My Library

At that point, I, myself, didn’t really realize what had happened. But parapsychologists and some scientists soon did. Firecrackers began going off in the gossip lines I’ve referred to earlier, first largely firecrackers of disbelief. But, as our experiments continued, during October 1971, Backster wrote and circulated a small report entitled PSYCHOKINETIC EFFECTS ON SMALL SAMPLES OF GRAPHITE which I helped in constructing. With this, the proverbial excreta began hitting the slowly revolving fans of parapsychology. And soon, although I again didn’t at realize it at the time, "the repeatable experiment" was to become my hallmark. And it was this, and absolutely nothing else, which was to catapult me into increasing attention -- the REPEATABLE EXPERIMENT. Please to bear this in mind as you read ahead. In the laboratory sense, it really doesn’t matter if someone is psychic. All that really matters is that the experiment be REPRODUCIBLE -- for this implies CONTROL -- and control implies PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS. Things that cannot be brought under control can’t really be used for anything, can they? And in this case, the repeatable experiment directed and controlled not by the subject (not by me), but by the person of the experimenter and under his or her control.