Mediums Rare by Richard Matheson
The third lamp was the same power as the second but was shaded with tissue paper. The fourth, of similar power, was shaded with a thickness of red tissue.
The fifth, also four-candle-power, was shaded with two red screens.
Carrington examined them all. They varied from full illumination to a light in which the eye could make out only hands and faces.
Palladino came out of the cabinet with the two women, smiling to herself.
The women—especially Mrs. Humphrey—seemed embarrassed and Carrington suspected that, during the examination, Palladino had made some off-color (perhaps even lewd) remark; his wife had told him that the Italian woman was prone to such remarks during examinations.
Carrington avoided Palladino’s dark-eyed glance at him when she sat down on her chair.
“So,” she said. “The strega sits again.”
She enjoyed referring to herself as a witch.
Carrington regretted her attitude. It was not that he felt personally critical but it made legitimizing her abilities all the more difficult.
What was it Mrs. Finch had called her in that editorial? “A monster of erotic tendencies?” It was scarcely that bad, but Palladino’s behavior did make his work more onerous than it had to be.
It was hardly surprising that Hodgson had, so quickly, accused her of fraud. But then Hodgson always had been a pompous, waspish fool.
Carrington switched off the overhead light and, in the full illumination of globe number one, the group took their places, Palladino’s chair with its back to the cabinet, two feet from the curtain, Mrs. Humphrey to her right, Mr. Forbes to her left; her “controls.”
Palladino pressed her left leg against Mr. Forbes’ right leg, making a soft, sensual sound as she did.
Mrs. Carrington, sitting across the table from her, glanced at her husband.
He could only shrug a little. There was nothing he could do. If he said anything remotely captious, Palladino might explode with instant rage and refuse to sit; her temper was mercurial, an ever-present threat.
Everyone in the group rested their hands on the table, fingers touching.
It was nine-thirty p.m.
Eusapia Palladino raised her hands above the table, Mr. Forbes and Mrs. Humphrey holding their legs tightly against the medium’s.
The table moved.
“Raps, please,” Mr. Evarts requested.
On the table top, three faint raps were heard as though in reply.
Carrington freed his right hand momentarily to switch on globe number two and switch off globe number one. The room was now slightly dimmed.
Immediately, the table began to rock.
It, then, rose several feet into the air, was held suspended for a few moments, then lowered back to the floor.
At 9:42 p.m., Carrington again released his right hand to switch on globe number three and switch off globe number two. There was slightly less illumination in the office now.
The left-hand curtain on the cabinet blew out, then fluttered back into place.
The movement was repeatd.
Carrington changed the lighting once more, reducing it to the dim, reddish illumination of globe number four.
Again, their eyes adjusted to the change in light; they could still see very clearly despite the dimness. Both the medium’s hands were visible above the table, being held by her controls. Both her legs were pressed against theirs.
“I’ve been touched on the right arm,” Dr. Humphrey said.
Three loud raps were heard on the surface of the table.
At 9:48 p.m., the left-hand curtain of the cabinet again blew out and settled back into place.
Mr. Forbes’ dry swallow was clearly audible in the silence. “I have Eusapia’s hand firmly in mine but there is a hand behind the curtain touching my arm,” he said.
“I have good control of Eusapia’s right hand and foot,” Mrs. Humphrey added.
The curtains blew out over Mr. Forbes’ head.
“A distinct human hand is coming out of the curtain and touching me on the shoulder,” he said. “I am holding the medium’s left hand tightly.”
“And I am holding her right,” Mrs. Humphrey said.
At 9:55 p.m., Mr. Forbes gasped.
“My coat was grabbed by a hand and I was pulled toward the curtain,” he said.
“Yes, I saw him pulled,” Mrs. Humphrey verified.
Mr. Forbes cried out as his cigar case appeared on the cabinet table. “The case was in my inside coat pocket,” he said. “A hand took it out.”
As they watched, the cigar case opened itself. There was one cigar inside. “There were three,” Forbes said, startled.
He gasped as a cigar was suddenly thrust between his teeth. He spit it out.
Palladino’s hands were both in plain sight, two feet distant from the cabinet table.
At 10:02 p.m., the mandolin came floating from the cabinet and rested on top of Palladino’s head. The bell on the cabinet table was heard clattering to the floor.
At 10:04 p.m., the flute sailed slowly out of the cabinet and touched Mr. Forbes on the shoulder.
Mrs. Humphrey caught her breath. “I feel a finger touching my right ear,” she told the group.
The tambourine floated from the cabinet, rose in the air, waved back and forth, then dropped into Mrs. Humphrey’s lap, startling her.
She and Mrs. Forbes reported that Palladino’s legs and hands were still under their control.
The music box began to play in the cabinet. The tambourine rose from Mrs. Humphrey’s lap and floated back into the cabinet, shaking itself. It came out again and hovered above the medium’s head. All of them flinched as it was struck sharply three times.
At 10:19 p.m., everyone at the table felt a strong breeze coming from the cabinet.
“A hand is pinching my fingers,” said Forbes. “I feel the flesh.”
Palladino’s hands and legs and feet were all controlled.
Carrington switched on globe number five and switched off globe number four. The office was almost dark now.
Mrs. Humphrey’s chair was dragged from the table, then returned.
Four loud raps were heard on the table top. The cabinet curtains blew out violently.
“Something black just came out of the cabinet,” Dr. Humphrey said.
His wife made a frightened sound.
“There is a white face,” Mr. Evarts said nervously.
“We see it,” Carrington told him quickly. The atmosphere was becoming too tense, he thought.
At 10:41 p.m., the small table came out of the cabinet and appeared to climb onto the larger table, what looked like a hand grasping the small table.
The small table worked its way over to the edge of the séance table and fell to the floor beside Mr. Forbes, landing upside down. Both controls continued holding tightly to the medium.
At 10:44 p.m., a strong wind began to sweep around the room, chilling everyone. The curtains of the cabinet bulged out.
Mrs. Humphrey made a nervous sound. “Easy,” Carrington told her.
Mrs. Carrington gasped in shock, looking toward the top of the cabinet curtains. The others followed suit and Mrs. Humphrey could not restrain a sob of dread.
A ghastly looking hand was floating near the ceiling, attached to part of an arm.
Mrs. Humphrey sobbed again as the hand floated down and settled on her husband’s shoulder. “Easy,” Carrington warned.
Suddenly, it vanished.
Mrs. Carrington cried out.
Hovering near the top of the curtains was a hideous, black, masklike form.
“Remain still,” Carrington ordered.
Too late. Mrs. Humphrey went limp and started to slump forward in a faint. Tearing loose his hands, her husband moved to support her. Carrington could not control a sound of disappointment.
It was over.
The lights were turned up and Palladino helped to a chair by the window which was opened to give her air. Once more, Carrington was stricken
Now, after something more than an hour of sitting, she looked weak and drawn, nauseated, her face deeply lined. Amazingly, by tomorrow, after a night’s sleep, her vitality and magnetism would be completely restored.
Forbes moved to the cabinet table. His cigar case still lay on top of it. He opened it and looked inside. There were three cigars again. Grimacing, he closed the case and noticed that the silver monogram which had been on the outside of the case had been violently torn off.
It would not be found in the office or ever seen again.
AFTERWARD
It was often claimed that Palladino was caught cheating.
That, when her hands were held by sitters, she was able to free one of them with spasmodic jerking movements until both sitters were holding part of the same hand.
This trick seemed to be confirmed by the fact that Palladino objected to having both hands held by the same sitter.
She also refused to be bound in any way.
On occasion, she even refused to let her legs be held.
Yet, it has been declared as too far-fetched that intelligent sitters, well versed in the tricks of mediums, almost always clinging with arms and legs to this elderly Italian woman, could be permanently fooled by foot and hand substitutions.
Her investigators were well aware of her duplicity.
Nonetheless, Sir Oliver Lodge—a world-renowned physicist and one of the most astute of psychic investigators—had this to say about Eusapia Palladino.
“There is no further room in my mind for doubt.”
Palladino, herself, admitted that, upon occasion, she committed fraud.
“And always for the same reason,” she stated. “You see, it is like this. Some people are at the table who expect tricks. In fact, they want them.
“I am in a trance. Nothing happens. They get impatient. They think of the tricks, nothing but tricks. They put their mind on the tricks and I respond.
“But it is not often.”
The worst sitting Palladino ever gave was at Cambridge in 1895.
Psychic researcher Hereward Carrington claimed that this sitting was foredoomed because of the hostile presence of Dr. Richard Hodgson.
He stated that Palladino was actually encouraged to commit fraud.
That she was given every possible opportunity to do anything she pleased.
Hodgson even allowed her left hand to be free.
That Palladino availed herself of this opportunity was no surprise to Carrington.
Palladino was a simple woman, Carrington believed. Her ego compelled her to provide successful sittings.
Failure was unthinkable to her.
This streak of vanity was her undoing at Cambridge.
Still, to attribute all she did for more than eighteen years to a few simple, clumsy tricks is an insult to the intelligence and good sense of her many investigators.
To discount her phenomena, it must be stated categorically that every witness to it was either a fool or a liar.
Clearly, this was not the case.
BODY TO MIND
In the latter part of the nineteenth century, the emphasis on socalled “physical” mediums like Home and Palladino began to diminish to be replaced by a study of what came to be known as “mental” mediums.
Psychic investigators turned, with some relief, to this less taxing study of mediumship.
Now, the psychic, rather than performing feats of sound and movement—which were difficult to monitor, provided little in the way of genuine enlightenment and were sometimes dangerous to their investigators—offered information which often could not be verified and/or compared with established facts.
Two of the greatest of this new variety of psychic were Mrs. Leonore Evalina Simonds Piper (customarily referred to, simply, as “Mrs. Piper”) of Boston and Mrs. Gladys Osborne Leonard (known as “the British Mrs. Piper”) whose unusual careers were, in a number of ways, parallel to each other from children on.
Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Leonard
1867-1915
America and England
Returning home from school that day, Leonore went out into the garden to play.
It was a warm Spring afternoon in New Hampshire and the eight-year-old girl did not care to remain in the house.
For a while, she gathered acorns, crawling around busily to pick them up and place them in a small pail.
Then she sat on her favorite bench and methodically pushed them, one by one, through a hole in the wood which she had created by pressing down hard on a loose knot until it fell from the bench and landed on the ground.
She was so completely absorbed in her game that the blow caught her by surprise.
It was as though some invisible hand had struck her sharply on the right side of the head, over her ear.
She jerked erect with a gasp of startled pain, clutching at her head.
Inside the ear, she heard a hissing sound.
As she sat rooted to the bench, eyes wide with dread, the sibilant noise became a letter S being spoken by a woman’s voice.
Then the voice said, “Aunt Sara, not dead, but with you still.”
Leonore cried out, horror-stricken, and, bolting from the bench, ran into the house to her mother.
For several minutes, she was unable to speak a word, she was crying so hard and helplessly.
Then, between racking sobs, she managed to stammer, “Something hit me on the ear and Aunt Sara said she wasn’t dead but with me still!”
Several days later, word was received from a distant part of the country that, at the very moment of Leonore’s experience, her Aunt Sara had expired suddenly and unexpectedly.
Gladys Osborne showed equal evidence of being psychic at an early age.
It is not reported whether Leonore Simonds got in trouble for saying what she had but Gladys Osborne certainly did.
Because her father was leaving for Scotland that morning, eight-year-old Gladys was taken from her bed, clad in a dressing gown and brought downstairs to the dining room to have breakfast with him.
Scarcely awake, she sat in dutiful silence while he lectured her, telling her how he expected her to behave in his absence.
Too sleepy to concentrate on his words, Gladys stared at the wall across from her, enjoying the vision she had seen for several years now.
Before her lay a green valley bordered by verdant hills. The sky above was a sparkling blue, the light a vivid golden hue although there was no sunshine and no shadows.
Walking on the velvet-like grass, past banks of multi-colored flowers, were couples and groups of people dressed in graceful, flowing robes of varying hues. They all looked happy and contented.
As they always did.
“Gladys,” said her father firmly.
She blinked and turned her head to look at him.
He was gazing at her with a frown of disapproval.
“What the devil are you looking at?” he asked.
She stared at him, not knowing what to say.
“You haven’t heard a word I’ve spoken,” he told her. “You’ve been staring at that wall the entire time. Why?”
She swallowed. “I….”
“What?” he interrupted. “What were you looking at? That pair of mounted pistols?”
“Oh, no,” she said, concerned that he would think that.
“What then?”
She felt a sense of confusion. Dada didn’t see it?
“My …place,” she said. “My Happy Valley.”
He gaped at her. “Happy—?” he began, then did not complete the phrase.
After several moments of dark appraisal, he did complete it. “Happy Valley?” he enunciated slowly.
“Yes, Dada.”
William Jocelyn Osborne put down his cup of coffee and leaned across the table to peer suspiciously at his daughter.
“What in the nam
At first, her father, then her family, thought that Gladys was making it up.
But when she persisted, describing, in such minute detail, what she saw, they became alarmed, then punitive.
Their orthodox beliefs did not include probing into “things which were not meant to be understood.”
Gladys was forbidden to ever see this “Happy Valley” again.
In time, the visions—doubtless weakened by the collective negativism of her family, her doctors and friends—disappeared, leaving Gladys with a sense of deprivation.
When Leonore Simonds was twenty-two, she married William Piper of Boston.
At the urging of her father-in-law—because she was suffering from the effects of an accident experienced some years earlier—Leonore was persuaded to consult a blind clairvoyant named J.R. Cocke who was attracting considerable attention by his uncanny medical diagnosis and subsequent cures.
Those who attended the meeting that Sunday night were seated in a circle around which the clairvoyant slowly moved, placing his hands on the head of each person in turn.
While he was standing opposite Mrs. Piper, diagnosing the afflictions of the woman seated across from her—on whose head Dr. Cocke’s hands were resting—the face of the clairvoyant seemed to get smaller and smaller to her eyes as though it were receding into the distance.
Mrs. Piper began to lose all consciousness of her surroundings.
It did not return until the blind clairvoyant stopped behind her and placed his hands on her head.
Abruptly, she shuddered as a chill ran through her body.
She saw, in front of her, a flood of light in which a number of odd faces were hovering.
Then a hand passed to and fro before her eyes.
Dr. Cocke jerked his hands from her head as Mrs. Piper stood and walked around him to a table in the center of the room on which writing materials had been placed earlier.
Picking up a pencil, she leaned over and, for almost a minute, wrote rapidly on a piece of paper.