Doctor Wood. Modern Wizard of the Laboratory: The Story of an American Small Boy Who Became the Most Daring and Original Experimental Physicist of Our Day-but Never Grew Up

The Palladino sittings (says Wood) were held in the physical laboratory of Columbia University. The cabinet had been built into the doorway in Professor Hallock’s office in such a way that it jutted back into the apparatus room adjoining. They had cut a hole through the brick wall which separated the two rooms, close to the floor so that an observer could lie in the apparatus room and watch what was going on under the table, or as much as could be seen in the dim light. The cabinet contained a table on which the usual pieces of apparatus reposed, a tambourine, a bunch of flowers, and one or two other things that I have forgotten. Eusapia sat in a chair with her back to the curtain, her hands resting on a small wooden table, around which the other observers were gathered. Palladino was known to cheat whenever she was given an opportunity, and was frequently caught doing so. I convinced myself very early in the series of sittings that all the phenomena were fraud. I was puzzled by the blowing out of the curtains, with all the windows closed and the doors locked. Münsterberg, who succeeded Professor James at Harvard, attended some sittings later on, and explained that the curtain had been blown out by a jet of air from a rubber bulb that she had in her hand. Objects were “brought” out from the cabinet and appeared on the table in front of Palladino when her hands and feet were supposed to be held, and I was anxious to see what the instrument was that had reached back through the curtain. I decided it could be seen if the floor of the cabinet were feebly illuminated. An observer lying on the top of an apparatus case in the next room, looking down through a hole in the top of the cabinet could see whether an arm or hand reached back for the tambourine, or whether the trick was done with some mechanical appliance. It was necessary, however, to arrange this so that Palladino would not see the light on the floor, as she had a way of pushing back the curtain and looking in occasionally. I accomplished this by making a wooden grill of thin, vertical slats, like a Venetian blind, painted black, which covered the floor under the cabinet. By propping one corner of the cabinet up for a quarter of an inch with a little wedge and placing an electric light to one side of the cabinet, the rays entered through the crack and spread over the floor, producing a feeble illumination. I could see this from above, looking down through the hole in the top, and between the slats, which, however, obscured the luminosity entirely from the eyes of Palladino, who was sitting at one side…

And, sure enough, at the very next sitting, peering down from my recumbent hiding-place above the cabinet, I could see a distinct black outline like a shadow silhouetted against the luminous floor. It was a long pointed triangle, and it poked around among the flowers and the tambourine but failed to bring anything out through the curtain. Palladino had an uncanny intuition whenever anything had been planned to trap her. She may have got a glimpse of the wooden grill on the floor that evening, which made her suspicious, even if she did not know the purpose for which it had been placed there. I finally decided to use X rays, placing a powerful tube on one side of the cabinet, and a fluorescent screen about four feet square on the opposite side. We tried this out before the sitting and it worked beautifully. Anyone reaching back through the curtain to the table could be at once detected and the observer in the dark room behind would see the bones of the hand and arm, or the projecting rod if she used one, as a sharp, black shadow on the fluorescent screen. We all had high hopes of this equipment, but when Palladino arrived she said she was “not feeling well” that evening and would not hold a sitting.

* * *

If Wood was a ruthless expert in setting scientific bear traps, Palladino was a “bear” at smelling them out and evading them.

She’d had her toes pinched occasionally, and was wary. She was “feeling no better” the next day, or the next, or on any day thereafter, so far as the American committee was concerned, if Wood was on it. The record shows she refused ever to hold another sitting for them.

Wood was, and still is, an admirer of hers. Convinced that so far as any supernatural or even supernormal power was concerned, it was all a fraud, he considers her to have been the greatest performer of her time, and the greatest, perhaps, in the history of the world. He had profound respect for her ability — and apparently she also had for his.