Eva Carrière

Eva Carrière (born Marthe Beraud) also known as Eva C was a 19th-century French spiritualist medium.

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Fraud

Gustav Geley investigated the mediumship of Carrière and concluded she was genuine, but after his death photographs were discovered which showed fraud. Wires could be seen running from Carrière's head supporting fake ectoplasm.[1] Baron Schrenck-Notzing also investigated Carrière and believed the ectoplasm she produced was genuine.[2] The Schrenck-Notzing experiments were bogus as scientific controls were scarce and there was evidence that Eva was freeing her hands.[3]

Carrière claimed to materialise a spirit known as "Bien Boa". However, a man called Areski admitted in a 1906 newspaper article that the entire thing was a hoax and that he had dressed up as Boa. Carrière had used cut out face clippings from the French magazine Le Miroir as her ectoplasm faces.

Ruth Brandon in her book The Spiritualists (1983) documented the fraud of Carrière throughout her career.[4]

Sexual activities

Eva has been described as "perverse and neurotic".[5] She was well known for running around the séance room naked indulging in sexual activities with her audience. According to Kalush and Sloman (2006), "[Juliette] Bisson would, during the course of the pre-séance examaination, introduce her finger into Eva's vagina to ensure no "ectoplasm" had been loaded there beforehand to fool the investigators. The whole procedure was so enjoyable for Eva that she often stripped nude at the end of a séance and demanded another full-on gynecological exam."[6]

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References
  1. J. Gordon Melton The Encyclopedia of Religious Phenomena Visible Ink Press, 2007 ISBN 1578592097
  2. Policing Epistemic Deviance: Albert von Schrenck-Notzing and Albert Moll
  3. Peter H. Aykroyd, Angela Narth A History of Ghosts: The True Story of Séances, Mediums, Ghosts, and Ghostbusters Rodale Books, 2009, p. 62 ISBN 1605298751
  4. Ruth Brandon. The Spiritualists. New York: Alfred E. Knopf, Print. 1983.
  5. Spirit Summonings Time-Life Books, 1989, p. 64
  6. William Kalush, Larry Ratso Sloman The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America's First Superhero 2006, p. 419
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