Paris Gossip.
Comedy of a ‘haunted’ house.
From our correspondent. Paris, Thursday.
There is perhaps a moral for your Society for Psychical Research in the following story. For some time the inhabitants of a house in the Avenue de Clichy have been alarmed nightly by a series of inexplicable noises. Eventually they called in a policeman, whose investigations were fruitless. So the local Commissaire of Police was asked to take up the matter and a couple of nights ago he sent three inspectors to try their luck. The three posted themselves at different points of vantage, and at 11 o’clock the noise began. The mysterious sounds appeared to be muffled blows on a metallic surface. The three policemen, not being believers in spooks, searched the whole building for the human cause. Having exhausted every other spot in the house, they at last entered a room occupied by the thirteen-year-old daughter of the woman who had first called in the police. Here was the source of the mystery. The girl was engaged in kicking at the gas and water pipes, which caused a muffled sound to penetrate the whole building. She admitted that she had been doing the same for several nights, as it amused her to hear the residents in the house talk about the “ghost.” Her mother severely scolded her. So did the police inspectors.
Globe, 10th October 1913.