The Rediscovery of Anna Prado

The Rediscovery of Anna Prado

GL Playfair

Quite soon, it seems, forms began to materialize around Anna, and so she found mediumship unexpectedly thrust upon her. Over the next five years before her premature and tragic death in a fire in 1923, her group members, who included both Nogueira de Faria and Ettore Bosio who, luckily for posterity, was a keen amateur photographer, witnessed just about every kind of materialization phenomenon reported earlier by Crookes, Richet, Geley and Schrenck-Notzing. There were raps, apports and direct writing in addition to full-form materialisations – sometimes of two figures at once, plus partial or even total dematerialization of the medium. Anna also gave a demonstration of travelling clairvoyance, now known as remote viewing, while she was in Belem, and described a rebellion then taking place in her home town of Parintins hundreds of miles away.

Although the local press soon got to hear of all this, Anna seems to have escaped any suggestion of trickery. One man who was particularly impressed was Fred Figner, a Jewish immigrant from Bohemia who was the founder of the recording industry in Brazil, issuing its first wax cylinder recording in 1902 and its first disc nine years later. When his eldest daughter Rachel died in 1920 he and his wife attended a couple of sittings with Anna, and both were fully satisfied that the figure they saw emerging from the medium’s cabinet was their Rachel, who even spoke to them and asked her mother not to wear black because she was ‘very happy’ where she was. Figner was so impressed that he wrote up his experiences in detail and published them in a local newspaper, creating something of a sensation in view of his reputation as a successful businessman. I was reminded of the very similar account given me by São Paulo police chief Rafael A. Ranieri as he sat on his desk oiling his revolver, which I included in The Flying Cow. His description of his meeting with his deceased daughter at a sitting with the medium Peixotinho was the kind of testimony I could find no reason to reject.

Several of Bosio’s photographs of Anna’s materialisations survive and they make an interesting comparison to those of other mediums such as Marthe Béraud (‘Eva C’.) and Peixotinho. Some of them do look unconvincing, with their faces resembling portraits torn from newspapers rather than pictures of real living people and their bodies surrounded by what looks like cotton wool. Yet this is not proof of trickery, which does not seem likely from what we now know of Anna’s background.

Several of Bosio’s photographs of Anna’s materialisations survive and they make an interesting comparison to those of other mediums such as Marthe Béraud (‘Eva C’.) and Peixotinho. Some of them do look unconvincing, with their faces resembling portraits torn from newspapers rather than pictures of real living people and their bodies surrounded by what looks like cotton wool. Yet this is not proof of trickery, which does not seem likely from what we now know of Anna’s background.

Personal incredulity carries more weight than visible evidence?

Personal incredulity outweighs visible evidence?  LOL!

Personal incredulity carries more weight than visible evidence?

I think it would depend on the reports, but yeah for something like this I'd probably want to see it personally otherwise it looks fake.