Nino Pecoraro
Nino Pecoraro (1899–1973) was an Italian spiritualist medium who was exposed as a fraud.[1][2]
Pecoraro from Naples worked as a spiritualist medium. He claimed his spirit guide was Eusapia Palladino, a deceased medium.[3] The psychical researcher Hereward Carrington introduced Pecoraro to the spiritualist Arthur Conan Doyle in America.[1] Pecoraro who was tied up during a séance by Carrington, managed to impress Doyle by making musical instruments play.[4]
Carrington persuaded Pecoraro to participate in the Scientific American contest. In four days in December, 1923 he was tested by members of the committee. He was tied to a chair with sixty feet of rope. Beside him was placed a table with musical instruments. During the séances various movements and sounds of objects were heard. He had managed to impress some of the committee members who considered the phenomena genuine. However, O. D. Munn, the publisher of the Scientific American, suspected that he had freed his hand to play the instruments.[1]
The magician Harry Houdini had not been informed of the test sessions, but managed to get to the fourth séance. Houdini suggested that Percorao was an escape artist who freed himself from the rope that bound him to his chair. Before the séance, Houdini had cut the rope into shorter pieces and tied Pecoraro to the chair. Because of the tight control, no phenomena occurred.[1][3] In 1931, Pecoraro confessed his fraud in a newspaper interview.[5]
Later in life he became an artist. Two of his paintings are on exhibit at The Houdini Museum in Scranton, PA.
References
- ^ a b c d Polidoro, Massimo. (2001). Final Séance: The Strange Friendship Between Houdini and Conan Doyle. Prometheus Books. pp. 127-128. ISBN 1-57392-896-8
- ^ Neher, Andrew. (2011). Paranormal and Transcendental Experience: A Psychological Examination. Dover Publications. p. 215. ISBN 0-486-26167-0 "Nino Pecoraro specialized in producing physical manifestations of spirits of the departed while he was "tied up" in a cabinet. Toward the end of his life, Percoraro related how he had deceived many famous people, including the novelist Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (who was easily fooled); he also wrote a confession in which he admitted that all his phenomena were faked."
- ^ a b Christopher, Milbourne. (1975). Mediums, Mystics & the Occult. Thomas Y. Crowell. pp. 189-190. ISBN 0-690-00476-1
- ^ Christopher, Milbourne. (1998). Houdini. Gramercy Books. p. 137
- ^ Kahn, Ely Jacques. (1979). Far-Flung and Footloose: Pieces from the New Yorker, 1937-1978. Putnam Publishing Group. p. 59
External links
- Another Medium Exposed. The Drummondville Spokesman, April 28, 1931.
- Faked Seances: Confessions of a World-Famous Medium. The Sunday Times, Perth, Western Australia, June 28, 1931.
- v
- t
- e
- Apport
- Automatic writing
- Cross-Correspondences
- Ectoplasm
- Faith healing
- Materialization
- Mediumship
- Séance
- Spirit guides
- Spiritual healing
- Spirit obsession
- Spirit photography
- Spirit possession
- Spirit world
- Table-turning
- Theism
- Derek Acorah
- Rosemary Altea
- Dan Aykroyd
- Charles Bailey
- Bangs Sisters
- Ada Besinnet
- Stephen E. Braude
- William Breeze
- Rosemary Brown
- Sylvia Browne
- Eva Carrière
- Doris Collins
- Florence Cook
- Mina Crandon
- William Crookes
- Geraldine Cummins
- Pearl Curran
- Frank Decker
- Arthur Conan Doyle
- Helen Duncan
- Eddy Brothers
- Harry Edwards
- John Edward
- William Eglinton
- Colin Evans
- Fox sisters
- Leslie Flint
- Arthur Ford
- Colin Fry
- Eileen Garrett
- Kathleen Goligher
- Rita Goold
- Jan Guzyk
- Robert Hare
- Alec Harris
- Gordon Higginson
- Richard Hodgson
- Daniel Dunglas Home
- Elizabeth Hope
- William Hope
- Swami Laura Horos
- Cecil Husk
- James H. Hyslop
- Allan Kardec
- Franek Kluski
- Gladys Osborne Leonard
- Oliver Lodge
- Heinrich Melzer
- Carmine Mirabelli
- Francis Ward Monck
- William Usborne Moore
- Lorin Morgan-Richards
- William Stainton Moses
- Einer Nielsen
- Eusapia Palladino
- Leonora Piper
- Ethel Post-Parrish
- James Van Praagh
- Bert Reese
- Estelle Roberts
- Jane Roberts
- William Roy
- Rudi Schneider
- Maria Silbert
- Henry Slade
- Doris Stokes
- Emanuel Swedenborg
- Rosina Thompson
- Stanisława Tomczyk
- Ena Twigg
- George Valiantine
- Jack Webber
- Etta Wriedt
- Chico Xavier
- List of Spiritualist organizations
- Spiritualist churches
- Spiritist centres
- London Spiritualist Alliance
- National Spiritualist Association of Churches
- Spiritualists' National Union
- Spiritualist Association of Great Britain
- Spiritual church movement
- Arthur Findlay College
- International Spiritualist Federation
- David Abbott
- John Henry Anderson
- George Miller Beard
- Ruth Brandon
- Lionel Branson
- Derren Brown
- William Carpenter
- Milbourne Christopher
- Edward Clodd
- Edmund Smith Conklin
- Millais Culpin
- Stuart Cumberland
- Eric Dingwall
- Joseph Dunninger
- Henry Evans
- Chris French
- Martin Gardner
- G. Stanley Hall
- Trevor H. Hall
- William A. Hammond
- C. E. M. Hansel
- Carlos María de Heredia
- Carl Hertz
- Terence Hines
- Harry Houdini
- Joseph Jastrow
- Stanley LeFevre Krebs
- Rose Mackenberg
- David Marks
- John Nevil Maskelyne
- Henry Maudsley
- Joseph McCabe
- Henry C. McComas
- Georgess McHargue
- Charles Arthur Mercier
- Albert Moll
- John Mulholland
- Fulton Oursler
- Joe Nickell
- E. Clephan Palmer
- Ronald Pearsall
- Frank Podmore
- Massimo Polidoro
- Harry Price
- Julien J. Proskauer
- James Randi
- Donovan Rawcliffe
- Joseph F. Rinn
- C. E. Bechhofer Roberts
- Chung Ling Soo
- Gordon Stein
- Amy Tanner
- Ivor Lloyd Tuckett
- Lyttelton Winslow
- Richard Wiseman