Everard Feilding

Francis Henry Everard Joseph Feilding (6 March 1867 – 8 February 1936) best known as Everard Feilding was an English barrister, naval intelligence officer and psychical researcher.

Career

As a teenager, Feilding worked as a midshipman for the Royal Navy during the Egyptian campaign in 1882. He was educated at Oscott College and attended Trinity College, Cambridge in 1887, he obtained his bachelors of law degree in 1890. Feilding was a Catholic, he began his interest in psychical research from his visit to Lourdes in 1892. He was secretary of the Society for Psychical Research from 1903 to 1920. His father was Rudolph Feilding, 8th Earl of Denbigh and his brother Rudolph Feilding, 9th Earl of Denbigh.

Feilding served as a lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR) and worked for the British Intelligence Staff in Egypt and Palestine (1915–1919). Feilding married the psychic medium Stanisława Tomczyk in 1919. It is alleged by biographers that he was a friend of the occultist Aleister Crowley.

Feilding report

Feilding is best-known for his investigation of the Italian medium Eusapia Palladino. In 1908, the SPR appointed a committee of three to examine her in Naples. The committee consisted of W. W. Baggally, Hereward Carrington and Everard Feilding. Although the investigators caught Palladino cheating during the séances, they were convinced Palladino had produced genuine paranormal phenomena such as levitations of the table, movement of the curtains, movement of objects from behind the curtain and touches from hands. In 1909, all three investigators wrote a report on the medium in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research.

Although originally convinced of her alleged powers, Feilding attended séances with Palladino in 1910 with the magician William S. Marriott and concluded her mediumship was fraudulent.

Paul Kurtz has noted that "Skeptic's question the first Feilding report because in a subsequent test by Feilding and other tests by scientists, Palladino had been caught cheating."

Abbé Vachère case

In 1914, Feilding with Maud Gonne and W. B. Yeats visited Mirebeau to investigate an alleged miracle of a bleeding oleograph that was in the possession of priest Abbé Vachère. Feilding took a blood sample to the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine. They concluded that it was not human blood.

In 1915, Feilding returned to Mirebeau. He made several visits to Vachère's home. The oleograph had been placed in his chapel. Feilding found that it was wet but he did not directly observe the picture to have bled. As a test, he locked the chapel door and placed a slip of paper in the hinge. He discovered hours later that although the picture was wet, the paper had been dislodged. The evidence was negative but Feilding did not believe Vachère was guilty of deception. Feilding took a blood sample and this time the results showed it was human blood. He did not come to any definite conclusion but because of the evidence suggestive of fraud, sceptics have dismissed the case as a hoax. He invited Head to a "ghost hunt" at an alleged haunted house known as "Pickpocket Hall" on his brother's estate in Pantasaph. He wrote in a letter to Wilfrid Meynell that they spent a few nights in the derelict house but the result was a failure. He also persuaded Head to investigate the shrines at Lourdes in the summer of 1895. In 1911, Feilding attended two séance sittings with the medium Etta Wriedt. He suspected that the phenomena may have been fraudulent. He was "specifically excluded" from attending further séances with Wriedt.

Publications

Books Sittings with Eusapia Palladino and Other Studies (1963)

Papers Baggally, W. W; Feilding, Everard; Johnson, Alice. (1906). Sittings with Mr Chambers. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 12: 197-203. Baggally, W. W; Carington, Hereward; Feilding, Everard. (1909). Report on a Series of Sittings with Eusapia Palladino. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 23: 309-569. Feilding, Everard; Marriott, William S. (1910). Report on Further Series of Sittings with Eusapia Palladino at Naples. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 15: 20-32. Feilding, Everard; Johnson, Alice. (1914). Report on Some Experiments in Thought-Transference. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 16: 164-167. Feilding, Everard. (1915). Note on the English Sittings with Miss Tomczyk. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 17: 28-31. Fielding, Everard. (1922). An Experiment in Faking "Spirit" Photographs. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 20: 219-223. Feilding, Everard. (1930). The Case of Abbé Vachère. (1930). Transactions of the Fourth International Congress for Psychical Research. Feilding, Everard. (1932). More Alleged Occurrences of the Rope Trick. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 27: 281-286.