Although the working classes of Paris have very little belief in religion, they occasionally show that they have a lively horror of the supernatural. During the last few days, the inhabitants of a populous quarter have been greatly exercised by certain ghostly ruours that have been afloat. It appears that, in one of those big dingy houses, occupied by about fifty families, which are so familiar to all who know anything of Paris, lives a carpenter who owns a little girl with an abnormally large head.
Whenever this child – so goes the story – approaches one of the walls of the apartment in which she lives, a noise is immediately heard as though the wall were struck with a blacksmith’s hammer. It was only quite recently that these singular phenomena were observed. At first, the neighbours complained of the noise, believing it to come from perfectly natural causes, but, when they were informed of its mysterious nature, they dreaded opening a cupboard or looking behind a door lest they should see the devil.
To many of the locataires, existence at such a price was not worth having, so they packed up their goods and chattels, and left the phenomenal child and her ghostly friends, and took up their abode in houses that were warranted free from big headed girls and goblins. These proceedings were sufficient to throw the whole street into a fever of excitement. The newspapers took the subject up, and the carpenter and his daughter have been visited by a legion of reporters; and all the details of this humble abode have been faithfully described.
The bubble however has burst. It has been found that the little girl has no power over the ghost unless she is on the other side of the wall of the room where the visitors are assembled. This uncivil behaviour of the ghost has destroyed all faith in the genuine character of the manifestations. The incident, however, shows what one little girl with a big head can do in the way of befooling the public.
Civil & Military Gazette (Lahore), 7th November 1884.