His Dancing Furniture Scares Lieutenant.
“Ghosts” raid flat: advised to seek aid of medium.
Benha (Egypt), Saturday.
After reporting to his own police station that “ghosts” had raided his flat, First Lieutenant Sinout Hanna Barsoum, police officer at Benha, in Lower Egypt, was advised to visit a medium.
He described the raid like this:- “It must have been 3 a.m., when I was awakened by a loud knocking at my door, followed by the sound of furniture being moved about in my flat. Suddenly, I saw one of the chairs rising and floating about, some six feet above the floor. I switched on my bedside lamp and everything returned to normal. Then, while I was lighting a cigarette I saw the four chairs in the room gliding across the floor in file. I threw my cigarette away in terror and it landed on one of the marching chairs, which immediately floated to the ceiling, and having reached it, crashed back to the floor. ‘There must be demons in this house,’ I cried out in fear, and at once one of the chairs flew in my face and hit me. So I went away and spent the night with my neighbour.”
On the following afternoon he visited his flat, changed his clothes and sat down to relax. Once more pandemonium started. This time the cupboard and the bed joined in the infernal dance about the room. Steadying himself, he carried his bedroom furniture into another room.
“I was greatly startled and surprised when I returned at night… for the bedroom furniture was back in the bedroom which I had vacated,” Lieutenant Barsoum continued. Unable to bear the situation any longer, the Lieutenant walked back to his own station and lodged a complaint with the Benha Police Deputy Commander, Major Mohaed Riad, who led an investigating party to the officer’s flat.
The door was unlocked and the police party walked in. The infernal dance had not yet ended. The police representative had the doors of the cupboard removed to examine them and the doors were placed against the wall. But the doors flew back to the cupboard and banged shut. The police party rushed from the flat in panic.
The deputy-commandant advised his subaltern to seek the services of a medium. – Reuter.
Liverpool Echo, 25th January 1958.