Investigations continued. At the Psychological Institute of Paris, a group of scientists, including Richet, carried out a long series of experiments with Eusapia (43 séances in all), during the years 1905–1907. According to Richet (1923, p. 420) the experiments yielded positive demonstrations of telekinesis. These are the experiments in which the curies participated as members of an investigating committee. Other members of the committee included the philosopher Henri Bergon, Richet himself, and the physicist Jean Baptiste Perrin, who like the curies won a nobel Prize in physics. Bergson won a nobel Prize in literature. So there were at least five nobel laureates in the committee that investigated Eusapia Palladino. After the years of study, the committee issued a favorable report, which included observations such as this: “The two hands, feet and knees of Eusapia being controlled, the table is raised suddenly, all four feet leaving the ground; then two and again four feet; Eusapia closes her fists, and holds them towards the table, which is then completely raised from the floor five times in succession, five raps also being given. It is again completely raised, while each of Eusapia’s hands is on the head of a sitter. It is raised to the height of one foot from the floor and suspended in the air for several seconds while Eusapia kept her hand on the table and a lighted candle was placed under the table; it was completely raised to a height of ten inches from the floor and suspended in the air for four seconds, M. curie only having his hand on the table, Eusapia’s hand being placed on top of his. It was completely raised when M. curie had his hand on Eusapia’s knees and Eusapia had one hand on the table and the other on M. curie’s head, her two feet tied to the chair on which she was sitting” (carrington 1931, p. 135).
Richet was also favorably impressed with a series of experiments carried out with Eusapia in naples. In 1908, Everard feilding, present at the cambridge séances, joined Hereward carrington, and W. W. Baggally, a magician and skeptic, for some experiments with Eusapia in naples. carrington, a magician and author of a book exposing fraudulent mediums, gave his summary impressions of the naples experiments: “In november and december, 1908, Mr. Everard feilding and Mr. W. Baggally and myself held ten séances in our rooms at the hotel under perfect conditions of control, and we were convinced that authentic metapsychic phenomena were produced that no trickery could account for” (Richet 1923, p. 420).
The sittings were held in rooms rented by carrington and his fellow investigators at the Hotel victoria in naples. The researchers carefully searched the rooms before the sittings. When Eusapia came, she herself was carefully searched, to insure there was nothing suspicious on her person or in her clothing. The rooms were on the fifth floor of the hotel, and the windows opened onto the street side of the building. After Eusapia entered the room chosen for the sitting, the door and windows were carefully locked and bolted. There was no possibility that any confederates could have entered. The researchers set up a “cabinet” by hanging two thin black curtains across a corner of the room. Upon a small table in the cabinet, the researchers placed objects such as a bell, guitar, and toy piano. The cabinet was inspected before each sitting, and several times during each sitting (carrington 1931, pp 213–214). The researchers carefully controlled Eusapia’s hands and feet, sometimes tying her to her chair at a table near the cabinet. carrington (1931, p. 215) noted that “all three of the investigators were fully aware of all the methods of trickery employed by mediums in order to release their hands, feet, etc., and were fully prepared to detect it, should trickery of this kind exist.” The researchers recorded levitations of a table and inexplicable movement of objects from the cabinet (Richet 1923, p. 420).
from 1909 to 1910 sittings were held in new York under the supervision of carrington. The usual phenomena occurred under carefully controlled circumstances. carrington (1931, p. 210) observed a table floating out of a curtained enclosure, noting that this happened “in a light sufficiently good to see that the medium was not touching it.” The table rose four feet in the air, bounced five times against a wooden partition set up in the room, and then turned upside down and fell to the floor. While this was happening, Eusapia was being carefully controlled, with some experimenters holding her hands while carrington was holding her feet with his hands.
during one of the new York sittings, the experimenters heard a mandolin playing inside the curtained enclosure. The striking of the strings was coordinated with the movements of Eusapia’s fingers on the hands of one of the experimenters. carrington (1931, p. 211) stated: “The mandolin then floated out of the cabinet, on to the séance table, where in full view of all, nothing touching it, it continued to play for nearly a minute—first one string and then another being played upon.” during this demonstration, Eusapia was carefully controlled, her hands tightly gripped by the experimenters.
On another occasion the experimenters placed a flutelike musical instrument on a table in the curtained-off enclosure in the room. Suddenly the instrument appeared floating in front of the face of one of the experimenters. carrington (1931, p. 211) stated: “no one saw how it got into its present position; but there it was, suspended in space, about five feet from Eusapia, and certainly too far for her to reach.”
carrington reported that he had often seen a wooden stool follow the movements of Eusapia’s hand, moving forward, backwards, and from side to side. “during its various movements I repeatedly passed my hand and arm between her hand and the stool, showing that no threads, hairs, wires, etc., were utilized for purposes of its manipulation,” said carrington (1931, p. 121). He reported that sometimes Eusapia transferred the power to him by touching him, and that at such times the stool followed the movements of his hand, until Eusapia removed her hand from him.
Richet himself concluded (1923, p. 421): “I have insisted on the phenomena of telekinesis produced by Eusapia because there have perhaps never been so many different, skeptical, and scrupulous investigators into the work of any medium or more minute investigations. during twenty years, from 1888 to 1908, she submitted, at the hands of the most skilled European and American experimentalists, to tests of the most rigorous and decisive kind, and during all this time men of science, resolved not to be deceived, have verified that even very large and massive objects were displaced without contact.”
Margaret mead (anthropologist)
Margaret Mead (1901–1978), a prominent American anthropologist, endorsed research into the paranormal. In 1942, she was elected as one of the trustees of the American Society for Psychical Research and was appointed to the Society’s research committee in 1946. In 1969, she was influential in getting the American Association for the Advancement of Science to accept the Parapsychological Association as an affiliated organization. She herself was a former president of the AAAS.