part0017

A n unprecedented explosion of mass interest in psychic and spiritual phenomena characterized the second half of the 19th century that affected countries in the East and the West, and included the more or less official beginnings of parapsychology with the founding of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) in Great Britain in 1882. There were several major and minor influences operating in the early days of psychical research: the popularity of mesmerism, von Reichenbach’s writings, theosophy, and the burgeoning spiritualist movement and the rise of rational empiricism in science, both of the latter which were occurring around the mid-1800s.

Rational and empirical thought in science at the time shaped how early researchers looked at the experiences and phenomena. From the start their aim was to collect empirical data about the psychic and spiritual events in the world so that they could truly explain just one more part of the vast range of human experience.

On the other hand, healing by means of the laying-on of hands, conversations about telepathy and eyeless vision, and especially conjuring spirits and conversing with the dead became popular with all the social classes. However, it was the spiritualist movement that really set the stage for just what would be studied, though it was not the whole of the stage’s psychic scenery—and setting the stage specifically for the ESP Wars of the 20th century.

S piritualism had a very humble beginning. While the various phenomena under the “spiritual” umbrella had been happening for thousands of years, and in the early 1840 s the works of Emanuel Swedenborg were influencing many in that direction, it was the experiences of two sisters living near Rochester, New York that in 1848 crystallized (and popularized) interest in psychic occurrences. Margaretta and Katherine Fox demonstrated some kind of contact with spirits that resulted in rapping noises produced to answer questions.

The wave of interest and spiritual contact spread a bit in the United States, but for some reason—possibly due to a lack of an overall, organized movement—it more or less subsided until about the time of the Civil War. However, the “movement” had begun to spread to Great Britain, also with interest in the popular Fox sisters, beginning in the 1850s.

Here in the States, while the movement was less organized, there were waves of interest in spirit contact during and after the War Between the States and the First World War with so many lives lost during warfare, there was a natural urge for people who had lost loved ones to want to try to contact them. In addition, due to the death of their child, Mary Todd Lincoln and Abraham Lincoln (especially the former) took part in various spiritualistic activities.

People of every economic stratum were equally seized by an enthusiasm for meetings with mediums, conjuring spirits, spinning saucers, and turning tables. Families held séances in their parlors, day and night, and psychic games were quite popular play for adults and children alike. The popular (and controversial) Ouija Board came out of these home-based activities.

But it wasn’t just the United Kingdom and North America. Before World War I, there were over 2000 spiritualist circles in Germany, 3000 in France, 3500 in Russia—with 1000 in St. Petersburg alone. In response to this craze, the Physical Society of St. Petersburg University even organized a commission on mediums in 1875. The commission, headed by the world-renowned scientist Dmitri Mendeleyev, who devised the Periodic Table of the Elements, built a special instrument: a table with a pressure gauge that recorded the pressure exerted by participants’ hands during séances. After completing its research, the commission concluded that, “Spiritualist phenomena arise either from unconscious movements or from conscious deceit, and that spiritualist teaching (the belief in spirits) is superstition.” However, this statement made no impression on the public at large—mediums continued to “conquer” the world with their popularity.

At the same time, Western European civilization began to discover Eastern philosophy along with the practices of Hindu and Buddhist yoga. Societies that studied and practiced occultism and Eastern doctrines began appearing everywhere. Elena Blavatskaya, better known as Madame Blavatsky, and Colonel Henry Olcott founded the Theosophical Society, arguably the most famous of these societies, on November 17, 1875 in New York. The Society had the declared purpose of researching previously unstudied laws of nature and human capabilities on the basis of a synthesis of Eastern and Western spiritual achievements. But there is no doubt that Madame Blavatsky’s hidden agenda was the creation of a new world religion, as this can be seen even in her choice of the term theosophy, which means “divine wisdom” in Greek. Despite claims that it was intended to be a religion, theosophy alongside mediumship, became a real influence on modern parapsychology especially in the East, and Madame Blavatsky became a name that is well-known even today.

Elena Petrovna Blavatskaya was born in 1831 in Russia into a wealthy and distinguished aristocratic family from one of the dynastic lines of the Dolgoruky princes who founded Moscow. According to her aunt, Elena demonstrated special mental powers as well as a lively and penetrating mind from early childhood. Her grandfather was the governor of Astrakhan, a region where many Kalmyk Buddhists lived. This gave Elena the opportunity to become acquainted with Eastern teachings at an early age. She married at seventeen, but soon left her husband and set off to travel around the world. She visited many countries during the next quarter century, and claimed that after repeated attempts to get into Tibet, she eventually succeeded in making two trips there. In 1873 she went to America, where she met Colonel Henry Olcott, who aided her in founding the Theosophical movement in 1875.

Although the foundation of Theosophy, Blavatskaya’s main works, The Secret Doctrine and Isis Unveiled, are essentially an improbable mix of eastern legends, scraps of philosophy, attacks on science, travel notes, mediumistic revelations and simple fairy tales, they made a huge impression on an American and European reading public that was captivated by the East, and served as the underpinning of the Theosophical movement. American inventor Thomas Edison, French astronomer Camille Flammarion, and the eminent English psychologist William James were among the many celebrities of the day who belonged to the Theosophical Society.

It is difficult to exaggerate the enormous influence that the Theosophical society had on esoteric thought around the world. Theosophical societies sprang up in Germany in 1884, in France in 1893, in Russia in 1908 and in many other countries. The Theosophical Society was first based in the US, but its founders then moved its headquarters to India in 1879. Several years later, Blavatskaya—Madame Blavatsky— moved to Europe.

I n general, the developing scientific world regarded Theosophy and Spiritualism as dubious. However, with a spiritualist movement focusing so much public attention on psychic phenomena in England, the interest of several scholars was piqued. This led to the foundation of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) in 1882. Among the founders were intellectual spiritualists, theosophists, and scientists associated with Cambridge University, including Henry Sidgwick and Frederick W. H. Myers, with Sidgwick assuming the role of the SPR’s first president .

In 1885, following a visit by Sir William Barrett to the United States, the American Society for Psychical Research was founded in Boston. Famed psychologist William James and astronomer-mathematician Simon Newcomb inspired the formation of the ASPR, with Newcomb as its first president. Richard Hodgson came from Britain to the United States in 1887 to take over as executive secretary of the ASPR, which became an official branch of the British SPR, remaining as such until Hodgson’s death in 1905. Professor James H. Hyslop, a former professor of logic at Columbia University, became the newly re-organized ASPR’s secretary and director, making it independent of the SPR and bringing the technical methods of the scientist to psychical research in the United States.

The French Society for Psychical Research was also founded in 1885, and the Russian Society of Experimental Psychology formed a commission to study the phenomenon of “mind reading” in 1890.

During the years between the founding of the SPR and ASPR and Hyslop’s death in 1920, the major thrust of both organizations was an interest in the phenomena brought to light by spiritualist mediums. Many of these early investigators were quite stubborn and often skeptical, and brought up the important question when dealing with apparent communication with spirits: further information received by a medium is passed by an actual spirit entity, or through the medium’s own clairvoyant or telepathic reception of the same information from “records” or from living sources.

In general, all of the organizations sought to distinguish real paranormal phenomena from charlatanism and to investigate them as a branch of science. Besides the work with mediums, they did surveys of the public’s psychic experiences, investigated reported cases of apparitions, hauntings and poltergeists, and studied cases of spontaneous telepathy and precognition that had been confirmed by witnesses. One of the most extensive surveys was conducted by the SPR. The “Census of Hallucinations” was conducted in 1889-90, studying over 17,000 replies from the British public and asking questions about apparitional and other psychic experiences. Much was accomplished in research, even though the researchers themselves were sometimes greatly disappointed by the results—especially when investigating or studying spirit mediums.

The tests that the SPR conducted, contrary to the intentions of their members to find actual phenomena, helped to expose deception more often than confirming any reality of mediumistic phenomena. Some positive results with spirit mediums were often overshadowed by fraud and even scandal.

With the Theosophical Society, a scandal broke out that would be the first in a long series that exposed cases of fraud by theosophists. Emma Coulomb, who worked in the Society’s headquarters, exposed a number of the tricks that the theosophists were using to fool the public after apparently failing to convince Blavatsky to pay her for silence on the matter. Her story immediately appeared in the newspapers. As a result of this and other scandals, several theosophical societies, including the German one, were disbanded. Madame Blavatsky died in 1891.

There were other issues of opposition with spiritualist mediums both within and without the scientific community that affected the SPR somewhat, and the ASPR more directly. Between 1923 and 1941, the American SPR tried various means to popularize psychical research, which led to some loss of prestige. A splinter group was formed in Boston in 1925 as the Boston Society for Psychical Research. The fascination of some of its more prominent members with the antics of medium Mina Crandon of Boston (known as “Margery”) caused a wide split in the attitudes of members and outside observers alike when a great controversy over her legitimacy arose out of work carried on by a number of investigators, most notably Harry Houdini, who complained that she was a complete fraud who had even offered sexual favors to investigators in return for an endorsement as a genuine medium. Other colorful personalities also used accusations of fraud against Margery as publicity for themselves, and in fact, the controversy over Margery’s legitimacy as a medium/psychic continues to this day, with some histories of the period suggesting that Houdini planted evidence to frame Mrs. Crandon.

The Margery mediumship brought to a head the controversy over fraudulent mediums that still goes on (with accusations of fraud tossed at any supposedly gifted psychic). In some respects, it pushed researchers in a direction that firmly established the field of parapsychology as an experimental science.

When ASPR President Hyslop died, William McDougall succeeded to the presidency of the ASPR, and became one of the two people really responsible for the rise of what we call parapsychology. McDougall, a psychologist from Oxford, came over to teach at Harvard while also serving as ASPR president. His influence on the other important figure, a young biologist by the name of Joseph Banks Rhine, led Rhine to follow McDougall to Duke University in 1927.

Luckily for McDougall and Rhine, they were able to avoid becoming embroiled in the scandalous situation of the Margery mediumship, keeping a skeptical, noncommittal attitude about her genuineness as a medium. Rhine and his wife Louisa followed McDougall to Duke in 1927 for postdoctoral studies, and along with McDougall were really interested in making studies of psychic phenomena acceptable to the academic world, and to research scientists, in the controlled experimental situation of the laboratory. They wished to do more than merely see psi at work: they sought patterns and explanations for the displays that the investigators witnessed. They wished to gather data that would lead to some kind of answers to prove the existence of this newly investigated phenomena. They also wished to show the universal nature of psychic abilities, that all people shared the talents seemingly evidenced by so called psychics and mediums. In addition, bringing psychical research into the laboratory with “normal” subjects and controlled conditions could reduce the chance of dealing with fraudulent subjects out for publicit y

As it happens, they were not the first researchers to give psychic phenomena the laboratory treatment. Over in France, in the early 20th century, Rene Warcollier conducted what might be considered the first remote viewing experiments, though often these were telepathy experiments with senders focusing on drawings, rather than location descriptions. Warcollier, in collaboration with Gardner Murphy, also conducted transatlantic telepathy experiments in the early 1920s.

In the United States, psychologist John Coover conducted various ESP experiments in a laboratory at Stanford University, under funding by Thomas Stanford. Coover’s results were generally negative (no better than chance) according to his report published in 1917, though later reassessment of the data presented showed there was actually statistical significance displayed. One of the more interesting studies he performed had to do with a person knowing when they were being stared at, a commonly reported experience, and one that is the subject of much current parapsychological research.

Even with these earlier researchers making their mark, it was McDougall and then the Rhines who really kick-started the field of parapsychology under that name. Coined by Max Dessoir of Germany several years before, J. B. Rhine, with McDougall’s approval, adopted the term “parapsychology” to somewhat distance his laboratory/academic studies of psychic phenomena from the work of the psychical researchers. The original sense of his use of the word parapsychology related to experimental and quantitative studies of psi, more or less as a subset of the broad category of psychical research, although today we use the terms interchangeably, along with the term “psi research.”

During the early work by McDougall and the Rhines, the terms “extrasensory perception” and “psychokinesis” were introduced with ESP covering the informational psychic abilities, and PK relating to the interactional ones. ESP is probably a poor term, since there may not be anything extra about this information channel, or even anything sensory. Yet it does seem to mimic the way we normally perceive things (“seeing” a vision that may be precognitive in nature). Psi, the 23rd letter of the Greek alphabet, was finally introduced as a more or less generic heading covering both ESP and PK.

After one year at Duke, Rhine joined the staff of the Department of Psychology. His area of specialization began with experiments on telepathy and clairvoyance, and later with psychokinesis and precognition. During his first few years there, psychologist Karl Zener, a colleague of Rhine’s, developed the ESP cards so familiar to all, in order to simplify the statistics involved in collecting the data. The initial results of those early tests were less than inspiring, until some long distance telepathy tests were conducted in 1933, later written up by Rhine in his book Extra Sensory Perception. These experiments, with participants J. G. Pratt (who later worked with Rhine as a parapsychologist) and Herbert Pearce achieved significant scores and stirred controversy around those scores that continues to this day .

The Parapsychology Laboratory was started on its own in 1935, with the Journal of Parapsychology beginning publication in 1937. Initial emphasis of the Laboratory was on strict, experimentally controlled investigations, and this was stated in the Journal’s first issue as the way of psi research for the future (by McDougall). While this was not the first time controlled laboratory experiments had been conducted, it was the first time an organization/laboratory had been set up for continued statistical analysis of psi effects. Rhine’s research also deals with subsequent periods of the history of parapsychology, which we will discuss later in this book.

In the US and the UK, there were numerous stellar performers in the ranks of mediums from the late 19th to early 20th centuries, some working as mental mediums (messages from the deceased), some as physical mediums (those dim or dark room séance folks who had things moving around and ectoplasm appearing) or both. Fraud was rampant, unfortunately, though there were mediums who seemed genuine to the researchers who investigated them, and some who were a bit “mixed.”

Most of the physical mediums would conduct their séances in near or total darkness, quite possibly because the phonies and stage performers created an expectation in lay audiences that this was the only way for the spirits to come forth. However, such conditions left lots of room for fraudulently produced effects.

One of the most famous and controversial physical mediums of the nineteenth century, Daniel Dunglas Home, stayed away from total darkness in his séances. Of course, it might be argued that he never did a séance, as no spirits were contacted. Among the effects reportedly produced by Home were raps on tables and walls, levitation of articles on a table or of the table itself, self-levitation (including one reported incident where he levitated horizontally out of one window and returned through another in a different part of the room), temporary immunity to fire with the apparent ability to transfer the ability, though in a limited way, to others, and continued physical events occurring until well after the formal séance.

Spirits? From the descriptions of Home and other similar physical mediums, it would appear they were more gifted with psychokinesis than with any sort of spirit contact abilities. However, his reported feats fit in with reports of shamans and other mystics around the world who were either channeling or were given such powers by divine or spiritual entities.

Another physical medium who claimed to be getting her powers from the spirit world was Eusapia Palladino. A stout, Italian woman of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Palladino was known to produce a wide range of physical events in her séances, including raps, levitations, curtain movements, breezes, partial materializations of some wispy forms, “cold” fire and fights, and more, some of it in full light. Palladino was also known for faking effects for the clients and researchers. Apparently, she admitted doing this because it was easier on her to fake the effects than to “really” produce them. Even given this proclivity to take the easy way out, the researchers and magicians who studied her still found much that was inexplicable, including the bizarre loss of weight during séances (those where they could detect no fraud). In fact, the weight loss was common for her, with the average being only a few pounds.

Researchers from all over studied Palladino—but not without problems. An 1895 study by the British SPR yielded what has been called the “Cambridge Fiasco.” The researchers of the SPR were apparently unprepared to study Palladino under appropriate controlled conditions. According to the late parapsychologist D. Scott Rogo, because the SPR had not kept up on the European literature about her, they were unaware of her ability to fake things. Of course, Palladino, not hit with many controls, took the easy way out and apparently faked it.

The SPR was embarrassed about the situation, though three more SPR investigators, Everard Fielding, W. W. Baggally, and Hereward Carrington, did give Palladino another go. This time, after careful controls, they reported that Palladino was genuine. The account of the investigation, known as the “Fielding Report,”1 described hundreds of separate phenomena reportedly manifested under stringent conditions.

While there were probably hundreds (if not thousands) of mental mediums operating in the late 1800s and early 1900s, probably two of the more famous of the period were Lenore Piper and Gladys Osborne Leonard.

Mrs. Piper came under scrutiny of the psychical researchers in the US in the 1890s, primarily Richard Hodgson. Mrs. Piper had a number of spirit “controls” who either spoke through her or came through in automatic writing, including fictional controls (in other words, the person the “spirit” claimed to be never really lived). In addition, Mrs. Piper apparently could gain information from both the dead and the living. While telepathy of living sources was often the preferred explanation for how some of the information received by mediums like Mrs. Piper could be true, Hodgson became convinced that her sources were often the deceased.

Gladys Leonard, a medium from Great Britain, began channeling early in the twentieth century. Feda, her control, was apparently the Hindu wife of one of Leonard’s ancestors. Feda gave no direct evidence that could be used to verify her existence, though as with a number of the reincarnation cases, sufficiently detailed records that could sort out any verifiable information from what Mrs. Leonard already knew about her ancestor probably didn’t exist. Leonard was thoroughly investigated for fraud by researchers, and was extremely successful with a number of complex tasks that appeared to limit the possibility of her telepathically picking up information from the minds of those sitting in the séance.

Better-known, though not nearly as well investigated, was the medium/channeler Edgar Cayce. Born in Kentucky, in 1877, the man known as “the sleeping prophet” was apparently capable of all sorts of readings for people with no more information than a name and address, indicating he was likely a bit of a remote viewer. His readings were typically directed at the health of the individual, and were reportedly more than a bit accurate. Prescribing treatments that are rooted less in medicine than in folk medicine—much like shamanic practitioners—many people reported being helped by Cayce’s advice. Cayce had no working knowledge of medicine (which showed, according to some critics, in the inaccuracies of many readings). Readings also included those concerning past lives, and Cayce often spoke while in trance of the ancient civilization of Atlantis.

Cayce first worked as a salesman, though he did report having psychic experiences even as a child. It was not until after he sought out a hypnotist to help him with an apparently incurable throat ailment that his true “calling” became evident. In “trance,” Cayce was apparently able to both diagnose and offer a cure for his own ailment. It was suggested he try this same technique with others, and subsequently he began diagnosing and suggesting treatment through a self-induced trance state.

During his lifetime, Cayce conducted approximately thirty thousand health readings. In 1931, Cayce founded the Association for Research and Enlightenment (ARE) in Virginia Beach, Virginia. The ARE supports some research and education and has thousands of members and local groups around the world, though primarily in the United States. Cayce died in 1945, having left his personal mark on the lives of tens of thousands of people through his readings, and millions more through his writings. His books are still in print and easily obtained, and his readings are available online.

After the West’s initial enthusiasm towards psi phenomena in the early part of the 20th century, the 1930s saw a rise in criticism of extrasensory perception and mysticism with members of the scientific community reacting negatively to the activities of the psi community. Even Rhine’s serious research and several scientific papers on ESP during this time could not sway popular scientific opinion. The first few years of the Rhine work produced little in the way of knowledge of how psi functions, although there did pop up clusters of well-scoring subjects in the early days, and a few effects led to looking at attitude and personality influences on the occurrence of psi. In 1940, in a volume by Rhine, J. G. Pratt, and a few others entitled Extra Sensory Perception after Sixty Years, the Rhine work was summarized. The volume describes 145 ESP experiments in which more than 75,000 people participated. In 106 of them, the results surpassed the number predicted by probability theory. Rhine summarized various approaches to the study of paranormal phenomena and invited his scientific colleagues and critics to write independent chapters; however, the negative attitude prevailed and only three of them responded due to continuing severe pressure from the academic world. Nevertheless, Rhine’s book still played an historical role. He never gave up, and continually refined his laboratory methodology in the fight to gain acceptance for parapsychology among the wider scientific community.

Around that same time (1941), the ASPR was reorganized and reconstructed under the guidance of Dr. George H. Hyslop (Professor Hyslop’s son), bringing together under one roof the old ASPR and the Boston SPR. At the initial meeting, Dr. Gardner Murphy, a prominent psychologist, was elected to the Board of Trustees and named Chairman of the ASPR Research Committee. This became a commitment to doing some laboratory research, and an element of continuity and relationship to the work done at the Duke Parapsychology Laboratory.

Scandal, fraud, and an emphasis on direction towards laboratory interest in psi and away from investigations of mediumship, as well as technological development in the world in general, pushed the mystique of the medium into the background of psychical research. Parapsychologists, as they were now more frequently called, were more interested in proving to the world the existence of psi phenomena and learning how it works through controlled situations with average people than they were in watching tables tilt and ectoplasm form, at least in the US and UK. Even the attitudes of the public began to shift. While people still went to see mediums, psychics, and fortunetellers, they did so in a more private manner, as technology seemed to ridicule those practices, especially in light of the fraud controversies surrounding so many mediums.

I n some parts of the world, Eastern mysticism was often mixed up with ideas of the “occult” and “black magic,” and some seemingly psychic figures often added to those connections, whether deserved or not. Take for example the case of one of history’s darker-seeming characters, Grigory Rasputin (1869-1916)—thought by some to be a practitioner of the “black arts. ”

The “sacred elder” was a peasant by birth who gained a reputation as a mystic with healing powers and second sight. Sometimes called the “Mad Monk” due to his religious practices, a mythology has sprung up around him and his role in the court of the Romanovs and their fall from power. In 1905, the healer was sent for to help Alexis, the son of Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra. The boy suffered from hemophilia and somehow Rasputin was able to provide some relief or healing—or so it seemed.

From then on, he became a favorite of the Russian imperial couple during that period, having promoted the reshuffling of ministers and the destruction of the government’s apparatus through his hypnotic influence, extrasensory abilities, and intrigues. Stories of his influence over the court, his sexual antics, drinking, taking bribes, and sometimes bizarre behavior affected his reputation and that of the court. One could definitely say his presence exerted influence over many political decisions made, whether it was his own charismatic advice or simply the way others approached the Tsar and Tsarina while he was present. Some historians “credit” him with the weakening of power of the imperial family, making it easier for their ouster.

Besides tales of his ESP and what some called his unnatural ability to influence those around him, including predictions of a coming war before the start (or even the inkling of the start) of WWI, there is much mythology built up around his assassination and specifically how he died. After no effect from eating poisoned cakes, according to accounts Rasputin was apparently shot, stabbed, beaten, and drowned before death claimed him.

Early 20th century scientific investigation of ESP was, of course, not limited to the US and UK, or even France and Germany, as research in Russia had also begun in earnest. The Russian scientists Vladimir Bekhterev, Vladimir Durov, Bernard Kazhinsky and Leonid Vasiliev are among the pioneers who began serious scientific research into the phenomena of telepathy and mental suggestion. The prominent Russian neurophysiologist and psychiatrist Vladimir Bekhterev, who had a longtime scientific interest in psychic phenomena, was the founder of the Psychoneurological Institute in 1907, and the Institute of the Study of the Brain and Mental Activity in 1918 in St. Petersburg (Leningrad). At the suggestion of the celebrated animal trainer Vladimir Durov, he conducted a series of joint experiments using mental suggestion with animals as subjects. Bekhterev describes how they began their teamwork2 :

A number of experiments of this type were conducted in my apartment with a small male dog named Pikki, by nature a very lively and smart fox terrier… The experiments were conducted after the dinner hour with several members of my family, including two doctors, O. Bekhtereva-Nikonova and E. Vorobyova present…

Pikki easily carried out all mental tasks [of those present]… In order to be fully confident…I decided to conduct a similar experiment myse lf, without telling anyone what it would be. My task was to have the dog jump up on a round chair located about two sazhens [sazhen is an old Russian measure of length, equivalent to 2.13 meters] from the grand piano and to sit there. As in our previous experiments, the dog was invited to jump up on the chair; while I was concentrating on the shape of the round chair, I looked into the dog’s eyes, and Pikki bolted from me at a breakneck speed and ran around the dining table many times. I considered the experiment a failure, but I recalled that I had concentrated exclusively on the shape of the round chair, forgetting that I should have begun concentrating on having the dog move toward the round chair and jump on it. So I decided to repeat the experiment, without telling anyone about the error, and corrected myself as I just described.

I invited the dog to jump up on the chair again and took its muzzle between my palms. I began thinking that the dog should run to the round chair located about one sazhen behind me, jump on it and remain there. After concentrating for about half to three quarters of a minute, I released the dog, and within an instant the dog was already sitting on the round chair. As I mentioned earlier, no one except me knew about the task that Pikki had executed in this case, because I did not consult with any one about it and, nevertheless, Pikki guessed my secret without the slightest difficulty.

Bekhterev and Durov subsequently conducted several thousand experiments in their study of human and animal telepathy. Some of the experiments were conducted at the Bekhterev Brain Institute in Leningrad, while others were done in Moscow, mainly at the Laboratory of Practical Zoo-psychology, which Durov founded. In a single year (1921), 1278 experiments of mental suggestion to animals were conducted there: 696 of them were successful, and 582 were unsuccessful. Scientists at Moscow University also took part in conducting experiments and processing their results.

In 1919, Bernard Kazhinsky, an electrical engineer who worked in Durov’s laboratory, began investigating the electromagnetic nature of telepathy or “brain radio” as it was then called. These experiments were conducted in chambers shielded by metal and other materials. In 1923, Kazhinsky published his results in the book The Transfer of Thoughts. Two years later Kazhinsky met Bekhterev, who invited him to work on a device for the electromagnetic enhancement of mental suggestion at his Brain Institute. Kazhinsky created a device in early 1927 but it proved unable to exert the desired effect on the telepathy process. The work was soon brought to an abrupt standstill in December 1927, due to the sudden death of Bekhterev by poisoning. Many authors suspect the state police—the OGPU—had a hand in this, as there were rumors that Bekhterev had diagnosed Stalin with paranoia .

Bekhterev’s pupil and collaborator, the physiologist Professor Leonid Vasiliev succeeded him as head of research in telepathy at the Brain Institute. At this time, the Narkomat (Ministry) of Defense began to show interest in this research, assigning Vasiliev with testing the hypothesis of the electromagnetic nature of telepathy. Vasiliev’s method was to first place the subject in a metal chamber, then repeat the experiment outside the chambers. The manifestation of telepathy did not disappear when metal screens that block electromagnetic waves were used to shield individuals, prompting Vasiliev to conclude that electromagnetic waves were not the carriers of mental signals. However, the opposite results were received at the recently established Institute of Biophysics by academician Peter Lazarev and Professor Sergei Turlygin, who even determined that the length of a wave of brain radiation was 1.8-2.1 mm. Pavlov’s Institute of Physiology also took part in this research.

Biologist Alexander Gurvich made an interesting contribution to the understanding of the nature of psi phenomena. In his attempt to understand the process of plant morphogenesis, he came to believe in the existence of specific biological fields that shape live objects as they grow and that ensure their development, and he was the first scientist to introduce the concept of a morphogenetic field in his 1922 paper On Embryonic Fields. Gurvich worked on developing the concept of a biofield, and introduced this term into scientific jargon. A classical academic scientist, Professor Gurvich always had a lively interest in the work of the Brain Institute, and sought to explain the phenomenon of telepathy from the point of view of biological fields. His works were widely published in the West in the 1920s and 1930s, and have found further elaboration in Rupert Sheldrake’s ideas about morphic fields and morphic resonance, which became very popular towards end of 20th century.

V. K. Chekhovsky, an engineer who had conducted experiments in telepathy independently in the past, arrived at the Brain Institute in the mid-1920s. He worked with a group of people to try to simultaneously transfer the same thought to a recipient, called “collective inductor.” The Institute’s academic council and Bekhterev became personally interested in Chekhovksy’s research and responded to it positively. With this support, Chekhovsky launched efforts to open a branch of the Brain Institute in Moscow.

During this period of scientific research in Russia, there is a strange account of an attempt to use the ancient magic of involtatsiya3 to overthrow the ruling regime. This is how the well-known biophysicist Alexander Chizhevsky (1897-1964), who also studied telepathy and was well acquainted with the participants in this process, describes it4 :

This work made it possible to hide another more dangerous activity. A baker’s dozen of like-minded men, including Chekhovksy, gathered weekly on Thursday evenings to commune together at his apartment [opposite the building of OGPU] on Lubyanka Street, observing the strictest rules of conspiracy. Silently draping certain cloaks over their shoulders and donning strange headdresses, they took their places around an extended table with rounded-off edges. In front of each member lay a book inscribed with mysterious letters. In the center of the table stood a skillfully sculpted wax bust of… Stalin himself! The wax head was covered with Stalin’s own hair that had been bought for an outrageous sum of money from Stalin’s hairdresser. Sometimes in the center of the table, instead of the bust there would be a photo of Stalin’s head, shot from behind. The photograph was as difficult to obtain as his hair, but the people who gathered there needed an exact image of the nape of the leader’s neck.

Then the action would begin: special verbal formulaic incantations were pronounced as the nape of the leader’s neck in the photo or the nape of his wax bust was pierced with a steel needle. This area is known as the occipital area: the centers that govern breathing and heartbeat, and the medulla oblongata are located there. The people gathered there passionately wished to destroy these vitally important parts of the leader.

Eventually the appropriate security services found out about this criminal intention. On one of those Thursdays, the criminal community was neutralized. Representatives of these same security services suddenly appeared and arrested all the participants, or so they thought. They laid an ambush in the apartment. But when an unusually dressed person appeared in that empty apartment the next day, the guards, who had been waiting in, bolted from the strange apartment in a panic. It turned out that one of the participants managed to conceal himself in some nook, and hid there, without anyone noticing him. When he couldn’t bear hiding out any longer, he decided to leave the secret shelter “come what may,” and as he was leaving, he frightened the ambush party to death, and they ran away. This was how he gained his freedom, and this is how this case became known to the public.

I n Germany, the Thule Society, which was destined to play an exceptional role in the fate of Europe, was founded on August 17, 1918. It was a Masonic organization, the Munich branch of the German Order (established in 1912) that incorporated the mystical pan-Germanism of Guido von List, theosophy, and other fashionable occult currents of the time. As a political act, members of the Society organized the German Workers’ Party in 1918 (later the National Socialist German Workers’ Party or NSGWP), which Adolf Hitler joined the following year.

The young Führer quickly found spiritual teachers and friends there, including Dietrich Eckart, Alfred Rosenberg, and Rudolf Hess, who became one of his closest associates. The young Hess was passionately interested in mysticism and astrology, and was a student of Professor Karl Haushofer at Munich University, whose geopolitical theories impressed Hess deeply. Hess introduced his friend Adolf to Haushofer, and from that point on the Professor became one of the Führer’s main spiritual instructors—a reputation later as Hitler’s spiritual director. Haushofer’s ideas quickly found their way into Hitler’s Mein Kampf, and after Hitler came to power, Haushofer’s geopolitical and mystical theories became extraordinarily popular in Germany. One of them was an idea that the supermen who would rule the world would come from the mythical hidden city of Shambhala in Tibet.

Karl Haushofer served in the diplomatic service in Asia from 1887, and then as a brigade general during WWI. It was rumored that he possessed powerful extrasensory powers, that he could predict the movement of enemy troops, and even show exactly where and when shells and bombs would hit. In other words, a participant in ESP warfare.

After the war, in 1921, he became a professor at Munich University. This was his public face, but there was another side to him about which Haushofer usually kept silent. He was in touch with Blavatskaya, and, possibly, with George Gurdjieff, one of the most prominent mystical and spiritual teachers of the 20th century whose teachings also related to Shambhala.

Legends about Gurdjieff abound. Born in the city of Aleksandropol in the Caucasus to a Greek father and an Armenian mother, as a child he was tremendously attracted to esoteric and spiritual knowledge, which his father and the Father Superior of a local orthodox cathedral cultivated in him. From the mid-1890s, he spent approximately 15 years traveling in the East, including studies with the Sufis and living in Tibet for some time. Gurdjieff claimed that he “had the possibility to get into the holy of holies of almost all the secret organizations, such as, the occult, religious, philosophical, political, and mystical societies inaccessible to the ordinary person…”

Gurdjieff, Haushofer, Hitler, Blavatskaya, and artist Nikolai Roerich all tried to find Shambhala—the mythical land of spiritual teachers. They organized a number of expeditions to search for it, and their objectives ranged from seeking higher knowledge to seeking higher powers. The esoteric western public trembled at the sound of expressions like the “warriors of Shambhala” and at the mythological descriptions of the battles of the armies of Good and Evil and the use of higher forces and fantastic types of weapons. Both the Nazis and the communists were looking for Shambhala. As a result, for many people at that time, Shambhala became a symbol of ESP Wars rather than a symbol of spirituality.

O ne of these expeditions to find Shambhala was led by Professor Alexander Barchenko and planned by a special department of the OGPU. Barchenko had long been deeply interested in parapsychology, and had conducted experiments in telepathy while studying at the Department of Medicine at Yurievsky University from 1905-1911. In 1920, he met academician Bekhterev, and was sent by the Brain Institute to the Kola Peninsula to study the mysterious disease of meryacheniye, described in the previous chapter.

After spending time in the north, Barchenko came to the conclusion that the northern peoples descended from the ancient Arctic civilization of Hyperborea, and in 1922, he set off on a new expedition to investigate this idea. Barchenko’s reports about the remnants of the Hyperborean civilization created a sensation, but Barchenko still needed financing. Consequently, he sent a letter to Felix Dzerzhinsky, the head of OGPU, in which he described his research and requested support. This information aroused the interest of the special services. In December of 1924, Barchenko was summoned to Moscow to report to the board of the OGPU. There he met Gleb Bokii, the head of the Special Department of OGPU.

On Lenin’s instructions, Bokii’s Special Department engaged in cryptography, breaking codes and gathering compromising material to discredit Bolshevik leaders. Bokii had money and the latest equipment. He organized the Laboratory of Neuro-Energy at the Special Department to study parapsychological phenomena and appointed Barchenko as its head.

Barchenko also convinced Bokii to organize an expedition to Shambhala. The main objective of this undertaking was to seek higher knowledge and higher powers. Bokii allocated a huge sum for the expedition—100,000 rubles (the equivalent of more than $500,000 at the time). The expedition was planned for the summer of 1925, but it fell through due to opposition from Trilisser, the head of espionage, and Chicherin, the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Bokii’s Special Department functioned for an additional twelve years, but Bokii and Barchenko were arrested during the wave of purges in 1937. They were later shot on charges of organizing an attempt to assassinate Stalin. All the parapsychological research was terminated, and the research materials disappeared without a trace into the archives of the NKVD.

In the Soviet Union, Stalin was now “clearing the space” of potential extrasensory threats, the reality of which he had no doubt. Magic had to be on his side and no one else’s—though perhaps Stalin believed he already had enough power, so it was better still to do without it altogether. Books on occultism were removed from shelves all across the country, members of esoteric groups were sent to camps and shot. Within a few years, occultism in Russia virtually ceased to exist and the only parapsychological research conducted at the time—Professor Vasiliev’s work at the Brain Institute—was completely shut down.

S piritualism and theosophy did have its influence in Germany, but Rudolf Steiner, the former head of the German Theosophical Society, resigned from it as a sign of dissent in 1913. That same year he established the new Anthroposophical Society, based on the belief in the existence of an intellectually understandable spiritual world. His lectures attracted huge audiences, and he was especially popular with students and society women. He even attracted important followers such as General Helmut Johan Ludwig von Moltke, Jr., chief of the General Staff of the German Army during World War I. This relationship ended badly, probably because Steiner was not held in high esteem by some at the time, including a new name on the German scene, Adolph Hitler.

As historian Anton Pervushin writes, “Even back in the days of the Weimar republic, when Nazis had no real power in Germany, Hitler gave orders to eliminate Steiner. He accused the founder of anthroposophy of using ‘black magic’ to subjugate von Moltke, thereby causing Germany’s defeat in the First World War. Plans were made to assassinate Steiner, but he secretly left Germany in the summer of 1922, never to return.”

Also involved with the Nazis was Erik Jan Hanussen, the so-called “Prophet of the Third Reich.” Born Jewish, as Hermann Steinschneider in Vienna, he took up stage mentalism (mind reading) and magic in his teens, and joined the army at the end of WWI. He adopted the stage name and persona of a self-proclaimed Danish count, as well as claims of incredible psychic and hypnotic powers. His fame grew in the 1920s, when he moved to Berlin and created a “Palace of the Occult.” He invested money in a number of high-ranking Nazis, and was introduced to Hitler in 1932. He publicly supported Hitler and the Nazi regime, especially in his published writings in his own astrological publication and in columns for several Berlin journals. He prophesized that Hitler would lead the Reich into a new age for Germany. It is believed he had some influence with Hitler, especially the dictator’s interests in the occult and magic, and arguably helped Hitler’s rise to power as Chancellor of Germany.

There are assumptions that he believed that hitching himself to the Nazis would protect him from any reprisals even in light of his Jewish background. He was quite wealthy, had achieved fame and secured favors for friends. However, in 1932 attempts to expose him as a charlatan led to revelations of his real name and heritage. Hanussen responded by refuting the claims, presenting papers showing he was the son of Danish nobility, raised by a Jewish couple after his parents died in an accident.

Apparently, the self-proclaimed psychic did not foresee his own fate, as in early 1933 he was arrested by the Nazis for using forged papers and shot. It is likely that no matter how much influence he might have had with Hitler and others of the rising Third Reich, his background and perpetrated fraud was too much of an embarrassment for the Nazis.

Was he genuinely clairvoyant or simply a psychic fraud? This is hard to say; however, some of his published predictions did come true, and others did not—par for the course for any psychic making predictions of an uncertain future. But Hanussen’s influence or, at the very least, participation can be seen when looking at the Nazis’ fascination and eventual obsession with the occult, definitely securing Erik Jan Hanussen’s place in the history of ESP Wars.

All totalitarian regimes seem to operate in the same way. When Hitler came to power in Germany, he, too, began to persecute those involved in the occult. But given his regime’s connections with the Thule mystical society, the reason why Hitler engaged in this persecution, even more than Stalin, seemed to be his desire to eliminate any potential competition. Nazi doctrine clearly had roots in mysticism, and numerous books, films and television shows have documented the Nazi obsession with the occult, and the influence of the occult on Nazi actions and beliefs.

Heinrich Himmler, another fan of mysticism, assisted Hitler in every possible way in the difficult business of Nazi spirituality. As head of the SS, the Nazi party’s elite military, Himmler transformed it into an organization with mystical rituals and symbolism with one of the goals of using ESP for military purposes.

In 1937, a new division was formed within the structure of the SS: “Ahnenerbe” (Ancestral Heritage). Its initial task was to study Germany’s historical and cultural heritage; however, the SS turned it into an organization that oversaw the development of secret weapons and information of parapsychological, mystical, and occult nature. From 1938-1939 the SS and the Ahnenerbe took an active part in preparing an expedition to Tibet that was headed by Ernst Schafer. The expedition’s goals were the establishment of political contacts, the classification of the races in Tibet, the discernment of the residual signs of physical Nordic traits, the search for Shambhala, the study of the Bon religion’s magic practices, and research into ESP techniques that could potentially be used by the Nazi regime. The expedition was received in Lhasa with respect, and the Tibetan authorities gave Schafer their general support. In spite of its success, the expedition soon had to curtail its activities on orders from Himmler due to the approach of World War II.

In spite of his passion for Tibet, Hitler had an even greater obsession with magical and religious artifacts. He was especially obsessed with the Holy Lance, also called the Spear of Destiny, which ostensibly would have granted power over the entire world. According to legend, the centurion Gaius Cassius had used this spear to “mercifully pierce” the side of Jesus Christ to end his torment. Young Adolf had seen this relic—or at least something purported to be the relic—in a museum at the Hofburg palace in Vienna, and it had made quite an impression on him. Hitler’s goal was to acquire this spear, which he did after the Anschluss with Austria. Thus, the major battle of the magic war had already been won in 1938. All that remained was a mere trifle: the conquest of the entire world.

This obsession with the mystical also led to rumored attempts to find other magical, occult, and religious artifacts—where the idea of the Nazi search for the lost Ark of the Covenant in the film Raiders of the Lost Ark comes from. According to some accounts from WWII, groups of Nazis canvassed parts of the world to uncover items of power or look for lost or hidden lands to raid for weapons and technology to help Hitler’s goals.

Others in Nazi Germany aided in furthering their ESP war. In 1942, Navy Captain Hans Roider advanced the theory that the English would use a pendulum to locate German submarines. Working with a pendulum (or resonator) is a standard ESP or dowsing procedure, and is used to answer a question from the response of the pendulum. The pendulum, which is hard to hold still, changes the direction or frequency of its oscillations when it is placed over an assigned point on a map when an operator makes a correct guess. The movement is caused by unconsciously controlled minor muscle movements called the Ideomotor Response, acting ostensibly in such cases on information received via ESP in the unconscious. The idea was understood and welcomed, and the Ahnenerbe organized the Pendulum Institute in order to locate sites for military purposes.

The Institute’s best-known operation was the search for Mussolini. When Benito Mussolini was arrested in Italy in September 1943, Hitler ordered “il Duche” found and rescued. But the intelligence services could not find him, and ESP was brought into the operation.

The Pendulum Institute recruited a group of psychics, who spent all day without taking work breaks, holding plum-bobs suspended over maps. These psychics had no success with indicating Mussolini’s location, and the search was transferred back to the Intelligence Services. Covert operations expert, Otto Scorseni, eventually liberated the Italian dictator, and Hitler bestowed much kindness on Scorseni, whereas the psychics were severely reprimanded.

E ast of Germany, Stalin, despite trying to wipe out occultism and its practitioners in the Soviet Union, was also trying to get help from the mystical and parapsychological sources. An interesting case of Stalin’s participation in ESP-based warfare is the story of the curse on opening Tamerlane’s tomb, and its history can serve as an example of the types of synchronicity that Carl Jung described. It also illustrates Stalin’s attitude to other-worldly matters and his obvious unwillingness to confront magic forces.

Nicknamed the Iron Lame Man because of an injury, Tamerlane (Timur, 1336-1405), a descendant of one of Genghis Khan’s commanders, conquered huge territories stretching from India to the Mediterranean Sea in the 14th century. His incredible cruelty was legendary: he built walls from the bodies of living people, covered them with lime, and erected towers made of tens of thousands of severed heads. Tamerlane made Samarkand the capital of his empire and when he died, he was buried there in the magnificent mausoleum of Gur-e Amir. On the tomb, in addition to a multitude of Tamerlane’s names, there was a warning to all who wished to unseal the tomb: “Those who disturb Timur’s rest will bring disasters upon themselves, and brutal wars will break out around the world.” And this is indeed what came to pass.

For about five centuries nobody dared to disturb Timur’s remains, not even the Bolsheviks—neither during the revolution, nor the civil war, nor afterwards. But Stalin was irresistibly drawn to everything that was connected with the great conquerors and rulers of the past. He hinted in every way possible at how similar he was to Peter I and naturally found it impossible to ignore a relic such as Tamerlane’s tomb on Soviet land.

In June 1941, a scientific expedition went to Samarkand with the purpose of opening the tomb, and studying the extant remains, and creating a portrait of the conqueror based on those remains, and then exhibit them. Unexpected obstacles and equipment breakdowns delayed the expedition’s work. When he learned about the expedition’s purpose, eighty-year-old Maksud Alayev, the custodian of the monument, was horrified and pointed out the warning inscription to the visitors. The expedition participants were overly cautious and wanted to play it safe, so they sent a report [about the curse] to Moscow. Orders came back to arrest Alayev for spreading rumors and panic and to open the tomb immediately.

Witnesses relate that right before the tomb was opened, several elderly clan leaders came to see the expedition participants to repeat their warning that war would break out if they opened Timur’s tomb. At the exact moment the tomb was opened, the lights in the mausoleum went out. But nobody dared to disobey the orders from Moscow, and on June 19, 1941, Tamerlane’s sarcophagus was opened.

War began 48 hours later—early in the morning on June 21, Germany attacked the Soviet Union. This war truly did turn out to be one of the most brutal wars in the history of mankind.

Later, expedition operative Malik Kayumov related this story to Marshal Zhukov, who took it seriously and conveyed it to Stalin. On December 20, 1942, Timur’s remains were re-interred with full burial rites, and the mausoleum of Gur-e Amir was restored during the height of the war. Remarkably, this date coincided with the Soviet victory at Stalingrad, one of the most crucial battles of World War II .

T here are accounts of the British utilizing psychic resources to fight their own ESP Wars against the Nazis. One such account has groups of practitioners of what became known as Wicca erecting a “cone of power” to stave off a possible German invasion of England, another puts the onus on psychic Dion Fortune’s ceremonial magic group.

There are rumors that during WWII, Winston Churchill consulted medium Helen Duncan for advice, though there are also interpretations of historical accounts and records that Churchill himself was a believer in spiritualism and a psychic who used his powers to defend England.

There are many other episodes in the history up to and including World War II with psychic associations, enough to produce an entire volume. We just wanted to show that there was some historical background for the ESP Wars which came later on, and truly whet your appetite for the better documented use of psychic abilities you’ll be reading about.