A Canadian Spook.
The township of Clarendon in Pontiac county has just been disturbed by a somewhat eccentric spook. A spook, it may be as well to observe at the outset, is a spirit. The word is of Western origin, and is derived from the German “spuk,” an apparition, or ghost. Anything apparently supernatural is a spook. A sound that cannot be promptly accounted for comes necessarily from a spook. A movement without human agency is produced by a spook. A figment of the imagination, the resemblance of a human being pictured to the mind so vividly as to suggest reality, is a spook.
Our Canadian spook revealed itself first in September last at the house of a farmer named George Dagg. It came altogether unannounced, and certainly uninvited. Its first procedure was unquestionably unfriendly, for it attempted to fire the premises. The curtains and blinds were consumed under what seemed to spontaneous combustion, but what really was the work of the spook. This operation concluded, his spookship proceded to break the windows. Heavy stones thrown by invisible hands very soon demolished eight of the panes. Then the crockeryware inside the house began to move. Several articles jumped from their places to the floor; a mouth organ commenced to play of itself, and subsequently leaped to the ground and crossed the room; the rocking chair rocked automatically; the washboard flew downstairs from the garret; and finally – thus was insult added to injury – a jug of water jumped from the table and poured its contents into Mrs Dagg’s face.
There is living in the Dagg residence a girl named Dinah, who came there from an institution in Belleville five years ago. Dinah was once stout and healthy; but she is now pale and sickly. She has seen the spook. Once she saw him as a tall thin man with a cow’s head and cloven hoofs; another time he resembled a dog; and again he was an old gentlemen with long white hair and a crown upon his head.
Consequent upon the reports of the doings of the spook crowds of visitors have come to Clarendon. Last week Mr Percy Woodcock, RCA, of Brockville, was among the number. Mr Woodcock had the good fortune to interview the spook, to placate it, and to persuade it to seek employment elsewhere. His first encounter was in the woodshed behind the house. There he saw nothing, but heard a good deal. A very gruff voice announced that his Satanic Majesty was present, and ordered Mr Woodcock to leave. How Satan could conscientiously neglect his other business to operate exclusively in a remote portion of Clarendon township it is difficult to understand. But still there he was, recognisable by the voice, though not by the eye.
Something very remarkable followed. Satan spoke in shockingly vulgar terms, and Mr Woodcock, as every RCA should do, protested vigorously against the use in his presence of bad language. The protest was completely successful. The spook became not only quite respectable in its conversation, but exceedingly remorseful in respect of its past conduct. It apologised to nearly everybody, and expressed a strong desire to be forgiven. At a later interview, however, the spirit again became vulgar. More than that, it prevaricated, for it blamed its manifestation upon a neighbour with whom the Dagg family had had a boundary dispute. Confronted by the victim of its accusation it was compelled to admit that this improbable yarn was false.
To make a long story short, the spook once more apologised for the trouble it had given and promised to go away. It was to have deserted the neighbourhood on Sunday of last week. In anticipation of its departure the neighbours assembled at Dagg’s house. There the spook became astonishingly religious. The formerly obscene spirit talked as if it were in the pulpit. The gruff, repulsive voice sang in a delightful soprano hymns of its own composition. So charmed was everybody with the spook that by special request it remained for another hour.
On the following day the spook made its departure. Dinah saw it go. It came into the fields in the form of a venerable old man, and ascended skyward, enveloped in flames. The manifestation is really a remarkable one. For the earlier part of the ghostly proceedings there have been many precedents. A Scotch girl once discovered that a sudden movement on a particular portion of the floor would bring the plates and dishes from the dresser as if by the help of a spook. She secured for the house in which she lived a ghostly reputation. But the latter half of the proceedings find no parallel. Spooks are not usually so vulgar as our Clarendon spook was, nor are they so susceptible to reasoning when addressed to them by a human being. However, it may be that Canada has a new species.
Toronto Daily Mail, 27th November 1889.
Two Canadian Ghosts.
An account was given some days ago in these columns of the sayings and doings of a ghost that has been troubling a family bearing the name of Dagg in Pontiac county. The unearthly visitor, it will be remembered, introduced itself by breaking the windows of the Dagg residence and destroying the contents of the Dagg dining-room. Friendly remonstrances alone secured the withdrawal of his ghostship. At first the spook refused to listen to reason. Arguments elicited from him nothing but a storm of profanity. Finally a member of the Royal Society of Canada, by some means unknown to common mortals, touched its heart, compelled it to apologise for its visits, and secured from it a promise to do no further damage.
On a Sunday night after service the spirit said farewell to the Daggs in the presence of a large audience. It transformed itself from a gruff, profane masculine ghost into a sweet singing soprano spirit, and in this shape entertained the company with hymns, many of which were of its own composition. With an appeal to the public to meet it in the hereafter the spirit withdrew to be heard no more. The Pontiac people are under a debt of gratitude to the member of the Royal Society who preached repentance so successfully to the ghost and rid the neighbourhood of its unwelcome visitor.
But the ghost has unfortunately left behind a remembrancer in the shape of a law suit. In a moment of candour or of ungovernable mendacity it declared that the whole trouble about the breaking of the dishes and the windows was produced by a neighbour, with whom the Daggs have a dispute. The neighbour now proposes to sue somebody for libel, and whom can he sue with greater propriety than Dagg? It was Dagg’s ghost that made the objectionable statement, and Dagg must therefore suffer the consequences.
Curiously enough the disappearance of the Pontiac spirit was promptly followed by a similar outbreak in St. John, N.B. One would almost imagine that the Pontiac visitor had taken the new short line to its eastern terminus with a view to giving an exhibition there. But this can hardly be the cas, for the St. John ghost is coloured. Moreover the Pontiac ghost was heard and not seen, whereas the St John ghost is seen and not heard. It is very evident from the accounts given of the two visitors, first, that the St John apparition is not an importation from the Upper Provinces; and secondly, that as there are different kinds of men, so there are different kinds of ghosts.
There are bad ghosts and good ghosts, visible ghosts and invisible ghosts, loquacious ghosts and dumb ghosts, white ghosts and black ghosts. The St. John ghost is, it appears, the troubled spirit of the late Mr Jackson, formerly a prominent and influential barber of that city. It has made it its business during the past few days to visit the widow Jackson, and appears to follow the example of the spirit of Alonso the Brave, that “spake not, and moved not, and looked not around.” In order to escape the posthumous attentions of her husband Mrs Jackson called in the clergy. Rev. Mr Lawson visited the house in response to her appeals, but was quite unable to detect a ghost upon the premises. Rev. H.A.S. Hartley, B.A, was then summoned. After making sure that the lady was not intoxicated, he examined the various rooms. In a bed he found the form of a man which, though he could see it, he could not feel.
Shortly afterwards he observed a chocolate-coloured man sitting in a chair, and subsequently the man walked with him from the bedroom to the parlour. This was the ghost. More than that, it was Mr Jackson’s ghost. Mr Jackson was clean-shaven in his lifetime; the ghost was also clean shaven; therefore the ghost was that of Mr Jackson. At least such was Mrs Jackson’s argument. Now the rev. gentleman thought it was time to do something, so, according to a local paper, he said Psalms in English and Latin and finally resorted to the old exorcisms of the Roman Church. These were successful, but not permanently so, for the ghost revisited the premises, indicating its presence to the satisfaction of a committee of four coloured men by disturbing the bed clothes in the darkened bedroom in which the committee had assembled. It is evident that notwithstanding the Latin and the exorcism Jackson’s ghost is undaunted. Probably the rev. gentleman has not used the Latin exorcisms to the best advantage. He should have read them backwards. Latin sentences read wrong end foremost are very powerful with ghosts. That is to say, those who believe in ghosts so maintain.
Toronto Daily Mail, 10th December 1889.
A Rare Type of Poltergeist.
Those who may have read with attention the various narratives of poltergeist disturbances which have been published in these pages and elsewhere will probably have noticed that the agency which produces them, whatever it be, though far from noiseless in its operations, is hardly ever heard to speak. Exceptions are, no doubt, on record, but they are rare. If the racketing spirit attempts to communicate, its purpose is most commonly effected by chalking up some message on the wall or by writing on a blank sheet of paper. The departure from this rule of silence, which is so conspicuous a feature in the story which follows, may reasonably be held, quite apart from the other extravagant features, to throw doubt upon its authenticity.
Unfortunately also, as the incidents occurred forty-six years ago in a remote part of Canada, it is hopeless to think of obtaining any verification. It can only be said that stories published in local journals and containing the names of many people living in the district can hardly be pure inventions. An editor is apt to be sensitive to the ridicule and loss of credit which follows when he is publicly made a full of. This premised, I may proceed to abridge the tale from the very full account printed in Light in the course of December, 1889.
On September 15, 1889, the family of George Dagg, a farmer living in the township of Clarendon, Province of Quebec, began, we are told, to be troubled by some strange spirit of mischief which played havoc with their peaceful home and drove them nearly distracted. The family consisted of George Dagg, aged thirty-five years, his wife Susan, little Mary Dagg aged four, little Johnny Dagg aged two, and Dinah Burden McLean aged eleven. (There were also relatives bearing the same name, Dagg, who seem to have lived not far off). This little girl Dinah, an orphan, was sent out from Scotland by Mr Quarrier, and had been adopted from the Belleville Home by Mr Dagg five years earlier. Previously to the commencement of these troubles, she was a stout, rosy-cheeked Scotch girl. “Now,” says the report, “her cheeks are sunken in, dark rings encircle her eyes, and she is a mere shadow of her former self.” As constantly happens in such cases, the farmer folk of the surrounding country believed that some sort of witchcraft or magic must be at the bottom of the troubles, and a certain Mrs Wallace and her children fell under suspicion. The one fact which was a matter of observation was that when Dinah was away from the house the disturbances ceased.
The account of the case, which was printed in The Recorder of Brockville, Canada, was furnished by a certain Mr Woodcock, described as an artist well known in the Dominion, who had also lived in New York and in Paris. He visited the Daggs on Friday, November 15th, and spent most of his time with them until the Sunday evening. During these three days he made notes of what he could learn from the family and the neighbours, and seems to have convinced himself that the physical manifestations, alleged to have taken place during the previous two months, were unquestionably authentic. Among other things he was informed that on September 15th Mr Dagg had brought home a five-dollar bill and a two-dollar bill and gave them to his wife, who placed them in a bureau drawer. In the morning a little boy named Dean, an orphan, who was employed by various farmers as “chore boy,” and who was temporarily in the service of the Daggs, came down from his bed in the garret and proceeded to light a fire in the cooking stove. Seeing on the floor a five-dollar bill he took it at once to Mr Dagg telling him where he had found it. Mr Dagg, being suspicious, looked in the drawer and discovered that the two-dollar bill was also gone. So sending the boy out of doors to milk, he examined his room and found the missing bill in his bed. Although convinced that the boy was guilty, they said nothing until later in the day when, on returning from the milk house, Mrs Dagg found on the floor of her house from back to front a streak of filth. This, with the theft of the money, was too much for Mrs Dagg and she immediately ordered the boy Dean out of the house. The boy stoutly asserted his innocence, but had to go. Mr Dagg took the boy to Shawville before a magistrate, and while they were away the same thing happened again and filth was found in various places, in the eatables, in the beds, etc., showing conclusively that the boy was in no way connected with it.
This continued for about a week and was accompanied by various other antics. Milk-pans were emptied, butter was taken from the crocks and put into the pans. As a precaution the milk and eatables were then conveyed to the attic for safety, but just the same annoyances occurred there as had happened before. This attic had no doors or windows and no entrance except by a stair which led up to it from the kitchen, and no one could enter the place without being seen, as these things were done in the daytime. The worry about eatables was succeeded by the smashing of windows, the outbreak of fires, the pouring of water and much other mischief. One afternoon little Dinah felt her hair, which hung in a long braid down her back, suddenly pulled, and on her crying out, the family found her braid almost cut off. It had to be completely severed. Incidents of this kind recurred during two months, and then a new type of manifestation developed. A gruff voice, which at first was heard by Dinah alone, began to be audible to all who were present.
On the Saturday morning of Mr Woodcock’s visit, he tried to have a private talk with Dinah and took the child to an open shed at the back of the house where she declared she had seen something. Dinah said: “Are you there, Mister?” To Mr Woodcock’s intense astonishment, “a deep gruff voice, as of an old man, seemingly within four or five feet from him, instantly replied in language which cannot be repeated here.” The visitor, recovering from his astonishment, said: “Who are you?” To which the reply came: “I am the devil. I’ll have you in my clutches. Get out of this or I’ll break your neck.”
From these beginnings a conversational wrangle developed which went on, we are told, for several hours. The voice used foul and obscene language, but in deference to the remonstrances of Mr Woodcock and George Dagg, after a while showed more restraint. The account insists that the gruff voice could not have been that of the child, which was rather exceptionally high-pitched, and also that there was no possible place of concealment where a practical joker could have hidden himself. As Mr Woodcock had heard of writings having been found about the house, he challenged the spirit to write something. Putting a sheet of paper and a pencil on a bench in the shed he saw the pencil stand up and move along the surface. As soon as the pencil dropped, he stepped over, and examining the paper said: “I asked you to write something decent.” To this the voice replied in an angry tone: “I’ll steal your pencil,” and immediately the pencil rose from the bench and was thrown violently across the shed.
In the report given of the dialogue between the voice and its questioners, we find passages like the following: Mr Dagg: “Why have you been bothering me and my family?” Answer: “Just for fun.” Mr Dagg: “It was not very much fun when you threw a stone and struck little Mary.” Answer: “Poor wee Mary! I did not mean to hit her, I intended it for Dinah; but I did not let it hurt her.” Mr Dagg: “If it was only for fun why did you try to set the house on fire?” Answer: “I didn’t. The fires came always in the daytime and where you could see them. I’m sorry I did it.”
In the end a promise was obtained from the spook that it would say good-bye and leave the house for good on the following night, the Sunday. News of this spread, and there was great excitement throughout the neighbourhood. People began arriving early in the morning, and all the afternoon the place was thronged. The voice was on its good behaviour, as had been promised, but it answered questions and made comments on different people as they entered the room. Some remarks were very amusing and displayed an intimate knowledge of the private affairs of many of the questioners. One of the visitors commented on the change for the better in the language used. The reply thereupon came: “I am not the person who used the filthy language. I am an angel from Heaven sent by God to drive away that fellow.” This character was maintained for some time, but Mr Woodcock declares that the voice was the same as that which they had previously heard, and, as the day wore on and many questions were asked, the spook contradicted himself, and getting entangled, lost his temper, saying many things quite out of harmony with his supposed heavenly origin.
Before ending his visit on the Sunday, Mr Woodcock drew up the following report: “To whom it may concern: We, the undersigned, solemnly declare that the following curious proceedings which began on the 15th day of September, 1889, and are still going on the 17th day of November, 1889, in the house of Mr George Dagg, a farmer living seven miles from Shawville, Clarendon Township, Pontiac County, Province of Quebec, actually occurred as below described.
“1st. That fires have broken out spontaneously throughout the house, as many as eight occurring in one day, six being in the house and two outside; that the window curtains were burned whilst on the windows, this happening in broad daylight, whilst the family and neighbours were in the house. 2nd. That stones were thrown by invisible hands through the windows, as many as eight panes of glass being broken, that articles such as a water jug, milk pitchers, a wash basin, cream tub, butter tub and other articles were thrown about the house by the same invisible agency, a jar of water being thrown in the face of Mrs John Dagg, also one in the face of Mrs George Dagg while they were being about their household duties, Mrs George Dagg being alone in the house at the time it was thrown in her face; that a large dining table was thrown down; a mouth organ, which was lying on a small shelf, was distinctly heard to be played and was seen to move across the room onto the floor, while, immediately after, a rocking chair began rocking furiously; that a washboard was sent flying down the stairs from the garret, no one being in the garret at the time. Further, that when the child Dinah is present a deep, gruff voice, like that of an aged man, has been heard at various times, both in the house and out of doors, and when asked questions has answered so as to be distinctly heard, showing that he is cognizant of all that has taken place, not only in Mr Dagg’s family, but also in the families in the surrounding neighbourhood; that he claims to be a disincarnated being who died twenty years ago, aged about eighty years; that he gave his name to Mr George Dagg and Mr Willie Dagg, forbidding them to tell it; that this intelligence is able to make himself visible to Dinah, little Mary and Johnny, who have seen him under different forms at different times, at one time as a tall, thin man with a cow’s head, horns, tail and a cloven foot, at another time as a big black dog, and finally as a man with a beautiful face and long white hair dressed in white, wearing a crown with stars in it.” (It seems pretty obvious that though this document purports to have been signed on the Sunday, there has been added to it a reference to the venerable white-haired figure which only manifested on the Monday morning. This indicates a rather lax conscience in dealing with evidence. But the names of the seventeen witnesses are all printed in full, and the interpolation was probably made with the knowledge of the Daggs and perhaps with the consent of some others of the signatories.)
This document is signed by seventeen witnesses, beginning with the Daggs, all of them responsible people living in the district. No women’s names are included, and Mr Woodcock declares that he might have had twice as many signatures had he wanted them.
Perhaps the most extraordinary feature of the story is the fact that the spook after all took his departure in a blaze of glory. Though Mr Woodcock left the house on the Sunday evening to return to his own lodging, a number of people seem to have remained behind with the Daggs, hoping to witness the promised leavetaking of the author of all the disturbance. By this time he had, so far as appearances went, completely changed his character. He suddenly laid aside his gruff tones, declared that he had only maintained this harsh accent because otherwise people would have believed that Dinah was doing it, and then proceeded to sing hymns in what is described as a very beautiful flute-like voice. The group of visitors present were enchanted, and completely convinced by this reassumption of angelic attributes. So far from hastening the departure of the spook, they pressed him to stay, and this strange seance was prolonged until 3 a.m. The spirit then said good-bye, but promised to show himself to the children later in the morning.
Early in the forenoon of the Monday Mr Woodcock himself came back to the Daggs’ house to take leave. He describes how, when he got there, “the three children, who had been out in the yard, came rushing into the house, wild-eyed and fearfully excited.” I can only copy the exact terms of the statement which follows: “Little Mary cried out ‘Oh, Mama! the beautiful man! He took little Johnny and me in his arms, and, Oh, Mama, I played on the music and he went to Heaven and all was red!’ They, the Daggs, rushed to the door, but nothing unusual was to be seen. On questioning the girls they both told the same story. Their accounts said it was a beautiful man, dressed in white, with ribbons and pretty things all over his clothes, with a gold thing on his head and stars in it. They said he had a lovely face and long white hair, that he stooped down and took little Mary and the baby (Johnny) and said Johnny was a fine little fellow, and that Mary played on the music-thing he had with him. Dinah said she distinctly saw him stoop and lift Mary and Johnny in his arms and heard him speak to Johnny. Dinah said he spoke to her also and said – that man Woodcock thought he was not an angel, but he would show that he was, and then, she said, he went up to Heaven. On being questioned, she said he seemed to go right up in the air and disappear. He was in a kind of fire and the fire seemed to blaze up from his feet and surrounded him until he disappeared. No amount of questioning could shake their stories in the least.”
Personally I find it hard to believe that Mr Woodcock invented this. It runs so counter to the very uncomplimentary view of the spook which he had expressed the day before. Extravagant as the description is, it seems to me that as a documentary illustration of child psychology it is not without its value. Was it all a fiction which Dinah mendaciously invented and stuck to, impressing it on the minds of her younger companions? If there is truth in the statement about the three “rushing in, wild-eyed and fearfully excited,” this explanation seems unlikely. A more probable theory would suggest that some telepathic influence affected simultaneously the susceptible mental faculties of the children, enabling them to visualize a scene which existed only in their own imagination. Fancy and reality lie nearer together in the mind of the child than in that of the adult, and, even in the case of adults, they commingle strangely in our dreams. But what could be the source of this telepathic influence? One speaks very much in the dark, but, accepting as I do the existence of a spirit world, angelic, demonic and possibly nondescript, I should be more inclined to look for the impulse there than to identify it with any terrestrial agent. Children may very probably be more susceptible to such telepathic influences from outside than the normal adult is! We must, I think, recognize that some individuals possess psychic faculties, often involving a certain power of clairvoyance. It is alleged that people so gifted are able to see auras, faces, forms or hands, apparently materialised, which others, not so endowed, are incapable of perceiving. Whether that which is discerned on these occasions exists objectively and is localised at a point in space which can be determined by fixed co-ordinates, we do not know. It may be that there is, after all, nothing but a subjective perception, and that this is induced by telepathic suggestion from outside. But, however this may be, it is unquestionable that in a considerable number of accounts of poltergeist phenomena, the spook, while remaining invisible to all grown-up people, is said at times to have revealed himself, often in a highly fantastical guise (e.g., under the appearance of a man they have never seen, an old witch, a black dog, etc.), to some child medium involved in the disturbances.
At a later date (November, 1890) Light published some further details connected with the Dagg Poltergeist. Mr Arthur Smart, a resident in the neighbourhood, who is described as a most trustworthy witness, testified to these facts which he had himself witnessed. “He sat in front of a little cupboard at a distance of not more than four or five feet and directly facing it. There he saw Mrs Dagg put in two pans full of bread which she had just taken from the oven. After doing so she took a pail and went out to milk, while he continued to sit facing the cupboard. In about ten minutes Mrs Dagg, on coming in with her milk, found one of the pans full of bread in the back kitchen, and, on her expressing her surprise, he opened the cupboard and found only one there. This, he said, was the first thing which fairly staggered his unbelief.”
In the absence of Mr Dagg, who was away from home with his threshing machine, Mr Arthur Smart used to be invited to sit with the family, as they were afraid to stay alone. “On one of these occasions, while they were sitting round the stove in the evening, a match was heard falling on the floor, which was uncarpeted, then another and another, and this continued till the floor of the room was pretty well covered. Mr Smart watched with all the care possible to see if he could see the matches leaving the safe, which hung against the wall, but failed to see them, nor could he see them fall until within a few inches of the floor. After the shower was over he examined the safe and found it empty. He then proceeded to gather up the matches and go enough to fill the safe.”
From Mrs Dagg herself, another investigator (Robert Grant, a teacher, much respected in the neighbourhood), had the following account of one of the most striking incidents of the phenomena which took place in the presence of the same little medium, Dinah McLean. Mrs Dagg told him: “One day, just after dinner, I and Dinah were standing at the window on the side of the room opposite to where the dining table stands, when we saw it slowly turning over towards her till it fell on one side. It then made a second turn and lay with its legs pointing to the ceiling. This occurred at about 1 o’clock p.m. on a clear, sunny day when no one was near except myself and the family.” Mr Grant reports that he examined the table carefully. It was about 8 feet long and 3 1/2 feet wide, a very heavy, strongly-built table.
There are two features in the above story which lead me to think that, despite its extraordinary character, the narrative may have been written in good faith, and that if a certain allowance be made for the embellishments nearly always introduced by people who are very much startled, it may correspond pretty closely with the facts. The narrators do not betray any knowledge that what they record corresponds with the observations made in numberless similar cases in all parts of the world, and they do not, as they would almost inevitably do if they possessed that knoweldge, emphasise these points when they speak of them.
The first matter to which I refer is the assertion of the spook that when he threw a stone, which hit little wee Mary by mistake, he “did not let it hurt her.” The fact that Mary was not hurt was confirmed by the Dagg family, who seemed a good deal surprised at her escape. It also appears that though a number of fires were started the spook claimed that “the fires always came in the daytime and where you could see them.” The same peculiarity, viz., that though mischief is done it is not of a character dangerous to life or limb, recurs over and over again in poltergeist phenomena. Several examples have been cited here in previous articles both of objects flung with violence which missed the human target by a hair’s breadth, and of others which were strangely arrested in full career and fell harmless like spent bullets after inflicting a mere tap. With regard to the fires spontaneously breaking out, the case of the Indian poltergeist, referred to above in a foot note (the Poona case, Psychic Research, May 1930, p. 227) is particularly impressive. Mr Thangapragasam Pillay was terrified out of his wits at these recurrent excitements, but no damage was done to the fabric of his house. There was always someone at hand to notice and extinguish the fires. Giraldus Cambrensis in the twelfth century, speaking of a Welsh poltergeist, declared that in pelting people with all sorts of unpleasant missiles it only meant to tease them without really doing any hurt. (See Giraldus, “Itinerarium Kambriae” (Rolls Series), pp. 93-94.) Fifty years later William Auvergne, Bishop of Paris, speaks as if such cases were not infrequent and makes a similar comment (He ascribes these assaults, of course, to diabolical agency, but he says that the demons “hujusmodi jactibus homines vel rarissime vel nunquam laedunt.” Opera, Vol. 1, p. 1062). So again, in Queen Elizabeth’s time we read in Reginald Scot’s “Discoverie of Witchcraft” that “they (the spirits) throwe downe stones upon men, but the blowes therof doo no harme to them whome they hit.”
The other circumstance which seems strikingly in accord with what has been noticed in poltergeist disturbances where a variety of small objects are thrown, is the curious statement of Mr Smart that when the matches were falling he could never detect the manner of their departure from the “safe” and could not see them at all until they were within a few inches of the floor. Many parallels might be quoted for this apparent dematerialisation during flight, but I must content myself with referring to a case of which an account was sent me a few years ago by a Jesuit Father in Presburg, Czechoslovakia. My informant, quite obviously, knew nothing about poltergeist phenomena, but in giving a description of the incident which had occasioned much talk in the neighbourhood, he told me how two lads were pelted all along the road with a shower of small stones which did not even cease when they sought refuge in a wayside tavern. I may add that there were other more violent phenomena which occurred later, but the interesting point for the moment is that the stones could not be seen until they were about a foot away and did not strike the boys with any great violence. As my correspondent knew no English and I am ignorant of Czech, he wrote in Latin. His actual words were “imber lapidum incipit cadere qui solum in distantia 30 cm. erant visibiles et non habebant ictum gravem.” As stated above, many similar instances might be quoted for which I have here no room. For the present it may suffice to note that neither Mr Smart nor Father Sichta betray any previous acquaintance with poltergeist phenomena, and that, though their accounts are in accord, Presburg is a very long way from the Province of Quebec.
Herbert Thurston.
In ‘The Month’, v. 167, issue 859, January 1936.