"Yes, many of them took place within a yard of her head; but some of
them, and the most marvellous of them, not merely took place out of her
reach, but under conditions of unexampled rigor. 'Eusapia's mediumistic
limbs penetrated into the cabinet,' says Bottazzi. 'I begged my friends
not to distract the medium's attention by requests for touches,
apparitions, etc., but to concentrate their desires and their wills on
the things I asked for....' What he wanted her to do was very simple,
but conclusive. He wished 'the spirit hand' to press an electric button
and light a red lamp within the cabinet. The coil and the switch had
been dragged out of the cabinet and thrown on the table. Bottazzi begged
them all not to touch it. No one but Scarpa, Galeotti, and Bottazzi knew
what it was for. 'At a certain moment Eusapia took hold of the first
finger of my right hand and squeezed it with her fingers. A ray of light
from the interior of the cabinet lit up the room'--she had pressed the
contact-breaker with her invisible fingers at the precise time when she
had squeezed with her visible hand the forefinger of Bottazzi. She
repeatedly did this. 'If one of us, be it observed, had lit the lamp,
she would have screamed with pain and indignation.'"
"Was this the climax of his series? Is this _all_ he is willing to
affirm?" queried Harris, with ironic inflection.
"Oh no, indeed. The greatest is yet to come. At the fourth sitting a new
person, Professor Cardarelli, was introduced, and this new sitter
disturbed conditions. Nevertheless, the inexplicable took place. Small
twirling violet flames were seen to drift across the cabinet curtains,
and hands and closed fists appeared over Paladino's head. These have
been photographed, by-the-way. Some of them were of ordinary size, and
others at least three times larger than the psychic's hand and fist.
These flames interest me very much, for I have seen them on several
occasions, but could not believe in them, even though Crookes spoke of
handling them. I must admit their objective reality now. It is absurd to
suppose they were fraudulently produced in this laboratory.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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