Punchbowl ghost excites wonder.
Spiritualists declare girl is instrument of spirit.
A ghost, a thirteen-year-old girl, and a large bunch of spiritualists are having the time of their lives on Punchbowl this morning. The ghost broke loose in the old Boyd house on Punchbowl street yesterday, and the inhabitants, Stephen Pecarick, a Pole, and his Spanish wife, have been scared almost out of their wits. The young girl, Esperanza Gonsales, was employed as a servant by the Pecaricks, and seems to be in some way connected with the hystery. The Christian Scientists say that she is a medium, and the skeptics say that she has been having some fun at the expense of the community.
The workings of the ghost are of a rather commonplace order. It is alleged to have tumbled pictures off the wall, thrown kindling through closed windows without breaking the glass, shied faucets and tin cups into the dining room from the kitchen and to have stuck knives and corkscrews into the table.
Yesteday Catholic priests blessed the house, detectives took a look around, but nothing happened while these people were about. A reporter who also took a look, was hit in the back of the neck by a pan, but he is inclined to think that it was thrown by a mortal hand. This morning the house was visited by a large gathering of Christian Scientists, Theosophist, psychists, psychologists and other ‘ists, most of them ladies, who took a great interest in the phenomena. Nothing strange happened, however, while they were there. As a matter of fact, the phenomena stopped as soon as Esperanze left the house last night.
Mrs Pecarick firmly believes that a ghost is at work. She showed the admiring crowd the works of the unseen hands this morning. The picture, which had fallen down, and the mirror which had turned, both had nails, one of them with a string attached, which suggested to the skeptic that a trick could easily have been played. In relation of the other phenomena it was always peculiar that the girl appeared to have been close at hand, except in the case of the corkscrew, which, it was said, was stuck into the table, while Mrs Pecarick was within a few feet of it and the girl was under the house.
A stove-lifter was exhibited, adn it was stated that this had been broken by the spirit, but a close examination revealed the fact that the break was old and rusty, whereas the ghost has only been walking during the past few days.
The ladies who took an interest in the affair were all very earnest in their investigation, though none of them were prepared to explain the phenomenon, beyond suggesting that the girl was a strong medium through whom a spirit, who wanted something done, was communicating. Chas. R. Frizier, who has made many researches of this kind of things on a scientific basis, however, declared, after an investigation of the premises, that this was beyond doubt a case of spirits communicating through a medium. During the forenoon the girl was sent for, and on her arrival she was seized upon by the spiritualists and asked to explain. They themselves told her that she was not to blame, but that mysterious agencies were acting through her. The young lady herself was very angry with MRs Pecarick, and demanded that she deny that she (Esperanza) had played any tricks on her, and threatened that unless this were done she would consult a lawyer. In the meantime Pecarick has decided to shake the dust from his feet, and is today occupied in the pleasant pastime of house-hunting, while his wife is entertaining visitors with the story of the visits of the ghost.
Evening Bulletin, 28th September 1908.
Ghost refuses to do things.
Punchbowl spook laid, but house was jammed all day.
Ghosts evidently dislike publicity. Since the Advertiser printed the doings of the Punchbowl spirit, that spook has retired, and yesterday all was peace and quietness about the Pecarick residence, so far as any ghostly manifestations were concerned. There was anything but peace otherwise, however, the little house and the surrounding yard being so crowded with visitors all day that in the afternoon the services of the police had to be called upon to keep the curious from stringing through the house, trampling down the flower beds, frightening the little Spanish servant by innumerable questions and generally overrunning everything.
Nothing that has occurred lately in Honolulu has attracted so much general attention as the spooky doings in the Pecarick home, the subject of ghosts fairly crowding politics to one side throughout the city. Early in the morning, as soon as everyone in the city read their Advertiser, the street cars towards Punchbowl began picking up fares bound to the scene of the ghostly revels of the day before. Theosophists, spiritualists, esoterics, telepathists and others of the cults flocked up the hill to see the spot where mediumistic tricks had been done without the aids of mediumistic paraphernalia. They took the matter very seriously. In questions bristling with terms of the occult they besieged little Esperance Gonsalves, marveled at her unconscious power and generally frightened that damsel to the verge of hysterics. Pecarick and his wife told and retold the doings of the three days before, but everyone demanded miracles and hung around expecting the cookstove to pirouette, the family portraits to commence a conversation or ghostly fingers to thumb a tambourine.
And not a thing happened more astonishing than the arrival of the police when they were wanted.
To those who showed any intelligent interest in the phenomena reported, the truth of which was reiterated by many who had been witnesses, the principal actors told their stories, but as the day aged the crowd grew until the occupants of the house had to have someone to clear a place for them to move in. At one time yesterday morning it looked as if half the children in the city were on the lawn around the house, jamming the doorways, swarming around the windows and making general nuisances of themselves. All day crowds of older ones came, some rapping on the door and asking questions of the ones answering, others walking in without any formalities and treating the place as a sort of show.
As yet the whole mysterious doings in the house are unexplained. The priests who were called in shrug their shoulders when questioned and refuse to advance any theory, and those among the callers who are skills in things occult decided that there are more things in heaven and earth and Punchbowl than are dreamed of in the ordinary philosophy. It was disappointing, of course, to have the bacon frying in the pan in the most matter of fact way instead of jumping out onto the floor, and to see the cups stay on the shelves and the pictures on the wall, but it was some satisfaction to handle the very stone that had been dropped by an unseen hand through the unpierced roof and to see the very picture that had had sudden and mysterious migrations only a few hours before.
The ghost affair, while it has interested and amused the city, has not been unalloyed joy to either Mr and Mrs Pecarick or to Esperance Gonsalves, who is now known as “the beautiful Spanish girl.” Pecarick is worried. He stated yesterday that he had neither eaten nor slept for three days, and his looks bore out his statement. He is much more worried than his wife, although she, too, was plainly worn out by last night. The little girl is the most seriously affected, however, and yesterday afternoon she was in tears the greater part of the time. It was small wonder, too, for her appearance on the street was the signal yesterday for the children to circle around her and point her out as a witch, taunting her, but shunning “the evil eye” carefully. It would appear that she is due for a series of persecutions over the alleged manifestations on Sunday, which the ignorant ones among her neighbours are convinced were the doings of the devil.
Any share in the stunts and any necromancy on her part the tearful damsel strongly denies. She also resents being told that she is a medium, unconsious or otherwise. “Those women they say I do those things but I don’t know. I don’t do those things and I do know,” she says indignantly. “They say that the power it pass through me. I don’t feel nothing pass through me. I see the things bzzz past my head, but I don’t feel no thing pass through me. How I could do those things, eh? If I could make those things I could get a million dollars, and I don’t have to work no more. It silly thing, those women say. They come to me and talk, all of things I don’t know. I don’t think those women know themselves. That doctor man, he feel my heart go jump, jump, in my wrist. That’s silly. What my wrist go to do with those things? I don’t like you put my name in the paper, too. Every place I go they point finger at me. I don’t like that at all. Soon no one like me to work their house. The paper say when I come, things start; when I do, pau. That not true.”
It isn’t true, either, that this little girl could do all the things that eye-witnesses say were done, because there were some hard-headed men around on Sunday morning who watched the girl and everyone else to detect any trickery. There is as much sense in blaming her as there is reason to believe the story related with a wealth of details by some of those gathered at the house yesterday, that there was a treasure buried under the building, the exact spot of burial known only to a young girl who had died in the house. That story was only one of a dozen similar ones told and reported
At any rate, as a result of the excitement of which the Pecaricks have been the centre, the house will be wanting a tenant very shortly, Pecarick having decided to move just as soon as he can find a place to move into. The house is one under control by Castle and Withington, to whom prospective tenants are referred. In connection with the renting, a story of a mortgage foreclosure and spite arising thereby was told, a kahuna, threats, desire for revenge and a few other details being supplied. The last tenants, who moved out only a short time ago, state that during their occupancy of the house there was nothing worse seen or heard than cockroaches.
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Real Ghost Defies Priests, Reporters and Detectives.
(From Monday’s Advertiser.)
What would you think if the mirror before which you were combing your tresses persisted in turning its face to the wall? Wouldn’t it jar you if a roast of beef and a humble soup bone took it into their heads to bounce around the kitchen floor all of their own accord? Wouldn’t your hair creep up if you had a stick of kindling wood in your hand and it was suddenly snatched away from you by unseen fingers and disappear? How would you like to watch another pile of kindling hopping stick by stick up on to your lanai, without anyone in sight to make it hop, or have a chunk of rock come into your dining-room through a closed window without smashing the glass, or be hammered in the ribs by an unseen fist? Wouldn’t it make you feel nervous?
And yet these are the sort of things that have been going on in a house on Punchbowl for the past three days. Plenty of sober, reliable people have seen some of them, and a priest with holy water couldn’t stop it. This is not a fairy tale nor a nightmare, but the truth as testified to by scores of those living on Luso street and Punchbowl street, who thronged the “haunted house” yesterday and waited for ghostly manifestations.
Concerned are a beautiful young Spanish girl, a Polish man and his Spanish wife, three priests from the Roman Catholic fraternity and some hundreds of Portuguese. All Punchbowl is excited, and there were many faint hearts beneath the shadows of the grape-vines last night. Do you believe in ghosts, anyway, because nearly all the residents of Punchbowl have arrived at the belief that there are ghosts that are real, even though unseen, and that the old Boyd house on Punchbowl street, beyond the Mormon church, is their present abode? The fact that two priests of the Roman Catholic church were called by the family to the house yesterday morning to bless the house and drive the unseen visitors from the vicinity gave official standing to the spooks, who withstood the priestly presence and performed elfish antics in their very faces. Not one visit only did the priests make, but last evening another priest, who is rather a skeptic about ghosts, went there again to camp out and ascertain whether someone was playing tricks or whether there was a really real ghost playing pranks.
The story of what has been taking place up there is that big green house reads like a ghost story narrated in the dark of the moon, when the flesh becomes goosey and every sound makes the heart leap into the throat. The tale from that house, moreover, is not altogether of strange things occurring in the night only, but there are many eyewitnesses who say they saw queer things take place in the broad daylight of yesterday forenoon and continue at regular intervals all day. These stories concern the movements through space of saucepans, shoe horns, stovelid-lifters, knives, forks, stones, benches, pictures, bunches of keys, crockery, stove-wood, and even chunks of meat. The inmates of the house, Stephen Pecarick, who works for the Inter-Island company, his wife and a young Spanish girl residing with the family, who appears to be the special object of ghostly attention, tell of mighty queer things happening around the house for a couple of nights and yesterday, while many of the neighbours corroborate the doings of yesterday.
Yesterday forenoon, after an exciting night, the neighbours flocked to the residence and listened to the tales. They were told how during the night strange noises were heard, and how the head of the house called out and went outside while the noises continued; how he took a lantern to investigate and found the stove-wood he had chopped the evening before pile itself up on a landing of the steps leading to the veranda; how he called out and then got a revolver, while the wood continued to leave one pile and build up another. Then how stones flew around the rooms, the clock fell over two or three times, and a picture of St Anthony, hanging in the clothes closet, strangely left its place on the wall and was found lying on the floor and, after being replaced, was again found lying on a table and a third time on the bed, with a bunch of keys, that had left the bureau, alongside it. Then a shoe-horn whizzed through space from a bedroom, through various open doorways, until it fell against the wife, standing by the dining-room table. Then pans left their places on the top of the cupboard and fell to the floor, a cup appeared to leap from another cupboard and broke into pieces on the floor several feet away. A knife came through the air from the kitchen to the dining-room and stuck in the top of the table, and a corkscrew did likewise, while all the time the house stood steady on the underpinning and there was no way to account for the phenomena.
The bureau mirror swung back slowly, and the wife set it aright; then it moved back again, as did also a small mirror standing on the bureau. Three times this took place before her eyes, then she threw holy water on the face of the mirrors and nothing more happened to the bureau. Then the benches began doing acrobatic stunts. They overturned while standing in the middle of rooms, and even while Father Reginald was in the house, a bench which he was looking at but a moment before was heard to fall over, and on rushing to the door the bench was seen by the priest to be lying on its side, with nobody in the room.
Stove-wood came mysteriously into the house, although the windows were tightly closed and the green shutters latched. In fact, the queerest stunts were done by this mysterious visitor, ghost or otherwise. It was beyond the comprehension of the inmates of the house, and the neighbours, aroused by the unusual signs of excitement, attempted to unravel the mystery.
While they talked, even, the ghost is said to have indulged in a special exhibition. Stones which had been shown the neighbours, and which were lying on the floor or table, flew through the air and struck people. The benches were seen to topple over and the neighbours went out to get a breath of fresh air and talk it over in the open.
An Advertiser reporter, who had heard of the strange doings, went there in the afternoon and found the yard deserted save for the young Spanish girl, who was sitting on the front steps. The reporter was accompanied by a young man, formerly a Rapid Transit conductor, who had witnessed some of the strange things of the forenoon. They entered the dining-room and took a look around. There was a table in the centre of the room, a refridgerator near the wall and a chair nearby. An open door looked into the kitchen, the windows closed. The girl leaned against this doorway and told of several things that had happened, gesticulating in true Latin style. The former conductor leaned against the door on the veranda. All were talking over the strange things. As the reporter turned to look toward the bathroom a cakepan came from some mysterious somewhere, struck the wall by the refridgerator and fell clanging upon the floor. The object of the missile wheeled instantly, all gooseflesh, as the young man at the door gave a yell and started for the timber, while the girl was in the attitude of shrinking away from some object. The reporter was skeptical, and while trying to make himself believe that a ghost had had a hand in shying the pan, was inclined also to the idea that the girl had something to do with its flight. If she did, however, she is in line for an acrobatic career on the stage as a lightning artist.
The flying dishpan was enough, however, to induce the Advertiser man to sit in the dining-room and wait for some new developments. He sat there with the members of the family and a few neighbours, all watching the lamp on the table, the stone and kitchen utensils, but after half an hour’s waiting he decided to leave, feeling that he was a hoodoo.
At 6:20 the scribe called again with a friend but found that nothing new had taken place, and then departed, but ten minutes later the ghost jokester got busy. First a brass faucet on the meatsafe in the kitchen was slammed against the wall of another room, around a corner from where it lay, and a cup which had had several changes of location. Later, the Spanish girl, while working at the sink, suddenly left the room complaining that something had hit her in the side and she was ready to quit the place and go home, and home she went. She had had all the ghosts she could stand.
Father Reginald visited the house last evening again and the entire days’ doings were recounted and with nearly two hundred people from Punchbowl crowding the yard and house the place was lively enough for a campaign meeting.
At this time many were beginning to think that the girl had had a share in the whole matter, and some intimated that she had tripped over the benches and rocking chairs, thrown the stones and dishes, overturned the pictures, and then some one in the crowd would say: “I saw that rocking chair move by itself and then fall over, while the girl was off at the other end of the porch,” and the skeptical one subsided. Then others intimated that while she may not have done these things herself, yet she must have a medium’s powers, and as long as she was in the house strange things would happen. Away from it the family would be peace. Two hundred years ago such a discussion would have probably reached the extremes which happened in old Salem.
And while skeptic and scoffer talked, the head of the family was closeted in a room with an old Hawaiian, said to have the powers of a kahuna, who said that the house was built over the spot where a Hawaiian was buried long years ago, and that this spiirit had returned and finding new fangled things which he had never known in his lifetime he had got gay with them and was having a good destructive time, both to property and to nerves.
In the evening the police got into the ghost-laying business; Sergeant Aea, Detective Joe Leal and Mounted Officer Machado being ready to tackle anything tangible, although, not having any silver bullets for their guns, they looked nervous about tackling a ghost. If everything else fails it is likely that Chief Kalakiela will proceed to unwind the mystery today.
Away up a little lane near Luzo street a reporter found the home of the Spanish girl, a little house where she and her mother lived. They found a pretty girl of thirteen years, although she looked older. She had a bandage about her head, but even this seemed to add to her prettiness. She was of the true Andalusian type, with fine, lustrous, and yet snappy, eyes. She spoke English brokenly, but prettily. “I don’t know how these things happen,” she said. “I have worked for other people, but have no trouble like this. But here I work only four day and such queer thing happen. I see picture go from one place to another place and dish fall on floor and wood fly up in the air. When the man he pick up a stick of wood it jump right up from his hand. Oh yes, I make one bench fall down, but that was when I take ice in my hand to put in box and bench in my way. I push an’ it fall down. How this all happen I don’t know,” and then speaking with her mother in Spanish the word “diablo” could be heard. “Then the lady she go out to tree but I think this diablo hit at her feet with stick. Then she put on cross and throw church water.”
When asked if she knew that a medium was, one who, for instance, could make pictures move from one wall to another, she answered: “No, I no see moving pictures, I don’t think I’m medium. You want my name? No, no, I not tell you my name,” and her eyes blazed angrily. “If you put my name in the newspaper, when I walk down the street everybody point at me and say ‘There go Esperanza Gonsalves’.” And believing she had outflanked the newspapermen, she again smiled prettily, showing a row of teeth which even a society queen might envy.
Until late in the night crowds remained at the house on Punchbowl street waiting for further demonstrations. The head of the house was quite worn out and nervous, while his wife, too, was breaking down under the strain and the presence of crowds of curious people.
A couple of years ago another house in the Punchbowl district, or rather on Emma street opposite Col. Parker’s home, was said to be haunted; that a lady in white mistily swirled through the rooms at night and leaned over the beds, and frightened the inmates. So frequent were the visitations of the lady in white that one night the family fleed from the house carrying their bedclothes, clothing, and a few belongings and took refuge across the street on the veranda of a little store. That was the last time the house was tenanted and the owners finally had to raze the structure. “Now do you believe in ghosts?”
Hawaiian Gazette, 29th September 1908.
Girl no medium
Pecaricks now say house is haunted – work of astral hand.
If you were a gentle minded maiden who had just said your prayers and donned your robe de nuit and tucked the drapery of your counch about your sylphlike form, after neatly depositing your dainty shoes under your bed, and suddenly said shoes commenced walking about the room, kicking the furniture, doing a dance and running out through the doorway and scampering down the road to a shoe-store to get half-soled and heeled, and then came pitter-pattering back and arranged themselves again under your bed – wouldn’t it make you ache? If you saw an astral hand stretch sudden from the thick darkness and snatch open a blind – wouldn’t it excite your imagination? And if you felt an icy finger counting the vertebrae of your spine – wouldn’t it rustle your nerve?
Well, that’s what the Pecaricks now say of the house on Punchbowl from which they are today moving, after having been the main attractions of a few day’s visitation by hundreds of curious people who wanted to see the ghosts alleged to have turned things topsy-turvy on Sunday. The Pecaricks declare that they were buncoed by the previous tenants of the old Boyd premises, for that the previous tenants knew very well that the house was haunted and unkindly neglected to inform the Pecaricks that such was the case.
Now the Pecaricks say that the neighbours are telling of ghostly things that happened in the house before they became occupants about a month ago. They say that one night when their predecessors were endeavoring to slumber, a hand, without the usual body attachment, stretched out and wrench open the fastened shutters, and at the same moment all the windows and doors of the house flew open. On another night, they say, a young lady’s shoes walked out from under her bed and walked around the house, kicking the furniture, taking a run down the road and finally returning to their position under the bed. That’s what the Pecaricks say, but a wagon-load of salt should go with every statement.
One thing is very definitely stated this morning by both Mr and Mrs Pecarick, and that is that Esperanza, the comely Spanish girl is not a medium, nor is she in any way responsible directly or indirectly for Sunday’s psychic circus. They say all blame must be attached to the house. This doesn’t hitch at all with their first statement that Esperanza was the spirits’ agent.
Esperanza’s father is in the hospital; her mother is just recovering from a sickness and Esperanza, thirteen years of age, is the sole support of the family, says her mother. Now Esperanza is out of a job because people are saying that she is a medium, whereas she is not. Her mother is sore distressed and loudly declares the girl should never have been held responsible, and the mother is probably right.
The Hawaiian Star, 30th September 1908.
House is haunted; girl is innocent.
Pecaricks say so, finding ghosts were there formerly.
The house is haunted, and Esperanza Gonsales has nothing whatever to do with the ghost. This is the conclusion which has been reached by Mr and Mrs Pecarish, whose house on Punchbowl was the scene of weird happenings last week. They have now had sufficient time after the excitement to figure the matter out calmly, and have also been making a little investigation of their own, as a result of which they feel convinced that the fault lies with the house and not with the young girl, who was generally believed to be at the bottom of it all, either because she was a medium through whom restive or festive spirits acted, or, according to the belief of others, because she was having a little fun on her own hook.
This forenoon the Pecarish family was busy packing up its household goods, it being its intention to remove the lares and penates to a more quiet place. “It is the house, it is the house, and not Esperanza who made all the trouble,” they asserted, and the girl’s mother, who stood by, nodded frantically. She explained that the girl was the sole support of herself and her family, as her husband was in the hospital, and she had herself just recovered from a serious illness. She asked with tears in her eyes, that a statement be made in the paper to the effect that Esperanza was not the cause of the trouble, as she was afraid that the girl might not be able to find employment if people were led to believe that she brought ghosts along with her. She stated as proof that Esperanza had worked for a number of families in the city, but never had any ghosts appeared at any other place where she had worked.
Mrs Pecarish then said that she had found that the people who had occupied the house just before they themselves moved into it, had been visited by ghosts, but they had said nothing about it to the Pecarishes, who, as a consequence, feel much aggrieved. “They said at first that they had never had any ghosts while they were here, but I had heard from the neighbours that they had, and they finally confessed to me,” said Mrs Pecarish. “One night the daughter go to bed and she put her shoes under the bed. Then suddenly the shoes fly up and go bang against the wall. The mother calls to the girl and asks her why she throws her shoes like that, but the girl answer that she never do it. Them shoes they just fly like that by themselves. Another time when the husband was not home the wife she sees the blinds in front of the door fly open like if someone tear them apart, and it is hard to open them shutters, for they have hooks. She hear them bang against the wall, and then the glass doors fly open, but nobody comes in. The woman she gets scared and she hollers for a neighbour, but when he comes in there is nobody there. It’s the house that has ghosts, and Esperanza she’s got no ghosts. Why the night before last she sleep in this house, and all day yesterday she was here, and nothing happen. The house is the whole trouble.”
Evening Bulletin, 30th September 1908.