Observations placeholder
Palladino, Eusapia - Pierre Curie
Identifier
020430
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
On July 24, 1905, Pierre Curie reported to his friend Gouy:
"We have had a series of séances with Eusapia Palladino at the [Society for Psychical Research]." It was very interesting, and really the phenomena that we saw appeared inexplicable as trickery—tables raised from all four legs, movement of objects from a distance, hands that pinch or caress you, luminous apparitions. All in a [setting] prepared by us with a small number of spectators all known to us and without a possible accomplice. The only trick possible is that which could result from an extraordinary facility of the medium as a magician. But how do you explain the phenomena when one is holding her hands and feet and when the light is sufficient so that one can see everything that happens?"
Pierre was eager to enlist Gouy. Palladino, he informed him, would return in November, and "I hope that we will be able to convince you of the reality of the phenomena or at least some of them."
On April 14, 1906, just five days before his accidental death, Pierre Curie wrote Gouy about his last séance with Palladino:
"There is here, in my opinion, a whole domain of entirely new facts and physical states in space of which we have no conception."