On the evening of August 26th, 1875, fifteen people gathered on Twenty-seventh Street in New York City at a parlor belonging to a medium named Mrs. Belle Youngs. She was also known as the “Piano Medium.” Among the crowd were several reporters eager to witness why.
While some mediums lifted tables, Youngs lifted a piano. A thousand-pound fortepiano. And like the Fox sisters and many others, the attending spirit could answer questions through a series of raps. Three lifts of the piano indicated “yes,” and one life meant “no.” Youngs hands were reportedly resting lightly on top of the music rack during this Q&A session.
After a few answers had been given, Youngs would play a tune, as if to demonstrate the piano was real. One of the visitors then issued a challenge. Could the piano rest atop an egg without it breaking? So Youngs took the egg and held it at the bottom of the piano, then asked the spirits to raise the piano. “Instantly the piano rose as before and was held for a moment suspended in the air,” the New York Sun reported. “The novel and striking experiment was a complete success.”
Youngs wasn’t done yet. Next she asked the heaviest people among the group to sit on the piano. Seven men and women accepted the invitation, and once again the instrument lifted off the ground.
The Sun offered no explanation for such feats, but in 1877 another writer suggested that Youngs merely used her knees to do the heavy lifting. It certainly seems easier than getting the dead to do it.
