The 17th-century Franciscan monk St Joseph of Copertino began levitating during services and was often observed by whole congregations. Once while walking in the monastery grounds, he soared up into the branches of an olive tree and remained kneeling on a branch for half an hour, the thin stem hardly moving under his weight. Unable to glide down, after his ecstasy had passed, he had to wait for a ladder to be brought. For 35 years he was banned from all public services, but he levitated not only before the Pope and his fellow monks but also before Europe's titled heads and the philosopher Leibnitz.
The most famous levitator of all was the medium Daniel Dunglas Home (pronounced: Hume). His first recorded levitation took place at a seance in August 1852. He was suddenly 'taken up into the air . . . He palpitated from head to foot with the contending emotions of joy and fear . . . Again and again he was taken from the floor, and the third time he was carried to the ceiling of the apartment, with which his hands and feet came into gentle contact.' He later became able to levitate at will, and believed he was lifted up by 'spirits'. During a public career lasting 30 years, hundreds of people witnessed his levitations. The most famous of Home's levitations was when in the company of Lord Adare, the Master of Lindsay, and a friend of theirs, he floated out of one window of a London house and in at another. The eminent English scientist Sir William Crookes saw him levitate on several occasions and verified that there was no trickery involved. On one occasion, Crookes' wife, who was sitting beside Home, was raised off the ground in her chair
The magician Harry Kellar, who enjoyed showing audiences how mediums did their tricks, described how during a world tour in the 1870s he was watching a Zulu witch doctor go into a trance when suddenly 'to my intense amazement, the recumbent body slowly arose from the ground and floated upward in the air to the height of about three feet, where for a while it floated, moving up and down'. In 1882 he challenged the medium William Eglinton to perform some feat which no conjuror could repeat. Eglinton then levitated, carrying Kellar, holding his foot, into the air -- an achievement which Kellar had to admit he could not account for
The Italian medium Eusapia Palladino occasionally used to levitate and was also able to increase or decrease the weight of objects. Her paranormal powers were verified in investigations conducted by European scientists around the turn of the 20th century. After witnessing her demonstrations, the French astronomer Camille Flammarion stated that levitation should no longer be any more in question than the attraction of iron by a magnet [5]. Levitations of mediums have frequently been reported since then in spiritualist journals, but no medium has been able to produce them in conditions which could be called fraud-proof.
In the mid-19th century, Louis Jacolliot, Chief Justice of Chandernagore, travelled all over India to learn more about wonder-working fakirs. He witnessed many extraordinary phenomena, which he tried to view without prejudice or emotion, as a judge would weigh evidence in a court of law. In Varanasi (Benares) he met a fakir named Covindasamy, who performed various paranormal phenomena for him. On one occasion he crossed his arms on his chest and slowly levitated to a height of ten to twelve inches, remaining in the air more than eight minutes [6]. Another of his levitations is described by Jacolliot as follows:
"Leaning upon [his] cane with one hand, the Fakir rose gradually about two feet from the ground. His legs were crossed beneath him, and he made no change in his position . . .
For more than twenty minutes I tried to see how Covindasamy could thus fly in the face and eyes of all the known laws of gravity; it was entirely beyond my comprehension; the stick gave him no visible support, and there was no apparent contact between that and his body, except through his right hand"
Gravity and Antigravity
The most famous levitator of all was the medium Daniel Dunglas Home (pronounced: Hume). His first recorded levitation took place at a seance in August 1852. He was suddenly 'taken up into the air . . . He palpitated from head to foot with the contending emotions of joy and fear . . . Again and again he was taken from the floor, and the third time he was carried to the ceiling of the apartment, with which his hands and feet came into gentle contact.' He later became able to levitate at will, and believed he was lifted up by 'spirits'. During a public career lasting 30 years, hundreds of people witnessed his levitations. The most famous of Home's levitations was when in the company of Lord Adare, the Master of Lindsay, and a friend of theirs, he floated out of one window of a London house and in at another. The eminent English scientist Sir William Crookes saw him levitate on several occasions and verified that there was no trickery involved. On one occasion, Crookes' wife, who was sitting beside Home, was raised off the ground in her chair
The magician Harry Kellar, who enjoyed showing audiences how mediums did their tricks, described how during a world tour in the 1870s he was watching a Zulu witch doctor go into a trance when suddenly 'to my intense amazement, the recumbent body slowly arose from the ground and floated upward in the air to the height of about three feet, where for a while it floated, moving up and down'. In 1882 he challenged the medium William Eglinton to perform some feat which no conjuror could repeat. Eglinton then levitated, carrying Kellar, holding his foot, into the air -- an achievement which Kellar had to admit he could not account for
The Italian medium Eusapia Palladino occasionally used to levitate and was also able to increase or decrease the weight of objects. Her paranormal powers were verified in investigations conducted by European scientists around the turn of the 20th century. After witnessing her demonstrations, the French astronomer Camille Flammarion stated that levitation should no longer be any more in question than the attraction of iron by a magnet [5]. Levitations of mediums have frequently been reported since then in spiritualist journals, but no medium has been able to produce them in conditions which could be called fraud-proof.
In the mid-19th century, Louis Jacolliot, Chief Justice of Chandernagore, travelled all over India to learn more about wonder-working fakirs. He witnessed many extraordinary phenomena, which he tried to view without prejudice or emotion, as a judge would weigh evidence in a court of law. In Varanasi (Benares) he met a fakir named Covindasamy, who performed various paranormal phenomena for him. On one occasion he crossed his arms on his chest and slowly levitated to a height of ten to twelve inches, remaining in the air more than eight minutes [6]. Another of his levitations is described by Jacolliot as follows:
"Leaning upon [his] cane with one hand, the Fakir rose gradually about two feet from the ground. His legs were crossed beneath him, and he made no change in his position . . .
For more than twenty minutes I tried to see how Covindasamy could thus fly in the face and eyes of all the known laws of gravity; it was entirely beyond my comprehension; the stick gave him no visible support, and there was no apparent contact between that and his body, except through his right hand"
Gravity and Antigravity