Eusapia Palladino - Naples

Naples

In 1908, the Society for Psychical Research appointed a committee of three to examine Eusapia 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 Fielding, who had had an extensive training as investigator and "a fairly complete education at the hands of fraudulent mediums." They were convinced that Palladino possessed unusual powers. Note: In August 1906 Everard Fielding and his brother Basil were boating. The boat capsized and Basil drowned. It was at this period Everard became noted in the affairs of The Society for Psychical Research.

In 1910 psychic investigator Everard Fielding returned to Naples, without Hereward Carrington and W.W. Baggaly. Instead, he was accompanied by his friend, William S. Marriott, a conjuror of some distinction who had exposed psychic fraud in Pearson's Magazine. His plan was to repeat the famous earlier 1908 Naple sittings with Palladino. Other members of the Society for Psychical Research had called attention to the failings of Fielding's 1908 notes. Unlike the 1908 sittings which had baffled the investigators, this time Fielding and Marriott detected her cheating, just as she had done in the US. Her deceptions were obvious. Marriott stated,"When one knows how a feat can be accomplished and what to look for, only the most skillful performer can maintain the illusion in the face of such informed scrutiny." Fielding saw the second visit as totally worthless.

Carrington, who became Palladino's manager, contends that far from having been exposed in America, as the public imagined, Eusapia presented a large number of striking phenomena which have never been explained and that only a certain number of her classical and customary tricks were detected, which every investigator of this medium's phenomena had known to exist and had warned other investigators against for the past 20 years. No new form of trickery was discovered and Carrington warned the sitters against the old and well-known methods in a circular letter in advance. This is why the American exposure did not influence the European investigators in the least.

Indeed, Eusapia did not depart from America without making one interesting convert. Howard Thurston (1869–1936), world-famous magician, declared:

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.

On another occasion, Thurston offered this more detailed endorsement of Palladino's supernatural ability:

I do not believe that ever before in the history of the world had a magician and a sceptic been privileged to behold what I then looked upon. I saw Eusapia replace her hands on that table I had examined so carefully. I saw it lift up and float, unsupported in the air; and while it remained there I got down on my knees and crawled around it, seeking in vain for some natural explanation. There was none. No wires, no body supports, no iron shoes, nothing—but some occult power I could not fathom. ... I demanded more proof, and with bewildering willingness the strange old lady agreed. Mrs. Thurston held her feet, I held her arms. And even then, thus guarded and a prisoner, the table rose again!

When it finally crashed back to the floor again before my very eyes I was a defeated sceptic. Palladino had convinced me! There was no fake in what she had showed me. ... If after reading what I have said of this adventure into the realm where my magic cannot penetrate, the reader doubts, not my word, but my observation, let me say this: My career has been devoted consistently to magic and illusions. I believe I understand the principles governing every known trick. ... In all my seance examinations I train all my faculties against the Medium, watching for the slightest evidence of trickery. I am willing to stake my reputation as a magician that what this Medium showed me was genuine. I do insist that woman showed genuine levitation, not by trickery but by some baffling, intangible, invisible force that radiated through her body and over which she exercised a temporary and thoroughly exhausting control.

Howard Thurston supported spiritualism and had studied at the Dwight L. Moody Bible Institute, intending to become a Unitarian missionary before he became a magician.

In 1907, when the physician and professor Filippo Bottazzi read about studies about the phenomenon of mediumism, he decided to do experiments with his team. In 1909 he published the book, Mediumistic Phenomena.