Comedy of a ghost.
Family terrorised by bottle-throwing spook.
Baby lost and recovered.
Eye-witnesses story of events in a haunted house.
The story of what may be fittingly styled a ghost comedy comes from sunny Ceylon. Strange and decidedly unpleasant occurrences have taken place in the house of Mr W. E. Leonard, the advertisement clerk of the Ceylon Times at Colombo. The spook in this case evinced a liking for dropping and throwing bottles about in an inexplicable manner, scaring the members of the family and baffling the best-laid schemes of women and men to discover its identity.
One morning at seven the family were seated at breakfast when suddenly a bottle dropped in their midst and smashed to pieces. The bottle appeared to have descended perpendicularly and there was no hole in the roof through which it could have dropped.
This was the forerunner of numerous similar annoyances to which three families living under the same roof were subjected on the same day. Small medicine bottles, mango skins, empty tins, and other articles came weirdly out of space and fell at their feet. Things came to a climax when all the women-folk of the house were seated at their meal and a tin dropped into the curry dish in their midst. One of them, Mrs Melder, niece of Mr Leonar, fainted.
Father Harman, a Catholic priest, was called in and blessed the house; but this does not appear to have had the desired results. Neighbours have come in large numbers in order to see the fun, and bottles have dropped in the midst of them. Another peculiar incident occurred one night after the family went to bed. A small lamp was blown out three times in succession in Mr Leonard’s room, though the window and doors were securely fastened and locked. Mr Leonard was half asleep when he heard a noise as of someone blowing with his mouth, and out went the lamp. Just when Mr Leonard was dropping off to sleep the same thing occurred and was repeated a third time.
The house has the reputation of being haunted. Ten years ago, when another family were living in it, it is stated that a baby disappeared in a mysterious manner from its mother’s side. It was eventually found in quite a different part of the house carefully wrapped up in a mat.
A reliable and experienced European representative of the Ceylon Times who went to investigate Mr Leonard’s story, was conducted through the hall and dining room and along a short verandah forming, with a boundary wall in front of it and a kitchen standing opposite to the front part of the house, a small quadrangle. On the floor of the kitchen was a big splash of water where a large bottle had just dropped, having as usual come from “nowhere”.
While seated waiting for something to turn up, or more properly, “turn down,” a glass object whizzed along the verandah; struck the wall, rebounded, and shivered to pieces. The only people about were two ladies sitting at the end of the verandah opposite. One had her hands in her lap, and both ladies were in view as was also the only door through which the glass tumbler, as it turned out to be, could have come.
It smelled of stout, and Mrs Leonard exclaimed that a few minutes before she had drank some stout and tonic and had left the glass in her bedroom. On looking there she found that the glass had vanished.
Weekly Dispatch (London), 17th May 1908.