◆ SpookStack

Approved For Releasg,20@1J03/07 : CIA-RDP96-00787@g00490100022-5 Approved For Release 2001/03/07 : CIA-RDP96-00787R000400100022-5 | Your garden might be doing a lot more than just growing. lt might be reading your mind. _@One of six students was given the task of tearing into shreds one of two plants alone in a room. After the plant was demolished, the students, one by one, walked by the surviving plant. The plant showed no reaction whatso- ever to five of the students. But when the killer approached, the plant “fainted.” ~ @ While tiny shrimps were being boiled - alive in one room, plants in another reacted with intense emotion. Grad- ually, however, as more and more shrimps were cooked, the plants stopped being so excited. Mr. Backster also says that the polygraph has charted reactions from cooked vegetables. And rotted ones. ‘He says he’s also recorded eggs “‘faint- ing” just before being cracked into a~ waiting skillet. Mr.-Backster has had lots of en- thusiastic followers. Twenty or 30 in-- stitutions are at present reproducing some of his experiments in their own labs, A reported 7,000 scientists have- requested copies of his research. And some people have tried to actually make plants do things by thought con- trol. An inventor named Paul Sauvin re- cently conducted an experiment in which an indoor plant, controlled only by Sauvin’s thoughts, supposedly trig- gered a device that started a car in an outdoor parking lot. Sauvin was 2% miles away at the time. But what does it all mean? One in- terested party thinks there might be a “primary form of instant communi- cation between all living things that goes beyond everything we now know about science.” Scientists in the So- viet Union, who have done research similar to Mr. Backster’s, are con- vinced that plants possess electrical impulses similar to man’s nerve im- pulses. We don’t know where it all could lead. Just remember all these things - the next time you're around a willow tree. The wrong thought might make it weep. | m7 _— Pee RI a Sis See IE ae aa