Eusapia Palladino (alternative spelling: Paladino; 21 January 1854 – 16 May 1918) was an Italian spiritualist physical medium.Georgess McHargue. (1972). Facts, Frauds, and Phantasms: A Survey of the Spiritualist Movement. Doubleday. p. 136. Rosemary Ellen Guiley. (1994). The Guinness Encyclopedia of Ghosts and Spirits. Guinness Publishing. p. 242. 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.Joseph Jastrow. (1918). The Psychology of Conviction. Houghton Mifflin Company. pp. 101–127:The 1918 chapter was a re-print of an article that Jastrow had written in 1910: Jastrow, Joseph, "The Case of Paladino (sic)", The American Review of Reviews, Vol.42, No.1, (July 1910), pp.74—84.Walter Mann. (1919). The Follies and Frauds of Spiritualism. Rationalist Association. London: Watts & Co. pp. 115–130Ernest Hilgard. (1967). Introduction to Psychology. Harcourt, Brace and Company. p. 243. "Eusapia Palladino was a medium who was able to make a table move and produce other effects, such as tapping sounds, by the aid of a "spirit" called John King. Investigated repeatedly between 1893 and 1910, she convinced many distinguished scientists of her powers, including the distinguished Italian criminologist Lombroso and the British physicist Sir Oliver Lodge. She was caught in deceptive trickery as early as 1895, and the results were published. Yet believers continued to support her genuineness, as some do today, even though in an American investigation in 1910, her trickery was abundantly exposed. Two investigators, dressed in black, crawled under the table unobserved and were able to see exactly how she used her foot to create the 'supernatural' phenomena."Milbourne Christopher. (1971). ESP, Seers & Psychics. Crowell. pp. 188–204. 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.Harry Houdini. (2011, originally published in 1924). A Magician Among the Spirits. Cambridge University Press. pp. 50–65. Joseph Rinn. (1950). Sixty Years of Psychical Research: Houdini and I Among the Spiritualists. Truth Seeker Company. pp. 272–356C. E. M. Hansel. (1980). ESP and Parapsychology: A Critical Re-Evaluation. Prometheus Books. pp. 58–64. Massimo Polidoro. (2003). Secrets of the Psychics: Investigating Paranormal Claims. Prometheus Books. pp. 62–96.
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.
Early life Palladino was born into a peasant family in Minervino Murge, Italy. She received little, if any, formal education.Paul Kurtz. (1985). A Skeptic's Handbook of Parapsychology. Prometheus Books. p. 196. M. Brady Brower. (2010). Unruly Spirits: The Science of Psychic Phenomena in Modern France. University of Illinois Press. p. 62. Orphaned as a child, she was taken in as a nursemaid by a family in Naples. In her early life, she was married to a travelling conjuror and theatrical artist, Raphael Delgaiz, whose store she helped manage.Baron Johan Liljencrants. (1918). Spiritism and Religion: A Moral Study. Catholic University of America. p. 39D. H. Rawcliffe. (1988). Occult and Supernatural Phenomena. Dover Publications. p. 321 Palladino later married a wine merchant, Francesco Niola.Henry-Louis de La Grange. (2008). Gustav Mahler: A New Life Cut Short (1907–1911). Oxford University Press. p. 610.
Poland Palladino visited Warsaw, Poland, on two occasions. Her first and longer visit was when she came at the importunities of the psychologist, Dr. Julian Ochorowicz, who hosted her from November 1893 to January 1894.Krystyna Tokarzówna and Stanisław Fita, Bolesław Prus, pp. 440, 443, 445–53.
Regarding the phenomena demonstrated at Palladino's séances, Ochorowicz concluded against the spirit hypothesis and for a hypothesis that the phenomena were caused by a "fluidic action" and were performed at the expense of the medium's own powers and those of the other participants in the séances.Leslie Shepard. (1991). Encyclopedia of Occultism & Parapsychology. Gale Research Company. p. 1209.
Ochorowicz introduced Palladino to the journalist and novelist Bolesław Prus, who attended a number of her séances, wrote about them in the press, and incorporated several Spiritualist-inspired scenes into his historical novel Pharaoh.
On 1 January 1894 Palladino called on Prus at his apartment. As described by Ochorowicz,
Palladino subsequently visited Warsaw in the second half of May 1898, on her way from St. Petersburg to Vienna and Munich. At that time, Prus attended at least two of the three séances that she conducted (the two séances were held in the apartment of Ludwik Krzywicki).Krystyna Tokarzówna and Stanisław Fita, Bolesław Prus, p. 521.
England In July 1895, Palladino was invited to England to Frederic William Henry Myers's house in Cambridge for a series of investigations into her mediumship. According to reports by the investigators Myers and Oliver Lodge, all the phenomena observed in the Cambridge sittings were the result of trickery. Her fraud was so clever, according to Myers, that it "must have needed long practice to bring it to its present level of skill".Joseph McCabe. (1920). Is Spiritualism Based On Fraud? The Evidence Given By Sir A. C. Doyle and Others Drastically Examined. London, Watts & Co. p. 14
In the Cambridge sittings, the results proved disastrous for her mediumship. During the séances Palladino was caught cheating in order to free herself from the physical controls of the experiments. Palladino was found liberating her hands by placing the hand of the controller on her left on top of the hand of the controller on her right. Instead of maintaining any contact with her, the observers on either side were found to be holding each other's hands and this made it possible for her to perform tricks.M. Brady Brower. (2010). Unruly Spirits: The Science of Psychic Phenomena in Modern France. University of Illinois Press. p. 62. Richard Hodgson had observed Palladino free a hand to move objects and use her feet to kick pieces of furniture in the room. Because of the discovery of fraud, the British SPR investigators such as Henry Sidgwick and Frank Podmore considered Palladino's mediumship to be permanently discredited, and because of her fraud she was banned from any further experiments with the SPR in Britain. The magician John Nevil Maskelyne, who was involved in the investigation, supported Hodgson's conclusion. However, despite the evidence of fraud, Oliver Lodge considered some of her phenomena genuine.Leonard Zusne; Warren H. Jones. (2014). Anomalistic Psychology: A Study of Magical Thinking. Psychology Press. p. 216. "In spite of overwhelming evidence that pointed to fraud, such as was found in the case of the notorious Neapolitan medium Eusapia Palladino, Sir Oliver Lodge, another English physicist, refused to change his favorable opinion of her."
In the Daily Chronicle on 29 October 1895, Maskelyne published a long exposure of Palladino's fraudulent methods. According to historian Ruth Brandon "Maskelyne concluded that everything rested on the question whether Eusapia could get a hand or foot free occasionally. She wriggled so much that it was impossible to control her properly throughout. If she could get one hand, and sometimes a foot, free, everything could be explained".Ruth Brandon. (1983). The Spiritualists: The Passion for the Occult in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Weidenfeld and Nicolson. pp. 258–259.
In the British Medical Journal on 9 November 1895 an article was published titled Exit Eusapia!. The article questioned the scientific legitimacy of the SPR for investigating Palladino, a medium who had a reputation of being a fraud and impostor.The British Medical Journal. (9 November 1895). Exit Eusapia!. Volume. 2, No. 1819. p. 1182. Part of the article read "It would be comic if it were not deplorable to picture this sorry Egeria surrounded by men like Professor Sidgwick, Professor Lodge, Mr. F. H. Myers, Dr. Schiaparelli, and Professor Richet, solemnly receiving her pinches and kicks, her finger skiddings, her sleight of hand with various articles of furniture as phenomena calling for serious study". This caused Henry Sidgwick to respond in a published letter to the British Medical Journal of 16 November 1895. According to Sidgwick SPR members had exposed the fraud of Palladino at the Cambridge sittings. Sidgwick wrote "Throughout this period we have continually combated and exposed the frauds of professional mediums, and have never yet published in our Proceedings, any report in favour of the performances of any of them".The British Medical Journal. (16 November 1895). Exit Eusapia. Volume 2, No. 1820. pp. 1263–1264. The response from the "BMJ" questioned why the SPR wasted time investigating phenomena that were the "result of jugglery and imposture" and did not urgently concern the welfare of mankind.
In 1898, Myers was invited to a series of séances in Paris with Charles Richet. In contrast to the previous séances in which he had observed fraud, he now claimed to have observed convincing phenomena.Janet Oppenheim. (1985). The Other World: Spiritualism and Psychical Research in England, 1850–1914. Cambridge University Press. pp. 150–151. Sidgwick reminded Myers of Palladino's trickery in the previous investigations as "overwhelming" but Myers did not change his position. This enraged Richard Hodgson, then editor of SPR publications, who banned Myers from publishing anything on his recent sittings with Palladino in the SPR journal. Hodgson was convinced Palladino was a fraud and supported Sidgwick in the "attempt to put that vulgar cheat Eusapia beyond the pale". It wasn't until the 1908 sittings in Naples that the SPR reopened the Palladino file.Massimo Polidoro. (2003). Secrets of the Psychics: Investigating Paranormal Claims. Prometheus Books. p. 61.
The British psychical researcher Harry Price, who studied Palladino's mediumship, wrote "Her tricks were usually childish: long hairs attached to small objects in order to produce 'telekinetic movements'; the gradual substitution of one hand for two when being controlled by sitters; the production of 'phenomena' with a foot which had been surreptitiously removed from its shoe and so on".Harry Price, Fifty Years of Psychical Research, chapter XI: The Mechanics of Spiritualism, F&W Media International, Ltd, 2012.
France
The French psychical researcher Charles Richet with Oliver Lodge, Frederic William Henry Myers and Julian Ochorowicz investigated the medium Palladino in the summer of 1894 at his house in the Ile Roubaud in the Mediterranean. Richet claimed furniture moved during the séance and that some of the phenomena was the result of a supernatural agency. However, Richard Hodgson claimed there was inadequate control during the séances and the precautions described did not rule out trickery. Hodgson wrote all the phenomena "described could be account for on the assumption that Eusapia could get a hand or foot free". Lodge, Myers and Richet disagreed, but Hodgson was later proven correct in the Cambridge sittings as Palladino was observed to have used tricks exactly the way he had described them.
In 1898, the French astronomer Eugene Antoniadi investigated the mediumship of Palladino at the house of Camille Flammarion. According to Antoniadi her performance was "fraud from beginning to end". Palladino tried constantly to free her hands from control and was caught lowering a letter-scale by means of a hair.