Jump to content

Eusapia Palladino: Difference between revisions

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Browse history interactively
← Previous editNext edit →
Content deleted Content added
VisualWikitext
Goblin Face (talk | contribs)
7,637 edits
Goblin Face (talk | contribs)
7,637 edits
Line 109: Line 109:


{{cquote|Palladino was no simple case: on the one hand, she was regularly caught cheating, even by those who continued to express belief; on the other hand, she was reported to have produced genuine phenomena at times, in front of experienced and (previously) sceptical observers. For proponents, she was another example of the genuine but fraudulent demonstrator of extraordinary phenomena... Critics pointed to evidence of fraud, proponents pointed to the best evidence (where, they argued, fraud had been impossible), and critics argued that the investigators had simply missed it."<ref>[[Peter Lamont (historian)|Peter Lamont]]. (2013). ''Extraordinary Beliefs: A Historical Approach to a Psychological Problem''. Cambridge University Press. p. 189. ISBN 978-1107688025</ref>}}
{{cquote|Palladino was no simple case: on the one hand, she was regularly caught cheating, even by those who continued to express belief; on the other hand, she was reported to have produced genuine phenomena at times, in front of experienced and (previously) sceptical observers. For proponents, she was another example of the genuine but fraudulent demonstrator of extraordinary phenomena... Critics pointed to evidence of fraud, proponents pointed to the best evidence (where, they argued, fraud had been impossible), and critics argued that the investigators had simply missed it."<ref>[[Peter Lamont (historian)|Peter Lamont]]. (2013). ''Extraordinary Beliefs: A Historical Approach to a Psychological Problem''. Cambridge University Press. p. 189. ISBN 978-1107688025</ref>}}

Magicians such as [[Harry Houdini]] and Joseph Rinn claimed that all her feats were the result of conjuring tricks. [[John Mulholland (magician)|John Mulholland]] noted that "Palladino was caught cheating times without number even by those who believed in her, and she made no bones about admitting it."<ref>[[John Mulholland (magician)|John Mulholland]]. (1938). ''Beware Familiar Spirits''. C. Scribner's Sons. p. 127</ref>


She 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.<ref name="Brandon1983"/><ref name="Polidoro 2003"/>
She 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.<ref name="Brandon1983"/><ref name="Polidoro 2003"/>

Revision as of 02:52, 6 December 2014

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[1]) 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.[2][3]

Some Europeans regarded Palladino as a genuine Spiritualist medium. However, Palladino had been caught cheating in every country she had been investigated in, and after many investigations most magicians and scientists concluded she was a clever trickster.[4][5][6][7] 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.[8][9] 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.[10][11] Palladino later married a wine merchant, Francesco Niola.[12]

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.[13]

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.[14]

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."[15]

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).[16]

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."[17]

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.[3] 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.[18] 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.[18] However despite the evidence of fraud, Oliver Lodge considered some of her phenomena genuine.[19]

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.[20] 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."[20] 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."[21] 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.[21]

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.[22] 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."[22] It wasn't until the 1908 sittings in Naples that the SPR reopened the Palladino file.[23]

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."[24]

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.[3] 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.[3]

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.[17]

Flammarion who attended séances with Palladino believed that some of her phenomena was genuine. He produced in his book alleged levitation photographs of a table and an impression of a face in putty.[25] Joseph McCabe did not find the evidence convincing. He noted that the impressions of faces in putty were always of Palladino's face and could have easily been made, and she was not entirely clear from the table in the levitation photographs.[26]

In 1905, Eusapia Palladino came to Paris, where Nobel-laureate physicists Pierre Curie and Marie Curie and Nobel-laureate physiologist Charles Richet investigated her amongst other philosophers and scientists such as Henri Bergson and Jacques-Arsène d'Arsonval. Signs of trickery were detected but they could not explain all of the phenomena.[27]

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.[28]

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.[28] 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?[29]

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."[29] Marie Curie also attended Palladino's séances, but does not seem to have been as intrigued by them as Pierre.[29]

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."[30]

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.[31] 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.[32]

Italy

In the late 19th century Cesare Lombroso attended séances with Palladino and was convinced that she had supernatural powers.[33] The most extraordinary was a phenomenon that Lombroso titles "The Levitation of the Medium to the Top of the Table."[34] However, the levitations were found by other investigators to be the result of fraud.[35] According to authors William Kalush and Larry Sloman; Lombroso was known to be having a sexual relationship with Palladino.[36] 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.[37]

Enrico Morselli was also interested in mediumship and psychical research. He studied Palladino and concluded that some of her phenomena was genuine, being evidence for an unknown bio-psychic force present in all humans.[38]

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."[7] 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.[39] 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.[40] 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.[40]

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.[40] 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.[41]

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.[40] 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."[40] 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.[42]

The psychologist C. E. M. Hansel criticized the Feilding report based on the conditions of the séances being susceptible to trickery. Hansel noted that they were performed in semi-dark conditions, held in the late night or early morning introducing the possibility of fatigue and the "investigators had a strong belief in the supernatural, hence they would be emotionally involved."[43]

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.[44] 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.[45] 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."[45]

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.[46] 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.[47][48]

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.[49] 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.[50] 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.[51]

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.[52] Munsterberg had also observed Palladino free her foot from her shoe and use her toes to move a guitar in the séance cabinet.[3] Daniel Cohen noted that "[Palladino] was undaunted by Munsterberg's exposure. Her tricks had been exposed many times before, yet she had prospered."[53] Münsterberg also claimed that Palladino moved the curtains from a distance in the room by releasing a jet of air from a rubber bulb that she had in her hand.[54][55]

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.[56]

The psychologist Joseph Jastrow, in his book The Psychology of Conviction (1918), included an entire chapter exposing Palladino's tricks.[2]

Tricks

Palladino with fake ectoplasm hands.

In England, America, France and Germany, Palladino had been caught utilizing tricks.[2][3][7] Psychical researchers such as Hereward Carrington who believed some of her phenomena to be genuine, accepted that she would resort to trickery on occasion.[57]

Historian Peter Lamont summarized the Palladino case:

Palladino was no simple case: on the one hand, she was regularly caught cheating, even by those who continued to express belief; on the other hand, she was reported to have produced genuine phenomena at times, in front of experienced and (previously) sceptical observers. For proponents, she was another example of the genuine but fraudulent demonstrator of extraordinary phenomena... Critics pointed to evidence of fraud, proponents pointed to the best evidence (where, they argued, fraud had been impossible), and critics argued that the investigators had simply missed it."[58]

Magicians such as Harry Houdini and Joseph Rinn claimed that all her feats were the result of conjuring tricks. John Mulholland noted that "Palladino was caught cheating times without number even by those who believed in her, and she made no bones about admitting it."[59]

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.[6][7]

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".[60]

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.[61]

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.[2] 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.[62]

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.[61]

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.[63] 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.[64]

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.[65]

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.[66] The psychologist Millais Culpin wrote Palladino was a conscious cheat but also had symptoms of hysterical dissociation so may have deceived herself.[67]

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.[68] According to Deborah Blum, Palladino had a habit of "climbing into the laps of the male" investigators.[69]

M. Lamar Keene noted that "observers said that Eusapia Palladino used to experience obvious orgasmic reactions during her séances and had a marked propensity for handsome male sitters."[70] Walter Mann has written tat Palladino's first husband a travelling conjurer taught her séance tricks.[3] In 1910, Palladino admitted to an American reporter that she cheated in her séances, claiming her sitters had 'willed' her to do so.[71] Eric Dingwall who investigated the mediumship of Palladino came to the conclusion that she was "vital, vulgar, amorous and a cheat."[72]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Eusapia Palladino: Psychic Wonder Or Blatant Fraud?. Prairieghosts.com (1918-05-16). Retrieved on 2012-05-13.
  2. ^ a b c d Joseph Jastrow. (1918). The Psychology of Conviction. Houghton Mifflin Company. pp. 101-127
  3. ^ a b c d e f g Walter Mann. (1919). The Follies and Frauds of Spiritualism. Rationalist Association. London: Watts & Co. pp. 115-130
  4. ^ Harry Houdini. (2011, originally published in 1924). A Magician Among the Spirits. Cambridge University Press. pp. 50-65. ISBN 978-1108027489
  5. ^ C. E. M. Hansel. (1980). ESP and Parapsychology: A Critical Re-Evaluation. Prometheus Books. pp. 58-64. ISBN 978-0879751197
  6. ^ a b Ruth Brandon. (1983). The Spiritualists: The Passion for the Occult in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 978-0394527406
  7. ^ a b c d Massimo Polidoro. (2003). Secrets of the Psychics: Investigating Paranormal Claims. Prometheus Books. pp. 62-96. ISBN 978-1591020868
  8. ^ Paul Kurtz. (1985). A Skeptic's Handbook of Parapsychology. Prometheus Books. p. 196. ISBN 0-87975-300-5
  9. ^ M. Brady Brower. (2010). Unruly Spirits: The Science of Psychic Phenomena in Modern France. University of Illinois Press. p. 62. ISBN 978-0-252-03564-7
  10. ^ Baron Johan Liljencrants. (1918). Spiritism and Religion: A Moral Study. Catholic University of America. p. 39
  11. ^ D. H. Rawcliffe. (1988). Occult and Supernatural Phenomena. Dover Publications. p. 321
  12. ^ Henry-Louis de La Grange. (2008). Gustav Mahler: A New Life Cut Short (1907-1911). Oxford University Press. p. 610. ISBN 978-0198163879
  13. ^ Krystyna Tokarzówna and Stanisław Fita, Bolesław Prus, pp. 440, 443, 445–53.
  14. ^ See External links: "Julien Ochorowitz, 1850–1918."
  15. ^ Krystyna Tokarzówna and Stanisław Fita, Bolesław Prus, p. 448.
  16. ^ Krystyna Tokarzówna and Stanisław Fita, Bolesław Prus, p. 521.
  17. ^ a b Joseph McCabe. (1920). Is Spiritualism Based On Fraud? The Evidence Given By Sir A. C. Doyle and Others Drastically Examined. London, Watts & Co. p. 14
  18. ^ a b M. Brady Brower. (2010). Unruly Spirits: The Science of Psychic Phenomena in Modern France. University of Illinois Press. p. 62. ISBN 978-0252077517
  19. ^ Leonard Zusne; Warren H. Jones. (2014). Anomalistic Psychology: A Study of Magical Thinking. Psychology Press. p. 216. ISBN 978-0-805-80508-6 "In spite of overwhelming evidence that pointed to fraud, such as was found in the case of the notorious Neapolitan medium Eusapia Palladino, Sir Oliver Lodge, another English physicist, refused to change his favorable opinion of her."
  20. ^ a b The British Medical Journal. (Nov. 9, 1895). Exit Eusapia!. Volume. 2, No. 1819. p. 1182.
  21. ^ a b The British Medical Journal. (Nov. 16, 1895). Exit Eusapia. Volume 2, No. 1820. pp. 1263-1264.
  22. ^ a b Janet Oppenheim. (1985). The Other World: Spiritualism and Psychical Research in England, 1850-1914. Cambridge University Press. pp. 150-151. ISBN 978-0521265058
  23. ^ Massimo Polidoro. (2003). Secrets of the Psychics: Investigating Paranormal Claims. Prometheus Books. p. 61. ISBN 978-1591020868
  24. ^ Harry Price, Fifty Years of Psychical Research, chapter XI: The Mechanics of Spiritualism, F&W Media International, Ltd, 2012.
  25. ^ Camille Flammarion. (1909). Mysterious Psychic Forces. Small, Maynard and Company. p. 63-135
  26. ^ Joseph McCabe. (1920). Is Spiritualism Based on Fraud?: The Evidence Given By Sir A. C. Doyle and Others Drastically Examined. London, Watts & Co. p. 57. "The impressions of faces which she got in wax or putty were always her face. I have seen many of them. The strong bones of her face impress deep. Her nose is relatively flattened by the pressure. The hair on the temples is plain. It is outrageous for scientific men to think that either "John King" or an abnormal power of the medium made a human face (in a few minutes) with bones and muscles and hair, and precisely the same bones and muscles and hair as those of Eusapia. I have seen dozens of photographs of her levitating a table. On not a single one are her person and dress entirely clear of the table."
  27. ^ C. E. M. Hansel. (1980). ESP and Parapsychology: A Critical Re-Evaluation. Prometheus Books. p. 60. ISBN 978-0879751197 "These experiments extended over three years at a cost of 25,000 francs. They were attended by the great French scientists Pierre and Marie Curie, D'Arsonval, the physicist; Henri Bergson, the philosopher; Richet the physiologist; and numerous other scientists and savants. The French committee detected many signs of trickery on Eusapia's part, but they were clearly puzzled by some of the phenomena."
  28. ^ a b Barbara Goldsmith. (2005). Obsessive Genius: The Inner World of Marie Curie. W. W. Norton. p. 138. ISBN 978-0739453056
  29. ^ a b c Susan Quinn, Marie Curie: A Life, p. 208.
  30. ^ Susan Quinn, Marie Curie: A Life, p. 226.
  31. ^ Joseph McCabe. (1920). Spiritualism: A Popular History From 1847. T. F. Unwin Ltd. p. 210
  32. ^ Sofie Lachapelle. (2011). Investigating the Supernatural: From Spiritism and Occultism to Psychical Research and Metapsychics in France, 1853-1931. Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 82. ISBN 978-1421400136
  33. ^ C. E. M. Hansel. (1980). ESP and Parapsychology: A Critical Re-Evaluation. Prometheus Books. p. 59. ISBN 978-0879751197 "Eusapia was introduced to Lombroso in 1888, and, by 1891, she had convinced him of her supernatural powers. This, it should be noted, need not have presented her with as much difficulty as might appear. Lombroso was no hide bound skeptic. In 1882, he had reported the case of a patient who, having lost the power of seeing with her eyes, saw as clearly as before with the aid of the tip of her nose and the lobe of her left ear."
  34. ^ Cesare Lombroso, William Sloane Kennedy (1909). After Death—what?. Small, Maynard & Company.
  35. ^ Milbourne Christopher. (1971). ESP, Seers & Psychics. Crowell. pp. 188-204. ISBN 978-0690268157
  36. ^ William Kalush, Larry Sloman. (2006). The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America's First Superhero. Atria Books. p. 419. ISBN 978-0743272087 "The most notorious medium who used her sexual charms to seduce her scientific investigators was Eusapia Palladino... [She] had no qualms about sleeping with her sitters; among them were the eminent criminologist Lombroso and the Nobel Prize—winning French Physiologist Charles Richet. After being discredited, Palladino's career was revived in 1909 when Hereward Carrington, acting as her manager, brought her to the United States."
  37. ^ Joseph McCabe. (1920). Scientific Men and Spiritualism: A Skeptic's Analysis. The Living Age. June 12. pp. 652-657.
  38. ^ Brancaccio, Maria Teresa. (2014). Enrico Morselli's Psychology and "Spiritism": Psychiatry, psychology and psychical research in Italy in the decades around 1900. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 48: 75-84.
  39. ^ Alfred Douglas. (1982). Extra-Sensory Powers: A Century of Psychical Research. Overlook Press. p. 98
  40. ^ a b c d e Frank Podmore (1910), The Newer Spiritualism, Henry Holt and Company, pp. 114-44.
  41. ^ Justus Buchler. (2000). The Philosophy of Peirce: Selected Writings, Volume 2. Indiana University Press. pp. 166-167. ISBN 978-0253211903
  42. ^ Gordon Stein. (1996). The Encyclopedia of the Paranormal. Prometheus Books. p. 490. ISBN 978-1573920216
  43. ^ C. E. M. Hansel. (1980). ESP and Parapsychology: A Critical Re-Evaluation. Prometheus Books. p. 61. ISBN 978-0879751197
  44. ^ Massimo Polidoro. (2001). Final Séance: The Strange Friendship Between Houdini and Conan Doyle. Prometheus Books. p. 91. ISBN 978-1573928960 "William S. Marriott was a London professional magician who performed under the name of "Dr. Wilmar" and who, for some time, interested himself in Spiritualism. In 1910 he had been asked by the SPR to take part in a series of sittings with the Italian medium Eusapia Palladino, and had concluded that all he had seen could be attributed to fakery. That same year he published four articles for Pearson's magazine in which he detailed and duplicated in photographs various tricks of self-claimed psychics and mediums."
  45. ^ a b Milbourne Christopher. (1971). ESP, Seers & Psychics. Crowell. pp. 188-204. ISBN 978-0690268157
    • 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.
  46. ^ Magic Trick Secrets Revealed-Howard Thurston. Secretstomagictricks.com. Retrieved on 2012-05-13.
  47. ^ Filippo Bottazzi, Irmeli Routti, Antonio Giuditta Mediumistic Phenomena: Observed in a Series of Sessions with Eusapia Palladino ISBN 1936033054
  48. ^ Filippo Bottazzi e gli esperimenti sul paranormale. Denaro.it (2006-07-22). Retrieved on 2012-05-13.
  49. ^ Richard Wiseman. (1997). Chapter 3 The Feilding Report: A Reconsideration. In Deception and Self-Deception: Investigating Psychics. Prometheus Press. ISBN 1-57392-121-1
  50. ^ Paul Kurtz. (1985). Spiritualists, Mediums and Psychics: Some Evidence of Fraud in Paul Kurtz (ed.). A Skeptic's Handbook of Parapsychology. Prometheus Books. pp. 177-223
  51. ^ Massimo Polidoro. (2003). Secrets of the Psychics: Investigating Paranormal Claims. Prometheus Books. pp. 65-95. ISBN 978-1591020868
  52. ^ C. E. M. Hansel. (1989). The Search for Psychic Power: ESP and Parapsychology Revisited. Prometheus Books. p. 240. ISBN 978-0879755331
  53. ^ Daniel Cohen. (1972). In Search of Ghosts. Dodd, Mead & Company. p. 109. ISBN 978-0396064855
  54. ^ William Seabrook, chapter 17: "Wood as a Debunker of Scientific Cranks and Frauds — and His War with the Mediums", Doctor Wood, Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1941.
  55. ^ Fakebusters II: Scientific Detection of Fakery in Art and Philately
  56. ^ Milbourne Christopher. (1979). Search for the Soul. T. Y. Crowell. p. 47
  57. ^ Hereward Carrington. (1909). Eusapia Palladino and Her Phenomena. New York: B. W. Dodge. pp. 327-328
  58. ^ Peter Lamont. (2013). Extraordinary Beliefs: A Historical Approach to a Psychological Problem. Cambridge University Press. p. 189. ISBN 978-1107688025
  59. ^ John Mulholland. (1938). Beware Familiar Spirits. C. Scribner's Sons. p. 127
  60. ^ Joseph Jastrow. (1918). The Psychology of Conviction. Houghton Mifflin Company. pp. 100-111. "Both Dr. Moll and Dr. Dessoir, of Berlin, detected the precise substitution-tricks that were used in New York. 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. Dr. Moll records the throwing out of the curtain to cover the hand substitution; and notes that, by watching for it, he could detect the exact moment when the hand or foot was freed."
  61. ^ a b Frank Podmore, 1910
  62. ^ W. S. Davis, 1910
  63. ^ Sherrie Lynne Lyons. Species, Serpents, Spirits, and Skulls: Science at the Margins in the Victorian Age. State University of New York Press. p. 95. ISBN 978-1438427980
  64. ^ The New York Times. Paladino Used Phosphorus. November 19, 1909.
  65. ^ The New York Times. (1909). Sidelights on the Paladino Delusion. November 21.
  66. ^ Trick Methods of Eusapia Paladino
  67. ^ Millais Culpin. (1920). Spiritualism and the New Psychology: An Explanation of Spiritualist Phenomena and Beliefs in Terms of Modern Knowledge. Edward Arnold, London. pp. 143-149
  68. ^ Baron Johan Liljencrants. (1918). Spiritism and Religion. "Can you talk to the dead?". Devin-Adair Publishing Company. p. 40
  69. ^ Deborah Blum. (2007). Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death. Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0143038955
  70. ^ M. Lamar Keene. (1997). The Psychic Mafia. Prometheus Books. p. 74. ISBN 978-1573921619
  71. ^ Ronald Pearsall. (1972). The Table-Rappers. Book Club Associates. p. 224
  72. ^ David C. Knight. (1969). The ESP Reader. Grossett & Dunlap. p. 60

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Eusapia Palladino.

Template:Persondata

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Eusapia_Palladino&oldid=636838190"