Posted on 07 April 2025, 6:42

If the presiding judge had provided more time, the 15th witness in the case for consciousness surviving death would have been Professor Cesare Lombroso, an Italian psychiatrist most remembered as the man who founded the science of criminology.

In my essay for the Bigelow contest of 2021, I presented a simulated present-day court trial in which The Survival School contends that consciousness survives death in a greater reality, while arguing that the evidence for such survival was overwhelming before 1920.  I offered the testimony of 11 pre-1920 scholars and/or scientists, including three chemists, two physicists, a biologist, a judge, a lawyer, a theologian, a philosopher, and a physician.  Those not familiar with that trial summary/essay can find it, along with those of other award winners at https://shorturl.at/CfHCk

Prior to the trial, a number of other witnesses had been deposed and prepared for the trial, but because the judge put a time limit on the trial, only those 11 testified. Professor James Hyslop, a psychologist, would have been the 12th witness and Dr. Gustave Geley, a physician, the 13th. Hyslop’s testimony from his deposition was presented in my blog of December 6, 2021, while Geley’s was in my blog of September 11, 2023. The 14th witness would have been Vice-Admiral William Usborne Moore, whose testimony was set forth in my blog of December 16, 2024.

Lombroso (1835 – 1909, upper right photo) was also deposed and prepared to testify. He served as professor of psychiatry at Pavia, and then director of the lunatic asylum at Pesaro. He later filled the chairs of forensic medicine and psychiatry at Turin, where he created the science of criminal anthropology, which came to be called criminology and made a branch of social psychology. Below are questions and his answer put to him during his pre-trial deposition. (The quoted words are his from his 1909 book, “After Death – What?”

Professor Lombroso, it is true that you were a hard-core materialist before you began your investigation of Eusapia Paladino and other mediums?

“If ever there was an individual in the world opposed to spiritism by virtue of scientific education, and, I may say, by instinct, I was that person.  I had made it the indefatigable pursuit of a lifetime to defend the thesis that every force is a property of matter and the soul an emanation of the brain, and for years and years had laughed at the idea of centre-tables and chairs having souls.”

What brought the change in your belief?

“I was fated to be a witness, in 1882, as a neuropathologist, of certain very singular psychic phenomena for which no scientific explanation whatever ha[d] been found, except that they occurred in hysteric or hypnotized individuals. I refer to the case of a certain C.S., the fourteen-year-old daughter of one of the most active and intelligent men in all Italy.” (Lombroso then described numerous phenomena, including reading a letter while blindfolded, premonitions which later proved accurate, and various clairvoyant acts by C.S..)

You reported that the biggest change in your views came as a result of witnessing phenomena produced through the mediumship of Eusapia Paladino.  Am I correct on that?

“[Yes]. Although [the phenomena were] still repugnant to me, I ended by accepting, in March 1891, an invitation to be present at a spiritualistic experiment in full daylight in a Naples hotel [and conversation] with Eusapia Paladino (lower photos). And when I then and there saw extremely heavy objects transferred through the air without contact, from that time on I consented to make the phenomena the subject of investigation.”

You have detailed a number of such observations in your book.  Please tell us about those that took place on September 28 and October 3, 1892. 

“On the evening of the 28th of September, while her hands were being held by [Professor Charles] Richet (upper left photo) and [myself], she complained of hands which were grasping her under the arms; then, while in trance, with the changed voice characteristic of this state, she said, ‘Now I lift my medium up on the table.’ After two or three seconds the chair with Eusapia in it was not violently dashed, but lifted without hitting anything, on to the top of the table, and [Professor] Richet and I are sure we did not even assist the levitation by our own force. After some talk in the trance state the medium announced her descent, and ([M.] Finzi having been substituted for me) was deposited on the floor with the same security and precision while MM. Richet and Finzi followed the movements of her hands and body without at all assisting them, and kept asking each other questions about the position of the hands. Moreover, during the descent both gentlemen repeatedly felt a hand touch them on the head. On the evening of October 3 the thing was repeated in quite similar circumstances.  MM. Du Prel and Finzi being one on each side of Eusapia.”

Please describe the actions of the Miss Paladino when various phenomena are produced.

“In the state of trance she first becomes pale, turning her eyes upward and her sight inward and nodding her head to the right and left; then she passes into a state of ecstasy, exhibiting many of the gestures that are frequent in hysterical fits, such as yawnings, spasmodic laughter, frequent chewing, together with clairvoyance and word often extremely select and even scientific and not seldom in a foreign tongue with very rapid ideation, so that she comprehends the thought of those present even when they do not express it aloud or utter it in a mysterious manner.”

You reported on the materialization or apparition of your mother.  Please tell us about that.

“[Yes.] I have myself been a witness of the complete materialization of my own mother… The medium (Eusapia) was in a state of semi-intoxication, so that I should have thought that nothing would be forthcoming for us. On being asked by me, before the séance opened, if she would cause a glass inkstand to move in full light, she replied, in that vulgar speech of hers, ‘And what makes you obstinately stuck on such trifles as that? I can do more: I can cause you to see your mother. You ought to be thinking of that.’ Prompted by that promise, after half an hour of the séance had passed by, I was seized with a very lively desire to see her promise kept. The table at once assented to my thought by means of its usual sign-movements up and down. and soon after – we were then in the semi-obscurity of a red light – I saw detach itself from the curtain a rather short figure like that of my mother, veiled, and which made the complete circuit of the table until it came to me, and whispered to me words heard by many, but not by me, who am somewhat hard of hearing.  I was almost beside myself with emotion and begged her to repeat her words.  She did so, saying, ‘Cesar, fio mio!’ I admit at once that this was not her habitual expression, which was, when she met me, ‘mio fiol’; but the mistake in expression made by the apparitions of the deceased are well known, and how they borrow from the language of the psychic and of the experimenters, and removing the veil from her face for a moment, she gave me a kiss.”

That was not her only appearance, correct? 

“After that day the shade of my mother – alas! Only too truly a shadow – reappeared at least twenty times during Eusapia’s seances while the medium was in trance; but her form was enveloped in the curtain of the psychic’s cabinet, her head barely appearing while she would say, ‘My son, my treasure,’ kissing my head and my lips with her lips, which seemed to me dry and ligneous like her tongue.”

You reported on a similar appearance with M. Massaro of Palermo on November 26, 1906.  Please describe that one.

“Madame Paladino remarked quite suddenly that she perceived a young man who came from a distance, and, after being questioned, specified ‘from Palermo’ and afterwards said, ‘Portrait made in the sun.’ Whereupon Massaro remembered that he had in his letter-case a photograph of his son taken out of doors in the country. At the same time he was aware of being sharply tapped on the breast at the very spot where he had that picture of his son, and felt himself kissed twice on the right cheek through the curtain that hung near him; and the kisses were followed by very arch caresses, though most delicate withal. Then all of a sudden the significant touches were repeated, but this time by a hand that insinuated itself with eager movements into the inside pocket of the coat just where the letter-case was. This it opened just at that compartment that the held the portrait. During this second appearance caresses and kisses were held back at first; then he felt himself seized around the body, drawn near the curtain, and repeatedly kissed. Finally there were projected on the curtain the apparition of a head bound with a white bandage – a head which he recognized as that of his son.”

Skeptics point out that these materializations do not always completely resemble the person when in the flesh.  Any thoughts on this?

“The human forms assumed by the spirits are not such as properly belong to their existence, but form temporary incarnations by they which they may make themselves known to us, and may therefore be extremely variable. They frequently take on the physiognomy, the voice, the gestures of the medium, but exhibit this peculiarity, that they change sometimes even in the same day, and assume an individual physiognomy and an individual moral character which may last for months, as in the case of Walter [Stinson] and for years, as in the case of Katie King.”

As I understand it, complete materializations with Eusapia were rare and that those witnessed with Madame D’Esperance were much more marvelous Is that so?

“With Eusapia they are faces accurately delineated, heads and figures and half-busts of personages who are identified and named, the medium availing herself of notions obtained from the traditional history of Spiritualism.  In this case, one must admit that Eusapia acts upon certain invisible defunct beings in such a way as to make them conduct themselves as living beings – a fact demonstrated not merely by the playing of certain instruments and the sounds of voices, but by graphic registrations and reproduction of movements much more complex, and with instruments which cannot influence with her individual will.  Furthermore, Eusapia can bring before our eyes the images of deceased persons of whom she had no knowledge before the séance.”

You reported that you could often see fluidic limbs emerging in full light from the shoulder of Eusapia or from her skirt and that these fluidic limbs would perform the function of an arm. Also, John King, Eusapia’s guide, would often respond in English, a language unknown to Eusapia. Yet, some observers were convinced they had to be tricks. What do you say to that?

“Her deepest grief if when she is accused of trickery during the séances – accused unjustly, too, sometimes, it must be confessed, because we are now sure that the phantasmal limbs [extending from her body] are super-imposed, or added to her own and act as their substitute, while all the time they were believed to be her own limbs detected in the act of cozening for their owner’s behoof.”

And, yet, many remain skeptical.  What do you say to them?

“[Consider] the series of intellectual acts, of little account to be sure, but which suppose the aid of the hand of another and of a skilled person, such as the playing of a mandolin, of a violin, of a closed piano,—in all of which the difficulty is redoubled, because we cannot comprehend how the externalization of the motive force of Eusapia could accomplish results in which she herself could not succeed by employing her own normal woman’s hand, however, skillful she may be; nor how she plays a closed piano or a mandolin suspended in the air; not how she can put in motion a closed metronome; nor how knots can be made in a cord the ends of which are sealed together; whereas, on the other hand, we understand how those fluidic forms animated by the living body of the medium can perform these feats, and we can comprehend how a spirit more of less illuminated by intelligence building itself up out of the body of Eusapia, or fusing itself with her body, can produce intellectual results which Eusapia herself is not capable of accomplishing.”

Thank you, Professor Lombroso.  Any concluding thoughts?

“It is noteworthy that motorial and intellectual powers are manifested in the psychic trance which are very different from and much greater than the powers of the medium, and wholly incommensurate with these, and lead to the supposition of the intervention of another intelligence, another energy….I am ashamed and grieved at having opposed with so much tenacity the possibility of psychic facts – the facts exist and I boast of being a slave to facts. There can be no doubt that genuine psychical phenomena are produced by intelligences totally independent of the psychic and the parties present at the sittings.”

Michael Tymn is the author of The Afterlife Revealed: What Happens After We Die, Resurrecting Leonora Piper: How Science Discovered the Afterlife, and Dead Men Talking: Afterlife Communication from World War I.
His latest book, No One Really Dies: 25 Reasons to Believe in an Afterlife is published by White Crow books.