Eleven Sittings, Controlled by People Who Knew the Tricks

The Society for Psychical Research chose its three investigators for a specific competence. Everard Feilding, W. W. Baggally and Hereward Carrington had all investigated mediums before and all had exposed them; Baggally was an accomplished amateur conjuror and Carrington had written on the methods of fraudulent mediumship. They took a room in a hotel in Naples in November and December 1908, so that the setting was theirs rather than hers, and held eleven sittings.

Two of them held Palladino's hands and feet at all times, describing the grip in the record. A stenographer took down events as they were called out, so the account is contemporaneous rather than reconstructed. Their report, published in the society's Proceedings the following year, describes a table lifting clear of the floor with her hands visible on its surface, a small table moving across the room, curtains bulging, and touches on the sitters from what felt like hands, under conditions in which they state they could not see how she was doing it. They also record occasions on which she was caught, and describe those separately. Carrington had published a book on the methods of fraudulent mediums shortly before the sittings, which meant that at least one man in the room had recently catalogued in print every technique she might have used.