Poltergeist by James Kahn Read Free Book Online

more difficulty with—to move physical objects at a distance required (to her way of thinking) a greater energy source than was demonstrable or even imaginable in the human mind. Still, she had not ruled PK out—her favorite quote was by the astronomer Fred Hoyle; The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine . Dr. Lesh had this quote taped to the wall over her desk.
    Even so, there were things she didn’t accept. She didn’t believe in reincarnation, for instance—for reincarnation necessarily postulated the migration of the soul, and Dr. Lesh didn’t believe in such a thing as a soul. She believed in science.
    But she also believed in people, and that softened her core. She viewed her research as investigation into human resources as much as inquiry, into the nature of the universe. “The scientist with the heart of gold,” Marty called her.
    Marty Lewandowski was the chief lab technician, busily tinkering with the electroencephalograph behind Dr. Lesh now. Marty was twenty-three, thought of himself as a cool dude, and didn’t believe in much of anything but his bi-monthly paycheck. Not that he disbelieved in Lesh’s experiments—he just didn’t really care all that much. It was a nice place to work, though—he was into all the electronics, the people were pretty mellow, the hours were fairly flexible, there were always lots of cute grad students floating around. And Martha was a real human being to work for.
    “Out of ink in Lead Eight, Doc,” he called to her back. “How should we interpret that?”
    “Just fill it—that’s in your job description, isn’t it?” She smiled without looking up from her papers. They enjoyed teasing each other
    “You going over the Tangina transcripts?” he asked.
    “Mm hmm. I think a real pattern is emerging, too—whenever she scores high on the psi tests, her EEG demonstrates a statistically significant preponderance of . . .”
    “Alpha waves, right?”
    “Yes, alpha, but we’ve known that more or less all along. What I see here—and much more so, now that I’m looking for it—is PGO activity. The ponto-geniculo-occipital spikes.”
    “Same as you see during REM sleep?”
    “Exactly—that’s what makes this finding even more exciting—it seems to suggest that psi phenomena may be related to the dreaming state—which is, of course, anecdotally, what people have always said.”
    Ryan walked in and sat down. “You’re not talkin’ about voodoo again, I hope,” he laughed, dumping his books on the table. Ryan Mitchell was one of Dr. Lesh’s grad students. He was bright, energetic, and opinionated. Like Lesh, he’d seen telepathy demonstrated in the lab; unlike her, he generally scoffed at all the rest—for its lack of hard evidence, for the fools and charlatans that glutted the field.
    But Ryan was no cynic, merely a skeptic. He maintained rigorous standards of proof, and all things that failed to meet these standards were highly suspect; were, in fact, unworthy, if not totally worthless. A priori , of all things he was skeptical. However, once a phenomenon did pass his discriminating evaluations, did not wither under his scrutiny, held strong under the eye of the impartial observer—then Ryan Mitchell believed, and would stand behind that belief against all onslaught.
    Unfortunately, most “proofs” of paranormal phenomena failed to meet his strict criteria.
    Ryan was convinced, for example, that Tangina was faking.
    “Marty was talking about ink,” said Dr. Lesh. “I was talking about Tangina’s EEG.”
    “I think we ought to cut her loose,” Ryan went on. “Really, Martha, she’s just jerkin’ our chain.”
    “I don’t think so, Ryan. For two reasons. One—I was just telling Marty—is that I’m starting to see a real pattern in her EEG. Here, look at these PGO spikes—they fire each time the transcript was positive for a behaviorally paranormal experience.” Ryan examined the tracings. Lesh