Mystery of Strange Noises in the Night was Never Solved.
Was it a poltergeist?
By Harry Rose. Sunday Royal Gazette reporter.
“Poltergeist – spirit announcing its presence its presence by raps or other sound.” (Oxford Dictionary)
“Rendezvous,” the house on Grape Bay, scene of mysterious happenings.
The word “poltergeist” was never part of the Selley family’s vocabulary. But, when one of the strangest happenings in Bermuda sent them scurrying in the dead of night from their Grape Bay home in 1944, they began to ponder. The story of how the Selley family spent several weeks in the presence of an unaccountable phenomenon was recalled during the week by Mr Colin Selley who, even today, is not sure what actually did happen. For the Selleys, the curious incidents they felt during those few weeks were fearful not in the sense that they felt any danger, but because they could find no tangible explanation for noises which kept recurring at night.
Most people have heard stories about “ghosts.” Few have seen them. Do they exist? Books have been written, offering what the authors declare to be indisputable proof of “survival” of the soul and the possibility of contact being established between “departed” spirits and living human beings.
The Selleys still are not sure whether the happenings at “Rendezvous,” picturesque house at Grape Bay, had anything to do with spirits. But they are sure of one thing. That the manifestations could not be traced to any physical causes. Here is the story which caused a minor “sensation” in Bermuda during the summer of 1944.
At the time, Colin Selley was living with his mother and father and 11-year-old sister at their beach cottage, “Rendezvous,” which was built about 1932. Colin told me that he used to sleep in the day-bed in the living room and his mother and sister, Angela, were in the bedroom. His father used to sleep at the Selleys’ house on Pitt’s Bay Road except for week-ends when he joined his family at Grape Bay.
“One night after I had gone to bed,” Mr Selley recalled, “I became aware of a sort of bumping. It went on for periods with about 20 seconds interval between. We had no idea where it was coming from.” Like most people living in Bermuda who sometimes hear noises in the night – like the wind shaking a window fixture – the Selley household was not unduly perturbed. But the next night they heard it again and there was no wind.
“There’s that darn thump, thump again, muttered sleepy Colin Selley as he sat up in bed and listened. Just as he prepared to go back to sleep there was what he described as “a terrifica crash as if lightning had struck a tree or something.” The family got out of bed and looked out but could see nothing. “It unnerved us but we went back to bed,” he remembers. “And then the bumping started again. And there was a crash which sounded as though an ice box or something had been dropped about 20 feet to the floor.”
There was no sleep for the Selleys that night. “It so unnerved mother that we decided to all get out of the house. We just sat on the door step to wait for our neighbours to return home.” Their nearest neighbours, Mr and Mrs Abel Benevides, were spending the evening out. The practical young Colin decided as he sat pondering beside his mother and sister that a baseball bat might help their morale a little. As a weapon against the intangible it might not be effective, but if earthly intruders were making the noise Colin thought he would know how to use it. Whistling bravely, he sauntered into the house again with the intention of getting the bat. “When I got to the fire-place it started off again – like a series of revolver shots this time,” he said. “Then there was an ear-splitting crack. I didn’t wait to get the base-ball bat!” The Selleys spent that troublesome night at the Benevides house.
But there was more to come. “This occurrence didn’t happen every night,” Colin said. “There would be two or three nights when there were no disturbances at all.” The Selleys finally decided that something must be done about their nocturnal “visitations.” Plumbers were called. All the pipes were pulled out and inspected. The house was disconnected from its water and electricity supply. The entire building was re-wired. The telephone system was checked. Men came from the Electric Light Company and checked the transformers. Despite all this, no cauase could be found for the strange “goings-on.” Certainly nobody could have broken into the house and caused the noises which definitely came from within, said Mr Selley.
One night, when the raps, bumps and crashes were getting too much to endure, Mrs Selley called in the police. Shortly afterwards a police sergeant comfortably parked himself in the house to find out “what’s all this ‘ere.” After sampling some of the experiences which had confounded the Selleys, the plumbers, electricians, telephone men and carpenters, the police sergeant came to the swift decision that this was something the police force could not handle. Another night, recalls Mr Selley, a detective and a police constable brought a camera with the intention of taking pictures of whatever it was making the noises. They did not quite know at what they were to point the camera but were determined to get “tangible” evidence if ghosts there really were. The detective and police constable went away disappointed.
But there were others. Among them was the late Mr J. Collison, undertaker and carpenter, who thought the trouble might be in the beams of the house. But he too drew a blank. Then there were the amateur mechanics who thought they might track down the source of the trouble. They, too, found no cause. “After a while,” related Mr Selley, “the place got to be a shrine for the inquisitive – and it also got to be a nuisance.” He said people were “running around the house, peering into the windows and sitting on the steps.”
Sometimes, the noises were so disturbing that the family moved out and slept at neighbours’ houses. Colin Selley thought the noises seemed to come from somewhere in the living room. “But another night we heard a noise in the kitchen – it sounded like ice cubes being dropped in a glass,” he recalls. “And while we were looking, there came a loud rapping at the window. But nobody was outside.”
When the newspapers got to hear about it, people started to telephone the Selleys and asked them to leave the receiver off the hook all night so that they, too, could hear the manifestations. One would-be helper suggested that a priest should sprinkle Holy water around the house. “A common occurrence in England and other places,” they called it. “The cause of these disturbances were poltergeists,” they said.
Mr Selley said the noises were so loud that people could hear them from Rural Hill.
About five weeks after these incidents occurred Colin Selley left the Colony to return to school. With his departure, the noises stopped completely. They have never been reported since.
Colin Selley.
The Sunday Royal Gazette, March 11th, 1951.