Among the rare and as yet unexplained biophysical phenomena that we observed, a special place, in our view, is held by the burning effect.
Its essence comes down to this: Ninel Sergeyevna, as a result of that same tension, acts upon other people and causes them a burn. She usually does this with the palms of her hands, as that is easier and more habitual for her. The burning can be produced either by contact or without contact. The greatest distance at which this effect was registered in our experiments lies within two metres.
We gave great attention to this effect because it is reproducible under practically any conditions and does not require special physical effort, as telekinesis does. In the process we succeeded in obtaining varied information about changes in the external environment, observing visible results of the action on various objects, and also studying the tension of Ninel Sergeyevna's own organism during the burning.
We discovered this effect by chance. N. S. mastered it and trained on her own; we had no information about “burning” from the press, and no one had told us anything about it.
The history of the effect, briefly, is as follows. In 1963–1965 Ninel Sergeyevna underwent a course of treatment with the psychotherapist G. S. Belyaev, who successfully practised treatment by hypnosis and by the method of autogenic training. During the sessions N. S. was found to have heightened suggestibility. Both in the state of hypnosis and under self-suggestion, burns of various degrees appeared on her skin — the marks of rings on her fingers that did not exist but had been suggested to her, and so on. On the whole, the course of treatment proved successful, and the illness practically went away.
With time, however, Ninel Sergeyevna began to feel spontaneous surges of… burning. For the most part it was felt in her feet and in her hands, and it occurred at night during sleep, as a rule in its initial stage. The burning was often very strong and painful. This unpleasant sensation could not be relieved either by cooling or by any medicines. At the same time the temperature of the body where the heat and burning appeared was normal and did not differ in any way from the temperature of the other parts of the body. Attempts to get rid of the painful sensation by self-suggestion were unsuccessful. These episodes became more frequent and caused alarm and anxiety, since the painful state lasted several hours. With time N. S. gradually began to get used to these unexpected and troubling pains. The fear went away. On the whole, one could live with it. When the burning stopped, no complications arose.
Thinking about how to get rid of this affliction, we decided that my wife would try to transmit the burning to me mentally. We reckoned that the experience she had gained in the self-suggestion sessions would allow her to get rid of the pain. The idea was strange in itself and not grounded in any previous life experience. We decided to try, although we did not know what needed to be done or how.
Imagine our surprise when, during the next attack, my wife transmitted the troubling burning to me — to the forearm of my arm, which I had placed against her “burning” leg. At first I felt nothing except ordinary warmth. Soon, however, a slight tingling appeared, and then a weak burning, which gradually intensified and became strong. The skin on my arm reddened. The burning continued for no less than 10–15 minutes even after I had taken my arm away.
This was the beginning of our observations, experiments and search for the physical essence of the phenomenon we had discovered.
After Ninel Sergeyevna learned to transmit the burning to another person, her unexpected surges of heat stopped. But if for a long time, two or three months, she did not practise and did not transmit her energy to anyone else, she would begin to have headaches, malaise and unpleasant sensations in the region of the spine.
After numerous training sessions, checks and experiments, an optimal regime of load was worked out. N. S. learned to regulate the intensity and direction of her “thermal” action and to transmit energy either with the palms of her hands, which happened quickly and without particular effort, or without contact — at a distance, which turned out to be more difficult and required greater inner tension.
As a rule, N. S., when performing the procedure, first moistened her hands with eau de cologne, alcohol or, if these were not available, water. This cools the hands and makes the subsequent effort easier. Either the palms or the backs of the hands are moistened. She herself, as a rule, does not feel the burning that she transmits to another person. When the palms are moistened, the sensation of burning is transmitted faster and with less expenditure of energy.
I shall tell of strange cases that we saw during these experiments. They usually occurred when N. S. got carried away and the burning was being transmitted to another person relatively easily and quickly. During such an action she would suddenly begin to feel a strong burning on her body (as a rule, on her back). Feeling no burning at all in her palms, Ninel Sergeyevna would quite unexpectedly begin to suffer from intense heat on her back and would be forced to stop the experiment. As a rule, in these cases holes formed in her underwear made of acetate silk, precisely in the places where the strong burning was felt. The area of these holes, which had the most indefinite outlines, sometimes reached more than ten or so square centimetres. Along the edges there was no visible melting or thickening, nor any torn threads.
With intense transmission of burning, redness appears on the skin surface of the test subjects, and sometimes burns with water blisters. The heat is at times so painful that people are unable to bear it. After repeated exposures to the burning, the skin becomes light brown, as with a strong suntan, less elastic, and begins to peel and flake off in small pieces. This process and the healing of the wounds take place painlessly, without any inflammation.
N. S.'s intense action produces on the skin such changes as occur with thermal or ultraviolet irradiation. At the same time, careful and comprehensive checking has established that the temperature at the site of burning, both in the patient and in N. S., changes very insignificantly, only within one degree Celsius.
People give differing subjective assessments. Some at first feel a slight tingling, and then a sensation of warmth that grows stronger and turns into a strong burning. Others feel a slight cooling, and then heating and burning, as with a mustard plaster. For still others, after a sharp, sliding touch by something elastic and invisible, an unbearable burning sets in. There are other assessments and descriptions as well. However, despite some difference in details, this sensation is mainly assessed as burning, comparable to the action of strong mustard, an ant bite and similar irritants. However, this sensation does not resemble the real sensation of heat from touching something hot. The character of an ordinary burn of the skin by a hot object, by steam or by hot water, and also its healing, are completely different from what we observed in the experiments on the transmission of Kulagina's burning.
I shall give some examples of how the burning is explained by people who have experienced this astonishing sensation, as well as the opinions of scientists. I shall begin with what the English biophysicist Benson Herbert wrote:
“Madame Kulagina took the rings off her hands and asked me to roll up the left sleeve of my shirt. I understood that she wanted to repeat our earlier experiment, which had taken place during our stay in Leningrad in June 1972. On that occasion she had held my hand and produced an unbearable sensation of heat, which I could not endure for more than 2 minutes.
Unexpectedly the idea came to me to propose a certain change to the experiment: I asked Kulagina this time not to let go of my hands, however much pain I might feel, but to continue indefinitely, since I was interested in what would happen if I could endure this torture further. My decision caused some excitement among my colleagues, who formed a circle in order to witness the striking results.
Then Madame Kulagina surprised me by asking for a little vodka. I knew that she does not drink alcohol, and asked what it was for; she replied, smiling: ‘To wash my hands…’
I braced myself to endure the pain, while she lightly squeezed my arm above the wrist. After approximately a minute I began to feel the same as before, but this time the sensation seemed considerably stronger. In the first experiment I had not been entirely sure whether this sensation was electrical or thermal. I hoped now that, being subjected to this test for a long time, I would be able to come to a clear conclusion. I knew, for example, that self-suggestion is capable of producing such effects (including red marks on the skin). However, there is extensive experimental evidence that in the case of Madame Kulagina this phenomenon is objective (for example, she exerts an effect on photographic film), and in my report of 1972 I gave other arguments in support of its objectivity.
As for me, I felt acute physical pain. I had to clench my teeth and beat my forehead with my free hand in order to endure the ‘torture’. Soon it became clear to me that this sensation was purely thermal in nature, and not electrical. Apart from the heat concentrated under her hand, I felt no other symptoms. I do not know how long the experiment lasted, approximately 4–5 minutes, then I involuntarily fell back onto a sofa standing nearby and she released my arm.
Several minutes passed before I came to myself and was able to examine the burnt area. It was painful to touch. It looked bright red and slightly swollen, indeed just as if it had been subjected to intense thermal action. My colleague Cassirer photographed the burn mark, and I again leaned back on the sofa and closed my eyes.
I was soon alarmed by a groan: I looked up and saw that Madame Kulagina had pressed a small flat camera to Mr Cassirer's arm. Her hands touched only the camera, and not his arm.
He complained that he felt hot, and asked to be released from such a test. This was interesting to me, since Cassirer had felt nothing in our experiment of 1972. Later he confessed to me that he had previously thought I was insincere, playing along in order to please Madame Kulagina, but now he understood that I had not exaggerated the sensation.
It should be noted here that a certain Moscow scientist suggested that Kulagina possibly had a substance on her palm which, when acted upon by vodka, produced a burn. But in this case that could not have been connected with Cassirer's arm, which was not in contact with her hand. Between them was the camera! The width of this camera between the palm and the arm was 2.4 centimetres, its other dimensions 12.8–4.8 centimetres.
Several minutes before this experiment I had carefully examined Kulagina's hands and run my hand over them. They were completely dry…
In my case the burn disappeared only after 8 days, after my return to England…”
We have taken this testimony from the journal “Paraphysics” (London, 1973, vol. 7, no. 3).
I shall also give an extract from an article in the magazine “Studencheskiy meridian” (1980, no. 8) about a demonstration of experiments that took place at the “Molodaya Gvardiya” publishing house:
“— Is it true,” the question was asked, “that you can give a person a burn with the touch of your hand?
— Anyone who wishes can try it.
And now a brave volunteer is already sitting beside her. Kulagina takes him by the wrist. She asks:
— When it gets hot, tell me! — And she concentrates.
— Warm, — says the subject, — warmer still, it's getting hot. And now it's as if I had touched a hot kettle.
Kulagina lowers her hand. On the skin, where her palm had been, a noticeable red spot has appeared. Another person comes up to the table — the result is the same…”
The third testimony is the conclusion of a group of scientists who conducted experiments with N. S. Kulagina on 8 February 1978 in Moscow:
“We have satisfied ourselves that placing N. S. Kulagina's hand on the skin of the subject's arm after approximately a minute caused a strong burning (as from a mustard plaster or a red-hot object), followed by erythema as with a first-degree burn.
In the experiments N. S. Kulagina is indeed demonstrating not a trick but a natural phenomenon that is at present inexplicable, the investigation of which is of great interest for science.”
This conclusion was signed by nine Soviet scientists, among them five academicians, Full Members of the USSR Academy of Sciences: I. Kikoin, A. Tikhonov, Yu. Kobzarev, V. Trapeznikov, Yu. Gulyaev.
Here is what the well-known radiophysicist academician Yu. Kobzarev writes:
“By the action of her radiation on human skin Kulagina can cause a burn, the strength of which is determined by the duration of the action. One may suppose that the stopping of bleeding and the healing of wounds and ulcers performed by healers also take place mainly owing to the physical fields they generate.
Of these fields and of the role they play in life and, in particular, in extraordinary psychophysical phenomena, we still know nothing. The importance of investigating these fields and studying the mechanism of their action on the organism can hardly be overestimated. These investigations will undoubtedly open new horizons in a number of fields of the life sciences, first and foremost in medicine.”
The sensation of burning during these experiments does not arise only in individual persons with heightened suggestibility or special sensitivity. It is experienced by everyone who is subjected to N. S.'s action. It is known that “the sensation of pain appears when the temperature of the skin rises to approximately 43.5 °C — 10 °C above the normal skin temperature” (V. A. Baraboy, The Sunbeam, Moscow, 1976). This circumstance indicates once again that the cause of the burning should be sought not in a rise in temperature.
In confirmation of this, N. S. repeatedly demonstrated an extremely convincing experiment with a cast-iron flatiron. A cold iron at ordinary room temperature was placed on the bare forearm, since the skin here is more sensitive. At the first moment the person naturally feels its cold surface, since the temperature of the cast iron is close to room temperature and lower than the temperature of the skin by approximately 15–20 °C.
Then, 3–5 minutes after N. S. took hold of the handle of the iron or touched it with her palm, the subject would experience a new sensation — a slight tingling of the body… under the iron. Then warmth appears, and after that the same familiar burning. The reddening of the skin is localized in an area smaller than the area of contact between the body and the iron.
Experiments in transmitting the burning “through an object” were carried out repeatedly. A wide variety of articles were used as such objects (it would be more correct to say screens).
Unbearable burning was felt through a metal capsule filled with water. This stainless-steel capsule with screw-in end plugs was made from a length of pipe. The wall thickness was 3 millimetres, the outer diameter 38 millimetres, the length 200 millimetres. At the subject's request the experiment was stopped after 2–3 minutes because of severe pain. A bright pink spot the size of the end of the capsule remained on the shoulder. The burning continued for no less than half an hour. When the red spot that had appeared was felt, touching it with the hand did not produce the strong painful sensation that usually occurs with thermal or chemical burns.
A few hours later the pigmentation of the skin changed, and a light brown spot clearly emerged. A few days later the burned skin began to peel, revealing light pink new skin. Everything, as usual, took place painlessly, without inflammation.
During the experiment described, the acidity of the water in the hermetically sealed capsule also changed. Litmus paper in the irradiated water showed a decrease in the pH value from 7 to 3 units.
In similar experiments all kinds of articles were used as a barrier or screen, including a 3-millimetre sheet of lead. It turned out that the burning is practically not screened, but the time and effort that had to be expended on overcoming the barrier increased considerably.
What happened when N. S. put rubber gloves on her hands? In this case too the burning was transmitted both by contact — by the gloved hands — and without contact — when the palms were 15–20 centimetres away from the skin. Our observations do not allow us to assert that rubber is incapable of screening the effect. We are not convinced that during the action the hypothetical substance responsible for the burning effect is not produced from some other exposed area of N. S.'s body. We are led to this opinion by an experiment that was carried out in which Ninel Sergeyevna was quite unable to produce burning on the back of a person dressed in a rubber light-diving suit.
While monitoring the physical parameters of the radiation of N. S.'s organism, a group of physicists headed by academician Yu. V. Gulyaev discovered that sound pulses are generated during the burning. The intensity of this signal is within several tenths of a µW/cm² and the duration is less than 1 millisecond. These pulses follow one another with a period of less than one second. It was recorded that the speed of propagation of the sound pulses along a metal rod about three metres long and 50 millimetres in diameter corresponds strictly to the known speed of propagation of sound in metal. Another paradoxical fact was also established. When N. S. held one end of the metal rod in her palms, the experimenters, taking turns, placed their forearms against the other end of the rod and felt burning. Almost everyone's skin reddened, but no perceptible change in temperature occurred.
On another occasion a thin pipe of red copper was used, coiled into a spiral half a metre in diameter. The speed at which sound signals passed along the copper conductor was being tested. They were recorded by sensors placed on the turns of the spiral.
In this case too the sound signals were recorded, but not one of the experimenters who put a hand to the end of this pipe felt the burning effect.
Why did the burning effect arise in one experiment, with the metal pipe, but not in the other, with the copper pipe? The “ultrasonic hypothesis” discussed at first was dropped, since the physical characteristics of the recorded sound pulses were considerably lower than the values capable of causing perceptible biological effects.
Nor did the attempt to explain the observed facts by psychological causes find unanimous support, since these would not reveal the physical essence of the phenomenon.
Water, as a medium through which we had succeeded in transmitting the telekinesis effect to floating and submerged objects, had, as readers know, already been tried by us earlier, and with positive results.
This time the proposal arose to conduct experiments on transmitting the burning effect through water. Such an experiment was organized. Several experimenting physicists felt burning as they lowered their hands into a deep basin of water. N. S. immersed her hand in the same basin, creating the corresponding tension of the organism. The burning was perceived only on some single area of the hand, to which the influence was directed, and did not spread over the whole hand immersed in the water.
This seemingly not very significant observation added a number of fundamental riddles for us when we took up the experiments with water in earnest.
Following the planned programme, a series of experiments was conducted for several years under laboratory conditions under the direction of Professor G. N. Dulnev.
Besides the main group of researchers, specialists in various fields of knowledge from scientific centres of Leningrad and Moscow were enlisted to take part in them.
Some results of this work were published in the collection “Questions of Medical Electronics” of the V. D. Kalmykov Taganrog Radio Engineering Institute (Taganrog, 1984) and in the collection “Technical Aspects of Reflexotherapy and Diagnostic Systems” of the Kalinin Polytechnic Institute (Kalinin, 1984), in the article “Measurement of Extreme Values of the Physical Fields of a Human Operator”.
These publications are the first and so far the only scientific reports in which an attempt is made to interpret the research that was carried out. In them a quite definite conclusion is drawn about the physical reality of the phenomenon.
In connection with the analysis of the mysterious “thermal influence”, I would like to describe in more detail the experiments that took place on recording N. S. Kulagina's energy flow.
The following were used for monitoring:
First. A heat flux sensor — a heat-flux sensor of high sensitivity developed at the Institute of Thermophysics of the Ukrainian SSR Academy of Sciences. Glued onto the skin of the subjects, it recorded the magnitude of the heat flux resulting from the temperature difference between the skin surface and the air in the room. This difference was very considerable, amounting on average to about 16–18 degrees, which also determined the sizeable magnitude of the heat flux emanating from the body into the space of the laboratory.
Another instrument — a thermocouple — for measuring the temperature of the skin at the site of the burning.
A standard gas laser was also used. Its radiation probed the air space between the palms of N. S.'s hands and the spot where the heat-flux sensor and the thermocouple were glued. The laser beam crossed at a right angle the zone of the mysterious “radiation” emanating from the palms of the hands. The distance between N. S.'s hand and the sensors was about 25–30 centimetres. The laser beam passed through the middle of this distance.
A minute and a half to two minutes after N. S. had begun to warm the spot where the sensors were glued, the subject declared that he felt burning. Soon the skin around the sensors reddened.
However, the thermocouple signal remained practically unchanged. And this indicated that the skin temperature did not change either, despite its visible reddening and the burning that the subject was experiencing.
At the same time the signal of the heat-flux sensor several times rose sharply, within a tenth of a second, by a factor of three to four, and then just as instantly dropped to its former value. And the laser beam with which the zone between N. S.'s hand and the subject's back was being probed weakened in intensity by a third.
The result obtained is in no way consistent with our notions of how the physical instruments involved in the experiment work.
Indeed, the skin temperature on the subject's body where the sensors were glued did not change, as the thermocouple showed. Nor, practically, did the temperature in the laboratory change during this short interval of time. At the same time the heat-flux sensor recorded a sharp increase — by a factor of 3–4 — in the heat flux emanating from the body into the environment. And, as already said, the laser beam was synchronously weakened or scattered.
How is all this to be joined into a single logical chain?
After all, if the subject's skin temperature and the temperature in the room did not change, then clearly the heat flux emanating from the person did not change either. Consequently, the readings of the instrument should not have changed either. But they did change. That means some additional factors had appeared in the physical process being recorded, some other physical components for which the sensor had not been designed or constructed.
Such a formulation of the question is quite logical. The scientific report “Investigation of Certain Psychophysical Phenomena”, prepared by a group of scientists headed by Professor G. Dulnev, says:
“This strange result can be explained as follows: the heat-flux sensor is a thermopile with a large number of junctions and is so constructed that it forms a closed loop of conductors. Therefore the readings of the heat-flux sensor, i.e. the recording of an electromotive force, may be caused not by a temperature difference but by the action of, for example, an alternating magnetic field.
To test this assumption, the thermocouple was exposed to the field of a permanent magnet. With a moving field no signal from the sensors is observed. When the magnet was moved sharply, an abrupt, jump-like change in the signal of the heat-flux sensor could be seen, similar to those described above. The thermocouple did not ‘react’ to the movement of the magnet. From this one can make the assumption that the nature of N. S. Kulagina's influence is partly magnetic, although the experiments should be repeated with a more advanced design of heat-flux sensors.”
The author of these lines took part in the experiment described. We were particularly attracted by the possibility of probing with a laser beam the air space between Ninel Sergeyevna's hands and the subject. With the beam one can record the purely material structure of that unknown energy flow which causes the burning effect.
We had assumed that the thermocouple sensor would not give a signal indicating a rise in skin temperature. But that the heat-flux sensor would record a pulsed increase in the heat flux by a factor of 3–4 came as a complete surprise.
For the experiment an original apparatus with two lasers was built. Their beams passed through the end walls of a metal box. Holes facing each other were made in its side walls.
This box did not allow the hands of the participants in the experiment to be brought close together.
So, N. S. would bring her palm up to a hole in the box. And at the hole in the opposite wall another participant in the experiment held his hand.
At the same time laser beams rushed through the end walls of the box. They served, as it were, as a barrier to that unknown radiation which Kulagina was producing. However, the lasers did not succeed in blocking the path of the mysterious radiation. The skin on the palm of the other participant in the experiment reddened, and he experienced burning.
The signals of each of the laser beams were reproduced on the screen of an oscilloscope and recorded on magnetic tape.
It became evident, visible: at the moments when the hand was burned, the amplitude of each of the beams passing inside the box decreased in succession. This began with the nearer beam and went from N. S. towards the subject's hand. The visible picture made it possible to judge the speed of propagation of the material substance unknown to physics, which turned out to be several times lower than the speed of propagation of sound in air.
During the experiments the path of the laser beams was cut off twice. No signals reached the receivers; there were none either on the oscilloscope screens or on the magnetic tape. In those same short intervals a bright pink “mist” flared up, filling the whole space of the box, which could be seen with the naked eye. On the skin of the subject holding out his hand, and on the palm of N. S., bright pink spots of light clearly appeared. The table beneath the box, which stood on wooden spacers, was also lit up with a bright pink fire.
All this testified to the fact of an interaction of the laser radiation with a substance which was “squirted out” (it is hard to find another word here) from the surface of N. S.'s palm and was directed by an unknown force towards the hand held out to it. Since the signal at the receivers disappeared twice completely, although briefly, it must be considered that the substance that had arisen and found itself in the path of the laser beams proved to be opaque to these beams.
It is known that the processes of interaction of laser radiation with an opaque substance are explained from the standpoint of the classical theory of heat conduction (Laser Radiation. Moscow, 1977). It is assumed here that all the energy of the laser radiation is absorbed by a small volume of the substance, as a result of which its temperature rises. The substance then evaporates instantly, which could also have caused the formation of the bright pink mist inside the box-screen in the experiment described.
In other experiments, when the air space between N. S.'s palms and the object of the influence was, as it were, “felt” by a laser beam, luminous tracks of particles crossing the laser flux were observed repeatedly.
In other experiments, conducted by the Moscow group of physicists headed by Professor Yu. V. Gulyaev (now an academician), it happened more than once that the sensors broke down. This occurred both when sound pulses were being measured and in experiments in which the burning effect was observed. The acetate silk fabric of the sensors' membranes would tear.
On the membrane of one such destroyed sensor, opened up for inspection, a ragged hole was found. Along the outline of the resulting defect a light brown deposit was clearly visible. We had observed exactly the same very thin deposit on underwear made of acetate silk, as has already been mentioned. During lengthy experiments N. S. developed a yellowness between her fingers, and light brown spots appeared on the backs of her hands.
Yellowness on the palms was also observed during some interesting experiments in August 1978. At that time we were on holiday on the Black Sea, in Gagra. Unexpectedly, Doctor of Biological Sciences Yevgeny Vasilyevich Romanenko got through to us by telephone and invited us to come to the Utrish Marine Biological Station of the A. N. Severtsov Institute of Evolutionary Morphology and Animal Ecology of the USSR Academy of Sciences, situated near Anapa. At this marine biological station they study, among other things, dolphins. Here the biologists had decided to find out whether the dolphins would react to Ninel Sergeyevna's ultrasonic pulses, that is, to test whether contact of this kind between a human being and an animal is possible.
Picturing the chance of making a bus journey from south to north along the whole Caucasian coast of the Black Sea, we agreed. And so here we were at the biological station. We were accommodated in one half of a small trailer-cabin. The other half was intended for the director of the Institute of Evolutionary Morphology and Animal Ecology of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Academician Vladimir Yevgenyevich Sokolov.
Here we learned that Professor Yury Vasilyevich Gulyaev, who had discovered ultrasonic and sound pulses in N. S., had reported this discovery to the leadership of the Academy of Sciences, to its President A. P. Aleksandrov. It was decided to repeat the experiments, and in doing so to use not only the sensors made by the experimental physicists themselves but also the hydrophones of the Utrish Marine Biological Station.
After our arrival, the Moscow group of scientists headed by Professor Yu. V. Gulyaev came to the biological station. The experiments in the sea pools were carried out practically throughout the daylight hours. They became complicated when, on the third day, Ninel Sergeyevna slipped while going down the steps of the trailer-cabin and injured her arm. The doctor diagnosed a fracture and a displacement of a forearm bone, and put a fixing bandage on the arm. And so, with this bandage, she went from pool to pool, demonstrating the burning effect to the learned folk. And the station's regular equipment — the hydrophones — as well as the special sensors of the Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics, registered Ninel Sergeyevna's sound pulses.
The director of the institute, Academician V. Ye. Sokolov, experienced the burning on himself personally.
The scientists of the marine station regarded everything that went on with undisguised interest and with a quite natural share of scepticism and doubt. There were also sceptics who regarded everything that went on as conjuring tricks. They watched my behaviour closely during the experiments, when I was standing nearby at the wall of the pool or climbed up onto the platform that overhung the surface of the water. The watching grew more intense when I took photographs or picked up the cine camera, went over to my wife, or talked with her.
Particularly zealous was Doctor of Biological Sciences X. When I remarked that the nature of these extraordinary phenomena ought to be sought with the help of biological sensors, Academician V. Ye. Sokolov pointed to this learned man and observed that he was precisely the one who should be doing that.
Whether because of the academician's words or by virtue of his character, Doctor of Sciences X. went about gloomy, preoccupied and taciturn all those days. On the day of our departure, towards evening, when the experiments were ending, he suddenly invited Ninel Sergeyevna into a glass pavilion next to the pool. Seeing that X. was going to conduct some experiments of his own, having prepared test tubes, flasks and so forth, I hurried to this pavilion. And not in vain. There followed the long-familiar, painful conversation with a person convinced that some kind of farce was being played out here at the biological station.
The gloomy biologist carefully examined the palms of Ninel Sergeyevna's hands, noticed the yellowness that had appeared between the fingers and on the palm, and carefully wiped it off with alcohol. Then he proposed that she reproduce the burning effect, inviting a colleague to take part in this experiment — a physicist from Yu. V. Gulyaev's Moscow group. He carefully packed the cotton swabs bearing traces of the yellowness into the test tubes he had prepared.
It is hardly worth describing in detail how these interrogation-experiments were conducted: I will say only that the air stream of a fan was directed between the physicist's back and the palms of N. S. In spite of this, the same redness appeared on his back… Nor was it without the burning.
Having again wiped the palms and fingers of N. S.'s hands, the biologist put one more swab into a test tube and, having written down our address, gave his word of honour that he would inform us in writing of the results of the analysis…
We never received the biologist's promised communication, and we did not try to track this man down ourselves. And indeed, hardly anything good could have come of it even if we had taken it into our heads to approach him; we would have heard some new version about tricks, mystification…
The other part of the task the scientists had set when inviting us to the biological station — to test the reaction of dolphins to the sound pulses of N. S. — was not accomplished.
During an attempt at contact with three dolphins kept in a small lagoon separated from the sea by a sandbar, no clear reaction of theirs to the pulses of N. S. was recorded. The experiment with a single dolphin also went badly; the weather was not in its favour.
With this information we returned home from our “scientific mission” to the Utrish Marine Biological Station on the Black Sea.
Ninel Sergeyevna acted with the burning on various organisms.
Twice in 1975, experiments with yeast cultures were carried out at Leningrad University.
Flowers that N. S. had repeatedly “irradiated”, as we established, stayed fresh for a long time; by her influence she considerably accelerated the opening of leaf buds and flower buds.
More than once it was observed how wilted flowers revived and their scent grew stronger. The control flowers, which were not subjected to irradiation, usually wilted after two or three days. Those that were subjected to two- to three-minute exposures 3–4 times a day stayed alive, not wilting for more than two weeks.
Through glass and water N. S. irradiated aquarium plants and fish. With passes of her hands she stimulated the vital activity of the aquarium's inhabitants. Within some half an hour after her procedure, a vigorous formation of small air bubbles would begin on the stems and leaves. The plants became covered with a dense layer of these bubbles and stayed in this glittering airy attire for days on end. Growth accelerated, and the colour of the greenery became brighter and richer in comparison with neighbouring specimens that had not been subjected to this influence.
Observations of the fish also revealed a number of interesting facts. Single specimens, and small shoals as well, would not enter the zone of the aquarium that N. S. subjected to her irradiation. At the boundary of this zone some kind of invisible barrier was created, which the fish did not cross, but turned aside from.
Individual fish that had fallen ill, showing faint signs of life, even swimming belly up, recovered their vital activity. N. S. exerted her influence through the walls of the aquarium.
Roach and perch caught while fishing and placed in a basin of water remained lively and in a brisk state for two or three days when repeatedly acted upon. Control specimens of similar fish, placed in analogous conditions, as a rule died within a few hours.
Observations were also made of insects placed under a flat screen of transparent Plexiglas. Flies, beetles and others, just like the aquarium fish, kept away from and did not cross the invisible boundary of the zone that N. S. created under the screen.
Domestic animals — cats, dogs, rabbits — reacted to the burning effect in a definite way: they showed restlessness and tried to free themselves from her hands. The healing of wounds on a dog's paws (after surgery), with “warming” by the hands of N. S., went quickly and without the complications that were expected after such an operation.
In the laboratory of physiological research of the Research Institute of Physical Culture in Leningrad, on the initiative of Doctor of Technical Sciences G. A. Sergeyev, a remarkable experiment was carried out on the contactless action on the dissected heart of a frog. It was suspended on electrodes that picked up the electrical potentials of the working heart. These potentials were recorded on a standard chart recorder.
A frog's heart in this state produces steady rhythmic contractions and recordable electrical potentials for about half an hour.
Ninel Sergeyevna was asked to slow down or stop the heart in the shortest possible time. Positioned at a distance of about two metres from the preparation, she first managed to affect the rhythm of the heart and then stopped it within about two minutes.
Before the heart stopped, the amplitude of the electrical signals increased considerably.
In the autumn of 1977, experiments with mice took place in Moscow at the Institute of Chemical Physics of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Their results were set down in a report, which states:
“Experiment one.
14.10.77. Ten mice… were inoculated with a subcutaneous haematoma… at 13:00.
At 13:05, five mice inoculated with the tumour were transferred to a glass bell jar, which was irradiated with the biological radiation of Kulagina N. S. for 6 to 12 seconds. The mice remained mobile and showed no reaction.
After 15 minutes, a repeated irradiation by the biological field of Kulagina was given for 1 to 5 minutes. The mice developed motor excitation and convulsions, their fur bristled, the mice began jumping out of the glass vessel, then became completely limp, as with an overdose of deep anaesthesia. After the strong action of the biological field ceased, the mice quickly came to, their coat of fur became normal, and the mice looked lively. The control group of 5 mice, inoculated with the haematoma at 13:00… died 30 minutes later, at 13:30.
The 5 mice irradiated by the biological field remained in a lively, normal state until 18:45.
Experiment two.
5 mice… irradiated on the same day with a dose of 700 roentgens remained as controls. In addition, 3 similar mice were also irradiated with a dose of 700 roentgens. Both groups were irradiated at 14:30. The three mice that had received 700 roentgens were given a rapid action of the biological irradiation of Kulagina N. S.
After the action of the biological irradiation, the mice remained alive for four hours. The control group, irradiated with a dose of 700 roentgens, died after 15 minutes.”
It follows from the text that the mice irradiated by N. S. remained in a lively state until the end of the experiment, until 18:45, whereas the control group irradiated with X-rays died after 15 minutes, and the one inoculated with the tumour after 30 minutes. In fact, the mice irradiated by Kulagina's field lived considerably longer than the period stated in the report. Thus, the irradiated mice, after warming by her hands, lived for 10 days, and those with the tumour for 15 days. These data were not reflected in the report, since it was drawn up at the end of the working day, after N. S. had left for Leningrad. We received information on the observation of the mice from Moscow by telephone for two weeks.
In experiments on people, a therapeutic effect has been proven in the treatment of external and internal inflammations, neuralgic pains and headaches, obliterating disease, and radiculitis.
Open wounds and cuts healed successfully. Good results were obtained in asthmatic and other diseases. Restoration of the blood composition and of certain functions of the internal organs was noted.
The studies in the clinic, conducted by a group of doctors under the direction of Professor F. V. Ballyuzek, Doctor of Medical Sciences, a group which also experienced the burning effect, briefly characterize the phenomenon as follows:
“All the subjects felt, after a few seconds, a sensation of heat resembling a local burn, with a corresponding objective equivalent (reddening of the skin, swelling, etc.).
The intensity of the reaction was easily regulated by N. S. Kulagina, up to the formation of blisters and other clear signs of a second- to third-degree burn. In most cases such burns resembled in shape the configuration of the palm and fingers of her hand, and even then the skin was not in any contact with the patient's skin.
Repeated sessions caused similar changes. Subsequently, typical scabs and areas of hyperpigmentation formed at the sites of the burns. No infection of these areas was observed, although in a number of cases they were in the immediate vicinity of purulent wounds or ulcers.
Direct thermometry and thermography made it possible to show that the changes noted are not associated with a corresponding rise in skin temperature in the area of action: the burns cannot be considered thermal.
At the same time, their direct connection with changes in the chemistry of the tissues has been proven, in particular with a rapid shift towards the acid side (down to pH values of less than 3 in the blister fluid).
Blood flow increased substantially in those suffering from obliterating diseases of the arteries of the limbs, and they showed signs of restored patency of the main vessels (after 10–15 treatment sessions).
This phenomenon has to a certain extent been deciphered by studying the influence of N. S. Kulagina on the state of a fresh and a formed thrombus, both in the ‘test tube’ and in the lumen of a vessel (in thrombophlebitis of the superficial veins of the lower leg). In all cases a rapid thrombus lysis, within 3–5 minutes, was obtained.
Clinically, in all cases there were unquestionably positive consequences of the treatment, both in vascular and in inflammatory-trophic changes and diseases (healing of wounds, obliteration of abscess cavities, elimination of infiltrates, etc.). The treatment did not complicate the carrying out of traditional therapy if the latter continued in parallel.”
This document was signed by Professor F. V. Ballyuzek on 31 March 1988.
With this I shall permit myself to conclude the chapter on the burning effect.