But here follows a résumé of the phenomena observed with this medium.
In every séance, very vigorous raps were obtained in the table around which were grouped the experimenters and the medium (they together forming the chain), while the lamp with red light was on the table itself. "If we wished to produce raps so sharp and strong (says M. C. Caccia, the reporter of these séances), we had to rap with all our might on the table with some solid object, while the kind of raps which were produced in the séances with Politi seemed to issue from the interior of the table with loud sounds like explosions."
But now the table begins to be shaken. The white curtain of the cabinet which was behind the medium, at a distance of twenty inches, swelled out and floated in every direction, as if a violent wind had inflated it from the other side. We heard a chair moving with a gliding motion over the floor. It had been placed there before the beginning of the sitting and was now thrown violently over. During the course of the fifth sitting it came clear out of the cabinet, in the presence of everybody, and did not stop until it got near the medium.
These phenomena took place by the red light of a photographic lamp. In the complete darkness which attended the third séance an extraordinary thing occurred,—so much the more extraordinary because we had taken special measures to forestall any attempt at fraud. The medium was held by two sitters who, being very sceptical, had taken their places on his right and on his left, and were holding his hands and his feet.
At a certain moment the medium ordered the operators to lift their hands from the table and not to hinder its movements; above all, not to break the chain. Whereupon a great uproar was heard in the cabinet. The medium calls for light, and, to the great amazement of all of us, we discover that the table, which was rectangular in form and did not weigh less than thirty-nine pounds, was found turned upside down upon the floor of the cabinet. The controllers declared that the medium had not stirred. It is to be remarked:
1. That the table must have been lifted high enough to pass over the heads of the sitters.
2. That it must have passed above the group forming the chain.
3. That as the opening in the curtains of the cabinet only measured thirty-seven inches across, and the table, on its shortest side, thirty inches, there only remained free seven inches for passing through this opening.
4. That the table must have come forward endwise, then moved around lengthwise (it was three feet long), and turned upside down, resting on the floor; that the whole of this difficult manœuvre was executed in a few seconds in complete darkness and without any of the sitters having touched the table in the slightest degree.[73]
Luminous phenomena were also obtained. Lights appeared and disappeared in the air. Some of them gave the outline of a curve. They did not show any radiation. In the fifth séance, everybody was able to testify to the appearance of two luminous crosses, about four inches in height.