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Stanisława Janina Tomczyk (c 1885 – 2 April 1975) was a Polish spiritualist medium in the early 20th century known for her alleged demonstrations of
psychokinesis Psychokinesis (from grc, ψυχή, , soul and grc, κίνησις, , movement, label=ㅤ), or telekinesis (from grc, τηλε, , far off and grc, κίνησις, , movement, label=ㅤ), is a hypothetical psychic ability allowing a person ...
and psychic photography. Magicians and skeptics have dismissed Tomczyk as a fraud who performed her feats with the aid of a hidden thread.


Career

At the age of twenty, Tomczyk was arrested during a riot and jailed for ten days. The experience is said to have caused her hysteria and mental dissociation.


Ochorowicz experiments

Tomczyk was the subject of experiments conducted in 1908–9 at
Wisła Wisła (; german: Weichsel; cs, Visla) is a town in Cieszyn County, Silesian Voivodeship, southern Poland, with a population of about 11,132 (2019), near the border with Czech Republic. It is situated in the Silesian Beskids mountain range in t ...
, in southern
Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...
, by the Polish psychologist
Julian Ochorowicz Julian Leopold Ochorowicz (Polish pronunciation: ; outside Poland also known as Julien Ochorowitz; Radzymin, 23 February 1850 – 1 May 1917, Warsaw) was a Polish philosopher, psychologist, inventor (precursor of radio and television), poet, p ...
. Reportedly he regularly hypnotized her for therapeutic purposes, and she claimed to be controlled by an entity, "Little Stasia" ("Stasia" being a diminutive of Tomczyk's
given name A given name (also known as a forename or first name) is the part of a personal name quoted in that identifies a person, potentially with a middle name as well, and differentiates that person from the other members of a group (typically a ...
, "Stanisława"), who said she was not the spirit of any dead person but was described as a naked girl, one foot high.Harper, Margaret Mills; Gould, Warwick. (2013). ''Yeats's Mask Yeats Annual No. 19''. Open Book Publishers. p. 316. Ochorowicz was convinced from the experiments that "Little Stasia" was a second personality of Tomczyk. He conducted psychokinesis experiments with Tomczyk in which she was alleged to have levitated objects without contact, stop the movement of a clock in a glass case, and influence the turn of a roulette wheel. She was also said to have produced psychic photographs. Ochorowicz reported the results of the experiments in ''Annales des Sciences Psychiques'' (January 1909–August 1912). On one occasion Ochorowicz saw a black thread between her hands, and in numerous photographs taken by him and later investigators a thread was sometimes visible. Ochorowicz believed that the thread was a paranormal extrusion from her fingers, which he termed " ideoplasm". Ochorowicz also conducted psychic photography experiments with Tomczyk with his camera. He reported that she produced a psychic self-portrait of "Little Stasia", a photograph of an astrally projected hand and a photograph showing a "current" of light between her thumbs. He first reported observing the astrally projected hand which he called a "fluidic hand" at a séance on April 4, 1911. For some of the experiments he placed her hand's directly on the photographic plates or held them at varying distances. He believed from the photographs that he had discovered a new undocumented source of energy in the form of “a light which we have given the name ‘mediumnic’ although we have no knowledge of it and cannot place it in any category of known light sources". For these photographs he won a prize of 1000 francs from the Comité d'Etude de Photographie Transcendental in 1911 and a similar prize was awarded by the Académie des Sciences de Paris. However, years later both parties dismissed the photographs as fraudulent.Gould, Warwick. (2016). ''Yeats Annual No 5''. Palgrave. p. 134. The scientific community dismissed Ochorowicz's experiments as pseudoscientific based on poor experimental design and gullibility. In 1933,
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 ...
wrote in a letter to
W. B. Yeats William Butler Yeats (13 June 186528 January 1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist, writer and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and became a pillar of the Irish liter ...
stating that Tomczyk "practically remembers nothing of the phenomena reported by Ochorowicz, whom anyhow she absolutely mistrusts as an observer."


Flournoy experiments

Theodore Flournoy who observed Tomczyk in Paris in five séances in Spring 1909 was convinced she moved objects by psychokinesis. In May 1909, Flournoy and his son Henri, Ochorowicz and Professors
Édouard Claparède Édouard Claparède (24 March 1873 – 29 September 1940) was a Swiss neurologist, child psychologist, and educator. Career Claparède studied science and medicine, receiving in 1897 an MD from the University of Geneva, and working 1897–98 a ...
, Cellerier and Batelli held a series of séance experiments with Tomczyk in
Geneva , neighboring_municipalities= Carouge, Chêne-Bougeries, Cologny, Lancy, Grand-Saconnex, Pregny-Chambésy, Vernier, Veyrier , website = https://www.geneve.ch/ Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevr ...
.Flournoy, Théodore. (1911)
''Spiritism and Psychology''
Harper & Brothers. pp. 288-290
The experiments were complete failures and Flournoy recalled how Tomczyk tried to perform certain complicated experiments "which were manifestly purely fraudulent".Wolman, Benjamin B. (1977). ''Handbook of Parapsychology''. McFarland & Company. p. 320. Professor Batelli believed that the movement of objects was fraudulently produced by a hidden hair or thread that was held between her hands.


London experiments

In
London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
, between 2 June and 13 July 1914, Tomczyk was tested in eleven sittings by the
Society for Psychical Research The Society for Psychical Research (SPR) is a nonprofit organisation in the United Kingdom. Its stated purpose is to understand events and abilities commonly described as psychic or paranormal. It describes itself as the "first society to co ...
. The investigation committee included electrical engineer
Mark Barr James Mark McGinnis BarrFull name as listed in (May 18, 1871December 15, 1950) was an electrical engineer, physicist, inventor, and polymath known for proposing the standard notation for the golden ratio. Born in America, but with English citi ...
, V. J. Woolley, W. W. Baggally and Everard Feilding. The informal experiments admittedly not subject to rigid control obtained "inconclusive results". The most striking demonstration was the momentary levitation of a celluloid ball some 9 inches above a table, with her hands about a quarter-inch away.


Fraud

Magicians and skeptics suspected that the psychokinesis of objects Tomczyk was performing involved the use of a fine thread or hair, running between her hands to lift and suspend the objects in the air. This was confirmed when psychical researchers who tested Tomczyk occasionally observed the thread. Tomczyk's levitation of a glass beaker was exposed and replicated in 1910 by the magician William S. Marriott by means of a hidden thread.


Personal life

Her father was Eustachiusz Tomczyk. Tomczyk was a Catholic and lived at Hyde Park Mansions. In 1919, she married the psychical researcher
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 ...
, secretary of the Society for Psychical Research.Spence, Lewis. (2003). ''Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology''. p. 327.


Gallery

Stanislawa Tomczyk and ball.png, Tomczyk allegedly levitating a ball Stanislawa-Tomczyk-levitating-scissors-1909.jpg, Tomczyk, in trance, allegedly levitates scissors as psychologist
Julian Ochorowicz Julian Leopold Ochorowicz (Polish pronunciation: ; outside Poland also known as Julien Ochorowitz; Radzymin, 23 February 1850 – 1 May 1917, Warsaw) was a Polish philosopher, psychologist, inventor (precursor of radio and television), poet, p ...
watches Stanisława Tomczyk and William Marriott.png, Tomczyk (left) and magician William Marriott (right), who duplicated by natural means Tomczyk's trick of levitating a glass beaker Magician William Marriott and Stanisława Tomczyk.png, Tomczyk (left) and magician William Marriott (right)


See also

* Nina Kulagina * Notable claimants of psychokinetic ability


Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tomczyk 1975 deaths People from Cieszyn Silesia Polish psychics Polish Roman Catholics Psychokineticists Spiritual mediums Spiritualists Year of birth uncertain