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I quote by permission from a letter written me by Mr. Davis under date of June 22, 1923

Date of account
Published 1924
Source
A Magician Among the Spirits
Reference
A Magician Among the Spirits · selected passage 64
Rights
public_domain
Language
English
Record updated
2026-08-24

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Record summary

“I may remark just here that this medium has been caught in trickery from time to time, and will almost invariably resort to it unless she is prevented from doing so by the rigidity of the control (that is, the degree of certainty obtained in holding her hands and feet)

Published source text

Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.

Source passage

Source text · mention only

“I may remark just here that this medium has been caught in trickery from time to time, and will almost invariably resort to it unless she is prevented from doing so by the rigidity of the control (that is, the degree of certainty obtained in holding her hands and feet). The reason for this is that Eusapia, knowing that the production of genuine phenomena will exhaust her nervous forces, resorts to this simpler method, if her sitters are sufficiently credulous to allow it, in order to save herself from the painful after effects of a genuine seance. Nearly every investigator has at one time or another discovered this fraud, which is petty, and more or less obvious to any careful investigator, and consists in the substitution of one hand for two, and in the production of phenomena with the remaining free hand. If, however, sufficient precautions are taken, it is a comparatively easy matter to frustrate her attempts at fraud; and when this is done so-called genuine phenomena are produced.

Historical context

Contextual commentary · mention only

This source supplies historical scientific, skeptical or conventional context. Its terminology and conclusions may not reflect current scholarship.

Modern context

Contextual commentary · mention only

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