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.
He has, on the contrary, an impatient, biting scorn for all “psychic” and spiritualist mediums, whether amateur or professional, who claim communion with the dead — and has taken a fiendish delight in skinning a lot of them. He got out of patience some years ago with a doctor acquaintance who had suddenly discovered wonderful psychic gifts in his wife while fiddling with the ouija board. This doctor usually had a finger or two of his own on the board while it was scrambling to and fro along the alphabet, and later when they graduated to the planchette, he still kept his own fingers on the little table. Presently a furor was created by the announcement that the doctor’s wife had pulled a poem out of the infinite — in an ancient, unknown language. Taken to an authority on obscure ancient dialects, it proved to be in Old Icelandic. It was the copy of an actual poem which had been written centuries ago, the original being in the British Museum. Later Wood learned, however, that reproductions had appeared in a printed journal as late as the eighteenth century — and he smelt a very smelly rat. There was no way, however, to smoke the rat out of its hole. You couldn’t prove that sort of thing. You couldn’t prove that the doting doctor husband had copied the poem and simply reproduced it via his wife and her planchette. But later they made the mistake of inviting Wood to one of their spirit hunts, and offered to raise a spook for him. The host said:
“Is there anyone whom you knew well and who has died quite recently — preferably one who has ‘gone over’ no longer than a year or two ago?”
“Yes”, said Wood, “I’d very much like something from Lord Rayleigh”. Lord Rayleigh, the great British physicist, had died just a little while before. Wood wanted no wishy- washy wraiths. He asked for a tough one.
They put their hands on the board, and the host said repeatedly, “Lord Rayleigh, are you with us?” Presently the planchette wrote “Yes”, and the host said to Wood, “Have you any question to ask by which he can establish his identity?”
“Yes, I should like any remembrance he has of Terling”. Terling was the name of Lord Rayleigh’s country place. Presently the planchette began to tremble, and soon neatly wrote, “The ring of the stones on the swept ice”.
The rat was in the bag! The literarily gifted spook-summoner had tangled the word with “curling”, the Scotch game in which heavy flat stones are skidded over ice which has been swept clean with a broom. Wood was a guest, so he contained his contempt, and bade the doctor and his wife good night.
Sometimes these sources of seemingly spirit-inspired knowledge are not easy to trace. After Wood had begun to learn most of the tricks and their answers, he couldn’t refrain, of course, from occasionally using them, and hoisting his credulous friends by their own petards. The victims of his most celebrated hoax were Professor Hyslop of Columbia and Sir Oliver Lodge. Pure chance, in that case, had supplied him with the mysterious necessary knowledge. While crossing to England he’d been introduced on the boat to an attractive young widow who wanted his advice. Her husband had gone down on the Titanic. Subsequently she had met Professor Hyslop, who took her to a medium. She had an elaborately bound, typewritten report of all the sittings, and no human being save herself, the medium, and Hyslop had ever laid eyes on it. Now she wanted Wood to read it, and he did. Most of the messages were the usual clichés such as “waiting for you”, “happy in this new life”, etc., etc. But there was one phrase which had an element of novelty, on the page which recorded the dead husband’s thoughts immediately before the boat went down: