Sordi, Signora Lucia (1871-?)

Italian physical medium, a working-class woman controlled by "Remigio," a spirit who specialized in giving demonstrations, under test conditions, of matter passing through matter, producing many-colored psychic lights, materializations, and telekinesis.

The clothes of the securely-fastened medium were often removed from under a labyrinth of knots while not the slightest ringing was heard from the small bells attached to her garments. Handcuffs and a straitjacket were similarly taken off, and the medium herself was repeatedly placed outside a padlocked wooden fence more than two yards high.

In 1911, the Societa de Studi Psichici de Milano engaged Sordi's services for test sittings during a period of not less than a year. During this investigation, Baron Schrenck-Notzing at-tended two of the sittings. He discovered no trickery but expressed an opinion in Psychische Studien that the results might have been obtained by purely mechanical means. This opinion stimulated an animated controversy. In December 1911, and in the following January, the medium sat for scientists in Rome. An interesting account of an attempted exposure is given by Professor V. Tummolo in Luce e Ombra. A sitter being touched by a solid materialized limb switched on an electric lamp and produced a dazzling light. Tummolo continues,

"Then to my sight there appeared a sort of transparent shirt, which vanished immediately, instantaneously entering the medium. The latter, who happened to be standing at some distance from the cabinet and not far from the individual responsible for the sudden illumination, fell to the ground like a corpse, and then commenced to wail in an indescribable manner. Every possible attention was hastily rendered her; but she expectorated blood, and felt terrible pains in the region of the heart until the next day—pains which forced her to utter cries which she was unable to repress…. In the cabinet, immediately after the event just narrated, the medium's gown was found completely buttoned up, in spite of the fact that she was still bound in the manner previously described—bound, that is to say, in respect to her hands and body, with a network of ribbon."

Tummolo expressed his conviction of the genuineness of Sordi's mediumship.