Signora Raphael Delgaiz by marriage, the first physical medium who stood in the crossfire of  collective scientific investigation for more than twenty years all over Europe and in America.  It is in large measure due to this strange woman that the reality of  physical phenomena and the psychological complex of  fraud was, at the close of  the last and in the first decade of  the present century, vividly brought home to an array of  brilliant minds.  She was born at Minervo-Murge, near Bari, Italy, on January 21, 1854.  Her birth cost her mother's life.  Her father was assassinated by brigands in 1866.  As a little girl she heard raps on the furniture against which she was leaning, she saw eyes glaring at her in the darkness and was frequently frightened in the night when invisible hands stripped off  her bedclothes.  When she became orphaned a family of  the upper bourgeoisie received her in Naples as a nursemaid. They soon detected that she was not an ordinary girl, but her real discovery and mediumistic education is due to Signor Damiani, a noted Italian psychic investigator. His wife, an English lady, went to a séance in London.  John King manifested and spoke about a powerful medium in Naples who was his reincarnated daughter.  He gave her address, street and number.  Damiani went to the house and found Eusapia Paladino of  whom he had never heard before.  This was in 1872.  The development of  Eusapia Paladino's powers progressed at a rapid rate.  In the first five or six years she devoted herself mainly to phenomena of  movements without contact.  Then came the famous spectral appearances, the phantom limbs so often noticed to issue from her body and materialisations of  full but incomplete figures.

Her control, John King, communicated through raps and in trance spoke in Italian alone.  Eusapia Paladino was always impressed what phenomenon was going to take place and could warn the sitters.  She suffered extremely during the process and exhibited a very remarkable synchronism between her gestures and the movement without contact.  If  she glared defiantly at a table it began to move towards her, if she warned it off  it backed away.  A forcible motion of  her head was accompanied by raps and upward movements of  her hand would cause the table to lift in the air.

Another peculiarity of  her séances was that any particular phenomenon had to be wished for and incessantly asked.  Strong desire on the part of  the sitters present always brought about the occurrence.