Bolts from the blue.
Mysterious window-smashing in Bolton.
(From our own correspondent).
Bolton, Monday night.
Mysterious window-smashing occurred at Bolton late last night and early this morning, and as no other explanation has been forthcoming up to the present it is suggested in certain quarters that a ghostly influence has been at work. The breakages took place under the eyes of many enraged householders in Pedder-street, who summoned the police and initiated a search with bull’s-eye lanterns. The streets, courtyards, and even the roofs were investigated without result, and all the time the searchers were exposed to a galling fire of brickbats and slag.
Daily News (London), 9th April 1912.
Bolton’s “Haunted” Street.
“Phantom” window smasher returns and alarms victory residents.
Vain search by torchlight.
The Victory district has this week had a little sensation of its own in hand due to a recrudescence of the “phantom” window smashing which about 18 months ago caused such perturbation among the folks in the Vernon Street neighbourhood. The two occurrences are very much alike in character – the sudden breaking of cottage windows by missiles projected by unseen hands, followed by a vain hunt for the perpetrators.
The scene of the trouble was Peddar Street, one of the thoroughfares off Chorley Old Road, Victory, and the “manifestations” lasted from Sunday night until early the next morning. The first incident occurred at the house, 10, Peddar Street, occupied by Mr. H. Chadwick, where, without warning, a kitchen window was smashed by a missile hurled from without. About half an hour afterwards crash went a window at No. 7 (Mrs Lythgoe’s), and afterwards it was the turn of a back window at No. 5 (Mrs Dixon’s). Naturally “the street was up” by this time, and with a lantern and torches a search was instituted in back yards and elsewhere for the miscreants, whilst a policeman with the aid of his lamp reconnoitred the house tops.
One of the searchers below had a narrow escape from a “projectile,” which whisked past his head. Coal or slag appears to have been the material used, and some of the pieces were of considerable size, whilst one was thrown in such close proximity that it passed through the back kitchen to the vestibule door. It was well on the morning side before the locality got any rest, and unfortunately the authors of the trouble were not secured. There were two “suspects,” who were chased for some distance, but in the darkness they eluded their pursuers. A number of ashpit doors were at daylight discovered to have been tampered with.
The residents in Peddar Street were again on Monday night on the qui vive in fear of a repetition of the window smashing business of the previous night. A squad of policemen were also on the scene. The fear was not absolutely baseless, for about 10 o’clock the silence of the street was broken by the crash of a missile through the back window of Lythgoe’s house. There were apprehensions as to more to follow, but the sniping was not continued, there being only this solitary shot during the night.
The “Spook” satirised. With rather unbecoming levity for so grave a topic the Peddar Street “spook” was thus dealt with on Wednesday morning by the “Manchester Courier” in its topical column: –
The paragraphs in yesterday’s papers regarding the Bolton “ghost” dealt largely with facts and not with theories of explanation, and even the facts themselves are given in quite a casual manner. We learn, for example, from the columns of a journal that “the window smashing campaign began about nine o’clock on Sunday night, and other windows were smashed at intervals up to two o’clock on Sunday morning.” We know well that time flies, but this is the first occasion on which we have heard of time flying backwards. This “ghost” is long-lived; we heard of it about 18 months ago; in the meantime it has been perambulating other counties and countries and its present activity has been demonstrated by a heap of brickbats and slag which have been slung into the houses of Pedder Street. The Cock Lane ghost is nothing like so mysterious as this athletic creature: the Bolton police have failed to run it to earth, and the ordinary layman’s researches have resulted in precisely nothing. Perhaps the Psychical Research Society will send a learned emissary to investigate matters, and later on in the year we shall have a dull volume of some thousand pages telling us what we already know or guess. There may be ghosts in existence – we do not know; but we refuse to believe in the spook that can throw brickbats 50 yards or so.
Farnworth Chronicle, 13th April 1912.