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Author: The Devil's Penny
DELVES INTO ANOTHER WORLD
Believers in the occult are all agog over the visit to the United States of Madame Eusapia Paladino–she pronounces it Ay-u-sah-pe-a Paladeeno–a famous Italian spiritualistic medium, who came from her native country to be examined by the American Society for Scientific Research. She is the medium through whom Prof. Caesar Lombroso, the criminologist, promised to converse after his death. Lambroso died recently and death has revived interest in the madame.
In the presence of newspaper reporters and theatrical people, at a private seance, she performed feats which suprised the beholders. Though men held her feet and knees and declare that they did not move, while here hands were always visible, she caused a table to rise four feet off the the stage and remain suspended half a minute. When it fell to the floor it landed on the foot of an observer, who complained in English. The medium cannot understand one word of English, but understood the complaint and answered it in Italian. Articles of furniture were moved about, a bell, a plate, a flute and a tambourine were picked up by an immense hand, curtains were blown about and people were touched by some invisible object. All the time the electric light was burning in the room.
“English John,” the spirit entity that accompanies Mme. Paladino and moves heavy objects for her, works, according to Sir Oliver Lodge, like an invisible animal of a good deal more strength than hers which does her bidding–at times. Sir Oliver Lodge was a member of the English Society for Psychical Research and early in the nineties that organization was about to put its approval upon the Neapolitan medium as a person with supernormal powers, when she was discovered doing some crude trick work at Cambridge. The society then repudiated her.
Mme. Paladino left England pretty well discredited in that country and among members of the English Society for Psychical Research.
Copyright©The Devil's Penny
Reproduced courtesy of The Devil's Penny
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