Often the hardest topics to learn are those that lie on the surface. Of all the superpowers attributed to the human mind, telepathy is the most "pop", hackneyed by modern culture. On the other hand, what could be more impressive and even frightening than broadcasting your own thoughts and reading others?
OVERKILLING ALEXANDER
On March 30, 1915, the attention of the American public, already familiar with illusionists and magicians of all sorts, was attracted by a bright poster. It depicted a man of European appearance, but with a flowered turban on his head, holding a crystal ball in his hands. The caption to the poster read: "Alexander, He who knows everything." A crowd of curious people flocked to a fresh show and were not disappointed - Claude Alexander Conlin performing on stage turned out to be not just a magician, but a telepath of the first magnitude. The most popular number was sending him questions from the audience in tightly sealed envelopes, to which he answered without opening. Alexander then took out a crystal ball and conducted a reading of the future, illuminated by mysterious lights from below the stage, seemingly caused by his mystical power. They said, however,that the illusionist recklessly used the newfangled effects of electric light at that time, but no one dared to disturb the performance. Moreover, the backlight is backlit, and Alexander answered sealed letters without any tools …
Only a few decades after his death in 1954, the all-knowing Alexander will be called a swindler and a scoundrel, but almost a murderer, having hung on him many unsolved crimes. As for the performances, the lights really turned out to be electricity, the crystal ball was a fake, and the turban was stuffed with cunning devices. But, despite all the accusations of Alexander, not a single, even the most inveterate critic could explain how, in the semi-darkness of the hall, and without prompts from the assistants, he managed to instantly talk about the contents of those same envelopes. This question is usually bypassed, one cannot say about a person - “a swindler, which one to look for, but he was a real telepathist”?
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In general, exposing professional telepaths is an extremely ungrateful undertaking. There are, of course, one hundred percent deceivers who rely solely on equipment for eavesdropping and spying, but they can only deceive the most inexperienced public. A skilled telepath, even if he does not have a mysterious gift, must at least be a competent psychologist specializing in recognizing emotions. In English literature, this practice is called "Muscle reading", ie. "Muscle reading" or, sometimes, "hellstromism" - from the name of the German telepath Axel Hellstrom. He did not invent "muscle reading", this merit goes to the American neurologist George Beard as early as 1870, while Hellstrom performed since the 1920s. However, it was Hellstrom who perfected this technique when it was indistinguishable from natural mind reading. Of course, it did not work if it was required to guess the question in a sealed envelope, but as soon as the task was set to find the hidden object, nothing escaped the "telepathic". Subtle body language pointed out exactly where to look for the hidden, even if the viewer tried to remain still. George Creskin, for example, wanted to bring something new to muscle reading, could drive blindly if he was held by the hand of a person looking at the road. This is a win-win reading of thoughts through the muscles - without the slightest mysticism, but it looks no worse than true magic. Almost indestructible and giving the owner a bad reputation at the poker table. Who will sit down to play with a person who can “read the minds” of another player through the most imperturbable poker face?but as soon as the task was set to find the hidden object, nothing escaped the "telepathist". Subtle body language pointed out exactly where to look for the hidden, even if the viewer tried to remain still. George Creskin, for example, wanted to bring something new to muscle reading, could drive blindly if he was held by the hand of a person looking at the road. This is a win-win reading of thoughts through the muscles - without the slightest mysticism, but it looks no worse than true magic. Almost indestructible and giving the owner a bad reputation at the poker table. Who will sit down to play with a person who can “read the minds” of another player through the most imperturbable poker face?but as soon as the task was set to find the hidden object, nothing escaped the "telepathist". Subtle body language pointed out exactly where to look for the hidden, even if the viewer tried to remain still. George Creskin, for example, wanted to bring something new to muscle reading, could drive blindly if he was held by the hand of a person looking at the road. This is a win-win reading of thoughts through the muscles - without the slightest mysticism, but it looks no worse than true magic. Almost indestructible and giving the owner a bad reputation at the poker table. Who will sit down to play with a person who can “read the minds” of another player through the most imperturbable poker face?even if the viewer tried to stay still. George Kreskin, for example, wanted to bring something new to muscle reading, could drive a car blindly if he was held by the hand of a person looking at the road. Such is a win-win reading of thoughts through the muscles - without the slightest mysticism, but it looks no worse than true magic. Almost undetectable and gives the owner a bad reputation at the poker table. Who will sit down to play with a person who can “read the minds” of another player through the most unflappable poker face?even if the viewer tried to stay still. George Creskin, for example, wanted to bring something new to muscle reading, could drive blindly if he was held by the hand of a person looking at the road. This is a win-win reading of thoughts through the muscles - without the slightest mysticism, but it looks no worse than true magic. Almost indestructible and giving the owner a bad reputation at the poker table. Who will sit down to play with a person who can “read the minds” of another player through the most imperturbable poker face?Almost indestructible and giving the owner a bad reputation at the poker table. Who will sit down to play with a person who can “read the minds” of another player through the most imperturbable poker face?Almost indestructible and giving the owner a bad reputation at the poker table. Who will sit down to play with a person who can “read the minds” of another player through the most imperturbable poker face?
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Another relatively honest and non-refutable method of applied telepathy is the so-called "cold reading", which combines muscle reading, psychology and deduction. In cold reading, the telepath analyzes the client's appearance and then asks a couple of clarifying questions, carefully monitoring the reaction. If he is lucky, the client himself will lay out all the circumstances of his own life, while remaining confident in the skill of the "mind reader" sitting in front of him. By the way, Arthur Conan Doyle, who is very fond of spiritualism, could not help but know about this technique when he described the "deductive method" of Sherlock Holmes. Thus, developed intelligence and attentiveness can serve as a good analogue of telepathy, albeit in limited conditions.
SPONTANEOUS ALARM
But what about transmitting and receiving thoughts over great distances? In the modern world, smartphones have confidently filled this niche, but suppose that the task is for a region without mobile communications, or simply at the beginning of the last century, when even landline phones were considered an expensive and rare pleasure. History knows a number of personalities showing similar abilities - from Alessandro Cagliostro to Wolf Messing, but facts that are not related to professionals are much more interesting. The case of the American farmer Fred Trusty, who was working in his garden in Pensville on an unremarkable day, and suddenly felt something incomprehensible, is widely known. Having carefully examined the surroundings, he fixed his gaze on the nearest lake, but at first nothing betrayed trouble. Trusty is almost back to workwhen I looked at the lake again - and this time I saw a cap floating on the surface. It took him a few minutes to run to the water and pull out his own son from the bottom, providing him with the necessary first aid. Later, the son of Trusty swore that he did not make any sounds before submerging under the water (his leg simply squeezed while swimming), and his father clearly felt spontaneous telepathy … Another case was in 1958, again in the United States, when a certain resident from the town of Cleo, Michigan, suddenly felt fear for his uncle, who lived 50 kilometers away in Flint. To calm down, he even called his uncle's neighbor, who assured him that the old man was doing fine, but his anxiety did not subside. Then the nephew got into the car and rushed to Flint … To catch a fire in his uncle's house - his culprit,really distinguished by excellent health, managed to fall asleep with a lit cigarette and thus doomed himself to death.
ASTRONOMA COLLECTION
Such cases - and there are hundreds of them - can be attributed to developed intuition and chances, but their volume is so great that even the most reasonable arguments become unconvincing. Spontaneous telepathy works best between loved ones, but this is not at all a prerequisite. It is believed that the largest collection of telepathic manifestations belongs to the French author Camille Flammarion, who collected them in the book "The Unknown" in 1901. Like many scientists of the late 19th - early 20th centuries, Flammarion did not at all strive for mystical knowledge of the universe, on the contrary, he was a respected astronomer, the discoverer of double and multiple stars, subsequently proving the gravitational connection between them. But at the same time, he simply could not pass by the reliable manifestations of telepathy, collecting them in the indicated work. He himself did not try to explain the phenomenon of thought transmission,but other researchers coped with it - more precisely, they tried to cope. A variety of theories have been put forward - from the transmission of signals by electromagnetic waves of the brain to an unknown form of matter that is not recorded by devices. After decades of experiments, only one thing became clear - there were successful results, but they could not be repeated, which means that science makes a helpless gesture.
And one could be offended that even such a "banal" ability as telepathy is still considered by skeptics a clever trick or a natural deception. But the human mind continues to keep an incredible amount of secrets, to which the keys still cannot be found. The only question is, do we really need to know a method for reading other people's thoughts? Some riddles are best not answered at all.
Maxim Filaretov