THE PHANTOM PARINI – THROUGH THE MEDIUM CARLOS MIRABELLI
Although the phantom ‘Parini’ materialized several times in séances by Carlos Mirabelli and could also be photographed in high quality – during the famous series of sessions at the Academia ‘Cesare Lombroso’ – we are presenting one of the rarely shown copies today. Its peculiarity has to do with the conditions under which the photo was supposedly taken and with a follow-up photo that may have been taken more or less immediately afterwards. But first let’s take a look at the photo in focus today. We edited it a little and brightened up the rather dark original!
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| In the ‘secured’ experimental space behind a large netting that spanned the room, the medium C. Mirabelli and the experimental director Prof. Castro were seated. Castro is securing the medium by hand in his chair, and just before the image exposure the spirit phantom of the Italian poet Parini has formed. |
CARLOS MIRABELLI’S PHANTOMS OFTEN APPEARED FLOATING
Usually Mirabellis daylight materializations appeared from a kind of distortion or fogging of the air. Some observers described cloud-like structures from which the phantoms seemed to descend. For the professors Castro and de Goes, too, it was nothing unusual to sit at one table with the phantoms. The visible allegedly 17th-century poet Parini mostly recited his own poetry during the short episodes of his manifested presence or announced his ‘identity’ in Italian!
The de-materializations were also well observable for the more than 300 Mirabelli-daylight-materialization-witnesses. Either the figures began to hover again, as can be seen in other photos, gradually reducing to half of their original size – or disappearing stepwise with more and more parts of their shape becoming invisible – until they finally were gone completely. In many cases, they were again enveloped by ‘a cloud’ before they disappeared. Other phantoms disintegrated at lightning speed and within a second simply left leaving the empty chair and the puzzled observers and experimenters behind…
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| This picture shows the scene taken a few minutes later. Castro has changed his seat after opening the tie for the medium to breathe better, and is now sitting on his left. The phantom in the meantime had overtaken his seat in Castro’s former chair and other experimenters were allowed to step through the safety net and sit next to the phantom to be photographed. We see on the right of the empty chair on which the phantom was sitting, Prof. de Goes and a colleague, holding hands. The phantom, however, had dissolved just in the second before the exposure of the photograph and the astonishment is clearly visible on the faces of the men! |
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| The Phantom Parini at another materialization session. Having sunk down from a cloud, it sits between medium Mirabelli and Prof. de Goes. The visible condition of the medium is impressive in this picture. In his trance, the mediums vital signs were often barely measurable and a few sessions were canceled by the medical staff present. When Mirabelli’s physiology was so shut down and it seemed as if his life-energy was feeding the phantom, it often smelled of corpse. Evidently, by the way, some newly deceased appeared in their shrouds … |
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| Some of the sessions were held at this table in the Academia Lombroso, and here too the photographers captured the moment immediately after de-materialization. Again, amazement speaks from the eyes of the medium at the empty chair on which one of the phantoms had sat just the second before… |
Just under 10 years after these recordings, the German parapsychologist Hans Driesch visited Mirabelli. At that point in time, his powers seemed exhausted and Mirabelli appeared to Driesch as a very old man who could only accomplish small object movements …
The publications about Mirabelli in their Portuguese originals were again and again only hardly possible to access due to the language barrier, and many important aspects did not come to light internationally before decades. The review of Polish or Icelandic literature on exceptional physical mediums such as Guzik, Kluski or Indridason was just as complicated and delayed the excavation of important materials sometimes for decades.
Today Mirabelli is counted as one of the great exceptional mediums of his time, a daylight medium that was able to demonstrate its strongest manifestations in slightly darkened daylight conditions…!
THANK YOU CARLOS MIRABELLI