Spiritualism enjoyed great popularity at the turn of the century and had millions of people believing they could communicate with the dead. One of the more notable mediums was Italy’s Eusapia Palladino. Sitting at a séance with her, one might experience an array of astonishing effects, purportedly caused by spirits from the Other Side, including table levitation, the appearance of spectral hands and faces, flashes of light, and foreign tongues rambling on. These many wonders happened while the short, stout, uneducated psychic was supposedly in a trance, bound in a chair with her hands and feet held by those in attendance.
Palladino’s impressive feats attracted the attention of numerous scientists and psychical investigators. Among the latter was Hereward Carrington, who studied Palladino for years and was convinced that her powers were authentic. In his 1909 book, Eusapia Palladino and Her Phenomena, he recounts several séances attended by Professor Enrico Morselli between 1906 and 1907.
“The séances conducted by him are among the most remarkable and convincing that have ever been held,” Carrington wrote. “They at all events completely converted Professor Morselli.”
At these séances, Professor Morselli noted thirty-nine distinct types of phenomena, which were as follows:
1. Oscillations and movements of the table without significance.
2. Movements and beatings of the table having a significance.
3. Complete levitation of the table.
4. Movements of various objects, as soon as touched by the hands or body of the medium.
5. Movements, undulations, and swellings of the curtains of the cabinet.
6. Movements and swelling out of the medium’s clothes.
7. Oscillations of the table without contact.
8. Independent liftings of the table.
9. Movements occasioned in material objects by the hands being voluntarily turned toward them, but at a distance, and gestures made from or toward the object.
10. Spontaneous movements and displacements of different objects at various distances from the medium.
11. Bringing of distant objects on to the table.
12. Displacements of the seats of the experimenters.
13. Movements of operation of mechanical instruments placed at a distance.
14. Spontaneous changes of weight in a scale.
15. Change of weight in the body of the medium.
16. Raising of the medium’s body in the air.
17. Wind from the cabinet.
18. Intense cold.
19. Radiations from the head and body of the medium.
20. Blows, raps, and other sounds in the table.
21. Blows and raps at a distance from the medium.
22. Sounds of musical instruments.
23. Sounds of hands, feet, etc., being moved.
24. Sounds of human voices.
25. Mysterious signs left at a distance.
26. Direct writing.
27. Impressions in plastic substances.
28. Apports.
29. Touching, feeling, grasping, by invisible hands.
30. Organization of solid forms having the character of members of the human body.
31. Organization of hands, naked, and distinguishable to the touch.
32. Complicated actions of materialized forms, tangible, but invisible.
33. Appearance of luminous points.
34. Appearance of whitish clouds or mists. 35. Formation of dark prolongations of the body of the medium.
36. Forms having the appearance of arms and hands coming out of the cabinet.
37. Appearance of hands.
38. Appearance of obscure forms, of indeterminate character, and not very distinct.
39. Appearance of forms having determinate and personal characters.
Read more about Eusapia Palladino, Spiritualism, and miraculous mediums in Chasing Ghosts: A Tour of Our Fascination with Spirits and the Supernatural (Quirk Books), by your Weird Historian, Marc Hartzman.
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