“Spook” or “Spoof”
Could not resist the holidays.
Weird doings are reported from a boarding house in Blackpool, and although spiritualists in the town insist that they are genuine manifestations of the unseen world, practical folk are rather inclined to credit “unseen” boarders with a turn for practical joking.
First queer sounds were heard (so our local correspondent reports, without prejudice), and then strange handwriting appeared on a screen and on a table, both of which articles of furniture afterwards performed as graceful a dance as their rigid, ungraceful legs would permit.
A photographer was brought on the scene, and the signatures snap-shotted for further examination. Result: declared to be the signatures of dead-and-gone leading citizens of the town.
Sceptics – there are somehow always sceptics when the spiritualists are about – who went to the house to make investigations were struck by flying pepper-boxes, which naturally increased their scepticism, but as against this the true believers were able to point to the fact that bells had rung mysteriously, that fingers of the clocks went round the wrong way of the dial, just as though they wanted to go back to yesterday, while serious messages from the spirit world appeared on a blackboard (in chalk).
On Thursday evening the spooks intimated that there would be no manifestation during Eastertide. And sure enough, the serenity of the Blackpool boarding-house remained undisturbed yesterday, although some of the occupants tempted the spirits by remaining in the “haunted” rooms. Even spooks, it seems, like other people, must have their Easter holidays.
Evening Express, 26th March 1910.