The Nina Project is the name of the fifth episode of the stranger things 4. An episode that introduces us to a quite vulnerable Eleven, and who is offered an opportunity to recover her powers. Just like the story behind Eddie Munson, did you know that this project would have been inspired by a real life case? That’s right, this is the story of Nina Kulagina, a woman with alleged telekinesis.
Nina Kulagina, born in the city of Leningrad in 1926, claimed to have telekinetic powers that not only allowed her to move things, but also stop the hearts of her victims. According to Kulagine, these powers were presented to her after World War II.
After becoming a housewife, Nina Kulagina began to realize that objects around him moved spontaneously. Also, this effect was increased when she was upset, and they were completely blocked during storms.
This is how Nina became the center of attention in the Soviet Union. As with Eleven in stranger thingsscientists and researchers then decided to take the lead, and Kulaguina was taken away to experiment with her supposed power in a controlled environment. So, Nina Kulagina achieved several milestones: among them, separating egg yolks in water, moving objects across a table, and even stopping a frog’s heart.
But this is not all. During an outburst, Kulagina was about to stop the heart of one of the scientists They didn’t believe in their abilities. Of course, do not expect something as dramatic as the powers demonstrated by Uno en stranger things.
Did Nina Kulagina really have the powers of Eleven in stranger things?
Nina’s most notable experiment took place on March 10, 1970. It had already been 10 years since the woman rose to worldwide fame, being protagonist of studies by the Russian government since 1960.
On this occasion, Kulagina was asked to stop the heart of a laboratory frog. If Nina was able to test her powers on inanimate objects, could she do it on living things as well? This same doubt was what led the government of the time to summon women to their most famous demonstration.
So, in an observation room at the Ukhtomskii Military Institute in Leningrad, Kulagina did. Using all his concentration, he “stopped” the heart of a frog, which had been surgically removed from the amphibian prior to the experiment. With the use of a solution, the heart would remain beating for up to an hour after being removed from the body.
The scientists reported that, after only 7 minutes of concentration, Nina managed to stop the frog’s heart. Mind you, before doing so, viewers supposedly watched as the speed of the heartbeat increased and decreased constantlyuntil it stopped doing it altogether.
Upon this, one of the scientists in the room got up and asked Kulagina, in a fit, to do the same to him. Apparently, the man didn’t believe in Nina’s powers, so the woman finally agreed to put him to the test. Shortly thereafter, the experiment abruptly ended when analysts noted that the scientist’s heart rate had increased to “dangerous” levels.
So is telekinesis real?
The answer is probably no. Although the story of Nina Kulagina is mysterious and interesting, you must remember that these tests were carried out in the midst of the Cold War. Furthermore, many British, and even Soviet, experts they pointed out that the powers of the woman were a fraud. According to the first, the woman had been captured using magnets and threads during several demonstrations.
Whether Kulagina’s powers were real or not, that was never really the point. What is striking here is that this news reached the United States and other countries that were attentive to any movement of the USSR at the time. After all, the space race was not the only one at the time, behind all this was a great media war and psychological.
Making the enemies of the USSR believe that the nation was about to develop such a psychic weapon was a relevant advantage. Not only to influence the morale of American and Soviet citizens, but also to let the panic run.
In fact, they got it. When the CIA got hold of a copy of the video of Nina Kulagina stopping the frog’s heart, panic set in among the officers. This led the agency to develop its own project in 1972—now public—, called Project Stargate. However, the latter ended up being canceled in 1995.
The conclusion of that report was that enough accurate remote viewing experiences existed to defy chance, but that the phenomenon was too unreliable, inconsistent, and sporadic to be useful for intelligence purposes. We decided not to reinstate the program.
INC