Furniture’s Mad Antics.
Dancing plates and glasses that jumped.
A strange story of a haunted house in Paris is told by the “Petit Parisien.” It is a flat in the Rue de Patay, in the south eastern district of the city occupied by an aged cabinet-maker, his sister-in-law, and her son.
The strange visitations began last July. The hands of the clock were raced round by some unknown agency, while the clock disappeared from the mantelpiece, and was discovered in the sideboard.
While the family were at dinner it is alleged that wine glasses flew from the kitchen to the dining-room, hit the ceiling, and dropped in pieces into the soup.
The male occupants of the house received violent punches while in bed and occasionally had a pillow flung in their faces.
Sometimes they saw vapoury visions of a small manicured female hand, and tried to grasp it, but received a violent blow. Each evening when the seance finished the ghostly hand grasped that of the occupants as a sign of farewell.
On one occasion an egg in the cupboard flew out and dashed itself to pieces against a mirror.
The caretaker of the building laughed at the story, and offered to spend a night in the haunted flat. His scepticism was rudely shaken when the table danced away from him, then jumped into the air, and hit him on the chest. He rushed from the flat, dodging a bobbin of white cotton aimed at him by the spirit. The caretaker returned next night with a policeman and two local tradesmen. All four declare that plates flew from one room to another and fell to the floor in pieces, which burned their hands when they picked them up. They took a hurried leave (says the Paris correspondent of the “Daily Express”), and while descending the stairs heard the cabinetmaker utter a shout. He had just been hit on the head by an onion, which flew from the closed cupboard, and finished by bounding through a window pane.
The family attribute the ghostly pranks and visitation to a spiritualist relative with whom they are on bad terms, or to spirits of dead relatives desiring to communicate. They decided to consult members of the spiritualistic body, hoping to elucidate the mystery.
The Paris correspondent of the Central News telegraphs a solution of the mystery. The son aged 16, who is an electrician, installed a number of batteries in the house to play a practical joke on April 1. His parents have now left Paris to escape the ridicule of the neighbours.
Yorkshire Evening Post, 8th April 1920.
An Electrician’s Prank.
Paris, Wednesday.
A “haunted house” in the Rue Patay here has excited great interest for several days. Articles in the apartments occupied by a family of four persons moved without any apparent cause, bells rang, and needles spun and whirled about madly. An inquiry today established the fact that the 16-year-old son of the house, an electrician, had installed numerous batteries in the house in order to play a practical joke for April 1. The parents of the young man have left for the country in order to escape the ridicule of the neighbours. – Central News.
Daily Herald, 8th April 1920.