Eusapia Palladino's Naples sittings for the SPR committee of Feilding, Baggally and Carrington (1908)

Eusapia Palladino was a physical medium from Naples. In 1895 the Society for Psychical Research held sittings with her in Cambridge. The verdict was fraud. Thirteen years later, the SPR tried again. It sent three investigators chosen as experienced exposers of fraudulent mediums. The Hon. Everard Feilding was the Society's honorary secretary. William Wortley Baggally was an amateur conjuror. Hereward Carrington, about 27, was a conjuror too.

Hotel Victoria, Naples. The committee rented three adjoining rooms on the fifth floor. The séances were held in the middle room, Feilding's bedroom. Carrington described the setup: "We constructed a cabinet by hanging two light, black curtains across one corner of the room, forming a triangular space about three feet deep." The curtains rose seven or eight feet from the floor.

Inside the cabinet stood a small round table with musical instruments. Palladino sat with her back to the curtains, the séance table in front of her. An investigator sat on each side, holding her hand and resting a foot on her foot. A shorthand stenographer took down events as they happened. The light changed through each evening, often at the sitters' request.

21 November 1908. The first of eleven séances, held late at night. The last came on 19 December. Over those evenings the investigators logged hundreds of incidents. Raps. The table levitating. The cabinet curtain billowing. A small table and instruments moving out of the cabinet. Guitar strings plucked. Knots untied. Touches from hands. Hands and heads appearing. Lights.

Feilding listed "tables raised from all four legs, movement of objects from a distance, hands that pinch or caress you." One detail stood apart. A cold breeze issued from a scar on Palladino's forehead. Carrington held her mouth and nose to rule out breathing. He noticed a pattern too. The more stringent their precautions, the stronger the effects became.

The Feilding Report appeared in the Proceedings of the SPR in 1909. The committee did not hide that she sometimes cheated. Carrington had watched her hand substitution routine, quietly freeing one hand from control. But phenomena also occurred in good light, and the investigators ruled out collective hallucination. At least some of it, they concluded, was genuine. Baggally wrote: "I have no theory to advance as to the nature of the force that was manifested … but I witnessed enough to convince me … of some supernormal force which manifests itself in [her] presence." The SPR lifted its ban on her.

Frank Podmore wrote that the report "at almost every point leaves obvious loopholes for trickery." D. H. Rawcliffe called it unscientific. C. E. M. Hansel pointed to the semi-dark conditions and the late hours. In 1992 Richard Wiseman proposed a hidden accomplice, entering through a removable panel in an inside wall beside the cabinet. Barrington and others replied that an accomplice could not account for all the effects. Massimo Polidoro and Gian Marco Rinaldi argued she needed no accomplice at all. Her foot alone could have done it.

The story did not end in Naples. Feilding later returned with the stage magician William S. Marriott and this time concluded her mediumship was fraudulent. Carrington managed her American tour of 1909 and 1910, where Hugo Münsterberg, Joseph Jastrow and Joseph Rinn reported catching her using her foot.

The report remains one of the most cited pro-mediumship documents. It is also one of the most argued over. Stephen Braude framed what is at stake: "the crucial issue is not whether there are instances in which the medium cheated, but whether there are instances in which the evidence is strong that no cheating occurred."