Anna Melloni

The infamous ‘Mrs. Melloni,’ née Anna Rasmussen,

Anna Melloni Rasmussen was born in 1898 in Denmark. She was famous for the séances she held with her husband in the 1940s, in which she claimed to make contact with the dead.

As soon as the age of 12 years of age. Anna allegedly began here medium gifts with table lifting.

After some time she began to developed telekinesis phenomena and automatic writings, but she wrote with both hands backwards and blindfolded and you could only read this in a mirror. After some time she began with light phenomena and also to talk in trance. Anna’s guide was called Dr Lazarus. Anna sat with photographer Sven Turck, also a Danish investigator; he wrote a book about his many years’ experiences under his research and tested many mediums.

In October/November 1921, a first investigation was conducted by Fritz Grunewaldes laboratory in Berlin. This investigation and the results were given to the international congress for psychical research in Warsaw in 1923.

In 1922 another experiment was conducted with Professor Christian Winther of the Polytechnic Academy in Copenhagen. There was more scientific Investigation, Professor Bondorff also carried out tests but they were unconclusive

Anna sat for over 30 researchers in Europe, and one of them was for Harry Price, who him self in his book said, that Anna Mellonie Rasmussen was a real medium and had the gifts.

However, after years of popularity, the couple’s hoax was exposed in 1950, following a hidden camera investigation that revealed that it was actually Mrs. Melloni who had knocked on tables on swung pendulums attributed to spirits from beyond. Ritzau news bureau issued the 1950 telegram on the investigation, which became a sensational exposé in the newspapers of the time. Psychic adherents soon became a laughing stock, and the Melloni controversy was even panned in a Bakken amusement park revue, with the Liva Weel/ Ib Schønberg duet ‘What A Pair.’

But Anna Melloni was not to succumb so easily to public ridicule. She relished her role in the media spotlight, and simply refused, so to speak, to give up the ghost. Mrs. Melloni continued to take part in séances, in which undead spirits took off people’s clothes and shoes, mysteriously levitated heavy tables and flung chairs.