“The power of an invocation comes from the force of the soul who invokes it.”
– Roma Lister
Roma Lister was no stranger to séances. Over the course of her life, she attended dozens of sittings and had multiple occasions to converse with and study other psychics, such as the famed — but controversial — Neapolitan medium Eusapia Palladino. Unlike other critics, Lister believed Palladino’s powers — which she witnessed herself — could not be accurately measured by what she saw as the limited and prejudicial scientific procedures of the day. Lister also theorised that, in special social contexts, mediums acted like mothers, giving “birth” to temporary supernormal forces that dissipated either as soon a séance had come to an end or shortly afterwards. A fuller account of Lister’s engagement with and approach to the “Borderland” (to use her words) and its mysterious denizens can be found in Aradia’s Hidden Hand: The Untold Life of Roma Lister (forthcoming 2025).
Spirit manifestations during a séance. Engraving by Giosuè Gallieni
The following anecdote, which appears in Lister’s Further Reminiscences: Occult and Social (1927), is one example of the kinds of ostensibly extraordinary things Lister sometimes encountered during séances. According to Lister, the presiding medium was a high-level member of the Italian government:
Eight people were present; the room was a small hall where lectures were given weekly during the winter season. There was only one door; the walls were whitewashed. An ordinary kitchen cupboard of painted wood, in two parts —the upper part having glass, behind which could be seen the shelves, stood against the wall. The furniture was otherwise composed of a deal table and some ten or twelve straw-bottomed chairs.
Our only preparations consisted in drawing up our chairs to the table round which we sat. In the middle of the table hung a gas-light of the simplest fashion, and without a shade. The principal phenomenon of the evening was the fact that the chair of the medium ascended to the ceiling, and the six people present rose to the same height, myself included. We remained suspended in the air long enough for each of us to sign our names in pencil on the ceiling. After this we descended gently, and we found ourselves each seated in his chair, in the same position as before our flight.
A levitation demonstration, as depicted by Giosuè Gallieni
These sittings had to be ultimately given up because of intervention of the Commendatore’s wife. Madame Z — discovered that every time her husband exercised his really wonderful powers their night’s peace was disturbed by unasked-for pilgrimages of their bedroom furniture, and of one armchair in particular, which used to walk round the bed for hours, preventing any sleep.
