Kirlian Photography

In 1976 Pehek, Kyler and Faust showed in Science that moisture passing from the subject to the film explains most variation in Kirlian images.

J. O. Pehek, H. J. Kyler and D. L. Faust, 'Image modulation in corona discharge photography', Science 194 (1976), 263-270

A high-voltage contact-printing technique from 1939 Soviet Russia, later sold as photographing the aura.

Sources2 sources

Scholarship

J. O. Pehek, H. J. Kyler and D. L. Faust, Image modulation in corona discharge photography, Science 194 (4262), 1976, pp. 263-270Most variation in Kirlian images of living subjects is caused by moisture transferred from the subject to the film emulsion.
can be accounted for by the presence of moisture on or within the subject's surface

Where this claim originates

Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder, Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain, 1970, pp. 202, 206-7The Kirlians, from Krasnodar in 1939, came to read their high-frequency images as an energy counterpart body in which illness showed before it reached the plant or person.
a kind of energy counterpart body of the leaf