“Ghost” at a club.
Members to engage psychic investigator.
Strange things are said to be happening at the Moulin Rouge, a Brixton club. A psychic investigator is to be asked to spend a night in the club in order to trace the mystery of a “presence,” which is said to permeate the interior of the club on certain occasions, causing men who are by no means nervous to leave hurriedly.
A well-known boxer and a companion recently spent a night in the club, but discovered nothing. The lights were mysteriously switched on and the front door bell rung, but no sign of anyone was found.
The misty “presence” is being taken seriously by some of the club members, and a medium is to be invited to form a circle in an endeavour to probe the identity of the “ghost.” The club is said to be built on the site of a plague pit.
Sunday Mirror, 10th May 1931.
Night in a haunted club.
How were the lights turned on?
Watchers baffled.
By a special correspondent, London, Tuesday.
I have just spent one of the weirdest nights of my life. I have a perfectly open mind about ghosts and psychic manifestations, but there certainly were happenings which are hard to explain at the Moulin Rouge Club, in Brixton, during the early hours of this morning. Built on the site of an ancient plague pit, it is said to have been the scene of some strange events during its brief experience.
Seven of us sat in the club all night – three officials of the club, three journalists, and a friend of one of the latter. At midnight we turned out the lights in every room one by one. Every room was locked, and the holder of the keys did not leave his chair for an instant until we were all brought to our feet in varying stages of shock, surprise, and bewilderment.
At exactly twenty minutes to three o’clock every light in the building suddenly went up. We dashed to the switches and the mains. The mains was ‘on’ and every switch tumbler down. At midnight we had turned them all up – i.e. turned the current off. If it was a hoax it was one of the most involved and ingenious ever perpetrated. If not – – –
The premises consist of one large room with a number of smaller rooms built on the cubicle principle round its walls. Thus it is possible to ascertain from the big room whether there is a light on anywhere or not. Most of us were dozing when with a loud metallic click th elights went on. With two others I went to straight to the main switch of the building. It is situated about ten feet from the ground, in a locked room with no window. The room was empty, and the switch ‘on’. Room by room the whole place was examined. Every light switch was found to be turned on.
The police are nonplussed. Four times now they have seen the phenomenon from the street, and have summoned the secretary of the club by telephone. On each occasion the building has been surrounded and then searched thoroughly.
Liverpool Daily Post, 13th May 1931.
From a special correspondent. London, Wednesday.
A glass sandwich-dish, weighing about a pound, and hurled from the empty darkness with a force and velocity that would do credit to any cricketer, is the latest mystery of the Moulin Rouge Club in Brixton which requires explanation.
After the strange episode of the previous night we decided on another session in the “haunted” club, to see whether the lights would be switched on again by an unseen hand. Nothing happened to the lights, but six people are witnesses to the mystery of the sandwich-dish. Our party consisted of a retired cavalry officer, a colleague, a well-known boxing champion, two members of the club, an dmyself. We made sure that there was no one in the buildin gbesides ourselves, and that no one could possibly enter without our knowledge.
At 12.40 a.m. we switched off all the lights and sat down near the entrance to await developments. At 2.50 exactly something whizzed across the room with amazing force and speed, and landed with a loud crash of breaking glass on the floor on my left, just missing a man who was sitting there. “That,” he observed, jumping up with the rest of us, “is definitely unpleasant.” We were all startled, and he had escaped from serious injury.
After another twenty minutes the humour of the situtation of six men sitting in the dark waiting for more sandwich-dishes to be thrown at them became too much for our patience, and we turned up the lights to make a thorough search. We renewed our conviction that there was no one besides ourselves concealed in the room, and that no one could have got in or out. Then we started to investigate the sandwich-dish.
We found it smashed to small fragments, scattered all over the floor. Though I am not able to prove this, I am certain that the sandwich-dish must have been on the buffet at the left of the band-platform. Whoever or whatever threw it must have transported it right across the room – a difficult thing to do without being seen or heard.
Every few minutes throughout the night I took the precaution of glancing at my companions to see that they were all in their seats, and they always were. My colleague thinks that he heard a slight noise just before the missile was thrown.
It is certainly one of the strangest episodes that I have participated in, but its explanation is a matter for others. Judged by the accepted standards of suitable conditions for supernatural phenomena, the club was highly unsuitable. Even its darkest corners are periodically illuminated by passing traffic.
Liverpool Daily Post, 14th May 1931.
Ghost stories.
Brixton would not seem to be sufficiently mysterious to attract first-class ghosts, but the happenings in the Moulin Rouge Club there, which are being reported in a London newspaper, are in the best tradition of ghost stories. The ghost started by politely informing them of his presence, for he did nothing more than switch the lights on.
On the next night, however, he presumably decided that journalists were too hard-bitten to be troubled by that sort of thing, so he hurled a glass sandwich dish, weighing about a pound, at the group of them. Even those who are not afraid of the supernatural can confess without shame to a considerable fear of such solid missiles as this.
Coventry Evening Telegraph, 15th May 1931.
Club Ghost Laid.
Dramatic capture in an alley.
Mr Maskelyne takes a hand.
From a special correspondent, London, Thursday.
Mr Jasper Maskelyne, the illusionist, has laid the “ghost” of the Moulin Rouge Club at Brixton. In the early hours of this morning, while manifestations were proceeding apace within, he went unobtrusively to an enclosed alley at the back of the premises, and captured three material entities – two girls and a young man, all members of the club. From that moment the large audience who sat tensely in the gloom of the club were confronted with no more mysterious phenomena. In fact while the sitting still continued I was hearing the confessions of the principal perpetrators of this practical joke in the less psychic atmosphere of a neighbouring coffee stall.
A large party assembled at the Moulin Rouge Club towards midnight on Wednesday evening to make the acquaintance of the “ghost” which has baffled expert psychic investigators in its month-long career. Most active among these investigators was Mr Harry Price, director of the National Laboratory for Psychical Research, who busied himself for an hour sealing doors and windows with professional skill. Mr Maskelyne, alert and observant, was there. For the rest there were journalists and privileged visitors, and the club officials, whose familiarity with the practices of the “ghost” led them to assume a grave solicitude for the well being of their guests.
The capture followed the beginning of the sitting by little more than half an hour. Within five minutes of the hall having been put in darkness, scratchings were faintly heard at the windows and doors giving access to the alley. Metallic clangings resounded, and eerie howls rent the silence of the night. A moment later lights appeared outside a window beside the row of sitters, and a club official moved like a shadow across the dance floor to investigate. What would he discover? In the eagerness of their anticipation few saw Mr Maskelyne rise from his chair beside the main entrance door and pass noiselessly into the street.
The tensity of the situation was growing. Whence, asked a whispering voice, would the next manifestation come? It came from the main entrance door, which opened to admit an inspector of police. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced, “your ghosts are outside if you would like to see them.” There was a rush to the street, and there, peering through an ironwork gate that barred the entrance to the alley, stood the two girls clothed in black dance frocks and coats in the custody o fMr Maskelyne. Thei rmale abettor, wearing a dark blue suit, appeared a moment later in the grasp of a Pressman.
The first part of the confession was made to me meanwhile by the proprietor of a coffee stall. For many years this person was a stage comedian and practical joker, an dhe told me how he had propagated the story of the plague pit – whence the ‘ghost’ of the Moulin Rouge was said to have come – to prepare the way for occult happenigns calculated to bring business to his stall. “I had a carefully-thought-out plan,” he said, “and was foolish enough to confide it to a few of my regular customers and acquaintances. That was a month ago, and before I could put my plan into operation ghosts began to walk in the Moulin Rouge. Since then I have lost interest in the enterprise, though I have refreshed the ghosts from this stall more than once as they went to work.”
Liverpool Daily Post, 15th May 1931.
The Ghost Laid.
The ghost of the Moulin Rouge Club at Brixton did not last very long, for after two sessions, at which various journalists were impressed by the ghost’s accuracy in throwing things, it was discovered by Mr Jasper Maskelyne that two girls and a man were producing the phenomena. But however often one finds out about so-called ghosts being nothing more than flesh and blood hoaxers, the belief in the possibility of a real ghost remains within nearly all of us, whether we admit it or not. A hoax is no proof that the real thing does not exist, and no doubt this exposure will not create many sceptics.
Coventry Evening Telegraph, 16th May 1931.
The Moulin Rouge.
It was George Abrahamson who some time last year conceived the idea of turning “Pop’s” into a sort of paradise, and later lost the building owing to providence affording a sensation which was quite the reverse and fiery. The Moulin Rouge, which is the home of Brixton’s professional Bohemianism, since its inception some little time ago, has gone out for special nights and galas of a novelty order. It probably beat its own record last week by giving a Ghost Ball and turning the dancers into grisly skeletons for the occasion. These horrors, with attendant moans and groans, were under the direction of Hall Griff, and there was also a mysterious individual R. Styx, who had just completed an important engagement at the Empire, Hades. The special cabaret was headed by the popular Victoria Carmen, and revelry continued until the morning.
The Stage, 28th May 1931.
Ghosts! By Jasper Maskelyne.
[…] Here and now, I issue a challenge to all ghosts of whatever age, sex, or condition, that if they will give me a chance, I will release them from their wanderings before another Christmas is past. Now then, all you window-tappers and corridor-gliders, you clutching hands and moaning voices, if your worried and haunted owners will drop me a line, care of this paper, I’ll settle your hash for good and all.
I do not speak without experience. I remember that on one occasion I laid a ghost at the Moulin Rouge Club, in London. The Club had been troubled by mysterious crashings and bangings, and by eerie lights floating about in mid-air, an dthe haunting wasn’t good for members’ nerves. So, one night just before “the witching hour when churchyards yawn,” I went along there with one or two friends.
After examining the doors, windows, electric light switches, and so on, we locked and taped all doors and windows, sealing the knots, all lights were extinguished, and we sat down silently in the dark to wait. The first manifestation was a slight metallic scratching, then a tinny crash. Finally, a tiny light crept up one of the darkened windows, and a very faint scratchin gsound accompanie dit. The light naturally showed on the ceiling in a manner which might have scared anyone who did not realise its origin.
But I did; and I slipped silently outside, and caught – two girls and a man, crouching among some dustbins on the back premises! The ghosts were practical jokers of a very cheap sort; but, none the less, the haunting had caused weeks of uneasiness at the Club and had seriously threatened its membership.
[…]
Walsall Observer, 24th December 1932.
A year or two ago, I laid a ghost that was causing a lot of excitement in Brixton, and promised to become a matter of national interest. The Moulin Rouge Club reported eerie happenings at its headquarters. Lights turned on and off at midnight, glass and china articles were flung about apparently without human agency, and horrible cries were heard. This scare reached such a pitch that a local clergyman was approached to hold a “cleansing” service in the club, which, it was discovered, was built on the site of one of the great Plague Pits used in the Black Death. Representatives from all the leading London newspapers gathered one night and obtained permission to spend the dark hours in the haunted room at the Moulin Rouge Club to report on the ghostly phenomena.
At midnight lights appeared and disappeared, groans were heard and a china vase sailed through the air, nearly braining one of the waiting reporters. They ran all over the building, but could find no trace of human agency.
Next night I waited there with some othe rPressmen. At midnight all the lights suddenly went out. So did I! Fie minutes later I returned bringing with me two girls and a man whom I had captured in a yard at the back of the club monkeying with the electric light switches and producing all the other ghostly “effects.” They confessed; and that was that. There have been no hauntings there since. Being a wizard who had raised stage ghosts myself, you see, I knew just where to look.
[…]
Sunday Mirror, 12th January 1936.
[…] Shortly before that I cornered a ghost in the heart of Brixton. The Moulin Rouge Club there reported gruesome cries, the sudden smashing of glass and china, and the switching on and off of electric lights without human agency. I went to investigate. I was waiting with some journalists and others just after midnight when all the lights in the building suddenly went out. So did I! I scurried silently round to a little yard at the back, and gathered in two girls and a man who were doing the ghostly effects for a lark. I am used to raising stage ghosts myself, so I knew just where to look. They were surprised! There were no more Brixton hauntings after that. […]
Littlehampton Gazette, 23rd December 1938.