Flying crockery – ‘it’s magnetism’.
After spending 24 hours in the house of “flying furniture” at Seaford, New York State, an observer says he believes he may have solved the mystery. His solution: Two underground streams meet under the home and have set up a magnetic field that passes through the house. For three weeks sugar bowls are reported to have moved by themselves and several other items of crockery and furniture are said to have broken or moved. – B.U.P.
Manchester Evening News, 28th February 1958.
Family plagued by “flying furniture”.
Dr. Gaither Pratt, Director of the Parapsychology Laboratory at Duke University New York, has been called in to study the mystery of the flying objects in the home of Mr. and Mrs. James Hermann. More than three weeks ago, the Hermanns reported that they began to be plagued by bottles which mysterious became uncapped, overturned, spilled, and even flew through the air.
The latest occurrences involved weighty objects like a record player, said to have flown ten feet through the air and crashed against a shelf, and a large world globe which travelled from one room into another. Upset by the unexplained happenings, and beseiged by reporters, photographers and police, the family which includes two children, has now left to stay with relatives.
Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, 7th March 1958.
https://archive.org/details/paranth_vol4no1a/page/n41/mode/2up?q=poltergeist+seaford
Priest Blessed House of Strange Events.
Seaford, N.Y., March 4 (NC).
A priest who blessed the house here where a series of reportedly inexplicable events have taken place said he can offer non explanation. Father William J. McCloud of St. William the Abbot Church said he visited the home of Mr and Mrs James M. Hermann, members of the parish, at the family’s request. “I went out there February 11 and blessed the house. This was about a week after the strange events were said to have begun. Mrs Hermann told me that things were normal for two days after my visit, but that after that time, it all started again,” Father McCloud said.
The Hermanns have reported that since February 3 the mysterious happenings in their house have included the unscrewing and popping of bottle caps and the hurling of appliances and other articles by an “unknown force.”
Father McCloud, a priest from Edmonton, Alta., who is helping out at this Long Island parish, said many persons who have visited the home and seen the apparent results of the unknown force have volunteered that the force is a poltergeist – “a mischievous, unnatural force of some kind known to man for centuries.” Among the group – including newsmen and police officials – investigating the reported happenings was Dr. J. Gaither Pratt, a psychologist from Duke University’s Parapsychology Laboratory. He said the laboratory studies “nonphysical factors of man as they apply to telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition and the power of the mind to affect the behaviour of matter.”
The Catholic Northwest Progress, 7th March 1958.