Michael Prescott's Blog

Taps

One of the points Arthur Findlay makes in his book On the Edge of the Etheric is that, in John Sloan's séances, the "trumpet" (a conical device used as a megaphone) would tap sitters on command, responding precisely to their instructions, even though the room was pitch dark. In other words, if a sitter asked to be tapped on the left knee, the tap would promptly follow. According to Findlay there was never any fumbling and there were never any mistakes.

Jan Vandersande, in his book Life After Death: Some of the Best Evidence, reported similar phenomena in séances he personally attended.

Reading these accounts, I wasn't particularly impressed, because I vaguely remembered reading descriptions in M. Lamar Keene's book The Psychic Mafia of how trumpet movements could be faked. But something Findlay said intrigued me. He reported that he had tried to duplicate the trumpet taps in the dark, and was consistently unable to do so. It was just too hard to know precisely where to tap the trumpet in an absolutely dark environment.

This seemed like an easy enough claim to test, so I tried my own experiment. Not owning a trumpet, either of the musical or megaphone variety, I used a cardboard tube that had once held a roll of paper towels. With the lights off, I tried tapping various targets in my living room. I found that Findlay was right. It is difficult, and often impossible, to tap a target in the dark. For instance, if I was aiming for the arm of an armchair, I might get the table next to it or the ottoman in front of the chair. Sometimes I would get the arm itself, but not consistently. Quite often I would tap nothing at all; my "trumpet" would pass through empty space.

After a while, my eyes adjusted somewhat to the dark - the room was not pitch black - and then my accuracy increased. But of course, had any sitters been present, their eyesight would have improved along with mine. If I could see them, they could see me. If the room was just bright enough to allow me to see my targets, anyone with me could have seen me holding the makeshift trumpet.

Then I went back and reread the relevant part of The Psychic Mafia. It turns out that Keene does not discuss trumpet taps at all. He does talk about creating the illusion of a levitating trumpet and making the trumpet whiz about in the air; the first is accomplished simply by lifting the trumpet in the dark, and the second is done by extending a collapsible trumpet to its full length and then waving it about, or by using a rod to extend the trumpet toward the ceiling. But there is no mention of tapping the sitters on command.

I also looked at a similar tell-all book, Revelations of a Spirit Medium. My search for the word trumpet in the online text brought up several references, but nothing relevant to the tapping effect.

Of course, one might argue that the medium is using night vision gear to see what the sitters cannot. This explanation could conceivably pertain to present-day séances, though there would be the problem of smuggling the night vision equipment into the séance room or concealing it beforehand. At any rate, it could hardly apply to Sloan's séances, which were conducted in the 1920s or even earlier.

It might also be argued that some mediums just happen to have unusually good night vision. Maybe so, but in hundreds of séances involving thousands of sitters, the odds are that some of the sitters would have exceptional night vision also. And it would only take one such sitter to blow the whistle on the enterprise. 

It would seem, then, that taps delivered on command to specified targets in the dark are good evidence for paranormal activity. I was wrong to dismiss this category of evidence so cavalierly.

Book review: On the Edge of the Etheric, by Arthur Findlay

Arthur Findlay's On the Edge of the Etheric was first published in 1931. The used edition I purchased came out in 1970; it was the 66th printing in the United Kingdom. The book has been translated into at least 19 languages as well as Braille. According to Amazon.com, the book remains in print to this day.

Clearly, On the Edge of the Etheric has found an audience. And it's easy enough to see why. Arthur Findlay provides a convincing portrait of an otherwise little-known British medium, John C. Sloan.

Sloan appears to have been a man of high moral scruples. He accepted no remuneration of any kind for the many séances he conducted, preferring to maintain a regular 9-to-5 job to pay his bills. He practiced trance mediumship as well as direct voice and produced various physical effects such as levitating trumpets. He supplied a great deal of accurate and detailed information without prompting, often addressing sitters who were strangers to him and whose names he had never been given. He cooperated with sensible tests carried out to preclude fraud. Findlay reports putting his ear against the medium's lips while direct voice communication was in progress. Though the voice continued, there was no sound emanating from Sloan's mouth. On another occasion, Findlay heard a slight hissing sound from Sloan while the voice emanated from the center of the room some distance away. Sometimes two or three voices would talk at once. Sitters were able to identify deceased loved ones by their distinctive voices and by the specific, personal information that was conveyed.

There seems to be no possibility that Sloan used an accomplice, since his lodgings were typically searched before each session. Moreover, it would be hard to imagine any motive for an elaborate deception lasting for many years, even decades, when there was no money or fame involved. Sloan sought no publicity and would probably not be remembered at all if not for Findlay's book, which was published some years after the séances took place.

Findlay gives examples of Sloan's readings, classifying them as A1 and A2 cases. The A1 cases are those in which Findlay feels that fraud, telepathy, cryptaesthesia, and other nonsurvival explanations can be ruled out. In the A2 cases the evidence is not quite as clearcut but still highly suggestive.

In one instance, Findlay seems to misclassify a case. This is the second case listed in chapter 8. Here, Findlay reports knowing some details about a painting owned by a friend. At a later séance, a different friend was addressed by the direct voice, which said, "Tell your friend Dr. Lamond, 18 Regent Terrace, Edinburgh, that I am much obliged to him for keeping his promise and placing my picture on his mantelpiece." The name and address given were correct, but the friend knew nothing about the painting. Findlay writes, "This is another fool-proof case ... it being quite free from any other explanation than that the personality of [the painter] was present, and spoke. Otherwise how could such a message have come?" Of course, there is another possible explanation -- telepathy. Since Findlay himself knew all the details of the painting, it is at least conceivable that the medium read his mind. It seems odd that Findlay overlooked this obvious objection, and it does cast some doubt on how accurately he categorized the cases in general.

Nevertheless, the evidence he gives is quite persuasive overall. There seems little doubt that John C. Sloan was an exceptionally talented trance and direct voice medium who was immune to the blandishments of fame and fortune.

A large part of the book is taken up with an explanation of how séances are conducted "on the other side." How exactly is the direct voice manifested? According to Findlay, who asked this question many times during the séances and received detailed answers, some vital force known as ectoplasm is elicited from the medium and the sitters, and is then collected in a kind of bowl. Using this ectoplasm, the communicator is able to materialize his hands, which he then uses to create a masklike form. He presses his face into this mask until it coats his mouth, tongue, and throat. With this coating in place, the communicator's etheric body takes on the "heaviness" necessary to produce sound vibrations in the physical world.

Of course the concept of ectoplasm is difficult for many of us to accept; it is too reminiscent of cheesy Hollywood movies and the pronouncements of fraudulent mediums. But if materializations are possible, then presumably some kind of quasi-physical substance is involved, and ectoplasm is probably as good a word for it as any.

Another large portion of the book concerns the allegedly scientific basis for materialization and direct voice mediumship. Unfortunately, Findlay's argument is based on the now-outdated notion of the ether, a substance once thought to pervade the cosmos and serve as the medium for the propagation of electromagnetic waves. Findlay believed that the key to mediumship was understanding differences in the frequency of vibration of the ether. Indeed, many sources affirm that "vibrations" of some sort are critical in mediumistic communication. If there is no such thing as ether, then what is vibrating? As far as I know, there is no answer to this question (though The Unobstructed Universe, by Stewart Edward White, attempts to supply one -- as I recall, the book posits "vibrations of consciousness").

A minor impediment to accepting the phenomena Findlay describes is the nature of Sloan's spirit control, an American Indian named Whitefeather. As was all too common in séances of this period, Whitefeather spoke in broken English, using the cliché expressions of a B-movie Indian. It is hard to take this personality at face value, although Findlay does mention that, in life, Whitefeather knew no English and learned his English by participating in the séances. If true, this might suggest that the expectations of the sitters influenced the idioms used by the spirit control. In other words, perhaps Whitefeather spoke like an Indian in a penny-dreadful novel because that was how his audience expected him to speak.

Interestingly, another Indian communicator spoke flawless English. The explanation he provided was that he learned English in his earthly life.

Whatever the deficiencies of the spirit controls, the information that came through the séances is quite impressive. Findlay gives only a few cases out of the scores he witnessed, but these are highly convincing. Here is an abbreviated version of one of the best:

I took my brother with me to a séance shortly after he was demobilised from the Army in 1919. He knew no one present, and was not introduced. No one present, except myself, knew that he had been in the Army. No one present knew where he had been during his time in the Army. His health had not permitted him to go abroad, and he was stationed part of the time near Lowestoft at a small village called Kessingland, and part of the time at Lowestoft, training gunners ...

During the course of the sitting the trumpet was distinctly heard moving about the room, and various voices spoke through it. Suddenly it tapped my brother on the right knee, and a voice directly in front of him said, "Eric Saunders". My brother asked if the voice were addressing him, and it replied "Yes", whereupon he said that there must be some mistake, as he had never known anybody of that name....

[My brother] asked where he had met him. The answer was: "In the Army." My brother mentioned a number of places, such as Aldershot, Bisley, France, Palestine, etc., but carefully omitted Lowestoft, where he had been stationed for the greater part of his army life. The voice replied "No, none of those places. I knew you when you were near Lowestoft." My brother asked why he said "Near Lowestoft," and he replied: "You were not in Lowestoft then, but at Kessingland." ...

My brother then asked what company [Saunders] had been attached to, and, as he could not make out whether he said "B" or "C", my brother asked if he could remember the name of the Company Commander. The reply was "Macnamara." This was the name of the officer commanding "B" Company at that time. By way of a test, my brother pretended that he remembered the man, and said: "Oh yes, you were one of my Lewis gunners, were you not?" The reply was: "No, you had not the Lewis guns then, it was the Hotchkiss." This was quite correct, as the Lewis guns were taken from them in April 1917, and were replaced by Hotchkiss ....

[Saunders] told my brother he had been killed in France, and my brother asked him when he had gone out. He replied that he had gone with the "Big Draft in August 1917". My brother asked him why he called it the Big Draft, and he said: "Don't you remember the Big Draft, when the Colonel came on the parade ground and made a speech." This reference was to a particularly large draft sent out to France that month, and was the only occasion on which my brother remembered the Colonel ever personally saying good-bye to the men ....

About six months after the above incident my brother was in London, and met, by appointment, the Corporal who had been his assistant with the light guns in his battalion at the time. My brother told him the above story, and asked if he remembered any man named "Eric Saunders"....

The corporal had brought with him an old pocket diary, in which he had been in the habit of keeping a full list of men under training, and other information. He pulled it out of his pocket, and together they looked back until they came to the records of "B" Company during 1917. Sure enough the name appear there, "Eric Saunders, f.q., August '17", with a red-ink line drawn through it; f.q. stood for fully qualified, and, though my brother knew the meaning of the red-ink line, he asked the corporal when it meant. He replied: "Don't you remember, Mr. Findlay, I always drew a line through the man's names when they went away. This shows that Saunders went out in August 1917."...

It is a remarkable case, as it is fraud proof, telepathy proof, and cryptaesthesia proof. Not only did no one present know my brother, but my brother did not know the speaker, and cannot even to-day recollect him, as he was passing hundreds of men through their training ... This case contains fourteen separate facts; each one was correct.

A spirited debate

I haven't posted anything about the David Thompson controversy in quite some time, and I really don't want to get drawn into the endless (and largely pointless) debate all over again. But ...

Despite my reservations about reopening  a can of ectoplasmic worms, I do think this editorial by Simon Forsyth on The Psychic Times Web site is worth linking to. In it, Forsyth compares an audio recording of an allegedly materialized Alan Crossley with a video of the actual Crossley, showing clearly that there is no similarity between the two voices. He also proffers an interesting challenge to Victor Zammit and David Thompson, backed up by a promise to pay a thousand pounds to charity if the challenge can be met.

As I say, I am weary of this argument, but this article - especially the thousand-pound challenge - seemed newsworthy enough to justify a link. It will be even more newsworthy if Mr. Thompson and his investigators take up the challenge. I hope they will.

Now back to our regularly scheduled blogging.

A moldy tale, continued

In the comments thread of my last post, Renaud Evrard pointed me to an excellent article by Mario Varvoglis on the Kluski materializations. This piece goes into more detail about the experiments and clearly shows the weaknesses of the attempted skeptical explanation.

The two skeptical researchers, Massimo Polidoro and Luigi Garlaschelli, performed some tests supposedly showing how Kluski produced his spirit molds fraudulently. Their main intent was to prove that a person could remove his hand from the wax mold without cracking the mold. But in presenting this explanation, they left unmentioned a number of crucial points.

Polidoro and Garlaschelli write,

Strictly following Geley's instructions, we prepared two basins (each had a diameter of 10 inches): one with hot water (approximately 5 litres at 55ºC), in which we poured a layer of molten paraffin (approx. 1 kg, previously melted in a pan with boiling water on a kitchen stove), and the other with cold water (5 litres), which we later used to immerse our hands and allow the paraffin to solidify. In turn, we immersed our hands first in the basin filled with paraffin and then in the one containing water.

But this is quite misleading, as Varvoglis' article makes clear. In the Kluski tests, there was no basin of cold water. Varvoglis:

Rather than using a second bowl for cooling, the IMI [Institut Metapsychique International]researchers preferred to allow the wax moulds to rigidify on their own, this being, as we shall see, a precaution against fraud.

The unnaturally rapid rate of cooling of Kluski's paraffin molds was itself a sign that something unusual was going on. Without any cold water available, the molds still cooled and set within one or two minutes - much faster than should have been possible. Kluski's hands (controlled throughout) were observed to get quite cold at times, as if he could produce a change in temperature at will.

The two skeptics, Polidoro and Garlaschelli, continue:

In all of these cases, we were able rather easily to make some fairly thin moulds (a few millimeters thick) just by immersing the hands a couple of times in the basin with the paraffin. But our most significant result was that in every instance we managed to remove our hands from the solidified paraffin glove without breaking it.

This sounds persuasive until we realize that molds "a few millimeters thick" are still significantly thicker than those produced in the Kluski tests, as Varvoglis observes:

Finally, it should be mentioned that the wax moulds were less than a millimeter thick (thinner than a sheet of paper).

And again:

the wax moulds were exceptionally delicate : at most a millimeter thick.

The thinness and fragility of the Kluski molds would have greatly complicated efforts to extricate the hand from the mold without having the mold fall to pieces - something the skeptics fail to mention.

Another fact creating difficulty for the skeptics is that Kluski's molds were much smaller than his own hands. The molded hands were child-sized; no one in the séance room had hands so small. In addition, the fingerprints of the molded hands were not those of Kluski. (It is a tribute to the thoroughness of the researchers that they actually checked this detail with the help of the police.)

Polidoro and Garlaschelli try to address this point:

It would not be difficult to conclude ... that particularly complex moulds could have been shaped with extreme care, before a séance took place, by the medium himself or his accomplices and, during the séance, jumbled up with other moulds forged at the moment of performing the spiritualist occurrence.

This won't do. The séance room was locked; only the investigators and Kluski were present. Who, then, was the accomplice? More important, there could have been no substitutions in at least three of the cases, when the investigators secretly treated the paraffin wax with telltale chemicals.

Here is one such case, per Varvoglis:   

Just prior to beginning, Richet and Geley had secretly added a bluish coloring agent to the paraffin. Control of the medium was considered excellent, with controllers regularly checking and verbally reporting ‘I am holding the right hand’, ‘I am holding the left hand’. Splashing sounds were heard about twenty minutes into the session, and one to two minutes later two warm paraffin gloves were deposited next to the controllers. Both wax moulds had precisely the same bluish tint as that of the tank, strongly suggesting that these were indeed created during the séance, and not smuggled in by the medium. An additional control was the weighing of all substance. Prior to the experiment, the paraffin was 3.920 grams, while at the end of the session it weighed 3.800 grams. The two moulds weighed 50 grams, and there was considerable wax scattered near the medium (around 15 grams), on his clothing, and on the floor 3.5 meters away from him (about 25 grams). Insofar as the sum of these weights correspond very closely to the initial weight, this further establishes that the wax gloves were produced during the session.

Moreover, Kluski's hands were held at all times throughout the sessions by investigators who were well aware of the old "substitution of hands" ploy used by fake mediums. The red light in the room, though dim, was sufficient to allow the sitters to see the outlines of the people at the table. Any gross movements occurring right in front of their faces would have been seen.

Why, then, did the researchers not see the spirit hands entering the paraffin bath? On at least one occasion, they apparently did. Varvoglis writes:

Finally, in one session the researchers actually saw the production of the wax moulds. In other words, they witnessed a continuity between the visual apparitions of luminous hands and the creation of the moulds. As Geley describes it :

We had the great pleasure of seeing the hands dipping into the paraffin. They were luminous, bearing points of light at the finger-tips. They passed slowly before our eyes, dipped into the wax, moved in it for a few seconds, came out, still luminous, and deposited the glove against the hand of one of us.

Varvoglis' complete article is well worth reading. In total, it makes a compelling case for the reality of the Kluski phenomena, and points up the extreme deficiencies of the skeptics' counterargument.

A moldy tale

Arthur Conan Doyle's History of Spiritualism, in two volumes (complete text available online: Vol. I and Vol. II), makes rewarding reading for anyone interested in the early years of parapsychology. That's not to say there aren't problems with the book. Doyle's dogged commitment to the reality of psi phenomena, especially as pertaining to life after death, led him to endorse some questionable characters. In Volume I, he goes to some lengths to establish the Davenport Brothers as legitimate, even though most observers then and later have made then out to be clever frauds. He endorses such dubious activities as slate-writing and spirit photography, and seems genuinely peeved at the efforts of the Society for Psychical Research to tighten up the experimental controls on mediums.

Despite these caveats, the two volumes of his book are well worth a look. There are many fascinating anecdotes, and a good deal of seemingly solid evidence is presented. Doyle's smooth, lucid prose style makes the pages turn quickly.

One section I found particularly interesting is found in Vol. II, in a chapter titled "Voice Mediumship and  Moulds." Here Doyle discusses the practice of producing paraffin molds of spirit forms - faces and hands, usually - in the séance room.

Skeptics understandably dismiss such claims, saying that the medium or an accomplice made the impressions surreptitiously, or that pre-made molds were smuggled into the room and substituted in the dark. This is undoubtedly true in some cases, as in the infamous case of "Margery" (Mina Crandon), who produced a spirit thumbprint that turned out to belong to her all-too-living dentist.

But consider the following series of tests first reported in the magazine Revue Metapsychique in June, 1921. It seems that every reasonable precaution against fraud was taken, yet positive results were obtained. Doyle tells us: 

Dr. [Gustave] Geley carried out with [Franek] Kluski a number of remarkable experiments in the formation of wax moulds of materialized hands. He has recorded the results of a series of eleven successful sittings for this purpose. In a dim light the medium's right hand was held by Professor Richet and his left hand by Count Potocki. A trough containing wax, kept at melting-point by warm water, was placed two feet in front of Kluski, and for the purpose of a test the wax was impregnated (unknown to the medium) with the chemical cholesterin, this to prevent the possibility of substitution. Dr. Geley writes:

The feeble light did not admit of the phenomena being actually seen; we were aware of the moment of dipping, by the sound of splashing in the liquid. The operation involved two or three immersions. The hand that was acting was plunged in the trough, was withdrawn, and, covered with warm paraffin, touched the hands of the controllers of the experiments, and then was plunged again into the wax. After the operation the glove of paraffin, still warm but solidified, was placed against the hand of one of the controllers.

In this way nine moulds were taken: seven of hands, one of a foot, and one of a chin and lips. The wax of which they were composed on being tested gave the characteristic reaction of cholesterin. Dr. Geley shows twenty-three photographs of the moulds and of plaster casts made from them. It may be mentioned that the moulds exhibit the folds of the skin, the nails and the veins, and these markings in nowise resemble those of the medium. Efforts to make similar moulds from the hands of human beings were only partially successful, and the difference from those obtained at the sittings was obvious. Sculptors and moulders of repute have declared that they know of no method of producing wax moulds such as those obtained at the séances with Kluski.

Geley sums up the result thus:

"We will now enumerate the proofs which we have given of the authenticity of the moulds of materialized limbs in our experiments in Paris and Warsaw.

"We have shown that quite apart from the control of the medium, whose two hands were held by us, all fraud was impossible.

"1. The theory of fraud by a rubber glove is inadmissible, for such an attempt gives crude and absurd results which can be seen at a glance to be imitations.

"2. It is not possible to produce such gloves of wax by using a rigid mould already prepared. A trial of this shows at once how impossible it is.

"3. The use of a prepared mould in some fusible and soluble substance, covered with a film of paraffin during the séance and then dissolved out in a pail of water, will not fit in with the actual procedure. We had no pail of water.

"4. The theory that a living hand was used (that of the medium or of an assistant) is inadmissible. This could not have been done, for several reasons, one being that gloves thus obtained are thick and solid, while ours are fine and delicate, also that the position of the fingers in our moulds makes it impossible that they could be withdrawn without breaking the glove. Also that the gloves have been compared with the hands of the medium and of the assistants, and that they are not alike. This is shown also by anthropological measurements.

"Finally, there is the hypothesis that the gloves were brought by the medium. This is disproved by the fact that we secretly introduced chemicals into the melted wax, and that these were found in the gloves.

"The report of the expert modellers on the point is categorical and final."

Nothing is evidence to those who are so filled with prejudice that they have no room for reason, but it is inconceivable that any normally endowed man could read all the above, and doubt the possibility of taking moulds from ectoplasmic figures.

A rebuttal of Geley's work was presented by two Italian researchers, Massimo Polidoro and Luigi Garlaschelli, who cast doubt on some of his claims. In particular, they showed that thin molds could be obtained rather easily, and that it was possible for a person to twist his hand free of the paraffin without breaking the mold. Their work is important and interesting, but it does not address the most significant claims made by Geley - namely, that the medium's hands were controlled throughout the séance, and that the paraffin had been pretreated with a certain chemical (without the medium's knowledge) to expose any attempted substitution.

If substitution is eliminated as a possibility, and if the medium's hands were properly controlled, then the only remaining non-paranormal explanation is the action of an accomplice, who would make a mold of his own hand. Could Geley have been careless enough to allow a potential accomplice into the séance room, and would this person's actions pass unnoticed in the dim red light? It seems doubtful.

Skeptics will probably say Kluski fooled the experimenters into believing they had control of both his hands, when actually they were controlling only one. But remember that one of the molds was of a foot, and another was of a partial face ("chin and lips"). Maybe, just maybe, Kluski could have lowered his face into the paraffin, though it seems likely that this action would have been observed, and that some traces of the paraffin would cling to his face afterward.

More important, how would he get his bare foot onto the table and into the trough of paraffin?

Getting a rise out of ectoplasm

In his book After Death -- What? Researches in Hypnotic and Spiritualistic Phenomena (1909; Aquarian Press edition 1988), turn-of-the-century scientist Cesare Lombroso recounts the experiments that led him from a strictly materialist worldview to a belief in spirits and life after death. One of the most striking chapters is Lombroso's account of "seventeen séances held in Milan in 1892 ... séances in which the most marked precautions were taken, such as searching the medium, changing her garments, binding her and holding her hands and feet, and adjusting the electric light on the table so as to be able to turn it off and on at will." (pp. 40-41)

The subject of these experiments was the controversial Sicilian medium Eusapia Palladino, who was said to be able to levitate tables, make musical instruments play themselves, produce cold winds in a sealed room, and materialize hands and faces. Eusapia was an eccentric character known for her propensity to cheat when she thought she could get away with it, a tendency that discredited her in the eyes of many researchers. (The fact that she was a coarse, uneducated, and flirtatious peasant woman also factored into the disrepute in which she was held in genteel circles.) Nevertheless, when properly controlled and observed, she produced some remarkable phenomena, which are difficult if not impossible to explain by any normal means. Indeed, the premier magician of the day, Howard Thurston, witnessed one of Eusapia's séances and stated publicly that her phenomena could not be duplicated by any trickery known to him.

What follows are a few excerpts from Lombroso's treatment of the Eusapia sittings. It should be noted that the table used in the experiments was not Eusapia's; it was "made expressly for the purpose" by the researchers. (p. 41)

After recounting some partial levitations of the table Lombroso writes:

It was natural to conclude that if the table, in apparent contradiction with the law of gravitation, was able to rise on one side, it would be able to rise completely. In fact, that is what happened, and these levitations are among those of most frequent occurrence in experiments with Eusapia. They were usually produced under the following conditions: The persons seated around a table place their hands on it and form the chain there. Each hand of the medium is held by the adjacent hand of the neighbor on each side; each of her feet is under the foot of her neighbor; these furthermore press against her knees with theirs. As usual, she is seated at one of the short sides (end) of the table, -- the position least favorable for mechanical levitation. After a few minutes the table makes a lateral movement, rises now to the right and now to the left, and finally is lifted wholly off its four feet into the air, horizontally, as if afloat in a liquid, and ordinarily to a height of from 10 to 20 centimetres (sometimes, exceptionally, as high as 60 or 70), then falls back on all four feet at once. Sometimes it stays in the air for several seconds, and even makes fluctuating motions there, during which the position of the feet under it can be thoroughly inspected. During the levitation the right hand of the medium frequently leaves the table with that of her neighbor and remains suspended above it. Throughout the experiment the face of the medium is convulsed, her hands contract, she groans and seems to be suffering.

In order better to observe the matter in hand we gradually retired the experimenters from the table, having noticed that the chain of several persons was not at all necessary, either in this or in other phenomena. In the end we left only a single person besides the medium, and placed on her left. This person rested her feet on the two feet of Eusapia, and one of her hands on the latter's knees. With her other hand she held the left hand of the medium, whose right lay on the table in full view of all, or was even lifted into the air during the levitation.

Inasmuch as the table remained in the air for several seconds, it was possible to secure several photographs of performance. [Two of these are included in the book.]

A little before the levitation it was observed that the folds of the skirt of Eusapia were blown out on the left side so far as to touch the neighboring leg of the table. When one of us endeavored to hinder this contact, the table was unable to rise as before, and was only enabled so to do when the observer purposely allowed to contact to occur. It will be noticed that the hand of the medium was at the same time placed on the upper surface of the table on the same side, so that the leg of the table there was under her influence, as much in the lower portion by means of the skirt as in the superior portion through the avenue of the hand. No verification was made as to the degree of pressure exerted upon the table at that moment by the hand of the medium, nor were we able to find out, owing to the brevity of the levitation, what particular part was in contact with the garment, which seemed to move wholly in a lateral direction and to support the weight of the table.

In order to avoid this contact it was proposed to have the levitation take place while the medium and her coadjutors stood on their feet, but it did not succeed. It was also proposed to place the medium at one of the longer sides of the table. But she opposed this, saying that it was impossible. So we are obliged to declare that we did not succeed in obtaining a complete levitation of the table of all four of its legs absolutely free from any contact whatever, and there is reason to fear that a similar difficulty would have been met in the levitation of the two legs that stood on the side next the medium. [pp. 43-46]

While performing some experiments with a balance, the same "blowing out" of the medium's garment was observed.

In this experiment of the balance, also, it was noticed by some of us that success seemed to depend on contact of the garments of the medium with the floor upon which the balance was directly placed. The truth of this was established by a special experiment on the 9th of October. The medium having been seated on the balance, that one of our number who had taken upon himself to watch her feet soon saw the lower folds of her dress swelling out and projecting in such a way as to hang down from the platform of the balance. As long as the attempt was made to hinder this movement of the dress (which was certainly not produced by the feet of the medium), the levitation did not take place. But as soon as the lower extremity of the dress was allowed to touch the floor, repeated and very evident levitations took place, which were designated in very fine curves on the disk that registered the variations of weight. [pp. 47-48]

The movement of the dress naturally gives rise to suspicion that some sort of fancy footwork was at play. But the researchers swore that Eusapia's feet were not responsible for the movement. If there is any reality to ectoplasm, then it may be the case that some sort of invisible ectoplasmic protuberance was causing the dress to move, and that contact between this ectoplasmic rod and the floor or table was necessary in order to achieve results.

In any case, the preceding observations pale in comparison to a phenomenon that Lombroso titles "The Levitation of the Medium to the Top of the Table."

Among the most important and significant of the occurrences we put this levitation. It took place twice, -- that is to say, on the 28th of September and the 3rd of October. The medium, who was seated near one end of the table, was lifted up in her chair bodily, amid groans and lamentations on her part, and placed (still seated) on the table, then returned to the same position as before, with her hands continually held, her movements being accompanied by the persons next her.

On the evening of the 28th of September, while her hands were held by MM. Richet and Lombroso, she complained of hands which were grasping her under the arms; then, while in trance, with the changed voice characteristic of this state, she said, "Now I lift my medium up on the table." After two or three seconds the chair with Eusapia in it was not violently dashed, but lifted without hitting anything, on to the top of the table, and M. Richet and I are sure that we did not even assist the levitation by our own force. After some talk in the trance state the medium announced her descent, and (M. Finzi having been substituted for me) was deposited on the floor with the same security and precision, while MM. Richet and Finzi followed the movements of her hands and body without at all assisting them, and kept asking each other questions about the positions of the hands.

Moreover, during the descent both gentlemen repeatedly felt a hand touch them on the head.

On the evening of October 3 the thing was repeated in quite similar circumstances, MM. Du Prel and Finzi being one on each side of Eusapia. [pp. 49-50]

The researchers' impression of being touched by "a hand" during this levitation is particularly interesting, and perhaps adds weight to the hypothesis of ectoplasmic extensions at at work.

Now, I'm well aware that there are ways of tilting a table and making it appear to levitate, though it would seem that the researchers' precautions were sufficient to prevent fraud in these particular tests. But even if Eusapia managed to fool them with regard to the table, how in the world could she simulate the levitation of herself and the chair she was sitting on -- transporting it from the floor to the table itself, and then back again, while closely observed?