The wife of  a Polish officer, and a subject of  Baron von Schrenck Notzing she was involved with  important materialisation experiments.  At the age of 18 she saw the phantom of  a friend, Sophie M., who died at the exact time.  Soon after, spontaneous telekinetic phenomena developed.  Having joined a spiritualistic circle, Sophie M. materialised and became the medium's permanent attendant, occasionally sharing control with  "Adalbert"  and a young Polish boy.  In 1911  P. Lebiedzinski, a Polish engineer, began a series of  experimental séances which lasted intermittently until 1916.  His report, published in the  "Revue Metapsychique"  (1921, No. 4) was favourable.  The experiments of  Baron Schrenck Notzing began in 1913.  After a few months the mediumship lapsed and did not return until 1915.  In 1906, when Baron Schrenck Notzing recommenced his séance observations, he became satisfied that Mme. Stanislawa P. produces ectoplasmic flow.  He made many striking photographs.  Stanislawa P., as a result of  Baron Schrenck Notzing's findings, has been acknowledged as a powerful medium.  In 1930 her reputation suffered a heavy blow.  She appeared at the Institute Metapsychique, shortly after a special automatic registering apparatus for phenomena produced in the dark was installed.  She made her own conditions and produced nearly blank séances until assured that no registering apparatus would remain in the room.  Dr. Osty suspected that the abortive phenomena noticed on the second séance were brought about by her secretly freed hand.  He decided to catch her in flagranto delicto.  In the fourth séance when the movement of  the objects placed on the table was heard a secret flashlight was exploded and three stereoscopic photographs were taken.  Both the sudden light and the developed photographs have clearly shown that a hand of  the medium was free and manipulated the table.  Dr. Osty concludes in the  "Revue Metapsychique"  (Nov - Dec 1930):  (1)  Stanislawa P. played a comedy of mediumship at the Institute.  (2)  Her fraud was persevering and perfectly organised. (3)  Her procedure consists in giving the illusion of  perfect control while she is capable of  disengaging one of  her hands from its liens and putting it back without apparently disturbing them.  (4)  With this procedure it is easy for her to displace objects and show luminous movements, etc.  Dr. Osty, however, hastens to add that his findings mean no attempt to judge the phenomena of  Mme. Stanislawa P. which were produced elsewhere.

The following is an extract:-

Chapter 21: Possessed of  Power over the Soul of  Things

Story of  Stanislawa Tomczyk

Nandor Fodor
 
Mlle. Tomczyk and Dr. Ochorowitz, lecturer in psychology at the University of Lemberg.  With Invisible rigid rays emanating from her fingers Mlle. Tomczyk lifts a pair of scissors.

No one could have been more startled by such a line of research than its originator, Dr. Julien Ochorowicz.  While a lecturer of  psychology at the University of  Lemberg, he had the good fortune to discover in Mlle. Stanislawa Tomczyk, of  Wisla, Poland, unknown and thoroughly mystifying powers.  She was his patient whom he regularly hypnotized for therapeutic purposes.  In the hypnotic sleep the girl disclosed an altered personality which answered to the name of  Little Stasia.

She was capable of  things beyond normal human power.  She could stop a clock by looking at it.  She could produce movement in objects without contact.  She could influence a roulette to the extent that the number chosen by the medium turned up more often than justified by chance.

As a miracle worker she was without peer.  As a personality she was full of  mischief and played no end of  tricks on Mlle. Tomczyk.  She did not know who she was.  But she did not think she was the spirit of  a dead person.  As she had to be somebody, and as she suffered not from the limitations of  secondary personalities,  Dr. Ochorowicz labelled her as the  "double"  of  the medium.  His chief reason for doing so was that Little Stasia proved that she had a body.  That body was not the physical body of  Mlle. Tomczyk.

This is a very startling statement.  Fortunately, Ochorowicz presented us with a detailed description of  his experiments.  The climax came on 11th of  September 1911, when he obtained the photograph of  an  "etheric hand"  on a sensitive film rolled up and enclosed in a bottle.  The film, as it lay in the bottle, measured about three-quarters of  an inch in diameter.  The bottle had an orifice of  about two thirds of  an inch.  It was closed with the palm of  Dr. Ochorowicz's right hand.  With his left he laid it on his knee and held it there firmly.  The medium then placed her two hands on the bottle between his.  She seemed excited and exclaimed that she wished that a small hand might appear.  Then she said:

"It is strange!  The bottle seems to enlarge under my fingers;  but perhaps this is an illusion.  My hands swell, I cease to feel them."

An attack of  cramp ensued, the medium screamed aloud, a moment or two later Dr. Ochorowicz broke the bottle, developed the film and found on it the imprint of  a large hand with the thumb posed in line with the index finger, so that it might find room to appear on the film, which was 13 cm wide.  The hand had the characteristics of  the medium.  In automatic writing, Little Stasia gave the following explanation:

"I crept in by a chink between your hand and the orifice of  the bottle.  Then I slipped my hand flat between the folds of  the roll, and the light caused itself,  I do not know how, I merely took care to make the film opaque."

Dr. Ochorowicz tried to discover the thickness of  the  "etheric hand".  He found indications that it was less than a millimetre. That it was self-luminous.  That under the effect of  suggestion it could grow or diminish.

The next puzzling stage of  his discoveries was reached when in several of  these "radiographs"  the medium's ring appeared on the finger of  her etheric hand.  This seemed to indicate to him:

1. That there is a kind of  link between the organism and the object it wears,

2. That the occult notion that material objects have an astral body is not limited to living bodies.

The ring did not always appear in the radiographs.  Dr. Ochorowicz tried to find out whether objects frequently worn by the sensitive were more easily produced on the plate than others.  He chose a thimble which she rarely used.  The medium suggested that he should himself  retain the thimble on the finger of  his left hand, holding her with his right hand.

"Perhaps,"  she added,  "the thimble will pass from your body on to my finger."

The experiment appeared absurd, but Dr. Ochorowicz was willing.  He took a plate from his box, marked it, and laid it on the medium's knees.  She was seated on his right.  With his right hand he held up her left hand about sixteen inches above the plate, the thimble being on the middle finger of  his left hand which he kept behind his left knee.  A red lamp was burning at a distance of  about three feet.  After a minute had elapsed, the medium said that she felt a sort of  tingling in the direction of her forearm, where their hands met.  She exclaimed:

"Oh, how strange.  Something is being placed on the tip of  my finger....  I do not know if  it is the thimble;  I feel something keeps pressing the end of my finger."

When the plate was developed it showed the hand of  the medium, and on the middle finger was what she called jokingly the soul of  her thimble.

Dr. Ochorowicz asked in some bewilderment:  was the image a  "double"  of  the thimble, or was it a photograph of  the idea of  the thimble?

A close examination of  the photograph and comparison with the thimble showed that the two corresponded exactly, the one  "was a true copy of the other, precise in details and in dimension".  This exactness supports the idea of  a direct impression from some object rather than a thought image merely.  The finger supporting the thimble is the palest of  all the fingers, probably, as Dr. Ochorowicz suggests, because the light by which the radiograph was taken proceeds from it.  He leaned to the conclusion that an etheric hand wearing an etheric thimble produced the image, and that mental desire gave the direction to the light which was necessary in order to make the details of  the thimble visible on the plate.

When, however, he proceeded to test his conclusion, a strange thing happened. Unknown to the medium he held in his left hand an Austrian five-crown piece. Presently she exclaimed:

"I see behind you a white round object....  it is the moon."

"At the same instant,"  writes Dr. Ochorowicz,  "I saw a faint but distinct light pass near my left hand, which held the coin;  it was not round, nor a flash, it was like a little meteor, like a thin ray, lighting up the space round my hand on the side away from the medium."

When the plate was developed it showed an image of  a full moon.

"The moon floats,"  he wrote,  "on the background of  a less luminous cloud, and is of  a rather different form from that in the preceding experiment."

The preceding experiment took place on 7th September 1911.  The medium the night before was much impressed by the superb light of  the starry heavens, and particularly by the full moon at which she looked for some time with admiration.  On the plate, instead of  the little hand which was desired, a full moon appeared against a background of  white cloud.

There was something very curious about this photograph of  the moon.  On the 17th April 1912, the moon was in eclipse.  Cinematograph pictures disclosed a slight flattening of  the image of  the moon in the direction of  the axis of  rotation.  This characteristic appears in the radiograph of  September 7th.  The impression was double and it looked as if the cloud had not been duplicated.  In that case the moon alone must have moved.  How can we conceive - asked Dr. Ochorowicz - of  this apparent movement of  a mental image?

The next surprise which Little Stasia provided was the proof  that she was not the double of  the entranced medium.  While Dr. Ochorowicz was having a lively conversation with Mlle. Tomczyk in her normal state, Little Stasia impressed her picture, as promised, on a photographic plate in a dark and empty adjoining room.

Who Little Stasia was mattered comparatively little.  It was her phenomena which puzzled Ochorowicz and the world of  science to which she was introduced. Invisible rigid rays appeared to issue from Mme. Tomczyk's finger-tips by the help of  which, before a commission of  physicians, physiologists and engineers, she could raise a pair of  scissors or any other light objects into the air without material support.  The rays were threadlike and acted like a line of  force.

"I have felt this thread,"  writes Dr. Ochorowicz,"  on my face and on my hair.  When the medium separates her hands the thread gets thinner and disappears;  it gives the same sensation as a spider's web.  If  it is cut with scissors its continuity is immediately restored.  It seems to be formed of  points;  it can be photographed and it is then seen to be much thinner than an ordinary thread.  It starts from the fingers.  Needless to remark that the hands of  the medium were carefully examined before every experiment."

When these photographs were thrown enlarged upon a screen the psychic structure became invisible.  So much could be determined that there were swellings and nodes along it, like the waves of  a vibrating cord.

When Mlle. Tomczyk lifted, supernormally, a ball, a whole number of  filaments surrounded it like a net.  In a photograph of  a balance which was supernormally depressed, fine, hairlike threads are visible.

The cry of  fraud is totally untenable.  In good light it is a child's play to watch for the introduction of  genuine hair.  Eusapia Paladino when she tried it was invariably discovered.  And then she immediately performed the feat by supernormal power.

The existence of  such invisible threads were known before Ochorowicz.  There are observations to prove that threads, finer than the spider's, may somewhat in the manner of  cobwebs, connect the medium with the objects in the room which are supernormally set in motion.  Mme. d'Esperance often complained of  a cobwebby feeling on her face.  Margery of  Boston and many of  her sitters had the same experience.  Two years ago Professor Karl Blacher, of  Riga, reported on his experiments with Frau Ideler, that she spun threads to accomplish telekinetic movements.  She seemed to pull them from the inner side of  her hand with her finger-tips.  The threads seemed to be of  a doughy, elastic substance, at first thick, then pulled fine, and felt soft and dry.  Even while being handled they diminished perceptibly.  A piece was secured and subjected at once to microscopic examination in an adjoining room.  An enlargement of  the microscopic photo shows that it is composed not of  one strand, but of  many fine but not organized threads. In its chemical composition the structure was not that of  any known textile fabrics. Curiously, fire had no power over those threads.  They made the flame withdraw. But they were conductors of  electricity.

Such discoveries divest the phenomena of  the seance room of  the miraculous and reduce them to facts of  physiology and physics.  They leave the psychological side unaffected though.  For the intelligence which so effectively uses the organism of  the medium for such purposes, claims to be a spirit.  Little Stasia was an exception.  But then she did not know what she was.  Spiritualists believe that they can offer a key to her riddle.  They say she was one of  the many who did not yet wake up to the fact that she changed over into another world of  existence, in other words she did not know that she was dead.

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