page_title: Eusapia Palladino
section_title: Italy
hierarchical_section_title: Eusapia Palladino / Italy
caption_attribution_description: English: A sketch showing the 8th séance sitting held on December 10th, 1908 at Naples with Eusapia Palladino. B = W. W. Baggally C = Hereward Carrington E. P. = Eusapia Palladino F = Everard Fielding R = Mr. Ryan (visitor)
context_page_description: Eusapia Palladino was an Italian Spiritualist physical medium. She claimed extraordinary powers such as the ability to levitate tables, communicate with the dead through her spirit guide John King, and to produce other supernatural phenomena.
  She convinced many persons of her powers, but was caught in deceptive trickery throughout her career. Magicians, including Harry Houdini, and skeptics who evaluated her claims concluded that none of her phenomena were genuine and that she was a clever trickster.
  Her Warsaw séances at the turn of 1893–94 inspired several colorful scenes in the historical novel Pharaoh, which Bolesław Prus began writing in 1894.
context_section_description: In the late 19th century, the criminologist Cesare Lombroso attended séances with Palladino and was convinced that she had supernatural powers. Lombroso was persuaded by Palladino's manager, Ercole Chiaia, to attend her séances. Chiaia challenged him in an open letter in the magazine La Fanfulla, pointing out that if Lombroso was unbiased and free of prejudice, he should be willing to investigate her phenomena. Lombroso's subsequent conversion, reported by the press in Italy and the world, was instrumental to Palladino's reaching celebrity status at the turn of the century.
  Most extraordinary was a phenomenon that Lombroso dubbed "The Levitation of the Medium to the Top of the Table." However, other investigators found the levitations of the table to be fraudulent. According to authors William Kalush and Larry Sloman, Lombroso was having a sexual relationship with Palladino. Lombroso's daughter Gina Ferrero wrote that, in his later years, Lombroso suffered from arteriosclerosis and his mental and physical health was wrecked. Joseph McCabe wrote that because of this it is not surprising that Palladino managed to fool him with her tricks.
  Enrico Morselli was also interested in mediumship and psychical research. He studied Palladino and concluded that some of her phenomena were genuine – evidence for an unknown bio-psychic force present in all humans.
  In 1908, the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) appointed a committee of three to examine Palladino in Naples. The committee comprised Mr. Hereward Carrington, investigator for the American Society for Psychical Research and an amateur conjurer; Mr. W. W. Baggally, also an investigator and amateur conjurer of much experience; and the Hon. Everard Feilding, who had had an extensive training as investigator and "a fairly complete education at the hands of fraudulent mediums." Three adjoining rooms on the fifth floor of the Hotel Victoria were rented. The middle room where Feilding slept was used in the evening for the séances. In the corner of the room was a séance cabinet created by a pair of black curtains to form an enclosed area that contained a small round table with several musical instruments. In front of the curtains was placed a wooden table. During the séances, Palladino would sit at this table with her back to the curtains. The investigators sat on either side of her, holding her hand and placing a foot on her foot. Guest visitors also attended some of the séances; the Feilding report mentions that Professor Bottazzi and Professor Galeotti were present at the fourth séance, and a Mr. Ryan was present at the eighth séance.
  Although the investigators caught Palladino cheating, they were convinced Palladino produced genuine supernatural phenomena such as levitations of the table, movement of the curtains, movement of objects from behind the curtain and touches from hands. Regarding the first report by Carrington and Feilding, the American scientist and philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce wrote:
  Eusapia Palladino has been proved to be a very clever prestigiateuse and cheat, and was visited by a Mr. Carrington.... In point of fact he has often caught the Palladino creature in acts of fraud. Some of her performances, however, he cannot explain; and thereupon he urges the theory that these are supernatural, or, as he prefers it "supernormal." Well, I know how it is that when a man has been long intensely exercised and over fatigued by an enigma, his common-sense will sometimes desert him; but it seems to me that the Palladino has simply been too clever for him.... I think it more plausible that there are tricks that can deceive Mr. Carrington.
  Frank Podmore in his book The Newer Spiritualism (1910) wrote a comprehensive critique of the Feilding report. Podmore said that the report provided insufficient information for crucial moments and the investigators representation of the witness accounts contained contradictions and inconsistencies as to who was holding Palladino's feet and hands. Podmore found accounts among the investigators conflicted as to who they claimed to have
caption: Sketch showing the layout of a séance in the 1908 Naples investigation.
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