Eusapia Palladino

File:Eusapia Palladino 2.jpg

Eusapia Palladino

Alexandr Aksakov (right) "controls" while Palladino levitates table, Milan, 1892.

Cesare Lombroso and Charles Richet "control" while Palladino levitates table, Milan, 1892.

Palladino, 1894; Julian Ochorowicz (left) controls right hand; Dr. Ségard controls left hand and feet.

Eusapia Palladino (alternate spelling: Paladino; 21 January 1854 – 16 May 1918) was an Italian Spiritualist physical medium. In Italy, France, Germany, Poland and Russia, Palladino seemed to display extraordinary powers in the dark: levitating and elongating herself, producing apports of 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, and other related phenomena, but after investigation all these things were discovered to be the result of trickery. It was expensive to watch one of her performances.

Some Europeans regarded Palladino as a genuine Spiritualist medium, and 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. However, Palladino had been caught cheating in every country she had been investigated in, and after many investigations the scientific community concluded that she was a clever conjuror. Her Warsaw séances at the turn of 1893–94 inspired several colorful scenes in the historical novel Pharaoh, which Bolesław Prus began writing in 1894.

Early life

Palladino was born into a peasant family in Minervino Murge, 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 and theatrical artist Raphael Delgaiz whose store she helped to manage. Palladino later married a wine merchant, Francesco Niola.

Italy

In 1892, 17 séances were held in Milan with Palladino. 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 with Palladino 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." However, the levitations were found by other investigators to be the result of fraud. According to authors William Kalush and Larry Sloman; Lombroso was known to be having a sexual relationship with Palladino. Lombroso's daughter Gina Ferrero wrote that during the later years of his life Lombroso suffered from arteriosclerosis and his mental and physical health was wrecked. Joseph McCabe wrote that because of this it is not surprising that Palladino managed to fool him with her tricks.

Poland

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 séances, 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 séances.

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,

"In the evening she visited Prus, whom she always adored. Though their conversation was original, because the one did not know Polish and the other Italian, when il Prusso entered she went mad with joy and they somehow managed to communicate with one another. So she saw it as her obligation to pay him a New Year's visit."

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).

England

In July 1895, Palladino was invited to England to Frederic William Henry Myers' house in Cambridge for a series of investigations into her mediumship. According to reports by the investigators Myers and Oliver Lodge, all the phenomena observed in the Cambridge sittings were the result of trickery. Her fraud was so clever, according to Myers, that it "must have needed long practice to bring it to its present level of skill."

In the Cambridge sittings the results proved disastrous for her mediumship. During the séances Palladino was caught cheating in order to free herself from the physical controls of the experiments. Palladino was found liberating her hands by placing the hand of the controller on her left on top of the hand of the controller on her right. Instead of maintaining any contact with her, the observers on either side were found to be holding each other's hands and this made it possible for her to perform tricks. Richard Hodgson had observed Palladino free a hand to move objects and use her feet to kick pieces of furniture in the room. Because of the discovery of fraud, the British SPR investigators such as Henry Sidgwick and Frank Podmore considered Palladino's mediumship to be permanently discredited and because of her fraud she was banned from any further experiments with the SPR in Britain. However despite the evidence of fraud, Oliver Lodge considered some of her phenomena genuine.

In the British Medical Journal on November 9, 1895 an article was published titled Exit Eusapia!. The article questioned the scientific legitimacy of the SPR for investigating Palladino a medium who had a reputation of being a fraud and imposture. Part of the article read "It would be comic if it were not deplorable to picture this sorry Egeria surrounded by men like Professor Sidgwick, Professor Lodge, Mr. F. H. Myers, Dr. Schiaparelli, and Professor Richet, solemnly receiving her pinches and kicks, her finger skiddings, her sleight of hand with various articles of furniture as phenomena calling for serious study." This caused Henry Sidgwick to respond in a published letter to the British Medical Journal, November 16, 1895. According to Sidgwick SPR members had exposed the fraud of Palladino at the Cambridge sittings, Sidgwick wrote "Throughout this period we have continually combated and exposed the frauds of professional mediums, and have never yet published in our Proceedings, any report in favour of the performances of any of them." The response from the Journal questioned why the SPR wastes time investigating phenomena that are the "result of jugglery and imposture" and not urgently concerning the welfare of mankind.

In 1898, Myers was invited to a series of séances in Paris with Charles Richet. In contrast to the previous séances in which he had observed fraud he claimed to have observed convincing phenomena. Sidgwick reminded Myers of Palladino's trickery in the previous investigations as "overwhelming" but Myers did not change his position. This enraged Richard Hodgson, then editor of SPR publications to ban Myers from publishing anything on his recent sittings with Palladino in the SPR journal. Hodgson was convinced Palladino was a fraud and supported Sidgwick in the "attempt to put that vulgar cheat Eusapia beyond the pale." It wasn't until the 1908 sittings in Naples that the SPR reopened the Palladino file.

The British psychical researcher Harry Price, who studied Palladino's mediumship wrote "Her tricks were usually childish: long hairs attached to small objects in order to produce 'telekinetic movements'; the gradual substitution of one hand for two when being controlled by sitters; the production of 'phenomena' with a foot which had been surreptitiously removed from its shoe and so on."

France

Table levitates during Palladino's séance at home of astronomer Camille Flammarion, France, November 25, 1898. There are two women seated at the table. Palladino sits at the far short end.

Mandolin (striped instrument, top, right) levitates above Palladino's head in front of the curtains at the far short end of the table during Palladino's séance in Munich, Germany, March 13, 1903.

The French psychical researcher Charles Richet with Oliver Lodge, Frederic William Henry Myers and Julian Ochorowicz investigated the medium Palladino in the summer of 1894 at his house in the Ile Roubaud in the Mediterranean. Richet claimed furniture moved during the séance and that some of the phenomena was the result of a supernatural agency. However, Richard Hodgson claimed there was inadequate control during the séances and the precautions described did not rule out trickery. Hodgson wrote all the phenomena "described could be account for on the assumption that Eusapia could get a hand or foot free." Lodge, Myers and Richet disagreed, but Hodgson was later proven correct in the Cambridge sittings as Palladino was observed to have used tricks exactly the way he had described them.

Charles Richet claimed to have observed the materialization of a hand in a séance of Palladino's. However, it was revealed that he had had a sexual relationship with Palladino and that he had been duped by trickery of medium Eva Carrière; thus his reports on Palladino's mediumship were dismissed by the scientific community as unreliable. Richet was also exposed as covering up a case of fraud for the medium Eva Carrière.

In 1898 the French astronomer Eugene Antoniadi investigated the mediumship of Palladino at the house of Camille Flammarion. According to Antoniadi her performance was "fraud from beginning to end". Palladino tried constantly to free her hands from control and was caught lowering a letter-scale by means of a hair.

In 1905 Eusapia Palladino came to Paris, where Nobel-laureate physicists Pierre Curie and Marie Curie and Nobel-laureate physiologist Charles Richet 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]."

It was very interesting, and really the phenomena that we saw appeared inexplicable as trickery—tables raised from all four legs, movement of objects from a distance, hands that pinch or caress you, luminous apparitions. All in a [setting] prepared by us with a small number of spectators all known to us and without a possible accomplice. The only trick possible is that which could result from an extraordinary facility of the medium as a magician. But how do you explain the phenomena when one is holding her hands and feet and when the light is sufficient so that one can see everything that happens?

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 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."

In a series of séances, physicist Jacques-Arsène d'Arsonval caught Palladino cheating many times. Professors Gustave Le Bon and Albert Dastre of Paris University examined Palladino in 1906 and concluded that she was a cheat. They installed a secret lamp behind Palladino and, at a séance, saw her release and use her foot. In 1907 Palladino was found using a strand of her hair to move an object toward herself and it was noted by investigators that the objects were not outside of her easy reach.

Naples

Sketch showing the layout of a séance in the 1908 Naples investigation.

In 1908, the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) appointed a committee of three to examine 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 Feilding, who had had an extensive training as investigator and "a fairly complete education at the hands of fraudulent mediums." Three adjoining rooms on the fifth floor of the Hotel Victoria were rented. The middle room where Feilding slept was used in the evening for the séances. In the corner of the room was a séance cabinet created by a pair of black curtains to form an enclosed area that contained a small round table with several musical instruments. In front of the curtains was placed a wooden table. During the séances, Palladino would sit at this table with her back to the curtains. The investigators sat on either side of her, holding her hand and placing a foot on her foot. Guest visitors also attended some of the séances; the Feilding report mentions that Professor Bottazzi and Professor Galeotti were present at the fourth séance, and a Mr. Ryan was present at the eighth séance.

Although the investigators caught Palladino cheating, they were convinced Palladino produced genuine supernatural phenomena such as levitations of the table, movement of the curtains, movement of objects from behind the curtain and touches from hands. Regarding the first report by Carrington and Feilding, the American scientist and philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce wrote:

Eusapia Palladino has been proved to be a very clever prestigiateuse and cheat, and was visited by a Mr. Carrington... In point of fact he has often caught the Palladino creature in acts of fraud. Some of her performances, however, he cannot explain; and thereupon he urges the theory that these are supernatural, or, as he prefers it "supernormal." Well, I know how it is that when a man has been long intensely excercised and over fatigued by an enigma, his common-sense will sometimes desert him; but it seems to me that the Palladino has simply been too clever for him... I think it more plausible that there are tricks that can deceive Mr. Carrington.

Palladino, ca. 1900

Frank Podmore in his book The Newer Spiritualism (1910) wrote a comprehensive critique of the Feilding report. Podmore said that the report provided insufficient information for crucial moments and the investigators representation of the witness accounts contained contradictions and inconsistencies as to who was holding Palladino's feet and hands. Podmore found accounts among the investigators conflicted as to who they claimed to have observed the incident. Podmore wrote that the report "at almost every point leaves obvious loopholes for trickery." During the séances the long black curtains were often intermixed with Palladino's long black dress. Palladino told Professor Bottazzi the black curtains were "indispensable." Researchers have suspected Palladino used the curtain to conceal her feet.

In 1910, Everard Feilding returned to Naples, without Hereward Carrington and W. W. Baggally. Instead, he was accompanied by his friend, William S. Marriott, a magician 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. Unlike the 1908 sittings which had baffled the investigators, this time Feilding and Marriott detected her cheating, just as she had done in the US. Her deceptions were obvious. Palladino evaded control and was caught moving objects with her foot, shaking the curtain with her hands, moving the cabinet table with her elbow and touching the séance sitters. Milbourne Christopher wrote regarding the exposure "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."

Carrington, who became Palladino's manager, believed that Palladino possessed some supernatural ability and 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. Palladino also made another convert. Howard Thurston (1869–1936), a magician, declared:

I witnessed in person the table levitations of Madame Eusapia Palladino ... and am thoroughly convinced that the phenomena I saw were not due to fraud and were not performed by the aid of her feet, knees or hands.

However, Howard Thurston was already a convinced spiritualist 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.

In 1992, Richard Wiseman analyzed the Feilding report of Palladino and argued that she employed a secret accomplice that could enter the room by a fake door panel positioned near the séance cabinet. Wiseman discovered this trick was already mentioned in a book from 1851, he also visited a carpenter and skilled magician who constructed a door within an hour with a false panel. The accomplice was suspected to be her second husband, who insisted on bringing Palladino to the hotel where the séances took place. Paul Kurtz suggested that Carrington could have been Palladino's secret accomplice. Kurtz found it suspicious that he was raised as her manager after the séances in Naples. Carrington was also absent on the night of the last séance. However, Massimo Polidoro and Gian Marco Rinaldi also analyzed the Feilding report but came to the conclusion no secret accomplice was needed as Palladino during the 1908 Naples séances could have produced the phenomena by using her foot.

America

On 18 December 1909, in New York, the Harvard psychologist Hugo Münsterberg investigated Palladino's mediumship and, with the help of a hidden man lying under a table, caught her levitating the table with her foot. Munsterberg had also observed Palladino free her foot from her shoe and use her toes to move a guitar in the séance cabinet. Daniel Cohen noted that "[Palladino] was undaunted by Munsterberg's exposure. Her tricks had been exposed many times before, yet she had prospered." Some investigators were originally baffled how Palladino could move curtains from a distance when all the doors and windows in the séance room were closed, but it was later discovered that she moved the curtains by releasing a jet of air from a rubber bulb that she had in her hand.

The magician Joseph Rinn gave a full account of fraudulent behavior observed in a séance of Palladino. Milbourne Christopher summarized the exposure:

Joseph F. Rinn and Warner C. Pyne, clad in black coveralls, had crawled into the dining room of Columbia professor Herbert G. Lord's house while a Palladino seance was in progress. Positioning themselves under the table, they saw the medium's foot strike a table leg to produce raps. As the table tilted to the right, due to pressure of her right hand on the surface, they saw her put her left foot under the left table leg. Pressing down on the tabletop with her left hand and up with her left foot under the table leg to form a clamp, she lifted her foot and "levitated" the table from the floor.

The psychologist Joseph Jastrow, in his book The Psychology of Conviction (1918), included an entire chapter exposing Palladino's tricks.

Tricks

Palladino with fake ectoplasm hands.

In England, America, France and Germany, Palladino had been caught using tricks. She dictated the lighting and "controls" that were to be used in her mediumistic seances. 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.

In a séance sitting in 1898 in Munich an investigator named Theodor Lipps noticed that, instead of Palladino's hand, he held the hand of the sitter controlling the left side of the medium. In this way Palladino had freed both hands by a trick. She was also discovered using trickery by other scientists in Germany. Max Dessoir and Albert Moll of Berlin detected the precise substitution tricks that were used by Palladino. Dessoir and Moll wrote: "The main point is cleverly to distract attention and to release one or both hands or one or both feet. This is Paladino's chief trick".

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 had to 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.

In France, the United Kingdom and the USA, she had been caught using tricks. Palladino was an 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 had to 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.

Joseph Jastrow a notable skeptic of Palladino's mediumship.

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. Hugo Münsterberg, who succeeded Professor William James at Harvard University, later attended some sittings and explained that the blowing out of the cabinet curtains when all the windows were closed and doors were locked was accomplished by a rubber bulb that Palladino had in her hand.

Science historian Sherrie Lynne Lyons wrote that the glowing or light-emitting hands in séances could easily be explained by the rubbing of oil of phosphorus on the hands. In 1909 an article was published in The New York Times titled Paladino Used Phoshorus. Hereward Carrington confessed to having painted Palladino's arm with phosphorescent paint, however he claimed to have used the paint to track the movement of her arm, to detect fraud. There was publicity over the incident and Carrington claimed his comments had been misquoted by newspapers.

The conjuror W. S. Davis published an article (with diagrams) exposing the tricks of Palladino. Davis also speculated that she used a piece of wire that she hid in her dress to tilt the séance table. Davis noted that when an attempt had been made to place a screen between her and the table she protested. Davis wrote she could not lift the table unless her dress was in contact with it and there is no obstruction between herself and the table.

In 1910, Stanley LeFevre Krebs wrote an entire book debunking Palladino and exposing the tricks she had used throughout her career, Trick Methods of Eusapia Paladino. Palladino was known for using her sexual charms in attempts to seduce her scientific investigators, who were all male. She often slept with male sitters to whom she was attracted. Two investigators who had supported her mediumship, Charles Richet and Cesare Lombroso, were both known to have had a sexual relationship with Palladino. According to Deborah Blum, Palladino had a habit of "climbing into the laps of the male" investigators. Another investigator who supported Palladino, Hereward Carrington, was known to have had a sexual relationship with another medium he investigated, Mina Crandon, so the same could have occurred with Palladino to bias his judgement in his reports of her mediumship.

The psychologist Millais Culpin wrote Palladino was a conscious cheat but also had symptoms of hysterical dissociation so may have deceived herself.

Laura Finch editor of the Annals of Psychical Science wrote in 1909 that Palladino had "erotic tendencies" and some of her male séance sitters were deluded or "glamoured" by her presence. According to M. Lamar Keene "Observers said that Eusapia Palladino used to experience obvious orgasmic reactions during her séances and had a marked propensity for handsome male sitters." Walter Mann has written Palladino's first husband a travelling conjurer taught her séance tricks. In 1910 Palladino admitted to an American reporter that she cheated in her séances, claiming her sitters had 'willed' her to do so. Eric Dingwall who investigated the mediumship of Palladino came to the conclusion that she was "vital, vulgar, amorous and a cheat."

See also

• Arthur Conan Doyle
• Albert de Rochas, leading French psychic researcher and one of the committee members that investigated Palladino

References

• Hereward Carrington, Eusapia Palladino and her Phenomena, B.W. Dodge & Company, 1909. Carrington's detailed descriptions and analysis of experiments conducted in European cities between 1891 and 1908.
• Edward Clodd. (1917). The Question: A Brief History and Examination of Modern Spiritualism. Grant Richards, London.
• Millais Culpin. (1920). Spiritualism and the New Psychology: An Explanation of Spiritualist Phenomena and Beliefs in Terms of Modern Knowledge. Edward Arnold, London.
• W. S. Davis. (1909). Sidelights on the Paladino Delusion. The New York Times. November 21.
• W. S. Davis. (1910). The New York Exposure of Eusapia Palladino. Journal of the American Society of Psychical Research. Volume 4: 401–24.
• Everard Feilding, William Marriott. (1910). Report on Further Series of Sittings with Eusapia Palladino at Naples. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. Volume 15. pp. 20–32.
• Barbara Goldsmith, Obsessive Genius: The Inner World of Marie Curie, New York, W.W. Norton, 2005, ISBN 0-393-05137-4.
• Nandor Fodor, An Encyclopaedia of Psychic Science, 1934.
• Joseph Jastrow, Wish and Wisdom: Episodes in the Vagaries of Belief, D. Appleton-Century Co., 1935. Chapter 12, "Paladino's Table," contains a photo of a mysterious spirit face in clay, compared to Palladino's face. The similarity is striking.
• Joseph Jastrow, The Psychology of Conviction: A Study of Beliefs and Attitudes, Chapter 4: "The Case of Paladino," Houghton Mifflin Co., 1918.
• Paul Kurtz. (1985). A Skeptic's Handbook of Parapsychology. Prometheus Books.
• Walter Mann. (1919). The Follies and Frauds of Spiritualism. Rationalist Association. London: Watts & Co.
• Joseph McCabe. (1920). Scientific Men and Spiritualism: A Skeptic's Analysis. The Living Age. June 12. pp. 652–657.
• Joseph McCabe. (1920). Is Spiritualism Based On Fraud? The Evidence Given By Sir A. C. Doyle and Others Drastically Examined. London: Watts & Co.
• Frank Podmore, Mediums of the Nineteenth Century, Vol. 2, Book 4, Chapter 1: "Some Foreign Investigations," University Books, 1963 (reprint of 1902 edition).
• Frank Podmore, The Newer Spiritualism, chaps. 3 ("Eusapia Palladino") and 4 ("Eusapia Palladino and the S.P.R."), Arno Press, 1975 (reprint of 1910 edition).
• Massimo Polidoro. (2003). Secrets of the Psychics: Investigating Paranormal Claims. Prometheus Books.
• Harry Price and Eric J. Dingwall, Revelations of a Spirit Medium, Arno Press, 1975 (reprint of the 1891 edition by Charles F. Pidgeon). This extremely rare, forgotten book gives an "insider's knowledge" of 19th-century deceptions.
• Susan Quinn, Marie Curie: A Life, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1995, ISBN 0-671-67542-7.
• D. H. Rawcliffe, Occult and Supernatural Phenomena, Chapter 21: "Eusapia Palladino," Dover Publications reprint of Psychology of the Occult, Derricke Ridgway Publishing Co., 1952.
• Andreas Sommer. (2012). Psychical research and the origins of American psychology: Hugo Munsterberg, William James and Eusapia Palladino. History of the Human Sciences. Vol 2: 23-44.
• Krystyna Tokarzówna and Stanisław Fita, Bolesław Prus, 1847–1912: Kalendarz życia i twórczości (Bolesław Prus, 1847–1912: a Calendar of [His] Life and Work), edited by Zygmunt Szweykowski, Warsaw, Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1969.
• Richard Wiseman. (1997). Deception & Self-Deception: Investigating Psychics. Prometheus Books.

External links

• Trick Methods of Eusapia Paladino (1910) [1], by Stanley LeFevre Krebs.
• The American Seances with Eusapia Palladino (1954) [2], by Hereward Carrington, Palladino's sponsor and manager, and member of the Society for Psychical Research.