One of the earliest investigated cases of an “electric person” was that of Angélique Cottin of La Perière, France. At the age of fourteen a strange condition befell her in which any object she went near would retreat from her, as if pushed, like magnets repelling each other. The mere touch of her hand was enough to send heavy furniture flying away from her. No one could hold down the furniture or stop it moving violently.
A study group was appointed by the French Academy of Sciences, and a well-known physicist of the day, François Arago, published a report in the Journal des Débats (February 1846). There is a lengthy translation of this report, entitled “The Electrical Girl”, published in Popular Science Monthly, Vol 6, March 1875.
Here is an example of what they observed while studying the phenomenon. Angélique approached a table, which was repelled as soon as it came in contact with her apron. She seated herself upon a chair with her feet resting on the floor, and the chair was thrown violently against the wall, while she was sent in another direction. This experiment was repeated, over and over. Neither Arago, nor Gougin, nor Laugier, also present, could hold the chair immovable, and M. Gougin, seating himself in one-half of it, while the girl occupied the other, was thrown upon the floor as soon as she took possession of it.
They had no explanation, of course, nor even speculated much. But they did find that Angélique’s unique powers seemed to emanate from her left side and were strongest in the evening. The episode lasted 10 weeks, before the strange manifestations finally ceased.
The Academy concluded that it was all a fraud by the slight little girl; apparently she had secret muscle reflexes that allowed her to throw a 100lb table or chair across the room, while disguising all movement from the observers! - Ridiculous but a predictable outcome. Of course as soon as the word “fraud” is uttered, even be it by buffoons of the day, all scientific interest ceases and the eggheads no longer have to trouble their (tiny) minds with the issue. But for my readers, who are made of intellectually sturdier stuff than French Academicians, there’s more!
George Gould and Walter Pyle, in their massive 1896 compilation of strange pathology called Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine mention a six-year-old Zulu boy who gave off intense shocks and was exhibited at Edinburgh in 1882. From infancy he had been distinguished for this faculty, variable with the state of the atmosphere (which almost certainly connects it with electrical atmospheric phenomena). Foder, in his Encyclopedia of Psychic Science, tells of a baby born at Saint-Urbain, France, in 1869 who badly shocked all who touched him. Luminous rays would shoot from his fingers, and when he died at just nine months old, radiance was observed around his body for several minutes. Later in the book we will be meeting biophotons, or light given off by living organisms. It’s real and there is thus a plausible origin for these strange phenomena. Let’s call this “high voltage syndrome”, since it is clearly pathological.
Douglas Hunt, writing in Prediction (January 1953) gives two other cases of high-voltage infants: one was able to charge up a Leyden jar and the other could cause “vibrations” in objects held near him, and was seen to be surrounded by a soft, white radiance. Colin Wilson, in his Mammoth Encyclopedia of the Unsolved1 cites the case of Jennie Morgan of Sedalia, Missouri, who in 1895, generated charge sufficient to knock a grown man on his back and when she touched a water pump handle, sparks flew from her fingertips.
One of the most remarkable stories (to me) was a piece in Electrical Experimenter (June 1920) in which Dr. JB Ransom, chief physician at Clinton prison, New York, reported 34 convicts suffering from botulinus poisoning. One had tried to throw away a piece of paper and found it stuck to his hand. Soon all the afflicted inmates were in the same highly charged condition, varying in intensity