A Big Chill

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Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild.

Our world is full of the unexplainable.

And if history is an open book, All of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.

Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.

In the 1960s and 70s, the US and the Soviet Union were in a race for control, for nuclear power, for outer space, and of course, for our minds.

But I'm not talking about propaganda or even ideology.

I'm talking about how, in 1970, one lone housewife in Russia set off a new type of Cold War where two world powers tried to create weapons of psychic destruction.

Sometime in the early 1970s, tapes smuggled out of the Soviet Union made their way to the CIA.

One video recorded on March 10th of 1970 quickly became an object of fascination to the agency.

The tape showed 44-year-old Nina Kuliina, a housewife and former Red Army soldier, in an observation room somewhere in Leningrad.

Sitting in front of her on a table was a tiny, still-beating heart.

The heart had been taken from a frog just minutes before and placed in a solution that would allow it to keep beating for up to an hour after death.

Both Nina and the tiny heart were wired with electrodes which recorded their heart rates.

As CIA analysts watched, the small, dark-haired woman on the tape focused intently.

To their amazement, the frog heart began to beat faster.

Nina screwed up her face in concentration again, and the frog heartbeat slowed.

And finally, after a few few minutes, Nina focused one last time and right before the analyst's eyes, through the power of thought alone, she stopped the frog heart cold.

Dozens of tapes trickled in from across the iron curtain, showing Nina moving matchsticks across a table with her mind, separating egg whites from yolks, even accelerating a researcher's heartbeat to dangerous levels.

And needless to say, the CIA was shocked.

It seemed that the Soviets had found someone who could master ESP, or extrasensory perception.

You see, for decades, researchers at the fringes of respectable science had been looking into the world of ESP.

Psychical researchers, as they called themselves, were bent on discovering whether humans could do extraordinary things with psychic energy, such as reading another person's thoughts, viewing a place halfway around the world, or even moving objects with their minds.

With the discovery of Nina's tapes, The world of psychical research immediately went from crackpot theories to serious government-funded science.

The American government commissioned an intelligence report on what they called Soviet psychoenergetic threat.

When it was finished, it was a bombshell.

Researchers and intelligence officials believed the Soviets were trying to develop mind control and wanted to use people with powers like Nina's to defeat their enemies.

By 1978, the CIA began its own top-secret ESP program, which they called Stargate.

Hoping to spy on the Soviets, researchers especially focused on remote viewing or using a psychic to see inside a place on the other side of the world.

They gave their subjects the coordinates of Soviet military bases and asked them to describe what they saw.

In some cases, the results were scarily accurate.

Both countries continued psychical research for the next few decades, although as far as we know, they've yet to employ telekinesis or remote viewing as wide-scale weapons.

However, sources report that military psychics were used by Russia as recently as the Chechen Wars, which ended in 2009.

And as for Nina, well, she gained international notoriety for her part in the psychic Cold War.

She claimed to newspapers that she realized her powers when she was young, when she noticed that things near her would move when she got angry.

According to her, her mother had the same ability.

To fine-tune it, she began to meditate to prepare herself, to concentrate intensely on moving objects with her mind.

And while she had many supporters in the military, she found even more critics once she went public with her powers.

It was pointed out that many of her miraculous tricks could be faked using sleight of hand.

Not to mention the Soviet Union had a reputation for exaggerating their victories for use in propaganda.

And wouldn't you know it, Nina was caught cheating during demonstrations using magnets and tiny threads, and it was believed by some that she had faked all of her powers.

Even Pravda, the official communist newspaper of the Soviet Union, called her a fraud.

In 1987, another magazine called her a fake, and Nina sued and won the lawsuit.

And she maintained the truth of her abilities until she died in 1990.

Maybe Nina really did have powers, or perhaps she was faking all along.

Either way, with all the news coverage of the debate, she really did a great job of getting inside our heads.

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When we think of World War II, we picture the forces of the U.S.

and Western Europe coming together unanimously to defeat the Germans.

But it's easy to forget that every nation had a diverse population with different views on the war.

There were Nazi sympathizers inside America, England, and France, and there was resistance to the Nazis inside Germany and Austria.

Perhaps the most colorful example of this, though, came right at the end of the war, when Americans, Germans, and the French joined together at a castle in Austria to defeat a Nazi assault.

Castle Eiter was the Nazi version of a luxury prison.

Located in western Austria, sandwiched between Germany and Italy, It housed French VIPs from the very beginning of the war.

Among the many who were held there were Paul Raynaud, former French prime minister, Marie Agnes Caillou, sister of then-leader of the French military Charles de Gaulle, and tennis star Jean-Burautre.

As the Allies closed in on Germany and Austria in April of 1945, the guards at Castle Eiter fled.

But the region was still swarming with Nazis belonging to the SS, the most loyal and brutal organization within the German military.

And the French prisoners worried that if the SS found them trying to escape, they would kill them.

And so they sent one of their own to sneak out of the castle and through the countryside to the nearest village, where they made contact with Major Joseph Gangel.

Now, Joseph was Austrian, but he had defected from the German military recently after seeing what it had become under Hitler.

He was filled with regret over his role in helping them conquer Europe.

Joseph heard about the plight of the French prisoners and immediately went on a covert mission of his own, sneaking through the countryside and making contact with the nearby American tank division.

It speaks to how late in the war this all was, that these different factions were all right there on top of each other.

The combined pleas of Joseph and the French prisoner were enough to motivate at least one of the Americans, Captain John Kerry Lee.

He was only 27 years old and a football player back home.

And as much as his men just wanted to keep their heads down and avoid putting their lives on the line this close to German surrender, Lee knew that it would be wrong to leave the French prisoners there to die.

So, he rallied his men and they began to drive their tanks toward the castle.

This was a process of attrition as they had to cross several bridges into the mountains leading to the castle.

The bridges were narrow and weak, so Lee ended up leaving behind all but one of his tanks.

When they finally arrived at the castle, they prepared to defend it from any SS troops who might take an interest.

Lee even blocked the entrance with his tank, and the French prisoners were determined to help.

Imagine the elderly French prisoner Agnes holding a machine gun next to a young American soldier.

And of course, Joseph also continued to assist, providing what insight he could into SS tactics.

They went to bed that night, hoping that all their precautions wouldn't be needed, but as it so happened, a lookout spotted grappling hooks on the castle walls just hours into his watch.

The SS were on their way, and soon enough they were pouring out of the woods, heading for the castle.

The Americans, the French, and Yosef all stood side by side, firing machine guns down at the invading army.

Lee's tank fired off shells from the front gates, blowing away any Germans who came close.

But then, things took a turn for the worse.

As morning arrived, German 80mm guns appeared on the horizon, blowing massive holes in the side of the castle.

Then, one of the shells got especially lucky, striking Li's tank.

His men had just enough time to flee before it exploded into flames.

And so Joseph and Lee kept moving everyone further and further into the castle.

But this was a losing game.

In one last desperate gamble, they sent a volunteer, Jean the tennis star, to pull vault over a castle wall and sneak past the enemy lines to find help.

While they waited, Paul Reynaud, the elderly former prime minister of France, viciously fired down from a castle window, refusing to give up.

Joseph, sensing that Paul was in danger, rushed forward, throwing his body in front of him.

Joseph's instincts were correct, too.

A sniper's bullet meant for Paul struck him in the head, killing him instantly.

He had given everything to make up for his role in the German army, and that included his life.

Just as all hope seemed lost, new arrivals appeared on the horizon.

Jean the Tennistar had been successful.

He'd found a second American tank division and led them straight to the castle.

He even showed up wearing one of their uniforms.

And soon enough, the tanks tore through the SS, driving them away from Castle Eider.

The prisoners were saved, and the curious band of Americans, French, and German soldiers suffered zero casualties.

That is, except for Joseph, who was later honored as an Austrian war hero.

And just three days later, the war in Europe was over.

I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.

Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts or learn more about the show by visiting CuriositiesPodcast.com.

The show was created by me, Aaron Mankey, in partnership with How Stuff Works.

I make another award-winning show show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show.

And you can learn all about it over at theworldoflore.com.

And until next time, stay curious.

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