After his university training, Cleve Backster eventually joined the U.S. Counter-Intelligence Corps, and lectured on the potential danger of foreign powers using hypnosis to extract classified information from overseas government personnel. Backster took a huge risk to demonstrate the seriousness of this subject to a high-ranking military officer. With her permission, Backster hypnotized the secretary of the commanding general of the Counter-Intelligence Corps. While under hypnosis, he asked her to remove a highly classified document from the general’s locked file cabinet—and she willingly obeyed. Backster told her she would not remember what she had done when she awoke—and sure enough, she had no idea she had just leaked very sensitive information when he brought her back.
That night I secured the document in my locked file and the next day presented it to the General. I explained to him that I might be risking a court martial, but hoped instead to expedite further consideration of the importance of my research. Rather than a court martial, on December 17, 1947, I received a very favorable letter of recommendation from the General, stating that my research was “of high importance to military intelligence.” Then positive things started to happen.8
Early Pioneer of the Polygraph
After giving ten days of hypnosis and sodium pentothal “truth serum” demonstrations at the Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C., Backster began working for the Central Intelligence Agency as of April 27, 1948. Shortly after joining the CIA, Backster studied with Leonarde Keeler—a pioneer in the use of the polygraph.
“In addition to other classified activities, I was a key member of a CIA team that was prepared to travel to any foreign location to analyze the possible use of unusual interrogation tactics, including my original areas of concern, mainly hypno-interrogation and narco-interrogation. . . . Back in Washington, D.C., the polygraph operation I had established was becoming popular for the screening of applicants for employment at the CIA and for some general screening of key CIA personnel. The ever-increasing schedule of rather routine polygraph examinations started to interfere with my more creative interests in research.”9
Shortly after Leonarde Keeler’s death, circa 1951, Backster left the CIA—to serve as director of the Keeler Polygraph Institute in Chicago. This was the only classroom-type school teaching the use of the polygraph at the time. Backster went on to start his own polygraph consultant business, working with several government agencies, in Washington, D.C.—and then expanded into a second office in Baltimore, Maryland. By 1958, Backster had freed up the time to begin intensive polygraph research, and he developed the first standardized system for numerical evaluation of polygraph charts—which is still being used today. He moved to New York City in 1959 and continued to operate a commercial polygraph business. Seven years later, Backster struck gold.
In February 1966 an event occurred that was about to expand the entire focus of my research through a kind of paradigm shift in my own awareness. At the time of its occurrence I had been involved in the use of the polygraph on humans for eighteen years.10
Backster’s secretary purchased a rubber plant and a dracaena cane plant from a store that was going out of business. This was the first time Backster had ever owned any plants. On February 2, 1966, Backster had worked through the night in his lab, and finally took a coffee break at seven A.M. In those weary hours, Backster got an idea—he would try to connect his new dracaena plant to the polygraph and see what happened. Much to his surprise, the plant did not have a smooth, flat pattern of electrical activity—it was surprisingly jagged and alive, changing moment to moment. Then, as Backster kept watching in amazement, it got a whole lot more interesting.
About one minute into the chart recording, the tracing exhibited a short-term change in contour—similar to a reaction pattern typical of a human subject who might have been briefly experiencing the fear of detection.11
In simple language, the plant’s electrical activity looked just like the graph from a person who was starting to tell a lie. Backster knew that if you want to catch someone lying, you first have to confront them about whatever they might be hiding. If your questions then cause them to feel threatened and anxious, the electrical activity in their skin gets much stronger. Backster wanted to see if he could get a humanlike response out of his new plant by threatening its well-being somehow.
An example of what we do with a human taking a polygraph test is ask a question such as, “Did you fire that shot [that was] fatal to John Smith?” If they did commit the crime, that question threatens their well-being and produces a reaction that shows up on the chart.12
Backster tried dipping one of the leaves into a cup of hot coffee. Nothing. He tapped one of the leaves with his pen. There was hardly any response.
Then, after about fourteen minutes of elapsed chart time, I had this thought: As the ultimate plant threat, I would get a match and burn the plant’s electroded leaf. At that time, the plant was about fifteen feet away from where I was standing. . . . The only new thing that occurred was this thought.13
What happened next would change the history of science forever—and the impact still has not reached our common, public awareness.
The very moment the imagery of burning that leaf entered my mind, the polygraph recording pen moved rapidly to the top of the chart! No words were spoken, no touching the plant, no lighting of matches, just my clear intention to burn the leaf. The plant recording showed dramatic excitation. To me this was a powerful, high-quality observation. . . . I must state that, on February 2, 1966, at 13 minutes, 55 seconds into that chart recording, my whole consciousness changed. I then thought, “Gee, it’s as though this plant read my mind!”14
Dr. Cleve Backster’s graph of his dracaena cane plant having an electrical reaction right as he thought of burning one of its leaves.
As the plant continued to have what would be considered an enormous, panicked reaction, Backster then went and got matches from his secretary’s desk.
When I returned, the plant was still showing highly visible reactions. . . . I made a feeble pass at [a] leaf with a lighted match, but by then I was not really into harming the plant. I thought the best thing for me to do was to remove the threat, and see if the plant would calm down. After returning the matches to my secretary’s desk, the tracing [finally] returned to the calmness displayed prior to the original decision to burn the electroded leaf.15
As of nine A.M., Backster’s associate Bob Henson came to work—and was fascinated when he heard about what Backster had just done. When Henson repeated the experiment and threatened the plant himself, the same reaction occurred. Backster now felt sympathy for the plant and did not let Hanson actually burn any of the leaves. In fact, Backster never again did an experiment that involved burning or threatening to burn plants.
A Personal Experience of the Backster Effect
In 2006, I called Backster’s research laboratory in San Diego to ask if he wanted to participate in a film shoot to dramatize this event in a modern classroom setting. Until I was actually on the phone with him, I did not realize that I had called on February 2, 2006—forty years to the day from when he first made this discovery in 1966. Backster agreed to do my movie. A few months later we brought him up to Los Angeles and spent a healthy chunk of investor capital for a professional Hollywood-level shoot.
In this key scene, Backster is invited to a college classroom to discuss his original experiment—while he has a live plant connected to his polygraph. One rebellious student in the audience gets excited and impatient, and wants to re-create the Backster Effect for himself. The kid jumps out of his seat with a lighter in his hand and runs toward the plant to burn it—but my character holds him back. The plant still “screams” from the fear of being burned—thus proving to the entire class that the Backster Effect really works.
This was how I had written the scene. I had a significant amount of investor dollars on the line, and Backster had promised to work as an actor and follow the script. To my horror, he refused to “preten
d” that the plant was having a terrified reaction each time I held the kid back. We did take after take, but Backster simply wouldn’t act out his part. Unless he saw the graph actually go wild, like he witnessed in his original discovery forty years earlier, he obviously wasn’t going to have any kind of authentic reaction on camera. I then realized the only way I could save my film was to use the Backster Effect myself.
Up until then, we were only acting. There were no strong emotions going around. The kid didn’t really want to burn the plant, and I knew he wasn’t really going to try to push past me. The plant “knew” it wasn’t in any real danger—so as a result, its graph stayed nice and smooth. I knew I had to do something—and fast. The next time we did the scene, I sent that plant the blackest, darkest thoughts I could possibly conjure up—right when I confronted the kid. I really felt it deep down in my core. I absolutely hated that plant. I wanted to tear it to pieces. Burn it to a crisp. Right at that exact moment, the polygraph needle went completely nuts—just like a person screaming in terror. With the cameras still rolling, Backster said, “Wow, we’ve got quite a reaction here!” I saved the shoot—and proved, for myself, that the Backster Effect really works.
I then told the plant I was sorry, and sent genuine feelings of love to it, in case it could somehow hear me or feel me. The graph calmed right back down. Backster let me save the graph paper from this stunning event—and I still have it in the box with all the bills we racked up from that day of shooting. The script went through many more changes and we never ended up using our promo footage professionally, but I was very happy to get my own chance to experience the Backster Effect with the man himself—and really know, deep down inside, that it works. I also will never forget the day I was speaking to my landlady and her ten-year-old daughter about Backster’s amazing discovery. Her daughter suddenly ran outside and started rolling around in the grass, in total ecstasy, saying, “You can hear me! You can hear me!”
They’re Always Listening
After his initial discovery in 1966, Backster found out that once you start taking care of a plant, it seemingly tracks your thoughts and feelings.
During plant monitoring sessions, when I left the lab to run an errand, I found that the moment I decided to return to where that plant was, the plant often showed a fairly significant reaction—especially when my decision to return was made in a spontaneous manner.16
Backster used synchronized watches to prove that the plant was responding at the exact moment he made the decision. In another case, Backster set up a plant experiment in New York and traveled to Clifton, New Jersey, with his associate Bob Henson, who was unaware that his wife had set up a surprise party for their wedding anniversary. Backster noticed several strong reactions in the plant as they went through various phases of their trip—including the time they approached Port Authority, the time they boarded the bus for Clifton, the time the bus entered the Lincoln Tunnel, and the time they made the final part of the trip out to Clifton. Right at the moment they entered the house and everyone yelled, “SURPRISE!” the plant definitely felt it. Backster said, “There was a big reaction from the plant at that exact time.”17
Backster began leaving plants connected to his polygraph without trying to do anything—just observing their reactions and then trying to figure out what might have caused them. One day he found a very strong reaction—and eventually realized it happened right as he poured a pot of boiling water into the sink in his lab. I’ve been in Backster’s lab myself and know how disgusting those sinks can get. Later tests revealed that his sink was loaded with bacteria—“somewhat similar to the cantina scene from Star Wars”18—and when the bacteria suddenly died from the scalding hot water, the plant perceived a threat to its own well-being—and “screamed.”
Backster later designed an experiment to try to standardize this effect. He tried to think of the most expendable living creature he could find—and he chose brine shrimp, which are commonly used as fish food. He invented a machine that would dump the shrimp into boiling water at a random time. The plants did indeed react, strongly, as the shrimp died—but only if the experiment was done at night, when no human beings were around in the lab. Otherwise, the plants seemed to “lose interest” in the shrimp; the energy fields from an average person were much stronger. Skeptics later attempted to repeat this experiment—but they did not follow Backster’s protocols.
As best we could determine, the people trying to replicate really didn’t understand how to automate human consciousness out of an experiment. They thought you could go to the other side of a wall and watch the experiment unfold through closed-circuit television. That wall meant nothing as far as the plant-to-human attunement was concerned.19
This study was given a brief column-and-a-half write-up in ElectroTechnology Magazine—and a stunning 4,950 scientists wrote Backster to request more information.20
Then, on November 3, 1969, Backster demonstrated this effect at Yale University Linguistics School. An ivy leaf was plucked and connected to the polygraph: “I then asked if they had any insects around that could be utilized for hopefully stimulating a plant reaction.” The students captured a spider—which is actually an arachnid, as Backster points out. They put the spider on a table and had one guy surround it with his hands so it couldn’t escape. The ivy leaf did not react during this time.
But, when he took his hands away, as the spider became conscious that it was able to run, you’d see a huge chart reaction just prior to its attempt to escape. This sequence was repeated several times.21
Backster soon appeared on numerous television shows to demonstrate this effect, including ones hosted by Johnny Carson, Art Linkletter, Merv Griffin and David Frost.22 Frost asked Backster if his plant was male or female. Backster and his plant both had an amusing response to this rather personal question.
I suggested he go over and lift up a leaf and take a peek. Before he even approached the plant, [it] . . . showed a wild reaction, evoking a very amused reaction from the studio audience.23
Backster’s results were replicated by Russian scientist V. N. Pushkin in 1972, using EEG instrumentation. People under hypnosis were brought into a powerful state of emotional stimulation, and a nearby geranium would have a strong reaction each time this occurred.24 Despite all these intriguing results, the scientific community was predictably severe in its criticism. Dr. Otto Solbrig of Harvard University’s biology department was not amused.
[This is a] waste of time. This work is not going to advance science very much. We know enough already about plants—so that when someone comes up with something like this, we say it’s quackery. You might say we are prejudiced. Maybe we are.
Yale professor Arthur Galtson was a little more polite—but still not supportive.
I don’t say Backster’s phenomena are impossible. I just say there are enough other things of more value to work on. . . . It’s attractive to think that plants are listening to you or that they respond to prayer, but there’s nothing in it. There’s no nervous system in a plant. There are no means by which sensation can be transferred.25
Others, like Stanford Research Institute’s Dr. Hal Puthoff, were more encouraging.
I don’t regard Backster’s work as quackery. The way he conducts his experiments is pretty good. It’s not the sloppy thing that most people believe who think the work’s no good.26
All of Nature Is in a Constant “Conversation”
Backster also connected yogurt bacteria, ordinary chicken eggs from his refrigerator and even live human cells to his polygraph—and continued to get stunning results. Consistently, what he found was that every living thing is intimately attuned to its environment. When any stress, suffering or death occurs, all the life-forms in the surrounding area have an immediate electrical response—as if they all share the pain.
Backster first got the idea to wire up chicken eggs when a philodendron plant had a strong reaction—right as he cracked one open for breakfast.27 Even though he used conventional, no
n-fertilized eggs from the grocery store, Backster’s electroded eggs displayed unexpected behavior—including patterns similar to a heartbeat on an EEG, and complex “cycles within cycles” on an EKG.28 One of Backster’s electroded eggs had a sudden shock when he picked up his Siamese cat, Sam, and startled him out of a deep sleep. Even more impressive is the graph of an electroded egg “screaming” each time its former neighbors are dropped into boiling water, one by one. This egg was kept inside a lead-lined box that screened out all electromagnetic fields. That meant this effect could not be due to any radio waves, microwaves or other electromagnetic frequencies.29
Backster clearly understood the importance of shielding out electromagnetic fields in an experiment like this.
At the suggestion of several scientists, and the physicists in particular, I later attempted to shield the smaller electroded plants from electromagnetic interference by using a copper screen cage [also known as a Faraday cage]. . . . The plants behaved as if the screen cage enclosure did not exist. Much later I had the opportunity to confirm this using [a] state-of-the-art shielded room. . . . I felt certain [the information passing between plants, bacteria, insects, animals and humans] was not within the known electromagnetic frequencies, AM, FM or any form of signal which could be shielded by ordinary means. Distance seemed to impose no limitation. I made observations that suggested that this signal could traverse dozens, even hundreds of miles. It seemed that the signal may not even fall within the electromagnetic spectrum. If not, this would certainly have profound implications.30
The Source Field Investigations Page 3
