Mysterious Psychic Forces: An Account of the Author's Investigations in Psychical Research, Together with Those of Other European SavantsFlammarion, Camille
Philosophy
Mysterious Psychic Forces: An Account of the Author's Investigations in Psychical Research, Together with Those of Other European Savants
Flammarion, Camille
Parapsychology -- Investigation; Spiritualism
November 16.--In order to entertain Eusapia, Adolphe Brisson yesterday
evening offered her a box at the Folies-Bergere, where Loie Fuller was
giving her magnificent spectacular exhibitions. We went there with
her. She returned enchanted, is to-day very gay and very animated,
speaks of her candid and loyal character and blames the comedies of
fashionable life. During dinner she tells us a part of the story of
her life.
Nine o'clock.--M. and Mme. Levy and M. G. Mathieu have just arrived.
We are conversing. Placing her hands on a leg of M. Mathieu in the
darkness she shows him the radiations emanating from her fingers,
which are however scarcely apparent to us.
It was after having shown me these radiations, the other day, that the
experiment of the letter-weigher took place. She associates the two
phenomena, and undertakes to try the latter again.
She asks me to give her a little water. I go to the dining-room in
search of a carafe and a glass. During my absence, M. Mathieu remarks
that, while my wife is talking with M. and Mme. Levy, Eusapia reaches
her hand to her head and makes a little gesture as if she were pulling
out a hair.
[Illustration: PLATE XI
METHOD USED BY EUSAPIA TO SURREPTITIOUSLY FREE HER HAND.]
I return with a glass and a carafe and pour out for her as much as she
wishes. She drinks a quarter of a glass of water. At my request, she
moves her hands downward on each side of the letter-weigher in the
same way as day before yesterday, and after two or three passes the
tray sinks, not to its full length as day before yesterday, but to the
mark of thirty-five or forty grams.
The experiment was tried a second time and succeeded in the same way.
Under pretext of going in search of a photographic camera M. Mathieu
draws me into another room and shows me a long, very fine hair which
fell into his hand after the experiment, at the moment when Eusapia
was making a gesture as if she were going to shake his hand.
This hair is of a rich chestnut tint (the color of Eusapia's hair) and
measures fourteen inches in length. _I have preserved it._
This took place at quarter past nine. The sitting begins at 9:30 and
finishes at 11:30. After the sitting, Eusapia asks me for another
glass of water, and shows me a little hair between her fingers.
Just as she is going, at midnight, half laughingly, half seriously,
she pulls a hair from the front part of her head and, taking the hand
of my wife, puts this hair in it and closes the hand while looking her
in the eye. She certainly noticed that we had perceived fraud.
III.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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