Thunderstruck - Erik Larson [19]
Now, in the darkened dining room of Richet’s summer house, Lodge walked to the table and stood behind Eusapia Palladino. Richet took her right hand, Myers her left. Lodge placed his hands on opposite sides of her head and held fast.
PALLADINO WAS FORTY YEARS OLD. By most accounts, she was illiterate, or nearly so. She claimed that she had been an orphan for much of her childhood—that her mother had died giving her birth and that when she was twelve her father had been murdered by bandits. She then went to live with a family in Naples and earned her keep doing laundry. The family had a Spiritualist bent and in the evening often convened séances, inviting Eusapia to participate. At one such gathering the family learned in a vivid way that there was more to Eusapia than met the eye. As the séance progressed, furniture began to move.
Word of Palladino’s alleged gift spread quickly, and soon she found herself in demand. In the lexicon of paranormal research, she was a “physical” medium as opposed to a trance medium. Trance mediums served merely as a kind of telephone to the beyond. Physical mediums also entered trances but then busied themselves conjuring forces that squeezed hands, touched faces, and moved furniture. During sittings by both types a psychical entity known as a “control” was said to guide communication with those beyond the veil.
Palladino had the right powers at the right time. Spiritualism was gaining adherents around the world, and reports of ghosts and poltergeists and premonitions-come-true became commonplace. Families acquired Ouija boards and scared themselves silly. Legendary mediums emerged, including two of the most famous, Madame Helena Blavatsky, eventually exposed as a fraud, and D. D. Home, whose talents convinced even skeptics.
By 1894 Eusapia Palladino too had achieved global fame. Lodge, Myers, and Richet now planned to put her powers to the test.
THE MEN HELD TIGHT. The room was dark and hot and very still. As Palladino entered her trance, a spirit entity named “John King,” her control, took over the séance. “I am not presuming to judge what John King really was,” Lodge wrote, “but the phenomena were certainly as if she were controlled by a big powerful man.”
With each new manifestation, the men called out to each other, and to the secretary outside the window, to describe what had happened and to confirm that Palladino’s hands and head remained under their grasp. They reported in French, “constantly ejaculating for the benefit of the others, whenever anything occurred,” as Lodge put it.
Myers shouted, “J’ai la main gauche.”
I have the left hand.
Richet: “J’ai la main droite.”
In the darkness Lodge felt the sensation of having his hands squeezed, even though Palladino’s hands were restrained.
“On me touche!” he said.
Something is touching me.
Lodge wrote, “It was as if there was something or someone in the room, which could go about and seize people’s arms or the back of their necks, and give a grip; just as anybody might who was free to move about. These grips were very frequent, and everyone at the table felt them sooner or later.” At one point Lodge felt “a long hairy beard