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Albert De Rochas D'Aiglun - Levitation of the human body

In the Journal of Psychic Studies, M. César de Vesme speaks [February 1903 issue] of a case that was recently observed in the United States. It is said to be a 12-year-old girl named Stella Lundelius, the daughter of a Swedish photographer residing in Port-Jervis. Since her earliest childhood, she had the ability to increase the apparent weight of her body at will. To produce the phenomenon, Stella presses her fingertips against the experimenter's wrist, forehead or neck; so many men, by combining their efforts, are unable to lift her off the ground, although she normally weighs no more than thirty kilos.

As these experiments resulted in a lot of interest, Mr. Lundelius was invited to take his daughter to New York to be studied by a committee of doctors. After long and meticulous experiments, the committee made a detailed report in which it concluded that the phenomenon was real and proposed as an explanation the difference that had been observed many times between "live weight" and "dead weight". He cites as examples the fact that the rider becomes lighter on his horse and the soldier who, carried on a stretcher in the hospital, lets himself be so heavy that his comrades protest and ask him to make himself less heavy.