A table rose four feet off the floor in a Naples apartment on a winter evening in 1892. The medium’s hands were held by two professors. Her feet were pinned under a journalist’s shoes. The table lifted, tilted, and stayed suspended for several seconds before crashing down. The witnesses wrote affidavits. The controversy never stopped. Eusapia Palladino was the most investigated physical medium of the nineteenth century, and the levitation phenomenon she produced — tables, chairs, even her own body — remains the core of the debate over whether spirits can move matter.
The Woman Who Made Tables Fly
Eusapia Palladino (1854–1918) was born in Minervino Murge, southern Italy, into a family of illiterate peasants. Orphaned early, she worked as a servant until her late teens, when she discovered she could make objects move without touching them. By the 1880s she was touring Italy as a professional medium, producing raps, materializations, and levitations in darkened rooms. Her fame reached the scientific community through Cesare Lombroso, the criminologist, who initially dismissed her as a fraud but changed his mind after a séance in 1891.
The levitation phenomenon was her signature. Witnesses described tables rising waist-high, chairs gliding across the floor, and once, a heavy dining table lifting so high that a sitter had to duck under it. In controlled experiments, her hands and feet were held, her body was tied to a chair, and still the objects moved. The question was never whether the table rose — dozens of reputable scientists said it did. The question was how.
History and Origins: From Naples to the Laboratory
The first documented levitation by Palladino occurred in 1888 in Naples, witnessed by the physicist Ercole Chiaia. Chiaia wrote to Lombroso, challenging him to investigate. Lombroso accepted in 1891 and, after four séances, published a report stating that the phenomena were genuine. This opened the floodgates.
In 1892 the French physiologist Charles Richet conducted a series of séances on the island of Roubaud. Richet coined the term “ectoplasm” during these sessions, but the levitations were his primary focus. He reported that a table rose repeatedly while Palladino’s hands and feet were controlled, and that the table’s movements corresponded to her breathing and heartbeat.
The most famous investigation came in 1895, when the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) invited Palladino to Cambridge. The séances were held at the home of Frederic W. H. Myers. The conditions were strict: Palladino was searched, her chair was placed on a scale, and she was required to keep her hands visible. Despite these precautions, the table levitated. But the SPR committee, led by Richard Hodgson, concluded that she had cheated by freeing a foot or using a hidden rod. The report was damning, and Palladino’s reputation never fully recovered in England.
She continued working in France and Italy. In 1908, a series of séances in Naples with the American psychologist Hereward Carrington produced some of the most compelling evidence. Carrington used a cage-like enclosure and electrical contacts on Palladino’s feet. Levitations occurred, and Carrington declared them genuine. The physicist Enrico Maccioni later analyzed the data and argued that no known trick could explain the results.
Palladino died in 1918, impoverished, still performing séances until her final illness.
What the Levitation Meant: Symbolism in Spiritualist Doctrine
For the Spiritualist movement, levitation was not a parlor trick. It was proof that the spirit could overcome the physical laws of matter. The séance table, heavy and inert, represented the material world. When it rose, it demonstrated that consciousness survived death and could act on the physical plane. Palladino’s levitations were therefore theological evidence, not just physical anomalies.
The phenomenon also carried a gendered symbolism. Palladino was a woman, uneducated, from the peasant class. Her ability to move objects without visible force challenged the scientific establishment’s monopoly on truth. Male investigators, often professors and doctors, found themselves in the humiliating position of having their hands held by a woman they could not explain. The levitation became a symbol of the powerless gaining power, of the invisible world asserting itself over the visible.
In the séance room, the levitation was often accompanied by a cold breeze, a drop in temperature, and the sound of rapping. These sensory details created a complete environment of the supernatural. The table did not just float, it moved with intention, tilting toward specific sitters, stopping when asked. For believers, this was the spirit of John King, Palladino’s alleged control, demonstrating his presence.
Practices and Traditions: How She Actually Did It
Palladino’s methods were a mix of genuine trance mediumship and, when conditions were lax, deception. She worked in near-total darkness, with a red lamp or candle for dim illumination. She insisted on a “cabinet”, a curtained alcove where she sat during materializations. For levitations, she sat at the head of a small table, her hands placed on top, her feet extended under the table.
The standard control procedure involved two sitters holding her hands and two others placing their feet on her feet. Despite this, levitations occurred. Skeptics argued that she could free one foot by flexing her ankle, then use her toe to lift the table from underneath. This was the “foot trick” theory. But in the 1908 Carrington séances, her feet were enclosed in a wire cage with electrical contacts that would break a circuit if she moved. The table still rose.
Palladino also produced levitations of her own body. In several séances, she was lifted out of her chair and floated horizontally above the table. Witnesses reported seeing her form silhouetted against the red light, suspended in air. This was harder to fake. The physicist Filippo Bottazzi, who studied her in 1907, concluded that no known physical force could account for the phenomena.
Modern parapsychologists classify Palladino’s levitations as “macro-PK”, large-scale psychokinesis. The phenomenon has not been replicated under laboratory conditions since her death, though some claim that the Italian medium Nino Rota produced similar effects in the 1950s.
Comparisons: Other Levitating Mediums
Palladino was not the first medium to levitate. Daniel Dunglas Home (1833–1886) was the most famous. Home levitated himself out of a third-story window in London in 1868, witnessed by three people. Unlike Palladino, Home never charged for séances and was never caught cheating. His levitations were often performed in full light, with sitters holding his hands.
William Stainton Moses (1839–1892), an Anglican clergyman, also produced levitations of tables and chairs in his séances. Moses was never accused of fraud, and his phenomena were witnessed by respected figures like Alfred Russel Wallace. But Moses’s levitations were smaller in scale than Palladino’s, and he did not produce self-levitation.
The key difference between Home and Palladino is class and gender. Home was a gentleman, educated, well-connected. Palladino was a peasant woman who sometimes stole money from her sitters. The scientific community treated Home with respect and Palladino with suspicion, even when the evidence for both was similar.
Common Misconceptions
Misconception: Palladino was a complete fraud. She was caught cheating multiple times, but she also produced phenomena under conditions that made cheating impossible. The best interpretation is that she was a genuine medium who sometimes resorted to trickery when her powers failed, especially under pressure from skeptical investigators.
Misconception: All her levitations were caused by the foot trick. The foot trick could explain some table movements, but not the levitation of her own body, nor the lifting of heavy furniture that required more force than a toe could exert.
Misconception: The SPR investigation proved she was a fraud. The 1895 Cambridge séances were poorly controlled by modern standards. The SPR committee was biased against her from the start, and later researchers like Carrington and Bottazzi obtained positive results under stricter conditions.
Misconception: Levitation is impossible, so all witnesses were mistaken or lying. This is a philosophical position, not a scientific one. The witnesses included Nobel laureates, physicists, and psychologists. If they were all mistaken, the error must be explained, not assumed.
FAQ
Did Eusapia Palladino really levitate? Multiple credible witnesses, including Charles Richet and Hereward Carrington, reported seeing her levitate herself and objects under controlled conditions. The evidence is strong but not conclusive.
How did she cheat when she was caught? She used her foot to lift the table, freed a hand from the control, or used a hidden rod made of cheesecloth and wire. She admitted to cheating in some séances when her powers were weak.
Why did scientists believe her? Because they saw phenomena that no known trick could produce, especially in the 1908 séances with electrical monitoring. Some, like Lombroso, changed their minds after direct observation.
Can levitation be replicated today? No. No modern medium has produced levitation under laboratory conditions that meets the standards of parapsychology. The phenomenon remains historical, not reproducible.
The Unfinished Question
The table rose. The hands were held. The feet were pinned. And still it rose. Eusapia Palladino left us with a body of testimony that refuses to settle into either fraud or miracle. The séance room is dark, but the question is not. For those who study the boundaries of the human mind, her levitations remain the most stubborn anomaly in the history of psychical research. We keep her files open, because the phenomenon has not been explained, only filed away.
For more on the history of physical mediumship, see our guide to mediumship. The term “levitation” also appears in our glossary of paranormal phenomena. And for a deeper look at the investigators who studied Palladino, read our article on Charles Richet and the Society for Psychical Research.