Eva Carrière

Eva Carrière (born Marthe Béraud), also known as Eva C, was a prominent spiritualist and psychic medium in the early 20th century. She was born in 1886 in France.

Béraud was the daughter of a French officer and was the fiancée of General Elie Noël's son, Maurice, who died in the Congo from tropical disease in 1904 before the marriage could take place. Béraud was living with General Noël and his wife at Villa Carmen in Algiers and claimed her mediumship ability had developed after the death of her fiancé.

In 1905 she held a series of séances at Villa Carmen and sitters were invited. In these séances she claimed to materialize a spirit called Bien Boa a 300-year-old Brahmin Hindu, however, photographs taken of Boa looked like the figure was made from a large cardboard cutout. In other sittings Charles Richet reported that Boa was breathing, had moved around the room and had touched him, a photograph taken revealed Boa to be a man dressed up in a cloak, helmet and beard.

A newspaper article in 1906 had revealed that an Arab coachman known as Areski who had previously worked at the villa had been hired to play the part of Bien Boa and that the entire thing was a hoax. Areski wrote that he made his appearance into the room by a trapdoor. Béraud had also admitted to being involved with the hoax.

In 1909 Béraud changed her name to Eva Carrière (Eva C) and began a new career as a medium to hide the fraud of her past.

Carrière's psychic performances were investigated by Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes mystery series. He believed that her performances were genuine and that she was not engaged in any deception. Another psychic investigator of the time, Harry Houdini, observed one of her séances and asserted that they were fraudulent. Houdini was never convinced by Carrière and likened her performance to a magician's trick, the Hindu needle trick.

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