CASE FILE · November–December 1908 · Naples, Campania, Italy
In November 1908, Hereward Carrington and Everard Feilding travelled to Naples to examine the physical-mediumship claims of Eusapia Palladino. W. W. Baggally joined them after the fourth sitting. The inquiry became one of the major positive episodes in Palladino’s contested history: investigators who believed they understood conjuring reported movements they considered impossible to explain by her ordinary actions.
The essential question is not simply whether the observers were experienced or sincere. It is what they recorded at the moment of each occurrence, what they could actually see or feel, and how completely those observations excluded alternative actions. Carrington’s own account makes that distinction central, even while arguing strongly for the phenomena’s reality.
The source used here
This article examines Carrington’s Eusapia Palladino and Her Phenomena, published by B. W. Dodge & Company in New York in 1909. Its preface dates the Naples experiments to November and December 1908. The opening of the personal-experiments chapter describes the inquiry’s organisation and controls; the first two sitting reports provide concrete examples of what he thought those controls established.
Carrington was a participant and an advocate of the resulting positive interpretation. His book is consequently a primary account of his participation, not an independent verification of his conclusions. The discussion below is based on those examined passages, not a claim to have audited every sitting or read the complete separate Society for Psychical Research report. Carrington identifies that report as Proceedings, volume XXIII, part LIX.
Why another investigation?
Carrington describes discussions in London with Alice Johnson and an arrangement for him to report to the Society for Psychical Research. He and Feilding met in Naples on 19 November. Their impressions after the second sitting led them to request further help. Baggally subsequently joined the investigation.
The account presents the three men as experienced investigators familiar with mediumistic trickery. Carrington emphasises Baggally’s conjuring knowledge and his own history of exposing fraudulent performances. He offers that experience as a reason to take their judgement seriously.
Experience is relevant, but it is not a substitute for a reproducible account of each observation. A person can be skilled at detecting familiar methods and still miss an unfamiliar manoeuvre under difficult viewing conditions. Carrington recognised the importance of a detailed record, although he believed his group’s arrangements had overcome the central problems.
The room and the cabinet
The séances were held in Feilding’s room, the middle room of a suite at the Hotel Victoria. Carrington describes adjoining rooms, doors that were secured before sittings, closed and shuttered windows, and balconies above the street. He says the group examined the room, table, cabinet and instruments, and used items they had bought in Naples.
The cabinet was a curtained corner rather than a separate sealed chamber. Two dark curtains enclosed a triangular space roughly three feet deep and rose about seven or eight feet. Palladino sat before the opening, with the séance table in front of her and controllers close to either side.
These arrangements addressed particular concerns, such as an accomplice entering through a door or the use of unchecked instruments. They did not by themselves settle whether every movement near the table or curtains could be accounted for. A room search and a correct observation of a hand at a crucial instant answer different evidential questions.
Recording the hands, feet and light
Carrington criticised earlier reports for failing to specify illumination and the exact positions of the medium’s hands and feet. Broad assurances that she had been held securely did not, he argued, give a reader enough information to judge a particular occurrence. He wanted positions dictated during the sitting, rather than reconstructed afterwards.
The Naples group used a stenographer seated at another table and described visibility under different lighting levels. That was an attempt to turn a remembered impression into a contemporary sequence of observations. It is one of the inquiry’s historically interesting features.
However, a dictated statement remains an observer’s statement. The reader must ask whether the controller identified the correct limb continuously, whether contact meant a full grip or a lighter touch, and whether two controllers’ observations covered the same instant. Recording a confident conclusion with precision does not guarantee that the underlying perception was correct.
The account also describes the practical difficulty of control. Palladino objected to some restrictive grips, and Carrington acknowledged that she sometimes attempted substitutions of hands or feet. That admission matters. It means a general description of the evening’s controls cannot automatically be applied to every event without examining the local record.
Examples from the first sittings
In the first sitting, dated 21 November, Carrington reports table movement, sounds and curtain activity. His record attributes a levitation near 11:58 to conditions in which the medium’s limbs were controlled, and describes Feilding checking beneath the table. The sitting continued until about 12:30 in the morning. Those are reported observations and checks, not a filmed or instrumented demonstration available here for independent frame-by-frame examination.
The second sitting, on 23 November, again placed Feilding and Carrington on opposite sides of Palladino, with a stenographer present. The narrative distinguishes lighting changes and describes different checks at particular times, including an interval when the table legs were tied to chairs. Such details make the account more useful than a summary saying only that a table moved mysteriously.
They also caution against treating a whole séance as one uniform experiment. Illumination, contact, positions and restraints could change. A particular check at one time cannot be retrospectively extended to a different effect earlier or later in the sitting. Evaluating the strongest reported event would require following the sequence around that event, rather than assembling the most reassuring details from the entire evening.
Findings, interpretation and remaining limits
Carrington concluded that ordinary means did not explain at least some of the phenomena. His argument relied heavily on the inference that correctly accounted-for hands and feet ruled out Palladino’s physical intervention. That conclusion depends on the reliability and completeness of the controls at the relevant moment; it is not an additional observation independent of those controls.
The account supplies valuable historical evidence about what the investigators believed they had witnessed and how they tried to test it. It does not compel a modern reader to adopt a spirit explanation, nor does this limited review establish a particular trick as the cause of every claimed movement. The appropriate conclusion is narrower: this was a positive participant investigation with detailed but humanly observed controls, within a wider disputed career.
The Naples inquiry should remain distinct from the other Palladino studies in the case library, including the earlier Cambridge and later New York investigations. Different locations, investigators and conditions are not interchangeable evidence. Later criticism can inform the questions asked of Naples, but cannot silently replace its records; equally, the Naples investigators’ confidence cannot validate every sitting elsewhere.
Location and dates
Approximate area: a broad Naples city reference, rounded from checked city coordinates. Carrington locates the sittings in a suite at the Hotel Victoria; this entry does not identify a present-day building, exact room or public visitor destination. Checked geographical reference.
This case entry was added on 10 November 2026. The library addition date is separate from the events and source-publication dates described above.
Sources and further reading
Hereward Carrington: Eusapia Palladino and Her Phenomena (1909) — Primary participant book, B. W. Dodge & Company, New York. Preface and chapter IV opening, printed pp. 152–161, plus the first two sitting passages around pp. 171–173 examined. Open scan at IAPSOP; PDF download and text extraction verified 10 November 2026. Not represented as a full audit of all sittings.
Flournoy: Spiritism and Psychology (1911), illustration — Source of the reused public-domain later New York portrait; not a photograph of the Naples inquiry.