Levitation

When I was in high school many years ago, when dinosaurs still roamed the earth, I had an interesting experience. Okay, maybe I had several interesting experiences, but on this occasion I--and all the other participants--was stone cold sober.

I had never heard of the levitation stunt before, and have since never heard reference to it in person or media. A websearch seems to indicate that it's still a current party trick in the U.K., so if I'm boring our Brit readers, please don't let me know.

What we did was four of us stood around a seated Fred Cossins (you may have to find a substitute if Fred is not available) and pressed down on his shoulders for maybe thirty seconds, whereupon we lifted him to the ceiling as if he were nearly weightless, using two fingers each. It felt like he weighed about two pounds--not that we were dividing his 150 pounds amongst our eight fingers.

So riddle me this: What's the mechanism? I can't imagine that thirty seconds of silence releases much adrenaline; I can't imagine that I could be fooled into thinking that thirty-seven pounds of effort feels like two; I can't believe any random four people can be so easily and instantly autohypnotized. Some websites suggest that the converse is also possible: Fred could have been made too heavy to pick up, then made weightless. I'd experiment, but I don't have four friends.

You'll find lots mumbo-jumbo on the Web; The Amazing Randi is dismissive of it but doesn't bother telling us why. The only reference I've found in print is from The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren, by Iona and Peter Opie, ©1959 Oxford:

Two witnesses may be quoted on this curiosity. The first is a correspondent, who was at school in Bath in the 1940's, writing 22 June 1952:

"The queerest happening I know of I have on my own memory. Some of my form-mates one day resolved to try a trick they had heard of, in which one person sat in a chair, and several others (I think four) stood round, with some part of their hands pressed on the victim's head--I think it was their thumbs. The idea was to continue this in an atmosphere of intense concentration by all (no talking or giggles) for a few minutes, after which it was supposed that the person sitting, contrary to all the laws of nature, would actually become lighter and could be lifted by the others as easily as if she were a cushion. This experiment was watched with keen interest by the form, and seemed to have a curiously uncanny effect. Whether by self-hypnotism or not I do not know, but the lifters, with a few fingers only under arm-pits and knees, certainly lifted the seated one with ease and grace into the air, and put her down in the same manner. It was more like real magic than anything else I have seen."

The other is that "good scholler and sober man" Mr. Brisband, as reported by Pepys in his diary for 31 July 1665:

"This evening with Mr. Brisband, speaking of enchantments and spells, I telling him some of my charms; he told me this of his owne knowledge, at Bourdeaux in France. The words these:

"Voyci un Corps mort,
Roy comme un Baston,
Froid comme Marbre,
Leger comme un esprit,
Levons te au nom de Jesus Christ."

[See a dead body,
Still as a stone,
Cold as marble,
Light as a ghost,
We lift you in the name of Jesus Christ.]

"He saw four little girles, very young ones, all kneeling, each of them, upon one knee; and one begun the first line, whispering in the eare of the next, and the second to the third, and the third to the fourth, and she to the first. Then the first begun the second line, and so round quite through, and, putting each one finger only to a boy that lay flat upon his back on the ground., as if he was dead; at the end of the words, they did with their four fingers raise this boy as high as they could reach, and he [Mr. Brisband] being there, and wondering at it, as also being afeard to see it, for they would have had him to have bore a part in saying the words, in the roome of one of the little girles that was so young that they could hardly make her learn to repeat the words, did, for feare there might be some sleight used in it by the boy, or that the boy might be light, call the cook of the house, a very lusty fellow, as Sir G. Carteret's cook, who is very big, and they did raise him in just the same manner. This is one of the strangest things I ever heard, but he tells it me of his owne knowledge, and I do heartily believe it to be true. I enquired of him whether they were Protestant or Catholique girles; and he told me they were Protestant, which made it the more strange to me."

Experiment. Discuss.