Forlì families in the conspiracy against Riario and were considered traitors, while others of our family remained faithful”.
“And so my ancestors were forced to change the surname to Plaxxxxx. to separate us from the original family who had not betrayed the trust they had received and remained a family of nobles. Then with the passing of the centuries, we went from fallen nobles to administrators and city officials and gradually became simple employees and workers of various kinds here in Romagna”.
“Is that all?” asked the researcher.
“It may not seem like much to you, but I assure you that buried down in a forgotten and fallen family is a condemnation to amnesia for me”, explained the witness.
“That may be true, but you have tried to remember and keep many things alive, and you don't seem a forgetful guy to me”.
“Yes, but a lot of people of my family became forgetful from a long time ago. And will not enough for me to remember everything for redeem and regain our lost family memories.”
“Do you have many relatives?”
“I had many relatives. Now most of them have a surname similar to mine and they don't even know any more who they used to be and that we were relatives”, the witness laughed.
“Why don't try to explain or tell something to them” said the researcher.
“Come on. Most people wouldn't even know what I'm talked about, and a few others wouldn't even care to remember if it is true what they heard. Men create their own prisons and then forget themselves in”.
“Maybe you're right”, said the researcher, thinking about it for a moment. Then he added, “Please continue”.
“At the end of 1700 an ancestor of mine, with French Enlightenment ideas, became an official collaborator with the Jacobins of the Napoleonic government, then settled in Forli, and also wrote some reports and surveys on our population for their administrators”.
“He was apparently an esoteric masonic group with some Napoleonic officials in and began to study mesmerism23 which had taken its roots in France at the time”.
“Carry on”, the researcher urged him.
“At night they used gathered together with Frenchmen in some rooms of the town hall and try to mesmerize many people to see what had happened in those places. And my enlightened ancestor also transcribed some things about what happened during those experiments”.
“Mesmerize”? The hypnotic practice discovered by Anton Mesmer?”
“Not really. Mesmerizing wasn't like hypnotizing and putting someone to sleep, but it was like magnetizing or tuning on, as we would say today, a person with someone or something”.
“Never heard of it before”, replied the researcher in amazement.
“Depends on how long time you means before. It existed in Mozart's time and only a century ago you would still have heard of this practice. Today it's no longer used, but back then it was used to mental connect a person with a place or another person”.
“You gives me some creeps just thinking about it. What happened anyway?” asked the researcher.
“It happened that some people mesmerized told what really happened in past and how some things had occurred in the centuries before, while others went over many details of what take place and told it like a heck.”
“Who were these people?”
“Some were Forli Jacobins in favour of the Napoleonic government that had settled for a short time in Forli, others were ordinary citizens and officials. And others were French military”.
“Carry on”.
“There were people who told many details, others who saw things that happened, others were a little reticent or frightened and told little or nothing”, explained the witness.
“And your great-grandfather would have told you all this when you were eleven?” asked the researcher.
“No. My great-grandfather was not yet born at that time, but he had heard from his father what had happened there and told me what they had done and what he still knew”.
“So your descendants told each other over and over the time what they knew and many of these things came from your ancestors in your hands?” asked the researcher.
“Pretty much, yes”.
“Tell me that”, said the researcher.
“After the Napoleonic government passed by, my Jacobin ancestor became an official of the municipality of Forli and died murdered by an his alleged illegitimate son in 1830”.
“Many years later another his nephews became custodian of the municipal warehouses which were then on the ground floor of the courtyard of the town hall. And he too, following in the footsteps of our ancestors, did esoteric research with other people in the late 1800s”.
“Did they only do esoteric research or did they something else too?” asked the researcher.
“They did something else too. So while they were there, they did some séances in the fortress of Ravaldino, that was the old fortress of Riario and Caterina Sforza, to which they had the access keys”, replied the witness.
“Séances in the late 1800s?”
“Sure. That was the heyday of those things all over the world”.
“That's true, but with all those mesmeric and séance sessions they did, what happened in the end?” asked curios the researcher.
“It happened that they tried to recall different people and not just Riario, to get him to tell them new things and many details”.
“Who did they recall?”
“Several people. One was Caterina Sforza, the others were some characters from Forli. Among other things, in the fortress of Ravaldino showed up the spirits of some French officers and Italian Jacobins who, eighty years before during the Napoleonic-Jacobin reign, had done mesmeric sessions inside that fortres, when they used as barracks for French soldiers”, explained the witness.
“Who were they?”
“French soldiers and some Forli officials from the Napoleonic era. The fact is that eighty years later, when the fashion for spiritualism arrived, other citizens towards the end of the 1800s, tried to summon people of all kinds to find out what had happened in past”.
“And these people who did the séances, eighty years after Napoleon's fall, who were they?” asked the researcher.
“I won't give you the names, but some of them were citizens. Others were former Garibaldians and Republicans. The keeper of the castle who took part in all this was my ancestor and, in 1957 when I was 11 years old, my great-grandfather told me a lot about what they knew and discovered then”.
“And what did they find out?”
“Many things about Riario and Caterina
