The only real ghost I have ever met was an unusually pretty seventeen-year-old girl. I had been asked to investigate the cause of a troublesome “haunting” in a Midland village, which had defied all local efforts at solution. The inhabitants were a transparently honest working-man, his good-natured wife, and their daughter. The man, who was not the kind to exaggerate, assured me that periodically in the evenings furniture would move about of its own accord, and things used to fall from the mantelpiece and elsewhere on to the floor.
The first evening I spent there nothing happened, but the next was exciting enough with a vengeance. Just after tea, and without the least warning, a clock at which I was glancing literally jumped from its place, swung round sideways and came to the floor in a definite spiral. Astounding as this sounds, it is perfectly accurate. Next minute, a vase came toppling down within a few inches of my head and smashed to atoms on the floor.
But I already knew all I wanted. The curious action of the clock showed me that the cause of the trouble was the cottager’s pretty daughter, who was at the time in the room above. She was what is scientifically known as a poltergeist – that is, a person in the vicinity of whom objects move without any apparent cause, though whether at the will of the person or not is unknown. The condition usually only exists in adolescents, and is one of the unexplained mysteries of human life. Anyway, I suggested that if the girl was put in a job away from home with fresh interests, the condition would probably pass off; and that actually happened as soon as she was found a place in a neighbouring factory. Considerable experience and investigation has convinced me that, with the exception of these poltergeists, nothing else that can fairly be called ghostly exists.
Bedfordshire Times and Independent – 22nd December 1933