The Californian Ghost.
Not to be outdone by the old country San Francisco has had a reproduction of the Cock-lane Ghost mystery. A committee of investigation is sitting with closed doors endeavouring to sift the truth out of the accounts given by many witnesses of certain spirit manifestations which have driven a gentleman and his family out of house and home. The scene of the mystery is Oakland, a small town across the Bay of San Francisco.
For three days and nights the inmates of a house in that place occupied by a Mr T.B. Clark, of the Sub-Treasury, were disturbed by thumpings on the floor of the sitting-room, by the ringing of the house-bells, and by the strange antics of chairs and other pieces of furniture. The house is two stories high, has a gable roof, and stands at the corner of two streets. The occupants of the house were Mr Clark, his wife, grown-up daughter, little son, a relative who is an invalid and confined to her bed, a Mr Oxland, and a Mr Bayley.
The rioting with the furniture in the house went on through a great part of one night, and continued until seven o’clock in the morning. Then there was a cessation of the sports until eight o’clock. Mr Clark and his wife were in the dining-room, and his daughter, who had been out, had laid her hat and shawl and gloves in the parlour and joined her parents, when a fresh noises in the parlour startled them. They went into the room and found that the sofa had been whirled round, and was lying on its back in front of the grate; a chair had been thrown down, and on it was a small iron safe weighing about 10lb. Miss Clark’s gloves lay on the floor, not flat, like empty gloves, but puffed out, and with the thumbs sticking up, as if they were drawn on invisible hands.
They picked up the sofa and the chair, and were about to leave the room when the blower before the grate jumped down and darted across the room in a kind of pirouette. Mr Clark, laughing, remarked that it must have been a strong draught of air that could have done that, and he replaced the blower. It immediately flew out into the middle of the floor again. He then put it on the hearth, but it wriggled on to the carpet. Then he lost patience, and said, “Well, all right, if you want to lie there, why do so.” And there the blower lay.
On the previous night, in the adjoining dining room, there was a curious performance by an easy chair which weighs about 40lb. The chair had not been moved during the evening, ,while other chairs were misconducting themselves in the maddest way. Mr Bayley, getting tired and sleepy, said, “Well, I’m going to bed, and I won’t get up again if the whole side of the house tumbles in.” Scarcely had he uttered these rash words when this big chair, which stood near the door, rose slowly into the air until it was half-way between the floor and the ceiling, and then began to spin round, slowly at first, but faster and faster as it gained centrifugal force, until in less than a minute it was revolving and humming like a top, and so fast that its shape was indistinguishable. It stopped, came down plump to the floor, and did not move again. Next day Mr Clark and Mr Bayley tried, but failed, to make the chair turn as fast as it had done when no one was touching it.
Early in the morning Miss Clark, wearied out, was going upstairs to her bedroom, when a basket of silver ware, weighing about 20 lb., came flying at her from the top of a small bureau which stood at the head of the stairs. The basket fell at her feet, and only one thing in the basket was at all injured – a small vase, which was dented. Soon afterwards a box of coal standing on a landing leaped over the banister and came tumbling downstairs. The white wall was marked by the coals. In Mr Oxland’s bedroom, where several persons were waiting for a recurrence of the phenomena, Miss Clark said, “Well, if they are coming again, I wish they’d come, for I’m getting sleepy.” Instantly one of the chairs jumped from the floor on the bed.
Soon afterwards Mr Oxland took his watch out and laid it on the bed. In an instant the watch was carried to another part of the room, and laid on a chair. With a great crash in another part of the house, a door, which had been locked and bolted, was taken off its hinges and placed against the banisters. No one saw this done. On the second night, when a chair came bounding over the stair rails and after striking against the wall, landed at the bottom of the stairs uninjured, Mr Clark went to the “Republican Convention,” and invited some of his friends to come and witness these strange performances for themselves. Mr Sherman (Assistant United States Treasurer), Colonel J.B. Howard, a lawyer, and two or three other gentlemen, accepted the invitation. The party sat talking for an hour, and nothing unusual happened. The visitors rose to leave about nine o’clock. As they left the dining-room another chair came over the banisters. When the party standing in the hall looked up the stairs they saw a large “upholstered” chair which stood at the head of the stairs come slowly forward, as if it was about to descend. When it got to the top of the stairs, however, it stopped; then it put the forelegs down one step, but drew them up again like a dog hesitating to go down some dangerous place.
One of the chairs in the parlour made a slight demonstration, which, however, scarcely excited any attention, so much had the inmates of the house become accustomed to see more violent gymnastic performances. The reporter subsequently interviewed Mr Sherman, who corroborated Mr Clark’s statement as to the things he had seen. Mr Clark was, he said, an honourable, truthful man, wholly incapable of trickery or deceit of any kind. Mr Sherman pointed out that these strange “manifestations” had occurred in every room in the house except the room of the sick lady and Mr Clark’s own room, in which his little boy sleeps. This, as the assistant treasurer said, may signify nothing, and it may signify a great deal.
Mr Clark said he had at first tried to keep the affair from getting into the newspapers; but as an account, notwithstanding, was published, he thought it best to give every facility for public examination. Accordingly, on the morning of the fourth day, he telegraphed to the reporter of the Chronicle to come over and bring his friends. The third night’s work had been too much for the nerves of Mr Clark’s family, and they quitted the house on the afternoon of the fourth day. Some of the events of the third night were very strange. A party of gentlemen had assembled at the house. They had been sitting in the parlour for an hour, and, nothing having occurred, Dr Eells was about to leave, when three tremendous thumps were heard on the dining-room floor. “There they are,” said Mr Clark; and he and Dr Eells, followed by the rest of the company, rushed towards the dining room. The moment they got into the hall Dr Eells cried out, “See that char” and they saw the chair that had shown so much vacillation on the previous night, spinning at the head of the stairs like a top.
Going to the dining-room and then to the rear of the house, they made a critical examination of the passage-way underneath the house, but the entrance was securely bolted and barred. About 15 minutes after the return of the party to the parlour the bells all over the house began to ring, and a little silver gong in the china closet gave out a succession of sounds that could be heard all over the house. As the party went towards the dining-room, two boxes (one a hat-box) and a basket came flying over the banister from upstairs, and a moment afterwards the big chair came down with a force that shook the whole house. Dr Eells had by this time seen enough, and he took his hat and said “Good night” to the party.
Not long afterwards a heavy mahogany bureau standing on the landing upstairs fell forward and remained with its face resting on the banisters. The drawers slid half-way out, and the glass was detached, but nothing was broken. The bureau was righted, and by his daughter’s advice Mr Clark put the big chair that had gone downstairs in front of the bureau to keep it from falling again. But no sooner was the chair placed against the bureau than it flew downstairs again, and this time, one of the legs being broken, Mr Clark carried it out to the wood-shed and left it there. The furniture in the rooms occupied by Mr Oxland and Mr Bayley was moving about in the most eccentric way. Chairs and tables were marching about the rooms, and books and boxes were thrown down. Sleep being out of the question Mr Oxland got up and came downstairs, closing his room door after him. Mr Bayley, lying on his bed with the door open, could see the door of Oxland’s room, and he declared that it was never opened. Yet a large trunk, weighing nearly 200lb., belonging to Mr Oxland, and which stood in his bedroom, containing books, paints, canvas, palettes, and paint-brushes, was thrown downstairs. In its flight it knocked a hole in the wall, and broke a rail out of the banisters, and fell, a mass of splinters, at the foot of the stairs.
This last exhibition of the power of the spirits “thinned out” the watching power, and all, with the exception of two gentlemen named Palmer and Colonel Vernon, left. Mr Clark confessed that he was getting nervous. Bayley and Oxland had retired to get, if possible, a little rest. Mr Clark and his three friends sat smoking in the dining-room, talking in low tones so as not to disturb those who were upstairs, when suddenly a long, wild, shrill scream sounded through the house. The cry was so unearthly that it frightened even the men, and the poor girl was nearly in hysterics, and, fancying that she had seen a strange white face, with open mouth and staring eyes, as of a woman in agony, she implored her father to take her away from the house. The scream unnerved all, and though there was neither sound nor disturbance of anything in the house after this noise, Mr Clark and his family left the house on the following day.
The next night a large party, among whom were several spiritualists and “mediums,” assembled to watch, but they were not rewarded for their pains by any more eccentric behaviour on the part of the furniture; and although one of the mediums tried to open communications witih the denizens of spiritland, the spirits would not come when they were called. It is noteworthy that when the invalid lady and the little boy had left the house the “spirit” manifestations ceased. The report of the committee is looked for with much interest. It would have been more satisfactory if the watching party had proposed, instead of sitting together in one room, to separate and each to keep watch in a different room, so that every room and place in the house might have been under inspection at the same time.
Magnet (London), 27th July 1874.