◆ SpookStack

Ap ss SAY SN oN TERS ~~ SULPLEEL ? Ler F* % NY \ F Do Plants* Have ESP? ‘Tmagine attempting a wheelie on your bike in the driveway and ending up doing a crashie into a bed of geraniums. You’d probably feel pret- ty bad. But how do you think the ge- raniuras would feel? Geraniums? They can’t feel—can they? A man named Cleve Backster claims plants can feel. He’s done ex- periments proving, he says, that plants have emotions just as humans have. They “faint”? when threatened, feel sympathy and appreciation, and even have a sort of memory, according to Mr. Backster, Tt all began in 1966 when Mr. Back- “ster, a lie detector (polygraph) expert, ‘hitched up an electrode from his poly- graph to the leaf of a houseplant. Mr. _- Backster had just poured water on the plant’s. roots, and he wanted to see how long it would take for the water to reach the tip of a leaf. (Polygraphs _ Measure and automatically make a chart of changing electrical impulses. . A freshly watered plant would grad- ually show a pattern of less and less ved For Release 20Q4j03/07 5. Cin electrical resistance.) Suddenly the chart became full of squiggles. It wasn’t measuring root-to- leaf time. It was producing the same pattern that appears on a person’s - polygraph when he’s emotionally moved. Was the plant saying, | “Thanks for the drink”? - Mr. Backster decided to try some- thing else. He thought of a threat to the leaf: touching it with a buming match. But before he could do any- thing, the graph’s curve shot upward almost off the chart. The plant seemed afraid! That was enough for Mr. Backster. He began a series of hundreds of ex- periments with plants and polygraphs, and he’s had some weird results: # Someone selected one of three fresh vegetables to be dropped into boiling water. The one selected went into a polygraph “faint” (a sudden upward movement followed by one continuous straight line) before it was even touched. ‘ Approved For Release 2001/03/07 : CIA-RDP96-00787R0004001 00022-5