AN UNCANNY MYSTERY.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 2706, 10 January 1910, Page 7

AN UNCANNY MYSTERY.

AMAZING FEATS BY ITALIAN PEASANTS.

SCIENTISTS BAFFLED

Ensaipia Palladino is a very remarkable woman. She is now over 50 years of age, and is The daughter of an Italian peasant, illiterate, unable to read, or to write more than her own name. Yet for many years she has been a baffling puzzle to the scientific men of Europe. Some fifteen years ago she first attracted attention because of the extraordinary spiritualistic phenomenasaid to have taken place through her mediumship. At that time* her uncanny powers were subjected to the most stringent scrutiny by men of European icnown versed in the occult. But they could make little of her. Sir Oliver Lodge at that time expressed his conviction that Eusapia possessed some supernatural power affecting matter, by which she was able to produce movements of material objects without any ascertainable agency, and, still more, produce matter, without any ascertainable source of supply.

This woman’s case aroused immense interest, and .great controversy at the time, but after her methods had been carefully watched by a group of experts at Cambridge, she was dropped, except by Continental observers, who still continue to make a study of her marvellous powers. Last year the Society for Psychical Research again took up the investigation, and appointed the Hon. Edward Feilding, the secretary of the society, to arrange for another thorough inquiry. This was done in a series of seances conducted with the greatest care. The result will bo given in detail in the “Proceedings” of the society, but Mr. Feilding has whetted the appetite of the public by contributing a most interesting account of his experiments in the current number of the “Nineteenth Century.” PRECAUTIONS AGAINST FRAUD. He selected two gentlemen of long experience in such matters, who, in fact, could lay claim to he adepts at conjuring. They approached the investigation in a spirit of complete scepticism, born of long experience in exposing' the frauds of so-called 1 mediums, They held eleven seances in a bedroom on the fifth floor of an hotel, the chamber having been prepared by the committee and searched before every sit-

ting. Across the corner of the room we hung, at the medium’s request, says Mr. Peilding, two thin black curtains forming a triangular recess, called the ■ ‘‘cabinet,” about three feet deep in the middle. Behind this curtain we placed a small round tea-table, and upon it placed various toys which we bought in Naples, a tambourine, a flageolet, a toy piano, a trumpet, a tea-bell, and so forth. Eusapia entered the room only in the company of the committee, and never looked behind the curtain, and did not know what had been arranged there. Outside it was placed a small oblong table. Eusa.pia herself sat at one end of this table, with her hack to the curtain, the back of her chair distant from the curtain about a foot or eighteen inches. One of us sat oil each side of her, holding’ her hands with ours and controlling her feet with our legs and feet, while on certain occasions a third was’under the table holding her feet with his hands. Mr. Feilding gives in the “Nineteenth Century” many instances Eusapia’s startling power of table-toll-ing and curtain bulging. One extraordinary phenomenon (bo writes) was touches' by some invisible object; that is, while the light was strong enough to see the face and hands of Eusapia, we were constantly touched on the arm, shoulder, or head by something which we could not see, even though we might be looking in the direction whenco it touched u,s—but which felt the finger tips. A HORRIBLE SENSATION.

Apropos of this, Mr. Feilding con tinues:

The next development was grasps through the curtains by hands. When I say hands, I mean palpable, apparently living hands with fingers ami nails, which grasped us on the arm, shoulder, head, and hands. This occurred at times when ive were absolutely certain that Eusapia’s own hand's were separately held on the table in front of her. The first occasion on which this occurred to me is among the phenomena most vivid in my memory. I had been sitting at the end of the table furthest from Mr. Carrington ’ and Mr. Baggally had for some time been reporting that something from behind the curtain had been touching them through it. At last I told Eusapia that I wanted to experience this also. She asked me to stand at the side of the table and hold my hand against the curtain over her head. I held it to 3 feet above her head. Immediately the tips of my fingers were struck several times; my first finger was then seized by an apparently living baud, three fingers above and thumb beneath, and squeezed so that I felt the nails of the fingers in my flesh; and then the lower part of my hand was seized and pressed by what appeared to be the soft part of a hand. Eusapia’s two hands were separately held by Messrs. Carrington) and Baggally, one on the table and one her knee.

VISIBLE HANDS AND QUEER OB-

JECTS

The next development was that these hands became visible. They generally, though not always, appeared 1 between the parting of the curtains over Eusapia’s head. They were of different appearances, somtimes of .a dead, paper white, eometimes of a natural color. Besides the visible hands, which were clear and distinct, there were also more or less indescribable appearances of various kinds, in themselves of the most suspicious character; white things that looked like handfuls of tow; black things like small heads at the end of stalk-like bodies, which emerged from the middle or side of the curtain and extended themselves over our table; shadowy things like faces with large features, as though made of cobweb, that shot with extreme rapidity and silence from the side of the curtain, and as quickly withdrew. There were also other phenomena, but the last which I shall touch oil now wore movements of objects outside the curtain, at a distance from Eusapia of from one to three feet. I speak chiefly of a stool which was placed on the floor, about a yard from Eusapia. She extended her hand, held by Mr. Carrington, towards it, but at a distance of about two feet, and presently the stool moved towards her; she them made gestures of repu]sion, and it moved away from her. This process was several times repeated. The shorthand writer, who, during part of the time, was standing close to tho stoolj passed his hand round it several times to ascertain that it had on attachment, but it continued to move the moment he removed his hand. There was a clear space between her and the stool, and the light was sufficient for me to follow its movements while I was standing up at the end of the table furthest from Eusapia—that is, at a distance of about five or six feet from the stool. COMPLETELY MYSTIFIED.

I Avill, in conclusion, say one thing more. While I have convinced myself of the reality of these phenomena, and of the existence of some force not yet generally recognised which is able to impress itself on matter, and to stimulate or create the appearance of matter, I refrain for the present from speculating upon its nature. Yet it is just in this speculation that tho whole interest in the subject lies. The force —if wo arg. driven, as I am confident we are, to presuppose one other than mere conjuring—must either reside in tilio medium herself and he of the nature of an extension of human faculty, beyond what is generally recognised, or must be a force having its origin in something apparently intelligent and oxter, nal to lier, operating cither from itself, or indirectly through, or in connection with, some special attribute of her organism. The phenomena then —in themselves proposterous, futile, and lacking in any quality the smallest ethical, religious, or spiritual value — are nevertheless symptomatic of sometliing. which, put at its lowest by choosing tho first hypothesis, must, as it filters gradually into our common knowledge, most profoundly modify the whole of our philosophy of human facplty: but which, if that hypothesis Is found Insufficient, may ultimately bo judged to require an interpretation involving something further—namely, a change in our conception of the relations between mankind and an intelligent sphere external to it.