Nowadays, some write about Ninel Kulagina as an ordinary swindler, others as a “great psychic” who has suffered persecution from official science. So who is she really and what is the secret of this woman?
Ability test
Black and white documentary footage captured a woman with a 1970s-style hairstyle. She tries to do something with her hands, moves her palms over the compass. A beautiful, well-delivered voice-over explains that this is Ninel Kulagina, a woman with unique telekinesis abilities. She tries to turn the arrow on the compass. At first she does not succeed, and the announcer explains that Ninel is distracted by the noise of the camera, the presence of strangers. But then the arrow begins to obediently turn after Kulagina's palm, and after that the compass moves on the table by itself, obeying the movement of her hands. A voice-over, meanwhile, reports that Ninel also managed to move the decanter and other objects placed under a cube made of transparent plexiglass.
The Kulagina phenomenon
This name - Ninel Kulagina - about fifty years ago was well known in the USSR, and not only in the USSR, everyone who was interested in various paranormal phenomena, such as telekinesis, telepathy. It was all very fashionable then. It is clear that where there is Ninel Kulagina before the modern "unique", gathering rooms and going on television "battles of psychics", but for her time it was a very famous lady. He wrote scientific journals, made popular science programs, and a whole laboratory of radio-electronic methods for studying biological objects was created to study the "Kulagina phenomenon".
Yu. B. Kobzarev, a serious Soviet scientist in the field of radio engineering and radiophysics, claimed that the following phenomena associated with Kulagina were recorded: movement of small objects, such as a piece of sugar or a cap from a pen; rotation of the compass needle; scattering of the laser beam by hands (!); change in acidity (pH) of water. Finally, according to the authorities who watched her, Kulagina could cause a skin burn simply by touching a person with her hand and exposing a photographic film in a closed bag.
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Kobzarev argued that there is a strong electric field around Kulagina's hands, and this was recorded by research carried out at the Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics. Moreover, the venerable scientist also claimed that the microphone installed at her hands recorded ultrasonic impulses.
An employee of the laboratory A. Taratorin, who studied Kulagina, reported that: “Histamine is injected from her palm in small drops, possibly through the sweat glands. Spraying out, it forms a charged aerosol, which explains all the observed effects. The droplets ejected caused clicks in the microphone, they changed the dielectric constant of the medium, scattering the laser beam, corroding the skin (the famous "burn"), finally, they "sat down" on the object, charging it."
For twenty years, the "Kulagina phenomenon" was studied by scientists, a film about her was made by order of Japanese television, and for twenty years the debate about the nature of her extraordinary abilities did not subside.
However, both then and now there are people who do not want to take seriously the abilities of this woman. Magicians and skeptics assure that all of Kulagina's miracles are nothing more than clever tricks that any circus magician can reproduce.
Quack or unique?
There is evidence of people who directly caught Kulagina for fraud. Thus, the commission of the All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Metrology named after Mendeleev, chaired by Doctor of Technical Sciences S. V. Gorbatsevich, recorded that Kulagina refused the proposal to repeat the experiment on moving objects by "the power of thought" in a hermetically sealed glass vessel. Head of the laboratory of magnetic measurements of VNIIM Studentsov and senior engineer Skrynnikov went to Kulagina's apartment. They concluded that Kulagina had a magnetic dipole under her clothes, and when she was asked to sit still, without moving her waist and hips, the compass needle stopped deviating. In addition, Kulagina insisted on moving exactly the object to which she would point herself, for example, a cigarette box. She refused to move the object brought by the testers. Finally, there is evidence that Kulagina moved objects with a thin thread or hair, and as soon as the witnesses of the experiment made "eye contact" with her hand, the movement of objects stopped.
Since, as you can see, Kulagina did not conduct a single experiment in clean laboratory conditions, but demonstrated her abilities in her apartment or in hotel rooms, there is no need to say that her gift was scientifically recorded.
It is quite difficult to suspect a not-so-young woman of charlatanism, that she deliberately led serious scientists by the nose for 20 years. Why would you? Today it would be quite understandable, psychics make good money, but then?
On the other hand, Ninel Kulagina was a swindler even before she became “a phenomenon unique to science”. In 1966, she was convicted of fraud by the Kirov People's Court of Leningrad. She introduced herself as someone who could help buy furniture from the back door. And she earned more than seven thousand rubles on this.
Martin Gardner, an American mathematician and popularizer of science, one of the founders of the Committee on Scientific Investigation of Allegations of the Paranormal, called Kulagina “adorable. A plump, dark-eyed little quack who, moreover, was twice caught using tricks in telekinesis experiments.
Nevertheless, they believed her, they wrote about her and are still writing about her, and there are people who raise her almost to the rank of a martyr of extrasensory perception.
