UNCANNY MYSTERY.

Otago Witness, Issue 2914, 19 January 1910, Page 87

UNCANNY MYSTERY.

AMAZING PEATS BY ITALIAN PEASANT. SCIENTISTS BAFFLED. Eusapia Palladino is a very remarkable woman. She is now over 50 tears 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 15 years ago she first attracted attention because of the extraordinary spiritualistic phenomena said to have taken place through her medium ship. At that time her uncanny powers were subjected to the most stringent scrutiny bv men of European renown 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 itself, or the' appearance pf matter, without any ascertainable source of supply. • The 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 bar marvellous powers. Last year the Society for Physical Rosearch again took up the investigation, and appointed the Hon. Evsrard 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 wall be given in detail this month 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 be adepts at conjuring. They approached the investigation in a spirit of complete scepticism, born of long experience in exposing ■ the frauds of socalled mediums. They held 11 seances in a bedroom on the fifth floor of an hotel, the chamber having been prepared by the committee and searched before every sitting. “Across the corner of the room we hung, at the mediums request, says Mr Feilding-, two thin blade curtains forming a triangular recess, called the “cabinet,’ about 3ft deep in the middle. Behind this curtain wo 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 if was placed a small oblong table. Eusapia herself sat at one end of this table, with her back to the curtain, the back of her chair distant from the curtain about a foot or ■eighteen inches. One of us rat on each side of her. holding her hands with ours and ■controlling her feet with our legs and feet while on certain occasions a third vva.s ? under the table holding her feet with hits hands.” . Mr Fielding gives in the Ninc.-ecmn Century many instances _ of Eusapia’s startling power of table-telling and curtain bubring? One extraordinary phenomenon ('he°write>s) was touches bv 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 wa rnin-ht be looking in the direction whence it touched 1 us—but which felt the fingertips. —A Horrible Sensation. Apropos of thin Mr Fielding continues: “The next development was grasps through the curtains hv hands. When X say hands I mean palpable, apparently living bands with fingers and nails, which oyasned ns on the arm, shoulder, head, |ud 'hands. This occurred at times when ire we re absolutely certain that Eusapias c wn hands were separately held on the > a ble in . front of her. The first occasion which' this occurred to me is among

the phenomena most vivid in my memory. ' I bad been sitting at the end of the table furthest from Eusapia. Air Carrington and Air Baggally had for some time been , reporting that something from behind the I curtain had been touching them through | it. At last I told Eusapia that l wanted 1 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 3lt above her head. Immediately the tips of my fingers were struck several times; my first finger was then seized by an apparently living hand, 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 preseed 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 on her knee. These --grasps, if fraudulent, could only have been done by an accomplice behind tne curtain. There was .no accomplice behind the curtain.” —Visible Hands and Queer Objects.— The next development was that these hand's became visible. They generally, though not always, appeared between the parting of the curtains over Eusapia’s head. They were of different appearances, sometimes of a dead paner-white, sometimes of a natural colour. I think only once was a hand both seen and felt at the same time, and that was when a hand caine out from the side, not the middle of the curtain, seized Air Baggally. and pulled him so hard as almost to upset him off his chair. 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 cobwebs, "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 on now were 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, "field by Air Carrington, towards it. but at a distance of about two feet, and presently the stool moved towards heir; she then made gestures of repulsion, and it moved away from her. This process was several times repeated. The shorthand writer, who during part of the time was standing doss to the stool, passed his hand round it several times to ascertain that it had no 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 1 was standing up at the end of the table furthest from Eusapia—that is. at a distance of about sft or 6ft from the stool. —Completely Alyetified. — f will, 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 .simulate or create the appearance of matter, I refrain lor the present from speculating upon its nature. Yet it is just in this speculation that the whole interest of the subject lies. The foi-ce —if we ars driven, as I am confident we are, to presuppose one other than mere oonjurine—must either reside in the 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 orumi in something apparently intelligent and external to her, operating either directly from itself, or indirectly through or iu conjunction with some special attribute of her organism. The phenomena then-in themselves preposterous. futile, and lacking in . any quality of the smallest ethical religious, or spiritual value —are nevertheless symptomatic of something which, put at its lowest hr choosing the first hypothesis, must, as'it filters gradually into our common knowledge, most profoundly modify the whole of our philosophy of human faculty; but which, if that hypothesis is qVmnd' insufficient, may ultimately be to require an interpretation mvolvhm"something further— namely, a change in°on r conniption of the relations between mankind and intelligent sphere external to it.