Palladino

As a follow-up to my previous post, I thought I would present a summary of the Eusapia Palladino case which I found in an old book (originally published in 1925), The Facts of Psychic Science, by A. Campbell Holms. I would have preferred to quote from either Sittings with Eusapia Palladino, by Everard Feilding, or The Limits of Influence, by Stephen E. Braude, but both books are in my winter home. It is invariably the case that when I need a book, it's conveniently lodged in my other residence, a mere 2,000 miles away!

Anyhow, Holms' summary is good enough to give some idea of the sittings, which took place in 1908 in the investigators' hotel room in Naples, Italy. He notes that one of the investigators, Hereward Carrington, "who had been for many years a peculiarly hostile sceptic of mediumistic phenomena, was completely converted by his experiences with Eusapia." The same had earlier been true of the investigator Cesare Lombroso.

Describing Eusapia's seances generally, the light was usually very poor, the medium constantly demanding less and less. Towards the end of the seance, when she became entranced and the more important phenomena occurred, one could usually just distinguish the hands and faces of the sitters in the dim, red light. On many occasions, however, when the medium was at her ease with friendly sitters, important phenomena occurred in bright light....

Flitting points of light and cold winds were often produced. Levitations of the table, lasting two or three seconds, occurred at every seance. On exceptional occasions the table remained up for over a minute.... This phenomenon often occurred under the most stringent test conditions; while a sitter on either side held the medium's hands and one of them placed his arm across her knees, another got below the table and held her ankles; and sometimes a night-light was placed under the table. The sitters often tried to force the levitated table downwards, but always found that the resistance offered, though stout, was a peculiarly elastic one, similar to what is experienced when a buoyant, floating body is pressed downwards....

In semi-darkness, Eusapia was often levitated, chair and all, on to the table.... And Prof. Poro reports that while she, sitting in her chair, was raised above the table top, he and another sitter passed their hands under her and the chair. In good light articles of furniture were often seen to advance untouched towards the medium, and a small table sometimes [seen to] climb up, apparently with difficulty, on to the larger one, round which the sitters sat....

Eusapia used to sit at the table with her back close to the curtains of a cabinet [a curtained-off corner of the room]. Inside, there was a small table, and various musical instruments, a banjo, tambourine, musical-box, bell, etc., and in the darkness these would begin to play or come out and play in different parts of the room, or all would play together in the cabinet to an accompaniment of raps and tilting of the table. These noisy demonstrations were frequent. The curtains often bulged outwards, as if blown by a wind, and sometimes they enveloped a sitter's head; there was no wind or other apparent cause of the movements....

It is interesting to contrast this summary, which by no means exhausts the phenomena observed by capable, experienced investigators working in red light, with the entry on Palladino given by skeptic James Randi in his book An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural. Here it is in its entirety:

Palladino, Eusapia (née Palladino, then Signora Raphael Delgaiz, 1854-1918) Born in southern Italy, spirit medium Palladino was accepted by many scientists, particularly those like Charles Richet and Schrenck-Notzing, who were devout believers in all spiritualistic claims. She specialized in levitation of tables.
      A cantankerous, vain, difficult person, she became an international celebrity, and sometimes sat for tests, though she was often caught cheating on these occasions and on other non-controlled sittings as well. The prominent investigator Hereward Carrington (né Hubert Lavington, 1880-1958) brought her to America, became her manager, and took her on tour. In America she continued to be caught cheating, and Carrington came to the conclusion that she sometimes cheated (when she was caught), but that the rest of her performance (when she was not caught) was genuine.
      Part of her success was probably due to her petulant attitude, which she used to discourage proper examination of her performances. As with others in her trade, she needed to control the circumstances around her and managed to do so very effectively, throwing temper tantrums and walking out of tests when things were not to her liking. She was also noted among investigators for her seeming lack of acquaintance with soap-and-water, being the source of a heavy variety of unpleasant body odors, especially in the closed séance room. She provided her examiners with plentiful reasons to regret having taken on such a formidable woman.
      In spite of all this, and her repeated exposures, Carrington remained thoroughly convinced for the rest of his life that Palladino was genuinely in touch with Summerland.

There is no dispute that Palladino would cheat when she could, a fact she cheerfully admitted to investigators. She was an eccentric who seemed to regard the process of scientific testing as a game. This "trickster" mentality is not at all unusual among people with psi abilities, as George P. Hansen's book The Trickster and the Paranormal has shown in detail. Palladino's propensity to cheat under imperfectly controlled conditions spurred serious investigators to adopt the tightest controls possible. In these conditions, when fraud was virtually ruled out, the most interesting and impressive phenomena often occurred.

Randi spends much of his summary painting Palladino as a noisy, temperamental, unwashed peasant woman (which she was), but somehow neglects to include any mention of the Naples sittings or the other successful tests of her abilities. I suppose he assumes that, as an accomplished magician himself, he could easily duplicate Palladino's feats.

I doubt it.  Years after the Naples sittings, Palladino visited America, where Howard Thurston, the most respected stage magician of his day, attended one of her seances. Afterward, Thurston was moved to declare, "I witnessed in person the table levitations of Madame Eusapia Palladino ... and am thoroughly convinced that the phenomena I saw were not due to fraud and were not performed by the aid of her feet, knees, or hands."

Comments

[T.B.]

Mediumship isn't my most knowledgable area. Wasn't Palladino the medium that Houndini attempted to frame, at one point?

[Michael Prescott]

No, that was Mina Crandon, who used the name "Margery." I wrote an essay on her at:

http://michaelprescott.freeservers.com/Margery.htm

[Ginny]

"A cantankerous, vain, difficult person" - what an apt description of Mr. Randi himself! :-)

[Vitor Moura Visoni]

Mr. Prescott,

about Palladino and the Feilding's report, I really think it's essencial to you read these articles:

The Feilding Report: A reconsideration (1992)
Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 58 (826), 129-152.
Wiseman, R

Palladino and the invisible man who never was (1992)
JSPR 58, 324-340.
Barrington, M. R

Methodological recommendations derived from the ' Feilding Report'. (1992)
Proceedings of the Parapsychological Association 1992, 239-250.
Wiseman, R. e Morris, R. L.

Barrington and Palladino: Ten major errors (1993)
Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 59 (830), 16-34.
Wiseman, R

Fontana and Palladino: Nine major errors (1993)
Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 59 (830), 35-47.
Wiseman, R.

Martinez-Taboas, Francia and Palladino: Nine major errors (1993)
Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 59 (831), 130-140.
Wiseman, R.

Palladino, Wiseman And Barrington: Ten Brief Replies (Julho de 1993)
Journal of the Society for Psychical Research [Vol.59, No. 832, July 1993]
Mary Rose Barrington

Palladino (?) And Fontana: The Errors Are Wiseman's Own (Julho de 1993)
Journal of the Society for Psychical Research [Vol.59, No. 832, July 1993]
David Fontana

The Feilding Report: All things considered (Julho de 1993)
Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 59 (832), July 1993, 210-217.
Wiseman, R.

Palladino and Wiseman: A Belated Rejoinder (Outubro de 1994)
Journal of the Society for Psychical Research [Vol. 60, No. 837, October 1994]
Alfonso Martinez-Taboas e Margarita Francia

Eusapia Palladino’s Sapient Foot: A New Reconsideration of the Feilding Report (?)
http://www.cicap.org/en_artic/at101008.htm
Massimo Polidoro e Gian Marco Rinaldi

The articles of Wiseman and the article of Polidoro tries to explain the Feilding's report in normal ways. There's a lot of dicussion with Mary Rose Barrington, Fontana and others about this.

Best wishes,
Vitor

[Michael Prescott]

I read Wiseman's article and Barrington's critique some time ago. Wiseman, IMO, has zero credibility as an investigator after the Natasha Demkina debacle. His "explanation" of the Palladino sittings can work only if the experimenters (all of whom were veteran debunkers) had lost their senses and turned into deaf and blind idiots.

However, I'll look for Barrington's further comments on the subject, just for fun. Thanks for the heads-up!