Elusive Phenomena

It is often claimed that psychokinesis - the power of the human mind to influence physical objects - consistently proves elusive to investigators. Yet many exponents of PK have been tested under laboratory conditions over the years, with most fascinating results.

Of all paranormal phenomena, psychokinesis has proved the most difficult to pin down under experiment. The Oxford Dictionary defines it as 'the movement of physical objects by mental influence without physical contact'; more simply, it is mind over matter.

Psychokinesis manifests itself in many ways: the bending of pieces of metal; the movement of objects; the influencing of chemical processes such as the development of photographic film and of biological substances like blood or body tissue - all without direct contact or any explanation in terms of orthodox physics.

Psychokinesis - PK for short - has a long history and has engaged the attentions of scientists since at least the 17th century, when the English philosopher Sir Francis Bacon suggested using 'the motions of shuffling cards, or casting dice' as a way of testing what he described as 'the binding of thoughts.' (This is, of course, precisely what Dr J. B. Rhine did more than two centuries later, when he embarked upon his 50-year study of psychic phenomena under laboratory conditions.)

However, it was only after the birth of Spiritualism in the mid-19th century that serious attempts were made to find out exactly what was going on. In 1854, the French politician Count Agenor de Gasparin published an account of table turning experiments in Switzerland, and concluded that the human will could act on matter at a distance.

This opinion was supported the following year by Professor Marc Thury, a pioneer of telekinetic investigation at the University of Geneva. Both men reached their conclusions quite independently of each other, following thorough and extensive experiments with groups of friends, and neither thought it necessary to bring in the idea of 'spirits' to explain the workings of what they saw as a hitherto unrecognized force in nature.

At the same time, across the Atlantic, Professor Robert Hare of Pennsylvania University was determined to debunk what he called the 'popular madness' and 'gross delusion' of followers of Spiritualism. But after a number of careful experiments using standard laboratory equipment - in one of them, he succeeded in recording the exertion of a force equal to 18 pounds (8 kilograms) on an empty spring balance - he changed his mind, and even became a Spiritualist himself.

The psychic force

Then, in May 1871, two eminent English parapsychologists embarked upon a series of 29 wellcontrolled and documented tests. One was the outstanding medium D.D. Home; the other was William Crookes, a foremost scientists of his time, who had been made a Fellow of the Royal Society while still in his thirties for his discovery of the element thallium, and who was later knighted. Crookes was soon fully convinced that Home was able to produce a variety of genuine PK effects, ranging from rappings on tables and levitations of objects (including people, among them Mrs Crookes) to alterations in the weight of inert bodies. Many such effects were measured and recorded. There was, Crookes declared confidently, a new form of energy, which he called the 'psychic force'.

He was also one of the first to draw attention to the 'manifest relationship to certain psychological conditions' of what we now call PK - the fact that psychic abilities are closely linked to the state of mind of the subject; and suggested that PK implies the existence of other dimensions, with the observer 'in infinitesimal and inexplicable contact with a plane of existence not his own.'

Later research gave Crookes' ideas considerable support, and many of his experiments with Home were repeated by several European scientists, including the French Nobel laureate Charles Richet and the English physicist Sir Oliver Lodge, with the Neapolitan medium Eusapia Palladino as subject. She was studied intensively over more than two decades, most successfully by a three-man team from the British Society for Psychical Research, headed by the Hon. Everard Feilding, in 1908.

Although Eusapia Palladino was not above faking 'paranormal' phenomena when she was unable to produce real ones, the team recorded a total of 470 events that satisfied them as being truly inexplicable. In their 263-page report, one of the classics of psychical research, Feilding and his two colleagues, Dr Hereward Carrington and WW Bagally - who, as well as being experienced psychical researchers, were also good amateur magicians - testified to their complete certainty as to the genuineness of the phenomena.

It seemed that more evidence for the existence of PK was hardly necessary; but the case of a young Polish medium, Stanislawa Tomczyk, provided useful confirmation. She was carefully studied between 1912 and 1914 by a number of researchers, including Feilding (who later married her). He noted that, while she could produce poltergeist-like phenomena spontaneously, and unexpectedly, in her normal state, she could also produce them more or less to order under hypnosis, making spoons and matchboxes move around and even rise into the air, just by placing her hands near them.

Binding thoughts

Thus, by the time Dr J. B. Rhine began his statistical analysis of PK in his laboratory at Duke University in North Carolina, USA, in 1934, there was already a volume of experimental evidence for its existence. Rather than amass still more evidence from the seance room, Rhine preferred to follow Francis Bacon's suggestion and see if people could indeed 'bind' their thoughts to dice and influence the way in which they fell.

After a series of rigorous experiments, using specially designed throwing machines to prevent any possibility of the subjects being able to influence the outcome physically, Rhine was able to report that they could. His subjects - not people with any particular psychic ability, simply a more or less random selection of friends and students - recorded statistically significant results, sometimes against odds of millions to one.

As a result, towards the end of his career, Rhine was able to state his view that PK, like telepathy and clairvoyance, is an 'oft-repeated, demonstrated experimental fact', and is actually an ability that we all possess. But important as they were, Dr Rhine's findings left the world no wiser as to the mechanisms involved in PK. It seemed that it was produced by the influence of the human mind, and that certain paranormal phenomena, previously ascribed to other causes, might also have psychological explanations.

In 1964, a British psychologist, Kenneth J. Batcheldor, set out with a group of trusted friends to try to reproduce PK phenomena, using nothing more than positive thinking and a considerable amount of patience. If people really believed something could happen, he reasoned, then it would. And, sure enough, it did. In the course of 200 sittings, many of them recorded on tape, the experimental group was able to produce many of the phenomena that had usually been associated with the séance room - except that, in this case, no 'spirits' had been invoked.

The table at which the group sat rapped in reply to questions, tilted in all directions, and repeatedly rose into the air, even when somebody sat on it. At other times, it resisted attempts to move it 'as if it had been glued to the floor.' Cold breezes - a frequently reported feature of poltergeist cases - were felt, 'like standing in front of an open refrigerator'; objects were thrown around the room by unknown means; and one sitter was dumped on the floor as his chair was pulled from under him 'as if by a steel hand.'

An interesting feature of Batcheldor's work, also reported by a group in Toronto and the SORRAT (Society for Research into Rapport and Telekinesis) researchers in the USA, was that, although PK could certainly be produced to order, it tended to get out of control and manifest itself in the least expected ways, indicating either the action of some kind of subconscious force in the subjects, or the presence of independent entities - a possibility that seemed to lead right back to the controversial claims of the 19th-century Spiritualists. Whatever PK was, it was proving very elusive, and it came as a relief to researchers when physical mediums, who seemed to have disappeared from the scene altogether, suddenly began to reappear in the late 1960s. At last, it seemed to researchers that they had a more reliable source of PK phenomena.

Answer to a prayer

The most important of these physical mediums was Nina Kulagina, a Russian woman born in the 1920s who first became known to researchers in the West in 1968. She was rare among psychics in being a powerful PK medium who co-operated fully with scientists and was able to produce effects to order 80 per cent of the time. She was filmed in action several times, and there is no evidence that she ever used trickery. Benson Herbert, a British investigator, called her 'the answer to a parapsychologist's prayer.'

Kulagina could make small objects move either towards or away from her on a table top, and even cause three different articles to move in different directions at once. She was observed stopping a pendulum and then setting it swinging in a different plane. She caused the downward movement of one pan of a scale while the other pan carried an extra weight. In addition, according to the Russian psychic researcher Dr G.A. Sergeyev, she was able to stop the beating of a frog's heart and - even more alarming - to give a sceptical observer a heart attack.

Benson Herbert had good reason to believe in her powers. When she placed a hand on his forearm during a series of experiments held in a Leningrad hotel room in 1973, he felt unbearable heat. 'I think it possible,' he said, 'that if Kulagina had maintained her grip on my arm for half-an-hour or so, I would have followed the way of the frog.' Fortunately, like many PK mediums, she also appeared to have some healing abilities, and apparently managed to revive a dead fish in a tank on at least one occasion.

After seeing a film of Kulagina in action, a New York medical technician, Felicia Parise, decided to see if she, too, could move things with her mind. After more than two months of hard practice, she succeeded, and was able to cause movement of a plastic bottle under the watchful lens of a film camera. Then, in one of her few elaborate experiments, she was asked to try to deflect the needle of a compass that had been mounted inside an electronic metal detector and placed on a sealed packet of film. The needle swung through 15º, stopped, and would not move even when researchers Graham and Anita Watkins put a magnet near it. But when they removed the compass from the 'target area', the needle returned to north; when they put it back on the original spot, the needle again moved 15º and once more resisted attempts to move it with the magnet. The film under the compass was found to be strongly exposed, though pieces of film at other nearby locations were only partly exposed. This suggested that Parise had created a localized magnetic field through mind-power alone - a field that remained for some minutes after she had ceased to concentrate on it.

Psychic success

Parise might have become a second Kulagina, but she ended her brief career in PK in 1974, finding that the work was becoming too much of a strain. In the same year, the British psychic Matthew Manning began a three-year period of extensive laboratory tests before devoting himself to healing, and Benson Herbert published his work with another British medium, Suzanne Padfield whom he found to be consistently successful in influencing the intensity of a beam of polarized light.

Meanwhile, in the USA, New York artist Ingo Swann performed a number of successful PK tests in different laboratories, including the alteration of the temperature registered by an electronic sensor and the interference on the chart record of a shielded magnetometer.

The SORRAT group also continued to produce remarkable results. It was found, for instance, that areas of coldness would develop around their target objects; and it became almost 'normal' for them to hear strange rapping's that seemed to display intelligence in using codes to answer questions, thereby opening up a two-way channel of communication between an 'agency' or hidden force and the group.

The 'agency' itself even claimed at one point to consist of a group of spirits. But their identity remained unclear. Gradually, the group's PK results became so strong that a table weighing all of 37 kilograms (82 pounds) was successfully levitated; while a light metal tray was made to remain in the air, without support, for a full three minutes. The 'agency' also caused direct writing: sometimes, it was mere scrawl, but whole words and even completely coherent messages were occasionally received.

Most commonly, it is thought that PK requires massive concentration on the part of the experimenters. But the work of the SORRAT group served to disprove this. Indeed, they produced evidence for a great many instances of entirely spontaneous psychokinesis. This was a particularly momentous discovery.

Other PK phenomena put to the test include the metal-bending feats of Uri Geller and others, and the well-known, equally famous 'thought photographs' (pictures taken without a camera and with the mind only) of American bell-hop Ted Serios. Advances in technology and research methods are, it seems, matched by the abilities of exponents of PK, for which no limit has yet been established.

'It staggers my imagination to conceive all the implications that follow now that it has been shown that the mind, by some means as unknown as the mind itself, has the ability directly to affect material operations in the world around it,' said Rhine, after a lifetime of studying PK and other psychic phenomena. 'Mind,' he concluded, 'is what the man in the street thought it was all along - something of a force in itself... '

Scientists must surely begin to take PK and other hidden forces into account if we are ever to reach a full understanding of the whole nature of Man and the astonishing powers and potential of the human mind.