SupernatEvaC224

In 1902-3 Madame Noel was the wife of the general in command of the Algiers garrison. Bored, she turned to spiritualism and in due course materialized an Indian brahmin, Bien Boa, a former high priest at Golconda who had died about three hundred years before. Madame Noel's medium was Marthe Beraud, the nineteen year old daughter of a fellow officer whom she first 'magnetized', so that "I can pass her my fluid" before the spirit could materialize.

In 1905 an investigation was carried out by Charles Richet, a physiologist and Nobel prize winner, whose sole object was to determine whether or not any deception was going on. Prior to the seance, Richet thoroughly examined the room and its contents for secret entrances and hidden objects. During the seance photographs of the ghost were taken using a magnesium flare. The resulting prints showed a rather shapeless creature wearing a white monk’s habit with the hood pulled over the head, the face covered with a metal casque beneath which hung a black beard. It appeared to breathe like a normal human being. Richet conducted an experiment where he required it to breathe through a tube into a bottle of baryta-water; the liquid turned white indicating that carbon dioxide had been breathed out by the ghost.

As Marthe had been visible in the dim background at the time of the apparition’s appearance Richet concluded that there was no doubt in his mind as to the material nature of the spirit. ..Bien Boa was a ghost.

Subsequently however, at a seance held in the Villa Carmen, Bien Boa was revealed as a fraud. Exit Marthe Béraud enter Eva Carriére, better known as Eva C.

Marthe Béraud moved to Paris where she struck up a relationship with Juliette Bisson and changed her name to Eva Carriere. Like her predecessor Madame Noel, Mme Bisson would hypnotize Eva C before each seance, the repertoire however was extended to include the production of ectoplasm from various parts of her body into recognizable ghosts. It was suggested by investigators that materials could be secreted in various orifices of the body and precautions were taken to eliminate this possibility. Schrenck-Notzing, a rigid scientific investigator, conducted a gynaecological examination by having Mme Bisson introduce her finger into the medium’s vagina, and Eva C was required to wear special clothing in the form of a leotard with the neck and sleeve openings sewn up to prevent the concealment and withdrawal of objects. Despite these examinations and precautions the phenomena continued.

On occasions, Eva C would demand a gynaecological examination even when it was not considered necessary, and sometimes would leave off her tights to facilitate the production of materials from between her legs.

In addition to full form materializations, there were emanations in the form of hands, feet, limbs and faces, all of which were photographed. Finally on February 23, 1913, Eva, completely nude, produced a full form phantom from behind her chair, which moved freely without feet and was illuminated several times by Eva’s electric torch. Christened ‘Dorsmica’, the phantom marked the peak of Eva C’s career.

Other ghosts soon followed, President Woodrow Wilson, Actress Mona Delza and King Ferdinand of Bulgaria. Schrenck-Notzing was adamant that the controls on Eva in all the seances had been so thorough that there was no way she could have smuggled matter in to produce anything of a fraudulent nature. So what are we to conclude?

Schrenck-Notzing hypothesized that Eva displayed a condition called hypermnesia which allowed sharpness of recall, and cryptomnesia, the recall of a memory image. If Eva had seen photos of the subjects she materialized then it was possible that she could produce an unconscious ideoplastic image of it. This would also account for the inexplicable phenomena produced by other contemporary mediums.

Comment:

Eva C’s manifestations were two dimensional and looked remarkably like cardboard cut-outs — which they no doubt were.

Sexual connotations are evident and no more credence can be had in the manifestations of Eva C than any other medium of that period.