A Karachi Poltergeist.
Showers of stones at a funeral.
From our correspondent, Karachi, July 6th.
A midnight Hindu religious ceremonial feast in a Karachi building on Saturday, in mourning for a child drowned in a garden tank, was rudely disturbed by continued showers of stones, of which no explanation is available.
A close search of the vicinity revealed no throwers, of which at least 20 would have been necessary. The party of 60, on the second or third shower of stones, broke in panic, several persons being injured by flying stones as they dispersed.
Poltergeist manifestations at previous ceremonies in the same building are reported to have occurred.
*A dictionary defines a poltergeist as a spirit that makes its presence known by noises.
The Times, 7th July 1936.
Showers of Stones at Funeral.
Indian Mourners Injured.
“Spirit” Manifestation.
A midnight Hindu religious ceremonial feast in a Karachi building in mourning for a child drowned in a garden tank was rudely disturbed by continued showers of stones, of which no explanation is available.
Search of the vicinity revealed no throwers, of which at least twenty would have been necessary.
The party of 60 mourners, on the second or third shower of stones broke in a panic, several persons being injured by flying stones as they dispersed.
Spirit manifestations at previous ceremonies in the same building are reported to have occurred. – Times.
Dundee Evening Telegraph, 7th July 1936.
Poltergeist in Karachi.
Karachi, apparently, believes it has witnessed a demonstration of a poltergeist. Recently while a marriage ceremony was in progress at midnight in a house in the city those attending it were taken aback by successive showers of stone on the roof of the house. These showers of stone did not cease even after observers had been placed outside the house and sent to scour the neighbourhood. Now witnesses have come forward to testify that similar incidents of stone-throwing have occurred before on the occasion of another marriage ceremony in the same house. It is not surprising that some witnesses consider the stone-throwing as the manifestation of the Devil, and the learned call it the work of a poltergeist, or a noisy ghost.
What precisely are the methods employed by a poltergeist to make its presence known no one can definitely say, and so far most occurrences attributed to a poltergeist have had, not very simple, but very natural explanations.
Moreover, in the case of the incident in Karachi, the noisy ghost was obviously outside the house. Ordinarily, a poltergeist makes its presence known and felt inside a house. Furniture begins to move or to be hurled about in a room, apparently, by invisible hands, or crockery begins to rattle mysteriously, or stones or mud is slung about inside a room. Scientific investigation, however, has shown that in most cases, ingenious devices have been employed by very substantial flesh-and-blood men and women to produce these occurrences. Before someone quotes the experiments conducted by the Psychical Research Society in England, we may say that these experiments also do not completely establish the presence of a poltergeist whenever occurrences ordinarily associated with frolicsome, and, in some cases, obviously cruel, spirits take place.
The trouble is those secretly playing the role of the poltergeist do not always employ the same methods for producing strange occurrences. Anyhow, those in Karachi who heard the noise of the showers of stone over the roof did not completely exhaust ways and means of ascertaining if it was not a human agency that rained stones. Observers sent out by the marriage party scoured the streets in the neighbourhood, but those playing the part of noisy ghosts could not be expected to walk abroad with their cargo of stones.
If someone wanted to prevent people from using the building in which the marriage ceremony was held, he would hide the stone-throwers in a courtyard in the house, or have them posted on trees, if there were trees near by.
Some years ago, strange occurrences were reported to be taking place in a house in a bazar in Jubbulpore. As soon as anyone entered a room in the house, it was said, mud began to fly everywhere in the room, but those in the room were never touched by the mud. It whizzed past their ears from the back, or in front, and found a lodgment on the walls. An investigator who visited the haunted room saw visible eviidence of the fusilade of mud, but he himself was not subjected to a bombardment. The poltergeist was evidently having a holiday.
Civil and Military Gazette (Lahore), 12th July 1936.