In proportion as her trance increases, her sensibility to light increases. A sudden light causes difficulty in her breathing, rapid beatings of the heart, an hysterical feeling, general irritation of the nerves, pain in the head and eyes, and a trembling of the whole body, with convulsions,—except when she herself asks for light (a thing which frequently happens to her when there are interesting verifications to be made upon the subject of displaced objects), for then her attention is strongly called in other directions.
She is in constant motion during the active period of the séances. These movements may be attributed to the hysterical crises which then agitate her; but they appear to be necessary to the production of the phenomena. Every time that a movement is being caused at a distance, she imitates it, either with her hands or with her feet, and by developing a much stronger force than would be necessary for producing the movement by contact.
Here is what she herself says of her impressions when she wishes to produce a movement at a distance. She suddenly experiences an ardent desire to produce the phenomena; then she has a feeling of numbness and the goose-flesh sensation in her fingers; these sensations keep increasing; at the same time she feels in the inferior portion of the vertebral column the flowing of a current which rapidly extends into her arm as far as her elbow, where it is gently arrested. It is at this point that the phenomenon takes place.
During and after the levitations of the tables she has a feeling of pain in her knees; during and after other phenomena, in her elbows and all through her arms.
It was only in the end of February, 1891, that Professor Lombroso, whose curiosity had finally been strongly excited, decided to come to Naples to examine these curious manifestations about which everybody in Italy was speaking. The following reports by M. Ciolfi were published apropos of this visit.[32]
First Séance
A large room, selected on the first floor by these gentlemen, had been put at our disposal. M. Lombroso began by carefully examining the medium, after which we took places around a gaming table. Mme. Paladino sat at one end; at her left, MM. Lombroso and Gigli; I faced the medium, between MM. Gigli and Vizioli; then came MM. Ascensi and Tamburini, who closed the circle, the last named at the right of the medium and in contact with her.
The room was lighted by candles placed upon a table behind Mme. Paladino. MM. Tamburini and Lombroso each held a hand of the medium. Their knees touched hers, at a certain distance from the feet of the table; and her feet were under theirs.
After a rather long wait the table began to move, slowly at first,—a matter explained by the scepticism, not to say the positively hostile spirit, of those who were this night in a séance circle for the first time. Then, little by little, the movements increased in intensity. M. Lombroso proved the levitation of the table, and estimated at twelve or fifteen pounds the resistance to the pressure which he had to make with his hands in order to overcome that levitation.
This phenomenon of a heavy body sustained in the air, off its centre of gravity and resisting a pressure of twelve or fifteen pounds, very much surprised and astonished the learned gentlemen, who attributed it to the action of an unknown magnetic force.