Girl says ghost hand moved pan.
A sixteen-year-old North Shields girl claims that at the week-end she saw a pan of water lifted as if by an invisible hand from a stove to a bench. While she was preparing tea the pan moved three times on to the scullery bench during her temporary absence. The fourth time she saw it being moved. On the previous day, as she was standing on a chair hanging a picture, something “that may have been like a human hand” gave her a light tap on the head which she felt through her hair.
The girl is Joan Nelson, a cinema usherette, of Queen Alexandra-road, North Shields. Although her mother dismissed the matter as one of hallucination, the girl was in a state of fright. Joan told The Daily Dispatch yesterday: “When I found that the pan was being lifted off and put back on the table I thought it was a trick by one of my brothers, but no one could have got into the scullery to do this. The fourth time, just as I returned to the scullery, I saw the pan moving through the air and just arriving on the table. I realised then that I was not being fooled and got such a scare that I ran out of the scullery. When I was 14 I had the feeling that some person was round me and that somebody was following me through the rooms. I did not tell anybody about that as I thought it must be just my imagination.”
Daily Dispatch (Manchester), 10th December 1945.