FIG. 28. EUSAPIA BEFORE THE SCIENTISTS.
“Their report confessed to seeing and hearing many strange things, although they believed they had the hands and feet of the psychic so closely held that she could have had nothing to do with the manifestations.
“Chairs were moved, bells were rung, imprints of fingers were made on smoked paper and soft clay, apparitions of hands appeared on slightly luminous backgrounds, the chair of the medium and the medium herself were lifted to the table, the sound of trumpets, the contact of a seemingly human face, the touch of human hands, warm and moist, all were felt.
“Most of these phenomena were repeated, and the members of the commission were, with two exceptions, satisfied that no known power could have produced them. Professor Richet did not sign the report, but induced Signora Eusapia to go to an island he owned in the Mediterranean, where other exacting tests were made under other scientific eyes. The investigators all agreed that the demonstrations could not be accounted for by ordinary forces.
“I have found in my experience that learned scientific men are the most easily duped of any in the world. Instead of having a cold, inert piece of matter to investigate by exact processes and microscopic inspections, they had a clever, bright woman doing her best to mystify them. They could not cope with her.
“Professor Richet replied to an article I wrote, upholding his position, and brought Signora Eusapia Paladino to Cambridge, England, where I joined the investigating committee. In the party were Professor Lodge, of Liverpool; Professor F. M. C. Meyer, secretary of the British Society for Psychical Research; Professor Richet and Mr. Henry Sedgwick, president of the society.
“I found that the psychic, though giving a great variety of events, confined them to a very limited scope. She was seated during the tests at the end of a rectangular table and when the table was lifted it rose up directly at the other end. It was always so arranged that she was in the dark, even if the rest of the table was in the light; in the so-called light séances it was not light, the lamp being placed in an adjoining room. There were touches, punches and blows given, minor objects moved, some near and some further away; the outline of faces and hands appeared, etc.
“When I came to hold her hands I found a key to the mystery.
“It was chiefly that she made one hand and one foot do the work of both, by adroit substitution. Given a free hand and a free foot, and nearly all the phenomena can be explained. She has very strong, supple hands, with deft fingers and great coolness and intelligence.