Castelvitch, Countess (ca. 1920)

Early twentieth-century private medium of Lisbon, Portugal, whose powers of physical phenomena were carefully observed by Dr. d'Oliveira Feijao, professor of surgery in the Lisbon University and Mme. Madeleine Frondoni-Lacombe. According to Feijao's description:

"Blows were struck, the loudest being on the glass of the bookcase. Articles of furniture sometimes moved. Heavy chairs moved about the room; efforts were made on the locked doors of the bookcase, which were opened; large and heavy books were flung on the floor (our hands being linked all the time); an office bell and a handbell, the half open piano and a guitar in its case all sounded loudly. The table rose as much as 24 inches."

Once a heavy table weighing 160 pounds was raised on two legs when it was barely touched and a smaller table was torn into 200 pieces. Objects were brought into the séance room and out through closed doors and excellent materializations were witnessed, among which there was a unique phantom with a death's-head. This phantom and other claimed materializations were photographed.

The mediumship of the countess was discovered in January 1913. Like Katie King, in the celebrated case of Florence Cook, her control, who manifested for years, departed after a dramatic farewell on July 14, 1920. The history of the medium-ship is well told in Frondoni-Lacombe's Merveilleux Phenomènes de l'au delà (Lisbon, 1920).

Sources:

Richet, Charles. Thirty Years of Psychical Research. London, 1923.