Yes, Nina Kulagina was interesting.
"why would scientists be interested in here if it all was fake?" Simple, its a scientist job to attempt to find scientific explainations for strange occurances. Because they don't find a scientific explaination doesn't mean there isn't one, it just means they haven't found it yet which is in a way the very definition of 'scientist'.
There are similar other examples in nature, abilities that are exhibited by different animals. But, even if some of these naturally occuring oddities in various different animals that are particular to their species were to occur in humans (which are just animals of a higher order) they would be very specific to individuals and very rare. I believe the possibility exists that such occurances happen with certain genetic oddities occuring in the human species but the likely hood of something as unique as Nina (if it was indeed real, with no tricks of any sort) occuring on a mass scale would indeed be very rare. You will note that most of these unique people exhibited these, for the sake of simplicity lets call them 'powers' (but not to imply they are indeed real powers or some type), within certain decades long before things like DNA testing and none have ever been subject to independant testing under the modern science we have today. Its also that these things occured in times when there was a public resurgence of interest and acceptance for things like this. While I believe the possibility exists, like it does for all things, that certain individuals may have through history seemed to exhibited certain unique powers, that given the correct testing these would prove to have completly understandable scientific explainations. Nina for example exhibited health issues that today are frequently diagnosed and treated where as back then these were not so well known and the treatments did not exist, for example she exhibited health symptoms that today are known to be related to things like parkinsons, AIDs, West Nile Virus, so just because these dieases were not known back then doesn't mean they didn't exist just that we didn't know about them, yet in the studies they were attributed as being a side effect of her abilities or 'powers' which is always a big give away in attemting to lend validity to things of this nature because if you can say there was a side effect and make it more human more people will believe it, and there in lies the trick also - playing upon natural human emotions and the willingness to believe.
Sometimes its easy to spot the inconsistancies also, like in the case of a psychic healer Matthew Manning (
http://www.mysteriouspeople.com/Matthew_Manning.htm). In part of his story it is stated:
"At school Matthew had an out–of-the-body experience where he managed successfully to astrally project himself back into his home; his mother felt his presence and he saw the inside of his house, though physically he was lying on his bunk bed in his school. If he could do this, Matthew reasoned, why not try and astrally project himself into the past? Back at home one weekend he lapsed into a trance-like state. After half an hour he could hear a woman’s soft voice – she identified herself as Henrietta Webb, who had died in 1673 and had lived in the house. Other ‘spirits’ that had lived in the house came through and eventually Matthew found himself witnessing a scene from 1731 when the house had just been built."
The inconsistancy in this story is obvious. In the narative it states "she identified herself as Henrietta Webb, who had died in 1673 and had lived in the house." and after that in the narative it states "Other ‘spirits’ that had lived in the house came through and eventually Matthew found himself witnessing a scene from 1731 when the house had just been built.". The obvious question here is if the house was not built until around 1731 then how could Henrietta Webb, who had died in 1673, have lived in the house 58 years before it was built? Is this a real story and there is simply a typo in the narative? I don't think so, I do think its an accurate account of how the story was related to the author of the article, but was it true to begin with? Further up in the narative, the out of body experience Matthew had dealt with his home, with which of course he was very familiar, this was probably a dream like state due to a 'self-hypnosis' type of condition in which his concentration was on his home. the article further states that his mother felt his presence. After all he was a young man in school and probably a little home sick. How do we know that it wasn't simply coincidence that his mother, like all mothers who love their children deeply, wasn't just simply thinking of him every day while he was away? How do we know that Matthew did not relate this 'experience' to his mother, who then acted like all humans and related what Matthew told her to fit into her own relational contextual understanding with a mothers love and longing for her children to be near and agree that she felt his presence at the same moment? The mind plays funny tricks that we can eaisly convince ourself the experiences are what we want them to be.
Further, in a statistical study, Ghosts and things like that can be attributed to a simple scientific explaination, for example sound. See
http://www.spr.ac.uk/confprogramme.php3 ... 00#Randall - then scroll further down to the section entitled "19HZ AUDIO SIGNALS AND APPARITIONAL EXPERIENCES" . Not stating that this study was a scientific one, but its a known scientific fact that such low frequency sound occurs naturally in nature and manmade structures/objects through chance (mostly when things are stressed such as two surfaces moving against each other). Such low frequency sounds are known to produce various effects in humans and induce various auditory and visual effects that affect everyone almost the same way with perception being slightly different for each. Then when you have people who have been primed by years of ghost tales (scary stories when we were children for example), and you put them in places where these scientific reasons occur the natural tendancy is for them to actually believe they saw or felt a presence or ghost. Its natural for humans to relate something in context with past experiences or life educational experiences, its how the mind works.
All these things have simple scientific based explainations or are simply the result of naturally occuring situations or the effect of the surrounding environment.
