 
prejudice seemed to disappear almost at 
a stroke when the Western world 
learned of James Reston’s appendix op- 
eration. The New York Tinies columnist 
submitted to acupuncture after surgery 
on a trip to China in 1971; thereafter, 
the unorthodox method was examined 
throughout the U.S. Today acupuncture 
is under intense study at several med- 
ical centers. Although some of the ben- 
eficial effects of “paranormal” medicine 
have been acknowledged by Western 
scientists, they are still at 
a loss to explain it. It was 
not long ago that most 
Americans attributed the 
feats of Eastern yogis to 
clever fakery. Yet the new 
Western experimentation 
with biofeedback* has 
shown skeptics that the 
mind can indeed control 
what are normally invol- 
untary bodily functions. 
The Menninger Founda- 
tion in Topeka, Kans., 
reports incontrovertible 
proof that subjects trained 
by biofeedback can con- 
trol their blood circulation 
and lower the temperature 
of the parts of their bod- 
ies at will; migraine head- 
aches can be literally 
wished away. The ancient 
yogic mythic skills sud- 
denly seem within the 
grasp of everyone. 
Is it not possible that 
thoughts—like TV pro- 
grams—can be transmit- 
ted from one brain to an- 
other? And if enough 
energy can be generated 
by the brain, why should 
if not influence the roll of 
dice? Or make a plant respond? 
In an epoch when the new physics 
posits black holes in the universe and 
particles that travel faster than the speed 
of light, and has already confirmed the 
existence of such bizarre things as ncu- 
trinos that have no mass or charge, an- 
timatter and quasars, why should any 
phenomenon be assumed impossible? 
What is wrong with Physicist Sir James 
Jeans’ attempt to give coherence to an 
unruly cosmos: “The universe begins to 
look more and more like a great thought 
than a great machine"? 
The psychic adherent's reply is sim- 
ple: anything is possible. But simply say- 
ing that it is so and then supporting the 
contention with shoddy or downright 
fraudulent evidence, is nol enough. Psy- 
chic phenomena cannot be accepted on 
MATIONAL TATTLER 
Bosra “eg aman 
*A process by which one can Jearn to control in- 
voluntary bodily functions (such as heartbeat) 
through the visual or aural monitoring of physi- 
ological data. 
72 Approved For Release 2003/04/18 : CIA-RDP96-00787R000100030002-8 
live researchers. To date, those demon- 
strations have not been made. 
Any close examiner of psychic in- 
vestigators and reporters will find a new 
meaning for Koestler’s roots of coinci- 
dence. A loose confederacy of parapsy- 
chologists parodics the notion of the sci- 
entific method. Harold Puthoff, one of 
the two S.R.IJ. investigators of Uri Gel- 
ler, is singled out in The Secret Life of 
Plants as a reputable scientist who has 
been experimenting with the response. 
of one chicken egg to the breaking of an- 
other. He is also a promoter of the bi- 
zarre and controversial cult of Scientol- 
ogy, which Ingo Swann, another psychic 
on ee ABE NOMEN aca 
PSYCHIC SURGEON OPERATING IN PHILIPPINES 
Sometimes painlessly, always with flourish. 
tested by S.R.I, also practices. William 
Targ, a Putnam exccutive, recently con- 
tracted to publish Astronaut Ed Mitch- 
ell’s forthcoming book, Psychic Explo- 
ration, A Challenge for Science. At the 
signing, Targ stated that “the real race 
now between the Russians and us is in 
the area of sciences like USP.” Mitch- 
cell's Institute of Noetic Sciences helped 
to fund S.R.E.’s Geller research, which 
was conducted largely by Puthoff and 
Russell Targ, who happens to be Editor 
Targ’s son. 
The questionable connections of 
many psychic researchers, in addition 
lo the paucity of objectively verifiable re- 
sults in their work, has made it difficult 
to raise funds for research; parapsychol- 
ogists barely squeak by with moncy from 
a few foundations and gifts and encour- 
agement from occasional philanthro- 
pists like Stewart Mott and Manhattan 
Realtor John Tishman. There is only 
one academic chair on parapsychology 
se 2D SEACH CARERS G87 ROAST TO Rhine prove doprene 
ingly negative, it is unlikely that acad- 
emics or foundations would encourage 
more chairs, or promote further psychic 
investigations. 
In a way, it is rather a pity that the 
shecp cannot get together with the goats. 
At the very least, the paranormal es- 
tablishment has questioned the dogina, 
emphasized the ignorance and under- 
lined the arrogance of modern medicine 
and science. Indeed, modern doctors 
have scarcely breached the frontiers of 
the mind. Science has all too frequently 
destroyed the layman’s sense of wonder 
by seeking materialistic explanations for 
all phenomena. 
As C.P. Snow says: “Scientists re- 
gard it as a major intellectual virtue to 
know what not to think about.” Com- 
plains one S.R.I. spokesman: “The so- 
cicly we live in doesn’t give you per- 
mission to have psychic abilities. That 
is one reason that so much talent is sup- 
pressed.” As Martin Gardner believes, 
“Modern science should indeed arouse 
in all of us a humility before the im- 
mensity of the unexplored and a toler- 
ance for crazy hypotheses.” 
As for the parapsychologists who 
make many of those hypotheses, they 
could learn the most valuable weapon 
in the arsenal of the truth secker: doubt, 
One hundred and fifty ycars ago Charles 
Lamb observed that credulity was the 
child's strength but the adult's weakness. 
That observation is even more valid to- 
day, when shoddy or ignorant research 
is used to lend legitimacy to the most’ 
extravagant tenets of the psychic 
movement. 
That is not to say that parapsychol- 
ogy ought to be excluded from serious 
scrutiny. Some first-rate minds have 
been attracted to it Freud, Einstein, 
Jung, Edison. The paranormal may ex- 
ist, against logic, against reason, against 
present evidence and beyond the stan- 
dard criteria of empirical proof. Perhaps 
there are reasons why the roll of the dice 
and turn of the cards sometimes appear 
to obey the bettor’s will. Perhaps the 
laws of probability are often suspended. 
Perhaps Geller and other magicians can 
indeed force metal to bend merely be- 
cause they will it. Perhaps photographs 
can be projected by the mind. Perhaps 
plants think. 
Perhaps not. 
There is only one way to tell: by a 
thorough examination of the phenom- 
ena by those who do not express an a 
priori belief, By those for whom proba- 
bility is not a mystique but a compre- 
hensible code. By those who have noth- 
ing to lose but their skepticism. Until 
such examiners are allowed to play the 
psychic game, it is unlikely that the 
paranormal will escape the ambiguous 
ultcrance against it in Leviticus: “Do not 
turn to mediums or wizards; do not seck 
them out, to be defiled by them...” And 
that most wondrous and mysterious of 
entitics, the human mind, will remain 
an underdeveloped country. 
TIME, MARCH 4, 1974