Catshill.
A Haunted (?) House.
There has been quite a sensation here recently, in consequence of stones dropping on and around the weigh bench of a nail shop at Marlbrook, in what is thought to be a most mysterious manner. The shop is in the occupation of Widow Kings, whose husband died a short time ago.
The stones began to fall on Tuesday week, and were supposed to have been thrown by some one outside the shop, but after closing the windows, and the stoney shower continuing as before, the people working in the shop became alarmed.
On the following day the stones fell more frequently, and the people became most terribly frightened. The most exaggerated reports were circulated about the matter, and the excitement in the neighbourhood became intense, hundreds of persons daily visiting the nail shop in question, and the stones, varying in weight from one ounce to twenty, falling in the same mysterious manner on each successive day, until the afternoon of Tuesday last, when they ceased, without it being discovered by what agency they were conveyed to the place where they were found and heard to fall.
The persons working in the shop were Mrs Kings, her daughter, and two granddaughters; and th edropping of the stones has been thought to have been caused by one of the latter, a supposition strengthened by the fact of no stones falling in the night or on Sunday, or at any time when the girls were out of the shop.
It is much to be regretted that the true cause of the disturbance has not been discovered, for many of the poor and ignorant people of the neighbourhood are foolish enough to ascribe it to supernatural agency, while there is very little doubt but it has been the work of a silly person, whom a slight course of dry bread and water, combined with hard stone-breaking, might cure of the mischievous habit of stone dropping.
Bromsgrove and Droitwich Messenger, 20th March 1869.