Boy who burns.
Spiritualistic mystery in Hungary.
Much excitement has been caused in Hungarian spiritualistic circles by the mysterious agencies which apparently are at work with a 13-year old peasant boy named John Farkas, the son of a scavenger in the country town of Kecskemet. Since his earliest youth, his simple family have been frightened to see furniture moving when he was in the room and to hear whispers from empty corners.
Since he passed his 12th birthday these uncanny happenings are said to have taken a more serious aspect. Mysterious fires broke out in the home where he lived. The local authorities, after investigations, put down the cause of these fires to evaporation of naptha in the soil. The superstitious villagers, however, were not satisfied, and John and his mother were obliged to leave the town and go to Budapest.
Here events repeated themselves. At night flames flicked over the bed where the boy slept, with his cheeks burning in fever, and singed the pillows. Very soon no house in Budapest was willing to harbour the dangerous tenant who seemed unconsciously to bring invisble and unwelcome guests.
John is now in the house of a prominent Hungarian spiritualist who hopes to solve the riddle, adn who claims to have discovered a new and brilliant medium for seances.
Nottingham Evening Post, 13th December 1921.