The Villa Carmen Materialisation Séances: Bien Boa, Algiers (1905)

It was the home of General Élie Noël and his wife. Their son had been engaged to Marthe Béraud, then about 19. He died in the Congo in 1904. From 10 August to 10 September 1905, the French physiologist Charles Richet sat in about twenty séances at the villa, with Marthe as the medium. Richet, a Sorbonne physiology professor, won the 1913 Nobel Prize.

A single stone staircase from the garden led to the séance room, whose two windows were blocked by canvas and thick tapestry. A tapestry formed the cabinet across one corner, and the light was red. Six to ten people sat each time, among them the Noëls, the spiritist Gabriel Delanne and Marthe's two younger sisters. Richet searched the room before every sitting. "I am able to certify that no one was hidden in the room when the séance began."

Richet saw "a white luminous ball floating over the ground; then, rising straight upwards, very rapidly, as though issuing from a trap-door, appeared B.B." It wore heavy white drapery. "He has his head covered by a sort of casque with some metallic ornamentation, and over this casque a turban…" A very thick black moustache formed the base of the face. It called itself Bien Boa, said to be a Hindu Brahmin who had died about 300 years earlier.

It walked and spoke with a limping, hesitating gait. It opened the curtain repeatedly when the sitters applauded. Richet touched its "warm and jointed" hand several times. After some difficulty, it blew into a bottle of clear baryta water. The gurgling liquid turned cloudy with carbon dioxide, suggesting the figure was breathing.

Then it went. "He suddenly sinks down, disappears into the ground, and at the same time a sound of clac, clac, is heard, like the noise of a body thrown on to the ground."

Richet and two other sitters photographed the form at the same moment, some plates stereoscopic. Marthe's face was not clearly visible. Her sleeve sometimes looked empty while the form was present. The form's face looked like hers might with "a coarse black moustache" stuck on. Richet published his report in the Annals of Psychical Science that year.

In March 1906, the Algiers psychiatrist Dr Hippolyte Rouby gave a public lecture at the Université populaire d'Alger. With him was Areski, a former coachman of the Noëls. Areski said he had slipped into the séance room unseen, got behind the curtain and played the phantom. He staged one for the audience in semi-darkness, but his luminous phenomena failed. Rouby added that Marthe had confessed to her father that a trap door was used.

Richet replied that Areski was never allowed into the séance room. Marthe, he said, had only told him that Rouby wrote begging for a written confession, and that she did not answer. The building's architect confirmed there was "no opening or trapdoor whatever." The judge Joseph Maxwell found Areski's testimony inconsistent. In 1915 Helen Verrall argued that Richet had not taken the charges seriously enough.

The theories remain: an accomplice in costume, Marthe in drapery and a false moustache, or a flat cardboard figure. Recent French work turns to Mme Noël and her use of the Algerian household staff as mediums. Richet held his ground: "No legerdemain can produce a living hand that melts in the hand that holds it." Marthe went on to fame as Eva C. A film, Les Apparitions de la Villa Carmen, directed by Judith Abensour, is in development.