Cloth-burning Ghost.
Experts fail stop mysterious phenomenon.
New Delhi (by airmail), (Reuter).
A small house on the outskirts of New Delhi appears to be haunted by a “cloth burning ghost”. Any piece of cloth inside the house catches fire mysteriously. A tired family was sitting in the drawing room of the house last week when they spotted a number of shirts on a coatstand burning. The coatstand itself was unburnt.
A little later, one of the children got up from bed. A second later, the bed caught fire, but the cot was intact. The family sat for dinner that night. As they rose, the table cloth started burning and became a heap of ashes in a minute – on a perfectly polished surface of the table.
Local experts have failed to stop the fire. One had hardly finished chanting holy hymns when a napkin nearby caught fire. Explanations varying from “invisible phosphorus fumes” to a “clothburning ghost” are advanced, but the mystery remains unsolved.
Civil and Military Gazette (Lahore), 17th November 1949.