Classic Mysteries September 2016

Classic Mysteries—Alternate Perceptions Magazine, September 2016

The mysterious bodily excursions of the Pansini brothers

by: Brent Raynes

Back in 1901, an Italian building contractor named Signor Mauro Pansini, moved his family to an old house in Ruvo, in Apulia, Italy. Within a few days, poltergiest activity suddenly broke out in the home as various articles began to be flung through the air by some unseen agency. Then one evening, the contractor's son, Alfredo Pansini, then 7, unexpectedly lapsed into a trance state and began speaking in French, Latin and Greek. It took sending the young boy off to a seminary to break him free of the strange entrancements. Then later, when he was returned home in 1904, at age 10, a new series of paranormal manifestations began. This time it not only involved this young Alfredo, but his younger brother Paolo, who was 8. It was reported that somehow they would be bodily transported in a few minutes time to locations 10 to 15 miles distance. The parents were very upset and bewildered and reached out to the Bishop of Bitonto for help. In fact, later while the mother was talking with the bishop both boys mysterious vanished from the room. No one who witnessed the phenomenon could explain it. Italian scientists proposed a theory they called ambulatory automatism wherein the boys presumably moved about while in an altered state of consciousness. However, no one could explain how the boys could have run the miles that they would have had to have run without someone along the road observing them.

Alfredo reportedly could answer mental questions using automatic writing. A spirit allegedly speaking through him explained how he would dematerialize at one place and apparently rematerialize at another.

Reference: An Encyclopaedia of Psychic Science: The only comprehensive survey of every kind of Psychical Phenomena known to Mankind, by Dr. Nandor Fodor. University Books Inc., 1966; The Citadel Press, 1974.