Chapter IV: Other Seances with Eusapia Paladino (2)

Some of these merit particular notice, owing to a circumstance capable
of giving us an interesting notion of their possible origin. Our first
business is to describe the touchings which were felt by persons
beyond the reach of the hands of the medium. Thus, on the evening of
October 6, M. Gerosa, who was separated from the medium by three
places (about four feet, the medium being a little to one side and M.
Gerosa in one of the adjacent corners at the opposite short end of the
table), having lifted his hand that it might be touched, felt a hand
strike his own several times to make him lower it; and, as he
persisted, he was hit with a trumpet, which an instant before had been
making sounds in the air.

In the second place, we must note touchings which constitute very
delicate operations, and which cannot be made in the darkness with the
precision which we have noted in them. Twice (on September 16 and 21)
M. Schiaparelli had his spectacles removed from his nose and laid down
on the table before another person. These glasses are fixed to the
ears by means of two springs, and a certain amount of attention is
necessary in order to remove them, even to one working in full light.
Yet they were removed in complete darkness with so much delicacy and
promptness that the said experimenter only perceived the loss of them
when he no longer had the usual feeling of them on his nose, on his
temples, and behind his ears, and he was obliged to feel with his
hands in order to be sure that they were no longer in their usual
place.

Many other touchings produced similar effects, and were executed with
extreme delicacy; for example, when one of the company felt his hair
and beard stroked.

In all of the innumerable manoeuvres executed by mysterious hands,
there was never any awkward stumbling or collision to be noted, though
ordinarily this is inevitable when one is working in the dark. I may
add, in this connection, that bodies tolerably heavy and bulky, such
as chairs and vessels full of clay, were deposited upon the table
without having collided with any of the numerous hands resting upon
the table,--a particularly difficult thing in the case of chairs
which, owing to their dimensions, occupied a large part of the table.
A chair was turned over on its face upon the table and lay there at
full length without causing the least annoyance to anybody; and yet it
covered almost the entire surface.

_Contact with a Human Face_

One of us having expressed the wish to be kissed, felt before his very
mouth the peculiar quick sounds of a kiss, but not accompanied by any
contact of lips. This happened twice. On three different occasions one
of the experimenters felt the touch of a face with hair and beard. The
feeling of the skin was exactly that of a living man. The hair was
much coarser and more bristly than that of the medium, and the beard
seemed very soft and delicate.

Such are the experiments made at Milan in 1892 by the group of savants cited above.

How can we help admitting, after the reading of this new official report, the following things?

1. The complete levitation of the tables.

2. The levitation of the medium.

3. The movement of objects without contact.

4. Accurate and delicate touches made by invisible organs.

5. The formation of hands and even of human figures.

These phenomena take their place in this book as things which were observed with the most scrupulous care.

Let us note also the action of the little piece of furniture (chair or round table), which tries to climb up on one of the company or upon the large table,--a thing also observed by myself.

Although the savants of the Milan group regretted that they did not make _experiments_, but only _observations_ (I said above (p. 20), what we ought to think about this), the facts were none the less proved.

I will add that after the reading of this _proces-verbal_, the cautious reserves of M. Schiaparelli seem exaggerated. If fraud has sometimes crept in, still what has been accurately observed remains safe and sound and is an acquisition to science.

Our medium, Eusapia, has been the subject of a fruitful series of experiments. Let me also mention those of Naples in 1893, under the direction of M. Wagner, Professor of Zoology at the University of St. Petersburg; that of Rome in 1893-1894, under the direction of M. de Siemiradski, correspondent of the Institute; those of Varsovie, from the 25th of November, 1893, to the 15th of January, 1894, at the house of Dr. Ochorowicz; those of Carqueiranne and of l'ile Roubaud, in 1894, at the house of Professor Richet; those of Cambridge in August, 1895, at the house of Mr. Myers; those of the villa de l'Agnellas, from the 20th to the 29th of September, 1895, at the house of Colonel de Rochas; those of Auteuil, in September, 1896, at the house of M. Marcel Mangin, etc. It would be entirely superfluous and an unconscionably long task to analyze them all. Let us merely select some special characteristic instances.

In the report of M. de Siemiradski we read as follows:

In the corner of the hall there was a piano, placed to the left of
Ochorowicz and Eusapia, and a little in the rear. Some one desired to
hear the keyboard touched. We at once hear the moving of the piano.
Ochorowicz can even see the displacement, thanks to a ray of light
which falls upon the polished surface of the instrument through the
window shutters. The piano then opens noisily, and we hear the bass
notes of the keyboard sounding. I utter aloud my desire to hear high
notes and low notes touched at the same time, as a proof that the
unknown force can act at the two ends of the keyboard. My wish is
granted, and we hear bass notes and treble notes sounded at the same
time, which seems to prove the action of two distinct hands. Then _the
instrument advances toward us_. It presses against our group, and we
are obliged to get up and move back with our experiment table, and we
do not stop until we have thus moved back several yards.

A glass half full of water, which stands on a buffet, out of reach of
our hands, was carried by an unknown power to the lips of Ochorowicz,
Eusapia, and another person, who all drank of it. This performance
took place in complete darkness and with astonishing precision.

We were able to prove the existence of a real hand not belonging to
any one present. We did it by means of the plaster cast and mould, as
follows:

Having placed a heavy basin filled with modelling-clay upon the large
table in the middle of the dining-room, we sat down with Eusapia
around the little experiment-table more than a yard distant. After
some minutes of waiting, the basin came of itself and stood on our
table! Eusapia groaned, writhed, and trembled in all her limbs; yet
not for a moment did her hands quit ours. Then she cried, "_E fatto_"
("It is done"). The candle is lighted again, and we find an irregular
hollowed place upon the surface of the clay. This hollow place,
afterward filled with plaster, gives us a perfect cast of the
contracted fingers of a hand.

We placed upon the table a plate smeared with lampblack. The
mysterious hand left there the print of the end of its fingers. The
hands of the experimenters, including those of Eusapia, _remained
white_. We next induced the medium to reproduce the impression of her
own hand upon another lamp-smoked plate. She did so. The layer of soot
removed by her fingers had deeply blackened them. A comparison of the
two plates enabled us to prove a striking resemblance,--that is to say
(to speak more accurately), the identity of the arrangement of the
spiral circles in the epidermis of the two hands; and we know that the
arrangement of these circles is unique in every individual. This is a
particular which speaks eloquently in favor of the hypothesis of the
double personality of the medium.

In order mechanically to control the movements of Eusapia's feet, Dr. Ochorowicz employed the following piece of apparatus. Two deep and narrow cigar-boxes were placed under the table, and Eusapia put her unshod feet into them. The boxes had double bottoms and were provided with an electrical arrangement of such a nature that she could move her feet freely for some inches in every direction; but, if she wished to withdraw them from the box, the electric bell tinkled before she had moved them half way to the top, and only stopped when they were returned to their place. Eusapia cannot remain utterly quiet during the seances. So she was given a certain freedom of movement; but it was impossible for her to make use of her legs for lifting the table. _Under these conditions the table, weighing twenty-five pounds, rose up twice without the bell being heard._ During the second levitation the table was photographed underneath. (The four feet of the table are seen in the photograph. The left is in contact with Eusapia's dress, as is always the case when the light is strong; but the boxes holding the feet of the medium are in their place.) Then the experimenters verified the fact that the bell was heard, not only when she removed her foot, but when she lifted it too high in the box.

After all these demonstrations, I will not do my readers the wrong of thinking that the levitation of the table is not MORE THAN PROVED for all of them.

Here, now, is a curious observation relative to the inflation of the curtain: Ten persons were seated around the table. Eusapia had her back turned to the curtain; she was controlled by General Starynkiewicz and Dr. Watraszewski.

I was seated (writes M. Glowacki-Prus) opposite Eusapia, near Mlle.
X., a very nervous person and easily hypnotized. The seance had lasted
for about an hour, with numerous and varied phenomena. Eusapia, as
always, was in a semi-conscious state. Suddenly she awoke, and Mlle.
X. uttered a cry. Knowing what this cry meant, I grasped her hand with
great force and then put my arm about her; for this girl becomes very
strong in certain states. The room was well lighted, and this is what
we saw (something, be it noted, which I myself experienced by my
hands). Every time that the muscles of Mlle. X. became more tense and
rigid, the curtain which hung opposite her, at a distance of from
seven to ten feet, made a movement. The following table indicates the
details of this correlation:

Feeble tension of the muscles the curtain is set in motion.

strong tension it bellies out like a sail.

very strong tension, cries it reaches as far as eusapia's
controllers, and almost wholly
covers them.

repose repose.

tension of the muscles movement of the curtain.

strong tension strong inflation of the curtain.

This tabular view presents the striking proportion which I ascertained
between the tension of the medium's muscles (who in this case was
Mlle. X.) and the mechanical work of the curtain in movement.

This experiment is so much the more interesting since it was not Eusapia who made it; and, if she had a trick for inflating the portieres, it was not employed in this case. We already know that she had none.

Here are the conclusions of M. Ochorowicz:

1. I did not find any proofs in favor of the Spiritualistic
hypothesis; that is to say, in favor of the intervention of an
intelligence other than that of the medium. "John" is for me only a
psychic double of the medium. Consequently, I am not a Spiritualist.

2. Mediumistic phenomena are confirmatory of "magnetism" as opposed to
"hypnotism"; that is to say, they imply the existence of a fluidic
action apart from suggestion.

3. Still, suggestion plays an important role in them, and the medium
is only a mirror reflecting the forces and the ideas of those present.
Moreover, she possesses the power of realizing her own somnambulistic
visions or those suggested by the company, simply by the process of
externalizing them.

4. No purely physical force explains these phenomena, which are always
of a psycho-physical nature, having a centre of action in the mind of
the medium.

5. The phenomena proved do not contradict either mechanics in general
or the law of the conservation of forces in particular. The medium
acts at the expense of her own proper powers and at the expense of
those of the persons present.

6. There exists a series of transitions between mediumship of an
inferior kind (automatism, unconscious fraud) and mediumship of a
superior kind or externalization of motivity (action at a distance
without visible and palpable connecting link).

7. The hypothesis of a "fluidic double" (astral body), which, under
certain conditions, detaches itself and acts independently of the body
of the medium, seems necessary for the explanation of the greater
part of the phenomena. According to this conception, the moving of
objects without contact would be produced by the fluidic limbs of the
medium.[35]

Sir Oliver Lodge, an eminent English physicist, rector of the University of Birmingham, says that, on the invitation of Dr. Richet, he went to attend the experiments at Carqueiranne, thoroughly convinced that he should not see there any instance of physical movement without contact but that what he saw completely convinced him that phenomena of that kind can have, under certain conditions, a real and objective existence. He vouches for the following verified facts:

1. Movements of a chair at a distance, seen by the light of the moon,
and in circumstances which proved that there was no mechanical
connection.

2. The inflation and the movement of a curtain in the absence of wind
or of any other ostensible cause.

3. The automatic winding up and moving about of a music-box.

4. Sounds proceeding from a piano and from an accordion which had not
been touched.

5. A key turned in a lock, on the inside of the room where the seances
were held, then placed upon the table, and again put back into the
lock.

6. The overturning, by means of slow and correct evolutions, of a
heavy moving table, which was afterwards found thus turned upside
down.

7. The levitation of a heavy table, under conditions in which it would
have been impossible to lift it in ordinary circumstances.

8. The appearance of blue marks upon a table previously spotless, and
this done without the help of the ordinary methods of writing.

9. The sensation of blows, as if some one were striking the head, the
arms, or the back, while the head, the hands, and the feet of the
medium were plainly in view or held apart from the portions of the
body that were touched.

It is plain enough what part the above statements play in our argument. They are throughout simply confirmations of the experiments described above.

At Cambridge, Eusapia was taken in the very act of deception; namely, the substitution of hands. While the controllers believed that they were holding her two hands, they were only holding one of them: the other was free. So these experimenters at Cambridge unanimously declared that "everything was fraud, from the beginning to the end," in Eusapia Paladino's _twenty seances_.

In a paper sent to M. de Rochas, M. Ochorowicz contested this radical conclusion, for several reasons. Eusapia is very susceptible to suggestion, and, by indulging her inclination to fraud and not hindering it, they incite her to it still more by a kind of tacit encouragement. Moreover, her fraud is generally of an unconscious kind. I append here, as a particular illustration of this, a rather typical story about her:

One evening, at Varsovie (says M. Ochorowicz), Eusapia is sleeping in
her chamber by the side of ours. I have not yet gone to sleep, when
suddenly I hear her rising and moving about with bare feet in the
drawing-room. Then she enters her chamber again and approaches our
door. I make a sign to Mme. Ochorowicz, who has waked up, to be quiet
and to observe carefully what is going to take place. A moment after,
Eusapia gently opens the door, comes up to my wife's toilet-table,
opens a drawer, shuts it, and goes away, carefully avoiding making any
noise. I hastily dress myself and we enter her chamber. Eusapia is
quietly sleeping. The light of our candle seems to wake her.

"What were you hunting for in our sleeping-room?"

"I? I haven't left this place."

Seeing the uselessness of further questions, we go to bed again,
advising her to sleep quietly.

Next day I ask her the same question. She is very much astonished and
even troubled (she blushes slightly).

"How should I dare," said she, "to enter your chamber during the
night?"

This accusation is very painful to her, and she tries to persuade us
by all kinds of insufficient reasons that we are wrong. She denies the
whole thing, and I am obliged to admit that she does not remember
getting up or _even having conversed with us_ (it was just another
somnambulistic state).

I take a little table, and direct Eusapia to put her hands on it.

"Very well," says she, "John will tell you that I don't lie."

I then ask the following questions:

"Is it you, John, who came into our sleeping chamber last night?"

"No."

"Was it the chambermaid?" (I suggest this idea for the express purpose
of testing John's veracity.)

"No," says he.

"Was it the medium herself?"

"Yes," says the table.--"No, it is not true," exclaims Eusapia, seeing
her hope banished--"Yes," replies the table, forcibly.

"Was she in the trance state?"

"No."

"In her normal state?"

"No."

"In a spontaneous somnambulistic state?"

"Yes."

"For what purpose?"

"_She was hunting matches; for she was frightened in her sleep, and
didn't want to sleep without light._"

Sure enough, there were always matches in the drawer opened by
Eusapia, except on this particular night. She therefore returned
without getting any.

While listening to the explanation of the table, Eusapia shrugged her
shoulders, but protested no longer.

Here, then, is a woman who, from time to time, has the power of
passing from one psychical state to another. Is it just to accuse such
a creature of premeditated fraud, without the slightest medical and
psychological examination, without the least attempt at
verification?...

M. Ochorowicz adds here that, so far as he is concerned, the phenomena are not produced by a personality different from that of the medium, nor by a new independent occult force; but it is a special psychic condition which permits the vital _dynamism of the medium_ (the astral body of the occultists) _to act at a distance_, under certain exceptional conditions. It is the only hypothesis which seems _necessary in the actual state of our knowledge_.

Why does the medium so often try to release her hand? So far as the Cambridge experimenters are concerned, the cause is very simple and always the same: she releases her hand in order to indulge in tricks. As a matter of fact, the reasons why she frees her hand are many and complicated.

Dr. Ochorowicz's explanations are as follows:

1. Let me observe, in the first place, that Eusapia frequently
releases her hand for no other reason than to touch her head, which is
in pain at the moment of the manifestations. It is a natural reflex
movement; and, in her case, it is a fixed habit. Since, more often
than not, she does not notice that she is doing it, or at least fails
to give warning to her controller, the darkness justifies suspicions.

2. Immediately before the mediumistic doubling of her personality, her
hand is affected with hyperaesthesia and, consequently, the pressure of
the hand of another makes her ill, especially in the dorsal quarter.
She then most frequently places the hand which is to be
mediumistically active _above_ and not below that of the controller,
trying to touch it as little as possible. When the doubling of the
personality is complete, and the dynamic hand more or less
materialized, that of the medium contracts and rests heavily upon the
controller, exactly at the moment that the phenomenon takes place. She
is then almost insensible and all shrunken together. In very good
mediumistic conditions the doubling is easy and the initial
hyperaesthesia of short duration. In this case the medium allows her
hand to be completely covered and the feet of the controllers to be
_upon_ hers, as was always the case in our seances at Rome in 1893;
but, since that time, she can no longer endure that position, and
rather prefers to be held by hands under the table.

3. In accordance with psychological laws, the hand always proceeds
automatically in the direction of our thoughts (Cumberlandism). The
medium acts by auto-suggestion, and the order to go as far as an
indicated point is given by her brain simultaneously to the dynamic
hand and the corporeal hand, since in the normal state they form only
one. And since, immediately after the hyperaesthesia, the muscular
sensation is excited and the hand grows benumbed, it sometimes happens
(especially when the medium proceeds carelessly and does not properly
govern her movements) that the dynamic hand remains in place, while
her own hand goes in the indicated direction. The former, not being
yet materialized, produces only a semblance of pressure; and another
person, able to see a little in the darkness, will perceive nothing of
it, and will even be able to ascertain by touch the absence of the
medium's hand from that of the controller. At the same time the hand
of the medium is going in the direction of the object; and _still it
may happen that it does not really reach it, acting, as it does, at a
distance, by a dynamic prolongation_.

It is in this way that I explain the cases in which the hand, being
released, has not yet been able to reach the point aimed at
(physically inaccessible), as well as the numerous experiments made at
Varsovie in full light, with a little bell hung in different ways,
with compasses of different forms, with a very small table,
etc.,--experiments in which Eusapia's fingers were quite near, but did
not touch, the object. I proved that there was no electric force at
work in these cases, but that things occurred as if the arms of the
medium were lengthened and acted invisibly, but _mechanically_. At
Varsovie, when one of my friends M. Glowacki, took it into his head
"that it was necessary to give the medium free rein, in order to
discover her method," we had an entirely fraudulent seance and lost
our time to no purpose. On the contrary, in a poor seance at l'ile
Roubaud, we obtained some good phenomena after having frankly told the
medium that she was cheating.

And here are the conclusions of the author upon "the Cambridge frauds":

1. Not only was _conscious_ fraud not proved on Eusapia at Cambridge,
but not the slightest effort was made to do so.

2. _Unconscious_ fraud was proved in much larger proportions than in
all the preceding experiments.

3. This negative result is vindicated by a blundering method little in
accordance with the nature of the phenomena.

Such is also the opinion of Dr. J. Maxwell, and of all who are competent judges of the question.

To sum up, we see that the influence of preconceived ideas, opinions, and sentiments, upon the production of phenomena, is certain. When all the experimenters have nearly the same sympathetic inclination for this kind of research, and when they have decided to exercise sufficient "control" (that is, watchful oversight) not to be the dupe of any mystification, and agree among themselves to accept the regrettable conditions of darkness necessary to the activity of these unknown radiations, and not to trouble in any way the apparent exigencies of the medium, then the resulting phenomena attain an extraordinary degree of intensity.[36]

But if discord reigns, if one or more of the company persistently spy upon the acts of the medium, with the conviction that he or she must be cheating, the results are very much like the progress of a sailing vessel impelled by several contrary winds. The medium simply marks time without advancing; and little but sterile results are secured. _Psychic forces are no less real than physical or chemical or mechanical forces._ In spite of the desire that we may have to convince prejudiced sceptics, it is advisable to invite only one of them at a time, and to place him next to the medium, in order that he may be at once astonished, shaken, and convinced. But in general this is not worth the trouble.

In the month of September, 1895, a new series of experiments was made at l'Agnelas, in the residence of Colonel de Rochas, president of the polytechnic school, with the assistance of Dr. Dariex, editor of the _Annales des sciences psychiques_, Count de Gramont (doctor of science), Dr. J. Maxwell, deputy of the attorney-general at the Court of Appeals in Limoges, Professor Sabatier, of the faculty of sciences at Montpellier, and Baron de Watteville, a licentiate in science. They confirmed all the preceding details.[37]

A similar series was held in September, 1896, at Tremezzo, in the rooms of the Blech family, then in summer residence at Lake Como; again at Auteuil, at the home of M. Marcel Mangin, with MM. Sully-Prudhomme, Dr. Dariex, Emile Desbeaux, A. Guerronnan, and Mme. Boisseaux also participating. Let us stop for a moment to glance at this last seance.

I will first mention the photograph of the table suspended in the air, a levitation which did not leave any doubt in the mind of the experimenters, any more than it does in that of the observer who examines with attention this photograph (Pl. IX). The table descended slowly and the succession of images was registered by the photograph (same plate, Cut B). The following is an extract from the report by M. de Rochas upon this seance and the succeeding one:

_September 21._--The table rises off its four feet. M. Guerronnan has
time to take a photograph of it, but he fears that it may not be good.
We beg Eusapia to begin again. She consents with good grace. The table
is again lifted off its four feet. M. Mangin notifies M. Guerronnan
who, from his post, could not see, and the table remains in the air
until he has had time to take a picture of it (from three to four
seconds at the most). The dazzling magnesium light enables us all to
verify the reality of the phenomenon.

The curtain, hung in the corner of the room, suddenly blows out and
covers my head. Then I feel in succession three pressures of a hand
upon my head, the pressures growing stronger and stronger. I feel
fingers which press as those of M. Sully-Prudhomme, my neighbor on the
right, might do. I hold his left hand as a part of the chain of hands.

It is a hand, it is fingers, which have just pressed upon me so; but
whose? I have continually had Eusapia's right hand upon my left hand,
which she seized and tightly held at the moment of the production of
the phenomenon....

I throw back the curtain, which has remained upon my head, and we sit
waiting. "_Meno luce_" ("less light") asks Eusapia. The lamp is turned
down more, and the remaining light shut off by a screen.

Facing me there is a window with closed outside shutters, but through
which filters the light of the street. In the silence, my attention
is caught by the appearance of a hand, the small hand of a woman. I
can see it, owing to the feeble light coming from the window.

PHOTOGRAPH OF TABLE SUSPENDED.

THE TABLE FALLEN BACK.]

It is not the shadow of a hand: it is a hand of flesh (I do not add
"and of bone," for I have the impression that it has no bones). This
hand opens and closes three times, sufficiently long to permit me to
say:

"Whose hand is this?--yours, Monsieur Mangin?"

"No."

"Then it is a materialization?"

"Undoubtedly: if you hold the medium's right hand, I hold the other."

I had the _right hand_ of Eusapia on my left hand, and _her fingers
were interlaced with mine_.

Now the hand which I saw was a _right hand_, stretched out and
presented in profile. It remained for a moment motionless in the air,
at about from twenty-four to twenty-eight inches above the table and
thirty-six inches from Eusapia. As its immobility (I suppose) was the
cause of my not seeing it, it therefore opened and closed: it was
these movements which attracted my attention.

My favorable position in respect to the window, unfortunately
permitted me alone to see this mysterious hand; but M. Mangin saw, at
two separate times, not a hand, but the shadow of a hand outlined in
profile upon the opposite window.

Eusapia turns her head in the direction of the curtain, behind which
there is a leather-covered easy-chair, and, displacing the curtain,
this chair comes and leans against me.

She takes my left hand, lifts it above the table the whole length of
her right arm, and makes the feint of rapping in the air: the echo of
three blows is heard on the table.

A little bell is placed before her. She stretches out her two hands to
the right and the left of the bell at a distance of from three to four
inches; then she draws back her hands toward her body, and, lo and
behold! the bell comes gliding along over the table until it bumps
against something and falls over. Eusapia repeats the experiment
several times. You would think that her hands were invisibly
prolonged; and that seems to me to justify the term "ectenic force,"
which Professor Thury, of Geneva, gave in the year 1855 to this
unknown energy.

I was just asking if she did not perchance have some invisible thread
between her fingers, when suddenly, an irresistible itching made her
put her left hand to her nose; her right had remained upon the table
near the bell; the two hands at this moment were about two feet apart.
I observed carefully. Eusapia rested her left hand upon the table,
some inches from the bell, and this was again set in motion.
Considering the gesture made by her, it would have been necessary, in
order to perform this feat, to have a wonderfully elastic thread,
absolutely invisible; for our eyes were, so to speak, upon the bell,
and the light was abundant. My eyes were only a foot distant from the
bell, at the utmost.

This was a certain and undeniable case, and Sully-Prudhomme returned
to his home with me as thoroughly convinced as I am.

The poet of _Solitudes_ and of _Justice_, wrote on his part, as follows:

After a rather long wait, an architect's stool came marching up all
alone toward me. It grazed my left side, rose to the height of the
table, and succeeded in placing itself upon it. As I lifted my hand, I
felt it at once seized.

"Why do you take my hand?" I asked of my neighbor.

"It was not I," said he.

While these phenomena were taking place, Eusapia seemed to be
suffering. It seemed as if out of her own physiological fund or stock
she were furnishing all the force required to put the objects in
motion.

After the seance, while she was still very much prostrated, we saw an
easy-chair which was behind the curtain come rolling up behind her, as
if to say, "Hold on there! you've forgotten me!"

My conviction is that I witnessed phenomena which I cannot relate to
any ordinary physical law. My impression is that fraud, in any case,
is more than improbable,--at least so far as concerns the displacement
at a distance of heavy articles of furniture arranged by my
companions and myself. That is all that I can say about it. For my
part, I call "natural" that which is scientifically proved. So that
the word "mysterious" means that which still astonishes us because it
cannot be explained. I believe that the scientific spirit consists in
verifying facts, in not denying _a priori_ any fact which is not in
contradiction with known laws, and in accepting none which has not
been determined by safe and verifiable conditions.

_Seance of September 26._--A dark bust moves forward upon the table,
coming from where Eusapia sits; then another, and still another. "They
look like Chinese ghosts," says M. Mangin, with this difference, that
I, who am better placed, owing to the light from the window, am able
to perceive the dimensions of these singular images, and above all
their _thickness_. All these black busts are busts of women, of life
size; but, although vague, they do not look like Eusapia. The last of
them, of fine shape, is that of a woman who seems young and pretty.
These half-lengths, which seem to emanate from the medium, glide along
between us; and, when they have gone as far as the middle of the table
or two-thirds of its length, they sink down altogether (all of a
piece, as it were), and vanish. This rigidity makes me think of the
reproductions, or fac-similes, of a bust escaped from a sculptor's
atelier, and I murmur, "One would think he was looking at busts
moulded in papier-mache." Eusapia heard me. "No, not papier-mache,"
she says indignantly. She does not give any other explanation, but
says (this time in Italian), "In order to prove to you that it is not
the body of the medium, I am going to show you a man with a beard.
Attention!" I do not see anything, but Dr. Dariex feels his face
rubbed against for quite a while by a beard.

New experiments made at Genoa in 1901, at which Eurico Morselli, professor of psychology at the University of Genoa, was present, were reported by my learned friend the astronomer Porro, successively director of the observatories of Genoa and Turin, to-day director of the national observatory of the Argentine Republic at La Plata. Here are some extracts from this report:[38]

Nearly ten years have passed since Eusapia Paladino made her first
appearance in the memorable seances at Milan during the course of her
mediumistic tours through Europe. The object of shrewd investigations
on the part of experienced and learned observers; the butt of jokes,
accusations, sarcasms; exalted by certain fanatics as a
personification of supernatural powers and scoffed at by others as a
mountebank,--the humble haberdasher of Naples has made so much stir in
the world that she is herself bored and displeased by it.

I had good proof of this when I took leave of her, after I had
listened with much curiosity to the anecdotes which she related to me
of her seances and of the well-known men with whom she has been
associated,--Ch. Richet, Schiaparelli, Lombroso, Flammarion, Sardou,
Aksakof, et al. She then very emphatically asked me not to speak in
the journals of her presence at Genoa and of the experiments in which
she should figure there. Happily, she has good reasons herself for not
reading the journals.[39]

Why was an astronomer chosen to give an account of the experiments at
Genoa? Because astronomers are occupied with researches into the
unknown.[40]

If a man absorbed in his own private studies and attached to an
austere and laborious manner of life, such as my venerated master M.
Schiaparelli, has not hesitated to defy the irreverent jests of the
comic journals, it behooves us to conclude that the bond between the
science of the heavens and that of the human soul is more intimate
than appears. The following is the most probable explanation. We have
to do in these studies with phenomena which are manifested under
wholly special and still undetermined conditions, in conformity with
laws almost unknown and, in any case, of such a character that the
will of the experimenter has but little influence upon the unshackled,
self-regulating, and often adverse volitions which betray themselves
at every moment in the study of these psychical marvels. Nobody is
better prepared to study these things than an astronomer, possessing,
as he does, a scientific education precisely adapting him to the
investigation of such conditions. In fact, by the systematic
observation of the movements of the heavenly bodies, the astronomer
contracts the habit of being a vigilant and patient spectator of
phenomena, without attempting either to arrest or to accelerate their
irresistible development. In other words, the study of the stars
belongs to the science of _observation_ rather than to that of
_experiment_.

Professor Porro then sets forth the actual state of the question relating to mediumistic phenomena.

The explanation that everything is fraud, conscious or unconscious
[says he], is to-day almost entirely abandoned, as much so as that
which supposes that all is hallucination. In fact, neither one nor the
other of these hypotheses is sufficient to throw light upon the
observed facts. The hypothesis of unconscious automatic action on the
part of the medium has not obtained any better fate; for the most
rigorous controls have only proved that the medium finds it impossible
to excite a direct dynamic effect. Physio-psychology has therefore
been obliged, in these latter years, to have recourse to a supreme
hypothesis, by accepting the theories of M. de Rochas, against which
they had heretofore directed the fire of their heaviest guns. It has
become resigned to the admission that a medium whose limbs are held
motionless by a rigorous control may, under certain conditions,
project outside of herself, to a distance of several yards, a force
sufficient to produce certain phenomena of movement in inanimate
bodies.

The boldest partisans of this hypothesis go so far as to accept the
temporary creation of pseudo-human limbs,--arms, legs, heads,--in the
formation of which the energies of other persons present probably
co-operate with those of the medium. The theory is that as soon as the
energizing power of the medium is withdrawn these phantom dynamic
limbs at once dissolve and disappear.

For all that, we do not yet go so far as to admit the existence of
free and independent beings who would be able to exercise their powers
only through the human organism; and still less do we admit the
existence of spirits who once animated the forms of human beings....

M. Porro openly declares that, for his part, he is neither a materialist nor a Spiritualist: He says that he is not ready to accept, _a priori_, either the negations of psycho-physiology or the faith of Spiritualists.

He adds that the nine persons who were present with him at the seances represented the greatest variety of opinions on the subject, from the most firmly persuaded Spiritualists to the most incorrigible sceptics. Moreover, his task was not that of writing an official report, approved by all the experimenters, but solely that of faithfully relating his own impressions.

The following are the _most important_ of these, selected from his reports on the different seances:

I saw, and plainly saw, the rough deal table (a table a yard long and
nearly two feet wide and resting on four feet) rise up several times
from the floor and, without any contact with visible objects, remain
suspended in the air, several inches above the floor, during the space
of two, three, and even four seconds.

This experiment was renewed _in full light_ without the hands of the
medium and of the five persons who formed the chain about the table
touching the latter in any way. Eusapia's hands were looked after by
her neighbors, who controlled also her legs and her feet in such a way
that no part of her body was able to exercise the least pressure for
the lifting or maintaining in the air of the rather heavy article of
furniture used in the experiments.

It was under such absolutely trustworthy conditions as these that I
was able to see inflated _a very thick piece of black cloth_ and the
red curtains which were behind the medium, and which served to close
the embrasure of the window. The casement was carefully closed, there
was no current of air in the room, and it is absurd to suppose that
persons were hidden in the embrasure of the window. I believe, then,
that I can affirm with the utmost confidence that _a force_, analogous
to that which had produced the levitation of the table, was manifested
in the curtains, _inflated them, shook them, and pushed them_ out in
such a way that they touched now one and now another of the company.

During the sitting an event took place which deserves to be mentioned
as a proof, or at least as an indication, of the _intelligent_
character of the force in question.

Being face to face with Mme. Paladino, at a point in the table the
most removed from her, I complained that I had not been touched as had
the four other persons who formed the company. No sooner had I said
this than I saw the heavy curtain sweep out and come and hit me in the
face with its lower edge, at the same time that I felt a light blow
upon the knuckles of my fingers, as if from a very fragile and light
piece of wood.

Next a formidable blow, like the stroke of the fist of an athlete, is
struck in the middle of the table. The person seated at the right of
the medium feels that he is grasped in the side; the chair in which he
was seated is taken away and placed upon the table, from which it then
returns to its place without having been touched by anybody. The
experimenter in question, who has remained standing, is able to take
his seat in the chair again. The control of this phenomenon left
nothing to desire.

The blows are now redoubled, and are so terrific that it seems as if
they would split the table. We begin to perceive hands lifting and
inflating the curtains and advancing so far as to touch first one,
then the other, of the company, caressing them, pressing their hands,
daintily pulling their ears or clapping hands merrily in the air above
their heads.

It seems to me very singular and perhaps intentional,--this contrast
between the touches (sometimes nervous and energetic, and again
delicate and gentle, but always friendly) and the deafening, violent,
brutal blows struck upon the table.

A single one of these fist-blows, planted in the back, would suffice
to break the vertebral column.

The hands that perform these feats are the strong and brawny hands of
a man, the daintier hands are those of a woman, the very small hands
those of children.

The darkness is rendered a little less dense, and at once the chair of
No. 5 (Professor Morselli), which had already made a jump to one side,
is slipped from under him, while a hand is placed on his back and on
his shoulder. The chair gets up on the table, comes down again to the
floor, and, after different horizontal and vertical oscillations,
soars up and rests upon the head of the professor, who has remained
standing. It remains there for some minutes in a state of very
unstable equilibrium.

The loud blows and the delicate touches of hands, large and small,
succeed each other uninterruptedly in such a way that, without our
being able mathematically to prove the simultaneousness of different
phenomena, it is yet almost certain in several cases.

While our opportunities for obtaining so valuable a subject of
demonstration increase, the simultaneity which we ask for is at last
granted; for the table raps, the bell sounds, and the tambourine is
carried tinkling over our heads all about the room, rests for a moment
on the table, and then resumes its flight in the air....

A bouquet of flowers, placed in a carafe on the larger table, comes
over onto ours, preceded by an agreeable perfume. Stems of flowers are
placed in the mouth of No. 5; and No. 8 is hit by a rubber ball, which
rebounds upon the table. The carafe comes over to join the flowers on
our table; it is then immediately lifted and put to the mouth of the
medium, and she is made to drink from it twice; between the two times
it sinks down to the table and stands there for a moment right side
up. We distinctly hear the swallowing of the water, after which Mme.
Paladino asks some one to wipe her mouth with a handkerchief. Finally,
the carafe returns to the large table.

But a transfer of a totally different character is effected in the
following way. I had complained several times that my position in the
chain at a distance from the medium had hindered me from being touched
during the seance. Suddenly, I hear a noise on the wall of the room,
followed by the tinkling of the strings of the guitar, which vibrate
as if some one were trying to take down the instrument from the wall
on which it hung. At last the effort succeeds, and the guitar comes
toward me in an oblique direction. I distinctly saw it come between me
and No. 8, with a rapidity which rendered the impact of it rather
unpleasant. Not being able at first to account to myself for this dim
black object which was driving at me, I slipped to one side (No. 8 was
seated at my left). Then the guitar, changing its route, struck
forcibly with its handle three blows upon my forehead (which remained
a little bruised for two or three days), after which it came to a rest
with delicate precision upon the table. It did not remain there very
long before it began to circle about the hall, with a rotation to the
right, quite high above our heads, and at great speed.

It is proper to remark that, in this rotation of the guitar, the
vibration of its own strings was added to the sound of the tambourine
struck sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other, in the air; and
the guitar, bulky as it was, never once struck the central supporting
electric-light rod, nor the three gas lamps fixed on the walls of the
chamber. When we take into consideration the contracted dimensions of
the room, we see that it was very difficult to avoid these obstacles,
since the space remaining free was very limited.

The guitar took its flight twice around the room, coming to a
stand-still (between the two times) in the middle of the table, where
finally it came to a rest. In a final supreme effort, Eusapia turns
toward the left, where upon a table is a typewriting machine weighing
fifteen pounds. During the effort the medium falls exhausted and
nervous upon the floor; but the machine rises from its place and
betakes itself to the middle of our table, near the guitar.

In full light, Eusapia calls M. Morselli, and, controlled by the two
persons next her, brings him with her toward the table, upon which is
placed a mass of modelling-plaster. She takes his open hand and
pushes it three times toward the plaster, as if to sink the hand into
it and leave upon it an impression. M. Morselli's hand remains at a
distance of more than four inches from the mass: nevertheless, at the
end of the seance, the experimenters ascertain that the lump of
plaster contains the impression of three fingers,--deeper prints than
it is possible to obtain directly by means of voluntary pressure.

The medium lifts her two hands, all the time clasped in mine and in
those of No. 5 (Morselli), and uttering groans, cries, exhortations,
_she rises with her chair_, so far as to place its two feet and the
ends of its two front cross-bars upon the top of the table. It was a
moment of great anxiety. The levitation was accomplished rapidly, but
without any jarring or jolting or jerking. In other words, if, in an
effort of extreme distrust you insisted on supposing that she employed
some artifice to obtain the result, you would rather have to think of
a pulling up, by means of a cord and pulley, rather than of a pushing
from beneath.

But neither of these hypotheses can stand the most elementary
examination of the facts....

There is more to follow. Eusapia was lifted up still farther with her
chair, from the upper part of the table, in such a way that No. 11 on
one side and I on the other were able to pass our hands under her feet
and under those of the chair.

Moreover, the fact that the posterior feet of the chair were entirely
off of the table, without any visible support makes this levitation
still more irreconcilable with the supposition that Eusapia could have
made her body and the chair take an upward leap.

M. Porro judges that this phenomenon is one of those which are less easily explained if we decline to have recourse to the Spiritualistic hypothesis. It is a little like the man who fell into the water and thought he could pull himself out by his own hair.

Eusapia [adds M. Porro] descended without any jolting, little by
little, No. 5 and I never letting go her hands. The chair, having
risen up a little higher, turned over and placed itself on my head,
whence it spontaneously returned to the floor.

This thing was tried again. Eusapia and her chair were transported
again to the top of the table, only, this time, the result of the
fatigue undergone by her was such that the poor woman fell in a faint
upon the table. We lifted her down with all due care.

The experimenters desired to know whether these phenomena, the success
of which depends in so great measure upon the conditions of light,
could not have better success in the white and quiet light of the
moon.

They were obliged to admit that there was no appreciable difference
between the lunar light and other kinds. But the table around which
they had formed the chain quitted the veranda where the sitting was
being held, and, in spite of the strongly expressed wishes of the
sitters and of the medium herself, betook itself into the neighboring
room, where the sitting then continued.

This room was a little salon crowded with elegant furniture and
fragile objects, such as crystal chandeliers, porcelain vases,
bric-a-brac, etc. The experimenters feared very much that these things
would suffer damage in the bustle of the seance; but not the slightest
object suffered any damage.

Mme. Paladino, who was now herself again, took the hand of No. 11 and
placed it gently upon the back of a chair, at the same time placing
her own hand upon his. Then, as she lifted her hand and that of No.
11, _the chair followed the same ascending movement_ several times in
succession.

This thing was repeated in full light.

No. 5, as well as other gentlemen, perceived, in a manner that
admitted of no doubt, a vague, indistinct figure thrown upon the air
in the doorway of an antechamber which was feebly illuminated. The
figure consisted of changing and fugitive silhouettes, sometimes with
the outline of a human head and body, sometimes like hands reaching
out from the curtains. Their objective character was demonstrated by
the agreement of impressions, which were controlled in their turn by
means of continual inquiries. There was no possibility of their being
shadows voluntarily or involuntarily projected by the bodies of the
experimenters, since we were mutually watching each other.

The tenth seance (the last) was one of the best-attended, and was perhaps the most interesting of all.

Scarcely has the electric light been extinguished when we remark an
automatic movement of the chair upon which a lump of plaster has been
placed, while the hands and feet of Eusapia are watchfully controlled
by me and by No. 3. However, as we wish to forestall the objection of
critics that the phenomena take place in the dark, the table
typtologically (that is, by taps) asks for light, and the
experimenters light the electric lamp.

Presently, _all the company see the chair_ on which the lump of
plaster lies (not at all a light chair) _moving between myself and the
medium_, without our being able to understand the determining cause of
the movement.

Mme. Paladino puts her outspread hand upon the back of the chair and
her left above it. When our hands rise up, the chair rises also
without contact, reaching a height of about six inches. This
performance is several times repeated, with the addition of the
intervention of the hand of No. 5, under conditions of light and of
control which leave nothing to be desired.

The room is again almost completely darkened.... A current of cold air
upon the table precedes the arrival of a little branch with two green
leaves. We know that there are no plants in the neighborhood of the
company: it appears then that we have here a case of _bringing-in_
from the outside.