Eusapia Palladino
Encyclopedia
Eusapia Palladino was a Spiritualist medium
from Naples
in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies
(later Italy
).
In Italy, France, Germany, Poland and Russia, Palladino seemed to display extraordinary powers in the dark: levitating and elongating herself, "apporting" flowers, materializing the dead, producing spirit hands and faces in wet clay, levitating tables, playing musical instruments under the table without contact, communicating with the dead through her spirit guide
John King, etc. It was expensive to watch one of her performances.
Many Europeans, including some Nobel laureates, regarded Palladino as a genuine Spiritualist medium, claiming that she did not employ the standard deceptions used by fraud
ulent mediums. As late as 1926, eight years after her death, Arthur Conan Doyle
in his History of Spiritualism praised the psychic phenomena and spirit materializations that she had produced.
In the United States, she was described as a medium who resorted to trickery when her alleged talents failed her.
Her Warsaw
séance
s at the turn of 1893–94 inspired several colorful scenes in the historical novel
Pharaoh, which Bolesław Prus began writing in 1894.
, Bari Province, Italy. She received little, if any, formal education. Orphaned as a child, she was taken in as a nursemaid by a family in Naples. In her early life she was married to a traveling conjuror.
In 1892, 17 séances held in Milan with Eusapia gave evidence of paranormal events. In his book After Death — What? Researches in Hypnotic and Spiritualistic Phenomena (1909; Aquarian Press edition 1988), turn-of-the-century scientist Cesare Lombroso
recounts the experiments that led him from a strictly materialist worldview to a belief in spirits and life after death. The most extraordinary was a phenomenon that Lombroso titles "The Levitation of the Medium to the Top of the Table."
The details that are given strongly imply that the levitations were not actually seen. There are no references to "we saw." It was totally dark. The sound of Palladino's chair landing on the table ("it was not violently dashed, lifted without hitting anything") and references to her hands ("[they] kept asking each other questions about the position of the hands" and "repeatedly felt a hand touch them on the head") are important to the interpretation of action and movement. There is confusion.
Palladino visited Warsaw
, Poland
, on two occasions. Her first and longer visit was when she came at the importunities of the psychologist
, Dr. Julian Ochorowicz
, who hosted her from November 1893 to January 1894.
Regarding the phenomena demonstrated at Palladino's séance
s, Ochorowicz concluded against the spirit hypothesis and for a hypothesis that the phenomena were caused by a "fluidic action" and were performed at the expense of the medium's own powers and those of the other participants in the séance
s.
Ochorowicz introduced Palladino to the journalist and novelist Bolesław Prus, who attended a number of her séances, wrote about them in the press
, and incorporated several Spiritualist-inspired scenes into his historical novel
Pharaoh.
On January 1, 1894, Palladino called on Prus at his apartment. As described by Ochorowicz,
Palladino subsequently visited Warsaw
in the second half of May 1898, on her way from St. Petersburg to Vienna
and Munich
. At that time, Prus attended at least two of the three séances that she conducted (the two séances were held in the apartment of Ludwik Krzywicki
).
In 1905 Eusapia Palladino came to Paris, where 1903 Nobel-laureate physicists Pierre Curie
and Marie Curie
and, again, future Nobel laureate Charles Richet were among those who investigated her.
Other members of the Curies' circle of scientist friends—including William Crookes
; future Nobel laureate Jean Perrin and his wife Henriette; Louis Georges Gouy
; and Paul Langevin
—were also exploring spiritualism, as was Pierre Curie's brother Jacques, a fervent believer.
The Curies regarded mediumistic séances as "scientific experiments" and took detailed notes. According to historian Anna Hurwic, they thought it possible to discover in spiritualism the source of an unknown energy that would reveal the secret of radioactivity.
On July 24, 1905, Pierre Curie reported to his friend Gouy: "We have had a series of séances with Eusapia Palladino at the [Society for Psychical Research]."
Pierre was eager to enlist Gouy. Palladino, he informed him, would return in November, and "I hope that we will be able to convince you of the reality of the phenomena or at least some of them." Pierre was planning to undertake experiments "in a methodical fashion."
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Marie Curie
also attended Palladino's séances, but does not seem to have been as intrigued by them as Pierre.
On April 14, 1906, just five days before his accidental death, Pierre Curie wrote Gouy about his last séance with Palladino: "There is here, in my opinion, a whole domain of entirely new facts and physical states in space of which we have no conception."
Charles Richet, who would later win the 1913 Nobel Prize
in physiology and who carried out decades of research into psychic phenomena, participated in the Curies' investigations of Eusapia Palladino and left an account of a séance:
In 1908, the Society for Psychical Research appointed a committee of three to examine Eusapia Palladino in Naples
. The committee comprised Mr. Hereward Carrington
, investigator for the American Society for Psychical Research and an amateur conjurer; Mr. W. W. Baggally, also an investigator and amateur conjurer of much experience; and the Hon. Everard Fielding, who had had an extensive training as investigator and "a fairly complete education at the hands of fraudulent mediums." They were convinced that Palladino possessed unusual powers. Note: In August 1906 Everard Fielding and his brother Basil were boating. The boat capsized and Basil drowned. It was at this period Everard became noted in the affairs of The Society for Psychical Research.
In 1910 psychic investigator Everard Fielding returned to Naples, without Hereward Carrington and W.W. Baggaly. Instead, he was accompanied by his friend, William S. Marriott, http://www.answers.com/topic/william-s-marriott http://www.prairieghosts.com/gambols.html a conjuror of some distinction who had exposed psychic fraud in Pearson's Magazine. His plan was to repeat the famous earlier 1908 Naple sittings with Palladino. Other members of the Society for Psychical Research had called attention to the failings of Fielding's 1908 notes. Unlike the 1908 sittings which had baffled the investigators, this time Fielding and Marriott detected her cheating, just as she had done in the US. Her deceptions were obvious. Marriott stated,"When one knows how a feat can be accomplished and what to look for, only the most skillful performer can maintain the illusion in the face of such informed scrutiny." Fielding saw the second visit as totally worthless.
Carrington, who became Palladino's manager, contends that far from having been exposed in America, as the public imagined, Eusapia presented a large number of striking phenomena which have never been explained and that only a certain number of her classical and customary tricks were detected, which every investigator of this medium's phenomena had known to exist and had warned other investigators against for the past 20 years. No new form of trickery was discovered and Carrington warned the sitters against the old and well-known methods in a circular letter in advance. This is why the American exposure did not influence the European investigators in the least.
Indeed, Eusapia did not depart from America without making one interesting convert. Howard Thurston
(1869–1936), world-famous magician, declared:
On another occasion, Thurston
offered this more detailed endorsement of Palladino's supernatural ability:
Howard Thurston
supported spiritualism
and had studied at the Dwight L. Moody
Bible Institute, intending to become a Unitarian
missionary before he became a magician.
In 1907, when the physician and professor Filippo Bottazzi read about studies about the phenomenon of mediumism, he decided to do experiments with his team. In 1909 he published the book, Mediumistic Phenomena..
Palladino dictated the lighting
and "controls" that were to be used in her mediumistic seance
s. The fingertips of her right hand rested upon the back of the hand of one "controller." Her left hand was grasped at the wrist by a second controller seated on her other side. Her feet rested on top of the feet of her controllers, sometimes beneath them. A controller's foot was in contact with only the toe of her shoe. Occasionally her ankles were tied to the legs of her chair, but they were given a play of four inches. During the sitting in semi-darkness, her ankles would become free. Generally she was unbound. In one instance, a controller cut her free so that phenomena might occur.
Palladino normally refused to allow someone beneath the table to hold her feet with his hands. She refused to levitate the table from a standing position. The table being rectangular, she must sit only at a short side. No wall of any kind could stand between Palladino and the table. The weight of the table was seventeen pounds. The table levitated to a height of 3 to 10 inches for a maximum of 2-3 seconds. When the table levitated, there was also movement from Palladino's skirt. (Frank Podmore
, 1910.)
In France, the United Kingdom and the USA, she had been caught using tricks. Palladino was expert at freeing a hand or foot to produce phenomena. She chose to sit at the short side of the table so that her controllers on each side must sit closer together, making it easier to deceive them. Her shoes were gimmicked and unbuttoned in such a way that she could remove her feet without disturbing a "control." Her levitation of a table began by freeing one foot, rocking the table, and then slipping her toe under one leg. Since she sat at the narrow end of the table, this was made possible. She lifted the table by rocking back on the heel of this foot. A total levitation was produced by now switching the support of the table to her knees. She made light spirit rappings by pressing the tips of her fingers on the table top and moving them. Louder raps were made by striking a leg of the table with a free foot. She could do these tricks in full light and not be caught. All the sitters at the table viewed her from different angles. Where one might catch her trick, another could not. This confusion greatly aided her. (W.S. Davis, 1910.)
A photograph, taken in the dark, of a small stool behind her, that moved and levitated, revealed the stool to be sitting on Palladino's head. After she saw this photo, the stool remained, immobile, on the floor. A plaster impression taken of a spirit hand matched Palladino's hand. She was caught using a hair to perform "controlled" scientific experiments. In the dim light, her fist, wrapped in a handkerchief, became a materialized spirit. (Podmore
, 1910.) Hugo Münsterberg
, who succeeded Professor William James at Harvard University
, attended some sittings later on and explained the blowing out of the cabinet curtains when all the windows were closed and doors were locked was accomplished by a rubber bulb Palladino had in her hand.
As time passed, Palladino's alleged powers began to diminish. Her supporters claimed that it was because she was growing older, not because of the tighter controls demanded by conjurors (magicians) and the scientific community, or the many times she was eventually caught cheating.
Mediumship
Mediumship is described as a form of communication with spirits. It is a practice in religious beliefs such as Spiritualism, Spiritism, Espiritismo, Candomblé, Voodoo and Umbanda.- Concept :...
from Naples
Naples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...
in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies
Kingdom of the Two Sicilies
The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, commonly known as the Two Sicilies even before formally coming into being, was the largest and wealthiest of the Italian states before Italian unification...
(later Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
).
In Italy, France, Germany, Poland and Russia, Palladino seemed to display extraordinary powers in the dark: levitating and elongating herself, "apporting" flowers, materializing the dead, producing spirit hands and faces in wet clay, levitating tables, playing musical instruments under the table without contact, communicating with the dead through her spirit guide
Spirit guide
"Spirit guide" is a term used by the Western tradition of Spiritualist Churches, mediums, and psychics to describe an entity that remains a disincarnate spirit in order to act as a guide or protector to a living incarnated human being....
John King, etc. It was expensive to watch one of her performances.
Many Europeans, including some Nobel laureates, regarded Palladino as a genuine Spiritualist medium, claiming that she did not employ the standard deceptions used by fraud
Fraud
In criminal law, a fraud is an intentional deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual; the related adjective is fraudulent. The specific legal definition varies by legal jurisdiction. Fraud is a crime, and also a civil law violation...
ulent mediums. As late as 1926, eight years after her death, Arthur Conan Doyle
Arthur Conan Doyle
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle DL was a Scottish physician and writer, most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, generally considered a milestone in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger...
in his History of Spiritualism praised the psychic phenomena and spirit materializations that she had produced.
In the United States, she was described as a medium who resorted to trickery when her alleged talents failed her.
Her Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
séance
Séance
A séance is an attempt to communicate with spirits. The word "séance" comes from the French word for "seat," "session" or "sitting," from the Old French "seoir," "to sit." In French, the word's meaning is quite general: one may, for example, speak of "une séance de cinéma"...
s at the turn of 1893–94 inspired several colorful scenes in the historical novel
Historical novel
According to Encyclopædia Britannica, a historical novel is-Development:An early example of historical prose fiction is Luó Guànzhōng's 14th century Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which covers one of the most important periods of Chinese history and left a lasting impact on Chinese culture.The...
Pharaoh, which Bolesław Prus began writing in 1894.
Early life
Palladino was born into a peasant family in Minervino MurgeMinervino Murge
Minervino Murge is a town and comune in the province of Barletta-Andria-Trani in western Puglia, southern Italy, on the western flank of the Murgia Barese mountain chain. It is 16 km south of Canosa di Puglia and 17 km north of Spinazzola, in the Alta Murgia National Park.The town's...
, Bari Province, Italy. She received little, if any, formal education. Orphaned as a child, she was taken in as a nursemaid by a family in Naples. In her early life she was married to a traveling conjuror.
Milan
Cesare Lombroso
Cesare Lombroso, born Ezechia Marco Lombroso was an Italian criminologist and founder of the Italian School of Positivist Criminology. Lombroso rejected the established Classical School, which held that crime was a characteristic trait of human nature...
recounts the experiments that led him from a strictly materialist worldview to a belief in spirits and life after death. The most extraordinary was a phenomenon that Lombroso titles "The Levitation of the Medium to the Top of the Table."
The details that are given strongly imply that the levitations were not actually seen. There are no references to "we saw." It was totally dark. The sound of Palladino's chair landing on the table ("it was not violently dashed, lifted without hitting anything") and references to her hands ("[they] kept asking each other questions about the position of the hands" and "repeatedly felt a hand touch them on the head") are important to the interpretation of action and movement. There is confusion.
Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
, Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
, on two occasions. Her first and longer visit was when she came at the importunities of the psychologist
Psychologist
Psychologist is a professional or academic title used by individuals who are either:* Clinical professionals who work with patients in a variety of therapeutic contexts .* Scientists conducting psychological research or teaching psychology in a college...
, Dr. Julian Ochorowicz
Julian Ochorowicz
Julian Leopold Ochorowicz was a Polish philosopher, psychologist, inventor , poet, publicist and leading exponent of Polish Positivism.-Life:Julian Ochorowicz was the son of Julian and Jadwiga, née...
, who hosted her from November 1893 to January 1894.
Regarding the phenomena demonstrated at Palladino's séance
Séance
A séance is an attempt to communicate with spirits. The word "séance" comes from the French word for "seat," "session" or "sitting," from the Old French "seoir," "to sit." In French, the word's meaning is quite general: one may, for example, speak of "une séance de cinéma"...
s, Ochorowicz concluded against the spirit hypothesis and for a hypothesis that the phenomena were caused by a "fluidic action" and were performed at the expense of the medium's own powers and those of the other participants in the séance
Séance
A séance is an attempt to communicate with spirits. The word "séance" comes from the French word for "seat," "session" or "sitting," from the Old French "seoir," "to sit." In French, the word's meaning is quite general: one may, for example, speak of "une séance de cinéma"...
s.
Ochorowicz introduced Palladino to the journalist and novelist Bolesław Prus, who attended a number of her séances, wrote about them in the press
Newspaper
A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...
, and incorporated several Spiritualist-inspired scenes into his historical novel
Historical novel
According to Encyclopædia Britannica, a historical novel is-Development:An early example of historical prose fiction is Luó Guànzhōng's 14th century Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which covers one of the most important periods of Chinese history and left a lasting impact on Chinese culture.The...
Pharaoh.
On January 1, 1894, Palladino called on Prus at his apartment. As described by Ochorowicz,
Palladino subsequently visited Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
in the second half of May 1898, on her way from St. Petersburg to Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
and Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
. At that time, Prus attended at least two of the three séances that she conducted (the two séances were held in the apartment of Ludwik Krzywicki
Ludwik Krzywicki
Ludwik Krzywicki was a Polish anthropologist, economist and sociologist. One of the early champions of sociology in Poland, he approached historical materialism from a sociological viewpoint...
).
Paris
Pierre Curie
Pierre Curie was a French physicist, a pioneer in crystallography, magnetism, piezoelectricity and radioactivity, and Nobel laureate. He was the son of Dr. Eugène Curie and Sophie-Claire Depouilly Curie ...
and Marie Curie
Marie Curie
Marie Skłodowska-Curie was a physicist and chemist famous for her pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first person honored with two Nobel Prizes—in physics and chemistry...
and, again, future Nobel laureate Charles Richet were among those who investigated her.
Other members of the Curies' circle of scientist friends—including William Crookes
William Crookes
Sir William Crookes, OM, FRS was a British chemist and physicist who attended the Royal College of Chemistry, London, and worked on spectroscopy...
; future Nobel laureate Jean Perrin and his wife Henriette; Louis Georges Gouy
Louis Georges Gouy
Louis Georges Gouy was a French physicist who was born at Vals-les-Bains, Ardèche in 1854 and died January 27 1926. He is the namesake of the Gouy balance, the Gouy-Chapman electric double layer model and the ....
; and Paul Langevin
Paul Langevin
Paul Langevin was a prominent French physicist who developed Langevin dynamics and the Langevin equation. He was one of the founders of the Comité de vigilance des intellectuels antifascistes, an antifascist organization created in the wake of the 6 February 1934 far right riots...
—were also exploring spiritualism, as was Pierre Curie's brother Jacques, a fervent believer.
The Curies regarded mediumistic séances as "scientific experiments" and took detailed notes. According to historian Anna Hurwic, they thought it possible to discover in spiritualism the source of an unknown energy that would reveal the secret of radioactivity.
On July 24, 1905, Pierre Curie reported to his friend Gouy: "We have had a series of séances with Eusapia Palladino at the [Society for Psychical Research]."
Pierre was eager to enlist Gouy. Palladino, he informed him, would return in November, and "I hope that we will be able to convince you of the reality of the phenomena or at least some of them." Pierre was planning to undertake experiments "in a methodical fashion."
Marie Curie
Marie Skłodowska-Curie was a physicist and chemist famous for her pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first person honored with two Nobel Prizes—in physics and chemistry...
also attended Palladino's séances, but does not seem to have been as intrigued by them as Pierre.
On April 14, 1906, just five days before his accidental death, Pierre Curie wrote Gouy about his last séance with Palladino: "There is here, in my opinion, a whole domain of entirely new facts and physical states in space of which we have no conception."
Charles Richet, who would later win the 1913 Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
in physiology and who carried out decades of research into psychic phenomena, participated in the Curies' investigations of Eusapia Palladino and left an account of a séance:
Naples
Naples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...
. The committee comprised Mr. Hereward Carrington
Hereward Carrington
Hereward Carrington, Ph.D. was a well-known British investigator of psychic phenomena and author...
, investigator for the American Society for Psychical Research and an amateur conjurer; Mr. W. W. Baggally, also an investigator and amateur conjurer of much experience; and the Hon. Everard Fielding, who had had an extensive training as investigator and "a fairly complete education at the hands of fraudulent mediums." They were convinced that Palladino possessed unusual powers. Note: In August 1906 Everard Fielding and his brother Basil were boating. The boat capsized and Basil drowned. It was at this period Everard became noted in the affairs of The Society for Psychical Research.
In 1910 psychic investigator Everard Fielding returned to Naples, without Hereward Carrington and W.W. Baggaly. Instead, he was accompanied by his friend, William S. Marriott, http://www.answers.com/topic/william-s-marriott http://www.prairieghosts.com/gambols.html a conjuror of some distinction who had exposed psychic fraud in Pearson's Magazine. His plan was to repeat the famous earlier 1908 Naple sittings with Palladino. Other members of the Society for Psychical Research had called attention to the failings of Fielding's 1908 notes. Unlike the 1908 sittings which had baffled the investigators, this time Fielding and Marriott detected her cheating, just as she had done in the US. Her deceptions were obvious. Marriott stated,"When one knows how a feat can be accomplished and what to look for, only the most skillful performer can maintain the illusion in the face of such informed scrutiny." Fielding saw the second visit as totally worthless.
Carrington, who became Palladino's manager, contends that far from having been exposed in America, as the public imagined, Eusapia presented a large number of striking phenomena which have never been explained and that only a certain number of her classical and customary tricks were detected, which every investigator of this medium's phenomena had known to exist and had warned other investigators against for the past 20 years. No new form of trickery was discovered and Carrington warned the sitters against the old and well-known methods in a circular letter in advance. This is why the American exposure did not influence the European investigators in the least.
Howard Thurston
Howard Thurston was a stage magician from Columbus, Ohio.-Life:Thurston had the largest traveling magic show for the time, requiring more than eight entire train cars to transport his props across the country...
(1869–1936), world-famous magician, declared:
On another occasion, Thurston
Howard Thurston
Howard Thurston was a stage magician from Columbus, Ohio.-Life:Thurston had the largest traveling magic show for the time, requiring more than eight entire train cars to transport his props across the country...
offered this more detailed endorsement of Palladino's supernatural ability:
Howard Thurston
Howard Thurston
Howard Thurston was a stage magician from Columbus, Ohio.-Life:Thurston had the largest traveling magic show for the time, requiring more than eight entire train cars to transport his props across the country...
supported spiritualism
Spiritualism
Spiritualism is a belief system or religion, postulating the belief that spirits of the dead residing in the spirit world have both the ability and the inclination to communicate with the living...
and had studied at the Dwight L. Moody
Dwight L. Moody
Dwight Lyman Moody , also known as D.L. Moody, was an American evangelist and publisher who founded the Moody Church, Northfield School and Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts , the Moody Bible Institute and Moody Publishers.-Early life:Dwight Moody was born in Northfield, Massachusetts to a large...
Bible Institute, intending to become a Unitarian
Unitarianism
Unitarianism is a Christian theological movement, named for its understanding of God as one person, in direct contrast to Trinitarianism which defines God as three persons coexisting consubstantially as one in being....
missionary before he became a magician.
In 1907, when the physician and professor Filippo Bottazzi read about studies about the phenomenon of mediumism, he decided to do experiments with his team. In 1909 he published the book, Mediumistic Phenomena..
Tricks
Lighting
Lighting or illumination is the deliberate application of light to achieve some practical or aesthetic effect. Lighting includes the use of both artificial light sources such as lamps and light fixtures, as well as natural illumination by capturing daylight...
and "controls" that were to be used in her mediumistic seance
Séance
A séance is an attempt to communicate with spirits. The word "séance" comes from the French word for "seat," "session" or "sitting," from the Old French "seoir," "to sit." In French, the word's meaning is quite general: one may, for example, speak of "une séance de cinéma"...
s. The fingertips of her right hand rested upon the back of the hand of one "controller." Her left hand was grasped at the wrist by a second controller seated on her other side. Her feet rested on top of the feet of her controllers, sometimes beneath them. A controller's foot was in contact with only the toe of her shoe. Occasionally her ankles were tied to the legs of her chair, but they were given a play of four inches. During the sitting in semi-darkness, her ankles would become free. Generally she was unbound. In one instance, a controller cut her free so that phenomena might occur.
Frank Podmore
Frank Podmore was an English author, founding member of the Fabian Society, and writer on psychic matters.-Life:...
, 1910.)
In France, the United Kingdom and the USA, she had been caught using tricks. Palladino was expert at freeing a hand or foot to produce phenomena. She chose to sit at the short side of the table so that her controllers on each side must sit closer together, making it easier to deceive them. Her shoes were gimmicked and unbuttoned in such a way that she could remove her feet without disturbing a "control." Her levitation of a table began by freeing one foot, rocking the table, and then slipping her toe under one leg. Since she sat at the narrow end of the table, this was made possible. She lifted the table by rocking back on the heel of this foot. A total levitation was produced by now switching the support of the table to her knees. She made light spirit rappings by pressing the tips of her fingers on the table top and moving them. Louder raps were made by striking a leg of the table with a free foot. She could do these tricks in full light and not be caught. All the sitters at the table viewed her from different angles. Where one might catch her trick, another could not. This confusion greatly aided her. (W.S. Davis, 1910.)
Frank Podmore
Frank Podmore was an English author, founding member of the Fabian Society, and writer on psychic matters.-Life:...
, 1910.) Hugo Münsterberg
Hugo Münsterberg
Hugo Münsterberg was a German-American psychologist. He was one of the pioneers in applied psychology, extending his research and theories to Industrial/Organizational , legal, medical, clinical, educational and business settings. Münsterberg encountered immense turmoil with the outbreak of the...
, who succeeded Professor William James at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
, attended some sittings later on and explained the blowing out of the cabinet curtains when all the windows were closed and doors were locked was accomplished by a rubber bulb Palladino had in her hand.
As time passed, Palladino's alleged powers began to diminish. Her supporters claimed that it was because she was growing older, not because of the tighter controls demanded by conjurors (magicians) and the scientific community, or the many times she was eventually caught cheating.
See also
- Arthur Conan Doyle
- Albert de RochasAlbert de RochasEugène Auguste Albert de Rochas d'Aiglun was a leading French Parapsychologist, historian, translator, writer, military engineer and administrator.-Life and career:...
, leading French psychic researcher and one of the committee members that investigated Pallidino