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Kirlian photography

In 1939, Semyon Kirlian discovered by accident that if an object on a photographic plate is subjected to a high-voltage electric field, an image is created on the plate. The image looks like a colored halo or coronal discharge. This image is said to be a physical manifestation of the spiritual aura or "life force" which allegedly surrounds each living thing.

Allegedly, this special method of "photographing" objects is a gateway to the paranormal world of auras. Actually, what is recorded is due to quite natural phenomena such as pressure, electrical grounding, humidity and temperature. Changes in moisture (which may reflect changes in emotions), barometric pressure, and voltage, among other things, will produce different 'auras'.

Living things...are moist. When the electricity enters the living object, it produces an area of gas ionization around the photographed object, assuming moisture is present on the object. This moisture is transferred from the subject to the emulsion surface of the photographic film and causes an alternation of the electric charge pattern on the film. If a photograph is taken in a vacuum, where no ionized gas is present, no Kirlian image appears. If the Kirlian image were due to some paranormal fundamental living energy field, it should not disappear in a simple vacuum (Hines 2003).

There have even been claims of Kirlian photography being able to capture "phantom limbs," e.g., when a leaf is placed on the plate and then torn in half and "photographed," the whole leaf shows up in the picture. This is not due to paranormal forces, however, but to fraud or to residues left from the initial impression of the whole leaf.

Parapsychologist Thelma Moss popularized Kirlian photography as a diagnostic medical tool with her books The Body Electric (1979) and The Probability of the Impossible (1983). She was convinced that the Kirlian process was an open door to the "bioenergy" of the astral body. Moss came to UCLA in mid-life and earned a doctorate in psychology. She experimented with and praised the effects of LSD and was in and out of therapy for a variety of psychological problems, but managed to overcome her personal travails and become a professor at UCLA’s Neuropsychiatric Institute. Her studies focused on paranormal topics, such as auras, levitation and ghosts. One of her favorite subjects at UCLA was Uri Geller, whom she "photographed" several times. She even made several trips to the Soviet Union to consult with her paranormal colleagues. Moss died in 1997 at the age of 78.

Moss paved the way for other parapsychologists to speculate that Kirlian "photography" was parapsychology's Rosetta stone. They would now be able to understand such things as acupuncture, chi, orgone energy, telepathy, etc., as well as diagnose and cure whatever ails us. For example, Bio-Electrography claims to be

...a method of investigation for biological objects, based on the interpretation of the corona-discharge image obtained during exposure to a high-frequency, high-voltage electromagnetic field which is recorded either on photopaper or by modern video recording equipment. Its main use is as a fast, inexpensive and relatively non-invasive means for the diagnostic evaluation of physiological and psychological states. [from the now-defunct http://www.psy.aau.dk/bioelec/]

The reliability of diagnosing illnesses by photographing auras is not very high, however. Bio-Electrography should not be confused with Esogetic Colorpuncture, Peter Mandel's therapy, which unites acupuncture and Kirlian photography "to detect energy imbalances."

None of these Kirlian methods of diagnosis should be confused with other types of medical photography, e.g., roentgen-ray computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, single photon/positron emission computed tomography and other useful types of medical imaging, none of which have anything to do with auras. 

further reading

reader comments

• Energy Healing: Looking in All the Wrong Places by Robert Todd Carroll
• Aura Photography
• Human Energy Fields? by Eric Krieg
• Kirlian Photography - The New England Skeptical Society
• Kirlian Photography
• Can Kirlian Photography Detect Diseases? by George Nava True II
• Andy's (Le Magicien) Kirlian Photography Page

Abell, George O. and Barry Singer (eds.) Science And Paranormal (New York: Scribner, 1981).

Hines, Terence. Pseudoscience and the Paranormal, 2nd ed. (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 2003).

Randi, James. Flim-Flam! (Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books,1982),

Watkins, Arleen J. and William S. Bickel. "A Study of the Kirlean Effect," in The Hundredth Monkey and Other Paradigms of the Paranormal,ed. Kendrick Frazier (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1991), pp. 209-221.

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