I think I am able to express the foregoing conclusions with certainty and confidence.

[4] See Appendix [B].

[5] This scale is applicable to the French pronunciation of the vowels in question.

CHAPTER III
PARAKINESIS AND TELEKINESIS

I. PARAKINESIS

I apply the term parakinesis to the production of those movements where the contact observed is insufficient to account for them. I thus more especially designate the complete levitation of a table upon which the sitters are leaning their hands; also the displacement of heavy pieces of furniture which are but lightly touched by the medium alone, or with other experimenters. Levitation is the raising of an object from the ground without that object resting on, or being in any contact whatsoever with, any normal support.

I have frequently observed this phenomenon with Eusapia Paladino under satisfactory conditions of light and other tests. She has given me several unimpeachable examples of parakinetic levitation, and, I repeat, in full light. A detailed report will be found in the accounts of seances at l’Agnélas, published in 1896 in the Annales des Sciences Psychiques.

These accounts, however, give only the physiognomy of the regular seances. We sometimes improvised experiments in the afternoon with striking results; and I remember having observed under these conditions a very interesting levitation. It was, I think, at about five o’clock in the afternoon; at all events it was broad daylight in the drawing-room at l’Agnélas. We were standing around the table; Eusapia took my hand and held it in her left, resting her hand on the right-hand corner of the table. The table was raised to the level of our foreheads; that is to say, the top of the table was raised to a height of about five feet from the floor.

Experiences like this are very convincing. It was utterly impossible for Eusapia, given the conditions of the experiment, to have lifted the table by normal means. One has but to consider, that she touched only the corner of the table to realise what a heavy weight she would have had to raise had she done so by muscular effort. Moreover, she had no hold whatsoever of the table. And, given the conditions under which the phenomenon occurred, she could not have had recourse to any of the means suggested by her critics, such as straps or hooks of some kind.