Stick that waltzes baffles the local.
Regulars stared, rubbed their eyes and stared and stared again. A walking stick was jumping around their pub. Not only that. Customers at the Cranberry Hotel in Barnsley, Yorkshire, swore last night that the old cane walking-stick was tapping out tunes. They said it rapped out “Auld Lang Syne” and a topical “Jingle Bells.” And, they hastened to add, it all happened before closing time.
It all started when the stick was hanging on the back of a bed in which 14-year-old Michael Collindridge was lying ill with tonsillitis. Michael, grandson of licensee Mrs Sarah Shepherd, said it sudddenly began dancing along the back of the wooden bedhead, raised itself two feet in the air and answered him knock for knock. Just to show he wasn’t fooling, Michael showed people what the stick could do. He called out, “Come here, Old Faithful.” and the stick hopped along the headboard towards him. Afterwards, said Mrs Shepherd, the stick jumped to the top of the bedroom door, wriggled along the top of the wardrobe and jumped into a chair. Councillor Mr Gordon Jepson, of Station Road, Barnsley, was treated to a dance routine. His comment: “It’s fantastic.”
A “People” reporter saw it too. He reports: “Michael’s hands were visible above the blankets. He looked at the stick and told me that it didn’t always perform when other people were in the room. But as he was speaking the stick, which was hanging over the bedhead, began to move from side to side, making rapping noises. Then it stopped. Michael rapped on the bedhead and the stick rapped back with its handle. Later it rose nearly two feet above the bedhead. Michael tapped out “Jingle Bells” and it replied in exactly the same rhythm. I examined the back of the bed and there were no connections through which the stick could be manipulated. I examined the stick carefully and there was nothing about it to indicate what made it perform.”
Said Michael’s mother, Mrs Dorothy Collindridge: “I do think this has something to do with either the room or Michael. It is a great mystery.”
The People, 28th November 1965.
The Case of the Dancing Cane is one of many investigated by the Society for Psychical Research. When an ordinary looking malacca walking-stick is left in 14-year-old Michael Collindridge’s room at the Cranberry Hotel, Barnsley, Yorks, it appears to rise above the bed, jig in mid-air, then scuttle behind the bedhead to tap out “messages.” The Society’s verdict so far on these apparently supernatural antics: Not Proven.
Sunday Mirror, 23rd January 1966.