The Psychic Powers of Nina Kulagina         

                                                                                    Part 1 | Part 2   

Testing the Psychic

Doctor Leonid L. Vasiliev, a psychologist at Leningrad University, had pioneered ESP study in Russia at the Institute for Brain Research in Leningrad, and was one of the first to test Kulagina, continuing to do so right up until his death in 1966. 
His experiments with her were often filmed; in fact there are over 60 films of Nina in action. Unfortunately in many of these the picture quality is lacking, and it’s not always easy to see exactly what is going on.

Another Soviet scientist, Dr. Genady Sergeyev, a well-known physiologist working in a Leningrad military laboratory, did several years of intensive laboratory research on Kulagina, and made special studies of the electrical potentials in Kulagina’s brain.  During observations he recorded exceptionally strong voltages and other unusual effects. In one series of experiments in Leningrad, recalling those of Dr. Shvetz, he and his colleagues placed undeveloped photo film in a black envelope. By staring at the envelope Kulagina was able to expose the film inside.  

A Strange Mind Power Experiment

One of Kulagina’s strangest filmed experiments involved the effect of her powers on a raw egg floating in a tank of saline solution almost two metres away from her. Using intense concentration, she slowly separated the yolk from the white of the egg, and moved the two apart; if she focused her energies for long enough, she could put the egg back together again. But the most unusual experiment of all took place in the Leningrad laboratory on 10 March, 1970. Satisfied that Kulagina had the ability to move inanimate objects, scientists were curious to know whether Nina’s abilities extended to cells, tissues, and organs. Sergeyev was one of the many scientists in attendance when Kulagina attempted to use her energy to stop the beating of a frog's heart, floating in solution, and then re-activate it. She focused intently on the heart and summoned all her powers. First she made it beat faster – then slower, and, using intense will power, she stopped it. Apparently she could also disrupt human heart beats – on one occasion giving a hostile Leningrad psychiatrist a frightening first-hand experience of her power.  

In one of the (silent) films shot of experiments with Kulagina in her Leningrad apartment she is seen seated at a large, round, white table, in front of a lace-curtain window. According to Russian scientists she had, on this occasion, already been physically examined by a medical doctor, who had x-rayed her to make sure there were no hidden magnets or anything else concealed on her person, nor any pieces of shrapnel lodged in her body from her war injury. She was found to be clean and the experiment begun. 

The film crew, scientists – Naumov among them, and reporters, moved in for a close –up. Naumov placed a compass on a wristband, a vertical cigarette, a pen top, a small metal cylinder like a saltshaker, and a matchbox on the table in front of her. Kulagina began with the compass – apparently the easiest object to warm up on. She held her fingers parallel to the table about six inches above the compass and started moving her hands in a circular motion. For a while nothing happened . . . then the needle quivered and slowly began to rotate counter clockwise, then the whole compass, case and all, began to spin.  

The 'Impossibility' of PK abilities

Naturally, Kulagina was not without her critics, but sometimes it went beyond criticism. In the Moscow paper Pravda there was a vicious attack on Kulagina, demonizing her and calling her a fake and a cheat. It was said that she performed her tricks with the help of concealed magnets and threads, though how magnets could move nonmagnetic things like glass, eggs, apples and bread was not explained. Kulagina also proved that she could move any one or two objects from a group chosen by the investigator. This again speaks against fraud. In the end it was revealed that the author of the Pravda piece had never even seen Kulagina. He had decided that PK was impossible therefore she must be cheating. At the same time as the Pravda article, a campaign of harassing phone calls began against Kulagina. It was unlikely that these were merely harmless crank calls - there were no telephone books in Russia at that time; to get somebody’s phone number involved lining up for hours at special address booths in the streets. Secondly, she was known to the public as Nelya Mikhailova, not by her real name of Nina Kulagina. 

So whoever was calling had to know her real name and her address. It seems likely that it had been well organised. But by whom? Was the KGB involved? The calls finally got so out of hand that the scientists decided to hide Kulagina in the country outside Leningrad.  

Contrary to what some sceptics have claimed, Kulagina was not only tested in her own apartment and in hotel rooms, but also by eminent Soviet scientists in controlled laboratory conditions. They more than once stated that after watching Nina in action that they had found ‘no hidden threads, magnets, or other gimmicks.’

Chairman of Theoretical Physics at Moscow University, Dr. Ya. Terletsky declared on 17 March, 1968, in Moscow Pravda: ‘Mrs. Kulagina displays a new and unknown form of energy.’ The Mendeleyev Institute of Metrology also studied Nina, and announced in Moscow Pravda that she had moved aluminium pipes and matches under stringent test conditions, including surveillance on closed-circuit television. They could not explain how the objects had moved.

But there was a down side to all this. Kulagina’s powers had always taken a lot out of her. After one set of tests with Dr. Rejdak she was totally exhausted, and had almost no pulse. Her face was pale and drained and she could hardly move her body. She had lost almost four pounds in half an hour (many Western mediums, such as American Felicia Parise, have also described this weight loss during PK); it was as if she were converting the matter of her own body into energy. According to Dr. Zverev’s report, her heart-beat was irregular, there was high blood sugar, and her endocrine system was disturbed. All this was consistent with high stress. She had also lost the sensation of taste, suffered from pains in her arms and legs, couldn’t coordinate, and felt dizzy.

Her powers eventually led to a strain on her health culminating, in the late seventies, in a near fatal heart attack. Her doctors recommended that she reduce her activity, though she kept up some lab work until she died in 1990, around the time of the death of the Soviet Union itself. At her funeral, Soviets praised her as a ‘hero of Leningrad’ after her bravery during the nine-hundred-day siege of World War II. But many also lauded her for sacrifices of a different kind to her country, allowing scientists and doctors to examine and test her incessantly in their quest for an unknown and elusive energy. In the end this exhausted her, ruined her health, and probably hastened her death.  

Sources and Further Reading

Gris, Henry, and Dick, William. The New Soviet Psychic Discoveries. London, Souvenir Press, 1979.

Inglis, Brian. The Paranormal – An Encyclopedia of Psychic Phenomena, London. Granada publishing, 1985, p112.

Ostrander, Sheila, & Schroeder, Lynn.  Psychic Discoveries – The Iron Curtain Lifted. London, Souvenir Press, 1997 (1971).

Spencer, John & Anne. The Poltergeist Phenomenon. London, Headline 1997, pp227-8.
                         

© Copyright 2003 by Brian A. Haughton. All Rights Reserved.