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Eusapia Palladino

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Psychic/Fraud

The Resume

    (January 21, 1854-May 16, 1918)
    Born in Minervino Murge, Italy
    Spiritualist medium
    Claimed to be able to move objects and levitate tables without touching them

Why she might be annoying:

    She was caught cheating repeatedly.
    Harry Price noted, ‘Her tricks were usually childish: long hairs attached to small objects in order to produce 'telekinetic movements'; the gradual substitution of one hand for two when being controlled by sitters; the production of 'phenomena' with a foot which had been surreptitiously removed from its shoe and so on.’
    A man hidden under the table during one of her séances spotted her striking her foot against a table leg to produce raps from spirits and putting her foot under a table leg to levitate it.
    During a tour of America, magician Joseph Rinn offered her $1,000 if she could produce under controlled conditions any phenomenon that could not be produced by a magician. She announced her acceptance of the challenge, then failed to show up (1909).
    Harry Houdini noted, ‘Each time that she was caught cheating the Spiritualists upheld her, excused her, and forgave her. Truly their logic sometimes borders on the humorous.’
    Her first husband was a travelling magician.

Why she might not be annoying:

    She was orphaned at a young age.
    She duped some intelligent people into believing she was genuine, including criminologist Cesare Lombroso and Nobel Prize winning physicist Pierre Curie.
    One psychologist suggested that she was not a conscious fraud, but had deceived herself into believing in her psychic abilities.

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    For 2024, as of last weekly ranking, Out of 1 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 1 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 6 Votes: 83.33% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 2 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 4 Votes: 25.00% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 22 Votes: 45.45% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 12 Votes: 50.0% Annoying