[TABLE TIPPING]. Photographs of a Table Tipping Séance. Vienna: Dr. H. Heid, ca. 1882. Five images show a medium Frau Valesca Töepfer, psychical researcher H. Hellenbach, and the photographer H. Heid witnessing and presenting the mediumistic effect of table tipping. A wooden table is seen balanced or floating uncannily as if under spirit control, touched only by the tips of the fingers of the medium or the other participants. Photographer’s printed mounts, several with notations to versos identifying the subjects. Each 4 ¼ x 2 5/8”. Near fine. Sold together with a cabinet card portrait of the medium and her family by Heid, with inked notations to the verso identifying the sitters. A rare grouping of images depicting a famous feat of fraudulent spirit mediums in Victorian times.Approximately ten years after these images were captured, Frau Töepfer was jailed for two years for her fraudulent escapades as a spirit medium.