Very little is known about the childhood of Eusapia Palladino. It seems that she was born in January 1854, and it cost her mother's life. Until the age of 12, she wandered with her father - a petty mafia and a smuggler - in the Italian province of Bari, until he died in a skirmish with the coast guard.
The orphaned illiterate girl was taken with him by a wandering magician who taught her all sorts of tricks. One day, while juggling on a rope, Eusapia fell off and hit her head hard. No one hoped that she would survive, and the circus performers left her in a Neapolitan church shelter.
The girl recovered, but remained disabled: her parietal bone was strongly depressed, which caused severe migraines and convulsions with loss of consciousness. From the orphanage she was hired by philanthropists who were fond of spiritualism.
The painful condition of Eusapia made it difficult to work around the house, and the owners decided to send her to the monastery. Then the girl, during one of the family table-turning sessions, performed several simple tricks, tapping dishes and moving chairs.
This caused a violent effect, and she was immediately declared a natural medium. Eusapia portrayed a strong fear, but she was persuaded to develop her spiritualistic abilities and, of course, abandoned all talk about the monastery.
Thus began her training in the mediumistic circles of Naples. Here she successfully demonstrated many of the traveling circus performers' repertoire, including fortune-telling with cards and dice using "spirits."
Mafiosi became interested in a capable medium.
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Having concluded an agreement with Eusapia, the Camorra, through her spiritist, inspired the wife of the influential Neapolitan Signor Damiani that a certain entity named John King, claiming that in a past life belonged to the famous pirate Henry Morgan, urgently demands to find a "mediator between the worlds of the living and the dead" … Moreover, such a "contactee" can only be his "reincarnated" daughter named Eusapia.
Madame Damiani, through mutual acquaintances, quickly discovered Palladino and immediately began to beg her to conduct a seance together. Naturally, during the "table-turning" the presence of King immediately manifested itself, who became the permanent "spiritual mediator and mentor" of Signora Damiani.
In the hands of the mafia
The Neapolitan "Camorra" was distinguished by the fact that it often acted through third parties, forcing to conclude with it a kind of "agreements of honor". Among other things, she forced strangers to commit crimes, take blame and perjure.
This was followed by the remuneration and leniency of corrupt judges. So the freelance staff of the mafia got a lot of representatives of all classes of Neapolitan society, from merchants to bankers and lawyers. Palladino did not escape this fate.
At the spiritualistic sessions of Eusapia, her spirit King began to increasingly demand heirlooms from wealthy Neapolitans, which should be placed in family crypts, chapels or other places "associated with the other world." Of course, the pirate spirit immediately took everything of value to its "afterlife". Of course, this could not go on for a long time, and revealing rumors spread throughout Naples.
When the heat of passion around the kleptomania of the spirit of Morgan reached a critical limit, the Camorra decided to send Eusapia on a European voyage.
In February 1891, the famous forensic scientist Professor Cesare Lombroso attended the sessions of Eusapia, who was so impressed by the tricks of the medium and his "pirate spirit" that he immediately gave several recommendations to the leading spiritualistic salons of Europe.
The tour began in Warsaw, where a certain doctor Ochorovich organized several dozen sessions in which, in addition to the usual tricks, they demonstrated: the appearance of prints on clay, the levitation of objects and medium, the play of an invisible spirit on musical instruments, and even "electric discharges".
It is curious that at first Eusapia's tricks aroused great doubt, but then the experts either stopped attending the sessions, or began to unfoundedly agree with the hoaxes. Moreover, two Polish magicians who found threads for "levitation" and wires from a battery for "man-made lightning" disappeared somewhere …
Society for Psychical Research
In 1894, Eusapia was invited by the British Society for Psychical Research. The sessions were organized by the renowned spiritualist researcher Oliver Lodge.
All conditions for the sessions were dictated by the Italian managers of Eusapia. At the same time, the team of the medium categorically insisted that the participants in the performances strictly follow the agreed rules, otherwise Eusapia would become wildly furious and refused to perform.
The sessions were held late in the evening or even at night, in the dark or twilight. Eusapia, in a dull long dress, was located in the corner "study" at a small table fenced off by black curtains. Nearby was a table with various musical instruments.
She began the session by entering a state of trance, when her body wriggled and writhed. During the session, tapping was heard, the table levitated, and objects, such as a small table, were pulled out of the office and lifted into the air. Musical instruments played and strange hands appeared. From time to time, those who were sitting were pinched by the arms and legs.
After the London performances, which were accompanied by constant scandals of the medium's team, Eusapia was invited to the University of Cambridge. Eusapia, after long meetings with her "impresario", agreed, but ultimately demanded new restrictions on lighting conditions and behavior of the audience. Thus, observers were strictly forbidden to feel the surrounding space and touch the "materializing" and "levitating" objects.
The very first performance caused a deafening scandal. It turned out that Eusapia and her assistants hiding behind the curtains widely use their arms, legs and special fishing canes. The medium alternately freed her hands and immediately began to perform various tricks.
Experts from Cambridge scholars concluded that she was engaging in an obvious deception, systematically refined over the years of diligent practice. This not only explained all the "paranormal abilities" of the Italian medium, but also gave serious suspicions of deception in the demonstration of other "supernatural phenomena."
It turned out that the Society specifically gave Eusapia complete freedom to cheat, and the medium used her to perform her tricks and tricks. The critics of the seances at Cambridge were so convincing in their conclusions that the Society for Psychical Research summarized the complete failure of supernatural abilities and the sheer deception of the Italian "magician."
Paris tour
After the complete fiasco at Cambridge and the condemning conclusions of the British Society for Psychical Research, Eusapia's team began to act much more circumspectly. At the same time, newspapers (especially Italian ones) continued to admire the paranormal abilities of an outstanding medium, and the opinions of serious scientists (as often happens today) were not taken into account. Eusapia's fees grew steadily, and the cash flow to the cashier of the Neapolitan Camorra continued unabated.
In 1905, the authoritative Parisian Institute of Psychology created a special committee to study little-studied and partly unexplained phenomena of the human psyche. It includes many prominent scientists, including the outstanding physicochemists Pierre and Marie Curie (in the status of observers).
During subsequent meetings of the committee, many supernatural abilities of all sorts of magicians, healers and magnetizers were considered. All of them, after a comprehensive analysis, were found to be deliberate falsifications, including obvious attempts to deceive.
By 1907, Eusapia had traveled to all major European centers of spiritualism and became a real celebrity in the world of researchers of otherworldly forces, although in general her fame was highly doubtful. Deciding to end the European tour and move to the New World, the medium's curators wished to organize a final tour in Paris.
However, it was impossible to give presentations on the Champs Elysees and completely ignore the presence of the committee members of the Institute of Psychology.
After much persuasion, Palladino agreed to hold several sessions in front of Paris experts, stipulating her presentation with unprecedentedly harsh conditions (one of which included the absence of journalists and subsequent public discussion) and an impressive fee, which was paid in an irrevocable advance.
The Committee of Psychologists honestly fulfilled all the requirements, and therefore we do not know all the details of what happened today. The brief communiqué only impersonally indicated that the Institute of Psychology research fully and completely confirmed the previous findings of the British Society for Psychical Research concerning mediums who were caught in deliberate deception.
Such actions condone harmful practices and discourage scientific research. And here the task of the committee, together with the British Society, is to stop the flow of fees, with an "unrelenting excess" flowing into the hands of the stuntmen.
Tragic denouement
Paul Langevin, an outstanding physicist and friend of the Curie family, wrote with great humor in his memoirs that when the light went out and by the light of a candle stub the Great Eusapia began to slowly soar into the air, Pierre Curie suddenly jumped out onto the stage. With a long cane with a curved handle, he held it under the "levitating medium" and, catching something, pulled it with force.
There was a loud crash, Eusapia collapsed to the floor, and tangled in the threads, "flying mandolin", "hovering drum" and "magic tambourine" fell on her. Someone turned on the light, and before the amazed experts appeared a "medium" trying to crawl out from under the curtain and her two assistants with a set of wax arms, legs, tongues and heads …
There was such a laugh that the windows of the demonstration salon rattled, and late passers-by looked around in amazement at a respectable institution - the Institute of Psychology.
Early the next morning, at the Paris train station, several sullen, dark-skinned people boarded the departing Roman express train station, angrily glittering at the journalists. Among those leaving, a woman in a dark dress stood out, hysterically prodding the lingering porters and continuously spewing streams of street Italian curses …
Meanwhile, the Camorra's revenge was not long in coming. Once, returning late at night from a scientific meeting, Pierre Curie noticed a puddle of oily liquid near the porch of his house in the quivering fire of a gas lamp. Trying to get around an unexpected obstacle, he slipped and collapsed on the pavement directly under the wheels of an unexpectedly appeared draft cart.
Death came instantly …
A few days later, the police found on the outskirts of Paris an unharnessed, heavily loaded with stone cart with wheels splattered with the blood of the great scientist who discovered the secrets of radioactivity …
In a new light
Back in Naples, Palladino held weekly sessions at the luxurious Victoria Hotel. Despite the echoes of European scandals, performances were invariably accompanied by a sold-out and enthusiastic newspaper commentary.
Now all the speeches of Eusapia were accompanied by the American researcher Hiward Carrington.
He actively negotiated the medium's American tour and set the stage by sending lengthy reports to The New York Times, National Inquirer and Boston Globe. In them, he wrote that "the only conclusion that modern science can draw is that there really is still an indefinite force that is released in the presence of Eusapia."
Finally. Carrington became Eusapia's official agent and arranged for her to tour the United States. It should be noted that he subsequently devoted himself entirely to the spiritualistic and mediumistic studies of Palladino.
In addition to a percentage of the American impresario, he received substantial royalties for dozens of books on this topic, and this ensured himself a comfortable existence. The first of Carrington's opuses, published back in 1909, was called Eusapia Palladino and Her Phenomenon.
In 1910, Palladino arrived in the United States. By this time, her mediumistic abilities were clearly in decline, and there were many reports of obvious attempts to cheat on her part. But custom-made newspaper articles continued to appear with enthusiastic descriptions of her "true materialization."
However, "Camorra" could no longer show its patronage to the criminal medium. A new Italian mafia, Cosa Nostra, was emerging in America, and the Neapolitans had no influence here. In addition, there was also a "Whistleblower Club" in New York, which included such famous illusionists as Harry Houdini and Howard Thurston.
Their scandalous revelations put the last point in the career of the Great Eusapia, who lost all her patrons and dragged out a miserable existence until the end of her days, in fact, returning to the craft of a provincial fortune-teller and soothsayer.