The narrative we are now about to cite has been published in many languages and widely circulated through the Continental journals of the period, 1862-3. The best and most impartial summary of the case is to be found in the London Spiritual Magazine of February, 1864, written by Mr William Howitt, under the caption of “Persecution and expulsion from his patrimonial house of M. Joller, of the Swiss National Council, by disorderly spirits.”
The extracts which we find most pertinent to this case, taken from Mr Howitt’s narrative, commence as follows:-
“In the third volume of this magazine, p.499, the reader will find an article headed ‘Manifestations at Lucerne.’ This article consists of extracts from different Swiss newspapers, giving an account of the extraordinary appearances, noises, and other annoyances going on, from the autumn of 1860 to that of 1862, in the house of M. Joller, at Stans, a village on the borders of the Lake of Lucerne. Some of these newspapers, in the usual style of such journals, were inclined to be witty, if not wise, over these occurrences; but a correspondent well known to us, and one of our most valued contributors, had taken the trouble to go himself to Stans, and ascertain what were the facts on the spot. He tells us that he found M. Joller, a lawyer, a man of middle age, having several children, his eldest son being about twenty. That he bore an excellent character, and was well known throughout the country. He found Stans a village about an hour’s sail by steamboat from Lucerne, standing in a charming valley one or two miles from the shore, fruitful, well peopled, by no means sombre or solitary, and surrounded by magnificent mountains. M. Joller confirmed the supernatural facts which have proved so startling to the public, and so grievous to him. The letter of our correspondent is dated the 4th of October, 1862. On the 22nd of the same month, or only eighteen days later, M. Joller was compelled by these unpitying polter-geister to abandon his hereditary home, with all his family.
“Mr Joller has now published the story of his unmerited sufferings and banishment from his natal hearth by these troublesome intruders, in a small brochure of ninety-one pages. This little book now lies before us, and certainly no more extraordinary case of supernatural persecution has yet been put on record.
“Every one familiar with the Lake of Lucerne, must have a pretty good idea of the situation of Stans, when it is said that from M. Joller’s house, Mount Pilatus on the one hand, and the Rigi on the other, are in full view. This house and property, M. Joller informs us, had been in the possession of his family for about a hundred years.
“It was in this house that M. Joller, an active and popular lawyer, and member of the national council, lived from the death of his father in 1845, to the summer of 1862, in peace and happiness. Then, suddenly, in the autumn of 1860, uncanny sounds and sights began to show themselves to the astonishment of all, and for some time to the persevering disbelief of M. Joller. ‘In my house,’ he says, ‘bloomed seven healthy children, four boys and three girls. In our abode superstition ever had been a rejected thing; and I may assert that scarcely any family had been brought up with so little fear of ghosts as mine.’
“The troublesome visitations made their debut by first rapping on the bedstead of the servant-maid, raps which she said she not only heard but felt, one night in the autumn of 1860. She immediately expressed her belief that this was the token of an approaching death in the family. The maid slept in a room on the third story, so that it could not well be any mischievous person playing a trick; but M. Joller strictly commanded her to keep her superstitious notions to herself, and ascribed the raps to the girl’s own imagination, which she would, however, on no account admit. The rapping was not again repeated for some weeks, but after that interval M. Joller came home from a temporary absence and found his family in great alarm. His wife and second daughter, sleeping in his own room, had been awaked by loud rappings on a table in the room. On demanding if it were any living agent, that it should rap again, it did so promptly. They also now entertained the notion that it was the messenger of death, and a letter informing them in a few days of the decease of a friend, confirmed that idea. They were soon, however, to be convinced that it was nothing temporary.
“In June, 1861, one of the boys, nine years of age, being in a wood-chamber on the third story, was found in a swoon. As he was a stout and fearless lad, great was the wonder, and on coming to himself, he said as he was in the chamber he heard knocks on the door, of which he took no notice, but immediately afterwards a white indistinct figure opened the door and entered, when he lost consciousness. This M. Joller endeavoured to account for by the erudite solvent of all difficulties – imagination. But M. Joller was not to be let off so easily. The other boys in their bedroom heard noises in the night in the rooms above and below them, and called out to know who was making the noise. M. Joller endeavoured to persuade them that they were cats or rats, or birds that made the noises; and yet he now recollected to have heard similar sounds on his own writing table, and that frequently, two years ago.
“In the autumn of 1861, the maid renewed her complaints. She said she was afraid of remaining alone in the kitchen. As she cleaned the shoes in an evening on the steps near the kitchen door, grey shapes appeared from the cellar below. They came upstairs into her chamber, and she heard them sobbing in the fourth story, which was a lumber room. Mrs Joller scolded her for her fancies. But the same things appeared to the children, and the youngest daughter about eleven years old, at her studies in the day, saw a child enter, walk up to her, and vanish. The maid-servant was dismissed in October of 1862, and a girl of only thirteen taken in her place to do the more common work of the house, the mother and daughters, in Swiss fashion, undertaking the rest. From that time to the summer of 1862 all was quiet, the medium seemed to have gone in the maid; but this was not the case, for two of the boys who slept in a chamber leading by a terrace into the garden, declared that they still heard at nights knocking on the walls; others said that they heard in the rooms above a going to and fro as of a heavy dog, and knockings on the walls and the floors. Still M. Joller endeavoured to persuade his family that these sounds proceeded from merely natural causes.
“On the 15th of August, M. Joller had occasion to visit Lucerne, with his wife and eldest son, and on his return the rest of the children had relations of fresh apparitions to make. This time he threatened them sternly with the rod if he heard any more ‘such nonsense’; and the children complained sorrowfully that ‘their father would believe nothing.’ But the very same forenoon the children were frightened out of the house by knockings, and as they sat down on the doorsteps leading to the gardens, a pebble the size of a man’s fist was thrown from somewhere above or from the house, and fell betwixt two of them. Returning to the house they found all the doors of the rooms, drawers and cupboards standing open. These they closed and locked, only to see them fly open again. They then locked the door of the chamber adjoining the sitting-room, and bolted it with the night bolt, but notwithstanding both, it was thrown open, and all the windows and doors standing open were as suddenly closed. Hearing also a heavy step on the stairs, though nobody was visible, they flew again in to the garden. Returning at noon to dinner, they saw a strange spectre on the staircase, and hurried once more into the garden with the dinner apparatus, and took refuge under a large walnut tree. As the girl carried the plates out from the kitcehn, she saw doors still opening and shutting and the children from the garden saw all the windows open.
“The disturbances now came thicker and faster. The humming of spinning-wheels was heard in th ehouse; occasionally a strange music; furniture began to move about; then the music was accompnaied by the audible singing in a melancholy tone, of Camilla’s prayer in Zampa, ‘Gleiches Loos,’ &c., and a voice said in the Nidwalden patois, ‘Wenn au gar niemer umen isch!’ ‘If I should never come again!’ Still more extraordinary, not only they, but the woman of the adjoining house, saw on the house floor, drawn with the accuracy of an engraving, a snow-white figure with a death’s head, which they watched for some time till it faded quite out. The same evening, on a fire being kindled in the ground story, called the hut, a conical figure surrounded by flames, came down the chimney, and, dissolving into water, drowned the fire out, and raised a wild cry from the maid and the children, which brought down the mother, who found the group sitting in the abutting house of the tenant weeping in terror.
“M. Joller now received information of like things going on in other places, from persons of education and intelligence, but he still persisted in ascribing these things to natural causes. But the time was now come for him to meet the enemy face to face. On the 19th of August, as he arrived at home in the evening, his wife called him into the house passage to hear the knocking going on. Then he soon had ample evidence that the stories of the maids and children had foundation enough. The knocking went on briskly on the wall before him; then in the scullery. He followed, putting his ear close to the place, and pretending that it must be a rat, struck some heavy blows on the wall to frighten the rat away. To his astonishment, the blows were returned with equal vigour and in equal number. He then called for a candle, and examined the passage and scullery closely. In vain; so he summoned his family to the sitting-room, declared he would find it all out next morning; and bringing Zschokke’s ‘Book of Family Worship,’ began to read aloud his 28th chapter, namely, ‘On the Power of Superstition.’
“The spirit, howevver, cared neither for M. Joller nor Zschokke, but began pounding on the room door so vigorously, that his reading was soon brought to an end, and the children asked triumphantly, ‘Is that a rat, then?’ Incensed at this, and strongly persuaded that some one was playing the fool with him, he seized a candle, armed himself with a stiletto, and sallied forth to hunt out the villain. The outer doors and windows being fast, he felt sure that he must soon detect him. He descended to the cellar, made a vigorous search amongst the barrels and behind the door. Nothing there! but above his head the knocking was now going on blithely. He ascended, followed the sound from place to place; sometimes with his candle, sometimes without it, stealing along in the dark to pounce on the rogue. Taking nothing by his motion, however, he ordered all to bed. The noises nevertheless became such, that the whole family had flown together into one room, and there the knocking came. The bedstead was seized and banged against the wall till the whole bed shook. M. Joller examined under the bed and into every corner of the room, but in vain, though he found the doors and windows all fast. As he was thus employed, he heard raps on the chairs, and felt a soft stroking on the forefinger of his left hand.
“From this time till that when the family was driven from the house, the haunting was almost incessant; and the knockings, the throwing about of furniture, the visible presentment of spirits has rarely had a parallel in teh history of such phenomena. There might have been room to suppose that the maids and children had given way to imaginary fears, but from this time forward the disorders became the subject of incessant public observation. The news flew about, spite of all M. Joller’s endeavours to keep it at home; and hundreds and thousands of people flocked from the country round to witness the proceedings – and did witness them in crowds. …
“The next morning he kept his word, and made a thorough examination of the house; and the spirits gave him the amplest opportunity to try his skill. They knocked everywhere, till he saw the very wainscot bend beneath their blows. As he was born in th ehouse, and as an inquisitive lad, had watched all repairs going on at different periods, he says there was not a handbreadth of its wall or roof that was not familiar to him. The knockings were everywhere. Now thumping on a door, he opened it, and held it fast in his hands, when the knocks were given on each side at once. On one occasion he stood with a chamber door ajar, and suddenly pulling it open as the first knock fell on it, saw a dark figure outside; but before he could spring forward, his wife and a daughter who were in the room, simultaneously cried out that they saw a brown bony arm at the moment withdrawn from the door. They did this so completely together that he was convinced that each saw the same thing. The servant flew upstairs to say that she had heard something come down the stiars, and three times groaningly exclaim, ‘Take pity on me!’ She added that she looked eagerly, but could see nothing; yet soon after she saw a grey transparent little cloud float in at the kitchen window, and pass with a vibrating motion to the chamber door, where it had knocked loudly.
“Driven to a late conviction of what he had to deal with, M. Joller hastened to beg the Commissary Niederberger to come and see these things; but he being absent, Father Guardian came, and watched the phenomena with deep interest, but without being able to suggest a solution of the cause. He thought an investigation by men of authority should take place; but M. Joller, dreading the consequences of publicity, for the present hesitated. The Father bestowed the usual blessing on the house and withdrew. The bewildered M. Joller then drew out his dust-covered college notes on experimental physics, made at Munich, while attending the class of Professor Sieber, but they afforded him no light.
“Neither the blessing of the reverend Father, nor the philosophical enquiry suspended the disturbances for an instant. The next day, as the Court of Justice was sitting at Lucerne, he was obliged to attend on business, but he was sent for before the Court rose, the house at home being in the most frightful uproar. Arriving, he found all his family in the open air, not daring to stay under the roof. Numbers of people were collected on the high road looking at the house, in great excitement. Having no fear, he entered the house, and found the doors madly flying open and then banging to with a violence that threatened to demolish them. In the kitchen he found the glasses, bottles, and earthenware standing on the table ringing as if struck with a metallic instrument. The knockings were in so many parts of the house at once, that had it been men who did it, it would have required four or five, yet not a man was in the house except himself.
“He here called in an old friend, the Councillor Zimmermann, Dr K. von Deschwanden, an accomplished natural philosopher; the President of the Court of Justice, Obermatt, Judge Schallberger, Master Builder Aloys Amstad, and Drawing Master Obermatt. These gentlemen witnessed with astonishment the phenomena. They sought everywhere for some physical cause, and propounded many theories of Vulcanism, magnetism, galvanism, electricity, etc. But at length they went away as much puzzled as many other scientific men had been in like circumstances.
“The next day, Mr President Obermatt brought other gentlemen to witness the disturbances, and one of these suggested whether it might not be some electrical machine on the premises which was grown thus riotous, when the eldest son of M. Joller, who had been cautioned by his father to be secret on the real cause, concedingly observed that it might be so. This was enough. It does not appear that there was any electrical machine on the premises, but the frolics of the spirits went on with a violence that no twenty electrical machines in the house could account for. Doors were fiercely flung open, bolts and bars dashed vehemently back. Figures were seen by different people, and the second son fainted and fell at the sight of one. The house was now rarely unoccupied by crowds of people, before whom the manifestations went on in full force and variety. Before the Land-Captain Zelger, the Director of Police Jann, Dr Christen, the President of the Court of Justice again, and many other persons of condition, the Episcopal Commissary Niederberger, and Father Guardian made a very vigorous examination of the house, and retired advising a thorough physical commission of inquiry; but believeing its origin to be still beyond the scope of such a commission.
“Something was become highly necessary; the house was crowded from morning to night; some talked of and hunted for the electrical machine; others challenged the devel to come out; and others, who had happened to hear that the eldest son of M. Joller had been seen speaking with an actor in the streets of Lucerne, declared that it was all sorcery, and that young Joller had learned it of the player. The police-director, Jann, sent in two policemen to keep watch that the house was not plundered by thieves amongst the crowds. As the conduct of the visitors, both in the flesh and out of it, grew every day more outrageous, though a number of watchers were maintained throughout the nights; as the spirits grew bolder and showed themselves more openly; and as M. Joller sezied one of the hands of the spirits and felt distinctly the thumb and fingers, which soon, however, drew themselves away; he went and demanded a formal examination of the house by the police authorities. This was accorded, and three of the heads of the police were appointed to prosecute the inquiry. Up to this moment the disturbances continued in full play. The directors of police ordered M. Joller to withdraw with his whole family from the house, and take up their quarters elsewhere. They were then left to themselves and profound silence for six days. No knock was heard, no ghost appeared, no door or window opened or shut itself. The profound Dogberries of the police, therefore, drew up a report that there was nothing at all amiss, and returned to Lucerne in the pride of ignorance of all psychology, and of having shown up the whole affair. These worthy souls knew nothing at all about mediums. M. Joller did not even understand that he had carried the mediums along with him; but he knew the moment that he recrossed his own threshold that the old ghostly power was there in all its force.
“The tide of popular ridicule was now let loose against the unfortunate Joller. The Press was in a heaven of triumph over the follies of the superstitious man. Though thousands had seen the very things that he asserted to exist; though police-director Jann, judges, magistrates, and dignified clergy had all witnessed the phenomena, poor Joller and his family were treated as little less than lunatics. The thing was the talk of all Switzerland, and what wounded M. Joller most deeply was, that all his political services and sacrifices to liberal opinion were at once forgotten. His own party, to a man, joined in deriding him; even those with whom he had stood side by side in a battle against political corruptions, threw their sarcasms at him. As is so often the case, however, some of his political opponents, whom he had hit the hardest and spared the least, now stood nobly forward and defended him, as an honourable, meritorious, and trustworthy man. In vain did M. Joller protest against the injustice of his neighbours: in vain did he insist on another police examination conducted in whatever manner the authorities pleased, so that the family should be in the house: the one already made was held to settle the whole question.
“On the contrary, however, the annoyances held their uninterrupted course from this time, the 4th of September, to the 22nd of October, when they finally drove him and his family out. It is still a long story, but we can only notice a few of the most striking phenomena. Chairs and other furniture continued to change their places, apparently at their own pleasure. Broken pots and glass, an old axe, cobs of Indian corn, a sickle, a great iron ring, were repeatedly brought out of the kitchen and cellar, and thrust into a stove in a chamber, locked up and the key in possession of M. Joller. In full sunshine at noon, the eldest daughter saw in the garden, as she thought, the maid servant climbing the lattice-work on the house side to gather grapes. She saw her dress so distinctly, her hair net, smooth hair, and dark neckerchief, that she called aloud to her, when to her astonishment she saw the maid issue from the kitchen below to see what was wanted: and the figure, as if crouching under the vine leaves, disappeared.
“For some days there had been a plucking of leafy branches and flinging of them into the chamber windows, or upon the heads of persons passing below, when on the 12th of September, as the whole family sat at coffee at half-past two in the day, three students being present, and the maid in the room, a great noise was heard in the salon above. All rushed up and saw the room in singular disorder. From the wall on the left hand a large engraving was taken down and laid on the floor. Two pier glasses were taken from the wall and laid down in like manner. A parasol that had stood in a corner was spread out over an ornamental hanging lamp. Stools and curtains were thrown confusedly on a heap; and all the chairs were heaped one upon another around the table. Everything being restored to order, and the room carefully locked, the next morning early, the room was found in a still greater state of chaos, as well as an adjoining chamber.
“M. Joller having to go to Lucerne to pay in some money, heard, on his return, from his family, that they had, in an adjoining chamber, heard the distinct counting out of money, piece by piece, and the rolls of it successively pushed aside, so that they were inclined to believe that there must be somebody there so engaged. On looking, however, they found nobody. On mentioning the time he found it agree exactly with that in which he was then counting his money at the bank. At another time, as he was then at some distance on the estate, watching the felling and cutting up of timber, his wife and children at home heard the chopping and splitting of wood in the cellar. On the 16th of September they were astonished by the hopping and dancing of an apple, which came flying downstairs against the house door, and passed by M. Joller in the passage at several bounds into the kitchen. The servant, busy at her cooking stove, seized it, and laid it on the kitchen table, when it soon sprung away and hopped into the passage. The girl seized it again, and flung it through the window, but it soon came flying back through the same window, bounded on the table, thence into the passage, the sitting-room, and finally into the adjoining chamber, when it flew into a corner and remained quiet. A pear descended from the ceiling, near M. Joller, with such force as to lie smashed on the floor. Other pieces of pear were flung at the girls while at work, and hung in their hair nets.
“The family were repeatedly assailed with showers of stones, both in the house and in the garden. At twelve o’clock in the day, while at the well, a shower of stones fell round one of the daughters without any striking her, and at the same time a sharp-edged wall stone fell down the kitchen chimney, striking the lid of a pan on the fire, and then falling to the floor without bringing a trace of soot with it. A knitting needle took to flying about from room to room, and being thrown out into the garden, it flew back again. There were continually sounds of humming and spinning wheels, and the drawing up of clock chains. On the 16th of September a voice deep and groaning, said distinctly, as out of the wall: “Jetzt komme ich nimmer” – “Now I come no more!” but it did not keep its word, or other actors stayed behind, for more variety of annoyances were played off than can be here enumerated.
“During all this time the unceremonious intrusion of people continued, so that there could be no domestic privacy, neither could the family affairs, or the legal business of M. Joller go on. He was, therefore, compelled to seek another home, and abandon this, his natal one, on the 22nd of October, 1862.
“Such is a brief notice of M. Joller’s case, undoubtedly, taken altogether, the most extraordinary which has occurred of late years. In closing it, he says, that a great many similar ones, but none so outrageous have been brought to his knowledge by persons of the most unquestionable character. That he could cite a long catalogue of witnesses of his unhappy spirit-persecution, but that is too notorious to need it. The house, he says, stood empty till the following spring, when he succeeded in letting it, and that up to the time of his writing this account, nothing particular had disturbed the new tenant, nor had the troublers followed him. It may be conceived what a serious affair it had proved to him in interruption of business and family life, in loss of peace of mind, and in infliction of censorious remarks. The nuisance of the invading crowd must, of itself, have been intolerable; for when compelled to lock his doors against them, they procured ladders and broke in at his chamber window.
“The most strking feature of M. Joller’s case is the entire ignorance of the nature of haunting spirits both by M. Joller, the police, and the clergy of the neighbourhood. As for M. Joller, evidently a Catholic by faith, he seems to have had no idea of getting rid of his persecutors by prayers and earnest appeal to the God of all spirits. A worthy man, he goes on suffering, and is actually driven from his home, without an idea that these troublesome guests might have been sent away instead. These were evidently unhappy spirits seeking aid from the first mediums they could meet with. They found these in M. Joller’s house; but they were mediums without that knowledge which mediums instructed by Spiritualism possess. These unhappy souls were repeatedly heard sobbing and groaning and exclaiming, ‘Erbarmet euch meiner!’ ‘Have mercy on me!’ They wanted the prayers and good offices of M. Joller and his family, and failing to make them comprehend this, they grew desperate; the worst instead of the best feelings of their natures were excited, and in their rage at being able to make these mediums perceive but not to understand them, they grew to resemble fiends in their wild passions rather than miserable supplicants. The consequence was that instead of being soothed by sympathy and gently dismissed on an upward course, as the Seeress of Prevorst often dismissed such, M. Joller was most unnecessarily driven from his own long-loved hearth. M. Joller, with all his worth and secular knowledge, is, in fact, the victim of ignorance – and a standing warning to men of education to pay some little attention to the psychological facts that are daily rising around them.
“It is satisfactory to see that a learned professor of one of the Swiss Colleges has prefaced M. Joller’s pamphlet by an assertion of the truth and the real nature of these phenomena, and contends that it is the duty of psychology and natural science, not to ignore these frequent facts, but to throw fresh light on them by honest enquiry.”
Nineteenth century miracles, or Spirits and their work in every country of the earth. Emma Britten (1884).