The Ghost Hunters - Deborah Blum [155]
But she liked Richet and admired his persistence. Neither Richard Hodgson nor her husband was there to dissuade her. Perhaps, she thought, it wouldn’t hurt to take one more look. And in that case, Nora thought, the irrepressible Everard Feilding was just the man for the job.
Feilding—after a strenuous discussion about investigations that wasted one’s time—agreed to visit the notorious Eusapia. But he demanded reinforcements for his trip to Naples: a talented amateur magician named Wortley Baggally and the skeptical investigator Hereward Carrington. The visit was scheduled to begin in late November 1908. None of the three rejoiced in the mission.
Baggally had agreed to go only because Feilding was a friend, but he insisted on announcing in advance that he believed Eusapia to be a fraud. Carrington was depressed by the whole assignment; he had “never seen anything that he was unable to account for by trickery,” and he usually finished such assignments convinced that he was a better conjurer than the person under investigation. In turn, Feilding had made it clear to Nora Sidgwick and to Oliver Lodge that he would do the job, but he expected little more than the usual clumsy deceit—and perhaps a few good laughs.
Resentfully, the three investigators planned their campaign. They set up camp in the small Hotel Victoria in Naples, taking adjoining rooms so they could stand watch together. They decided to use Feilding’s room for the tests and to prepare it themselves.
First, they hung four bare lightbulbs from the ceiling, all clustered above the chair they had designated for Eusapia. Two of the bulbs burned brilliantly, and the others shed a softer light. The combined effect was of sitting under a small sun.
Eusapia meekly accepted their conditions, making only two requests, that the preparations include a small wooden table and that a pair of curtains be hung across a corner. They could procure them, or she would lend her own. After talking it over, they decided to use her curtains and table. It would give them an early chance to catch her cheating. But the curtains turned out to be thin, nearly transparent black cashmere, and the table a rimless thing of fir wood, about two and a half feet tall, with a plain circular top. They hung the curtains across a corner of the room, to simulate a cabinet.
She asked them to provide some objects that the “spirits” might use in play. Those they bought themselves: a pair of tambourines, a guitar, a toy trumpet, a tin whistle, a toy piano, and a china tea set. Each day, they would hide different objects behind the curtains, changing them without notice.
Feilding admitted that some might criticize these arrangements as too obliging, that they should have insisted on novel effects, seances without her usual curtains and levitating objects. His answer was that they wanted to study Eusapia in standard conditions.
When they were finally ready, two of them stayed in the room to keep guard; another went down to the hotel lobby to meet her, making sure that she entered the test room alone.
Some mornings, Eusapia arrived apparently uninterested. She would rather gossip, rattle away until she “had tired herself out with her own conversation.” Eventually she would begin to yawn. This was a favorable symptom, Feilding said, “and when the yawns were followed by enormous and amazing hiccoughs, we knew it was time to look out, as this was the signal for her falling into a state of trance.”
The next day she might stomp silently into the room and tumble into trance, complaining of fatigue. On those days, they usually sat with nothing to watch but the minutes ticking away. They kept notes anyway—good day or bad—for eleven sittings, each man recording his own impressions, tracking who was holding her hands, her feet, her knees, who was above the table, who was below it.
The curious thing, Feilding noted, was that they got some of their best effects when they were holding tightest. Not that she didn’t often