Alarm clock flees across room and bedclothes rip to rags in priest’s haunted home.
As the result of extraordinary manifestations, attributed by some to sportive ghosts and by others to some cause beyond explanation, Rev. Charles F. Donohue, pastor of the Church of the Sacred Heart at Brocton (Mass.) and his household have been driven from the parish house.
Father Donohue is on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and parishioners are on guard, but the strange conditions in the rectory continue. Father Donohoe is one of the best-known priests, and his entire household vouch for the statement that clocks and furniture have been lifted by unseen hands and dashed to pieces in broad daylight and in dead of night. Seeing heavy furniture topple over, hearing an alarm clock thrown heavily and shattered against the wall, and beholding a hat-tree move all around the front hall on its own wooden legs, proved altogether too much for the nerves of the priest and his household, they explain. Even a squad of men who volunteered to watch the house fled, telling of furniture that fell apart, dishes that danced on a table, and pictures that moved on a wall before their eyes.
The manifestations, it is said, began a week ago. Members of a committee that had charge of a picnic were seated in the upper part of the house, when knockings were heard. Later, dishes were heard to fall and break. A close examination failed to reveal any source from which such knocks could have sprung.
During one of the most terrifying scenes bedclothes were said to have been snatched from their places and ripped before the eyes of Miss Margaret O’Connell, the housekeeper, and James Hoben, a friend of Father Donohue, who had ridiculed the first story, and had gone to see for himself.
“I cannot account for it all,” said Father Donohue. I realise how it sounds, but it is true, nevertheless, that I have seen pieces of furniture dashed to the floor and broken, with no possible explanation at hand. It is all very mystifying. Why, a few nights ago I was compelled to sleep on a cot just outside the room where Miss O’Connell and Mrs A.E. Hoben and daughter were sleeping because they had been terrified by their furniture being dashed about the room in dead of night. “My housekeeper was in the sitting-room, and I was busy in my study, when suddenly the dishes in the pantry rattled to the floor. We made an examination, but aside from finding the dishes on the floor we could see nothing wrong. Then everything was quiet, but suddenly the noises were heard again, and this time a table in the kitchen was overturned, the legs were broken, and several things in the room were moved as if by invisible hands. In the front hall was a small cabinet organ, in front of which stood a stool. The organ remained intact, but the stool was broken, the screws loosened and thrown about the room, and one of the iron braces bent.
“The other night I placed an alarm clock near the head of my bed, and about eleven o’clock was awakened by strange noises, and saw the clock fly across the room and hit the wall. I arose and picked it up, placing it at the head of the bed again. It was unbroken, and continued to tick. I was unable to get to sleep again, and in a short time I heard another crash, and the clock had gone from the head of the bed down a flight of stairs leading to the upper storey. This time it was smashed to pieces, and the only thing left was the glass front, which was not injured in the slightest. the remainder of the clock was a wreck.”
The house was owned and occupied for many years by Francis Marion Munroe, a well-known character of the town, who died six years ago. Mr Munroe was a member of no church, inclined to agnosticism.
Dundee Weekly News, 10th August 1912.