At 7 am on Monday, 21 September 1937, a stone fell on the roof of a bungalow in the rue Touraine, a street in Port Louis, a capital of the crowded little sub-tropical island of Mauritius. The stone bounced off the roof onto the paved courtyard below, frightening an 11-year-old servant girl who fled at once into the house for safety. During the rest of this eventful day another forty or so stones were to rain onto the roof and into the courtyard. More surprising, and certainly more frightening for the occupants, at least that number fell inside the house and no one could tell where they came from.
Not unnaturally, the owner of the bungalow, Mr Cappy Ricks, supposed the stones were being thrown by mischievous boys. The police were called in and a sharp look-out was kept all day long, without any success. No one was seen behaving suspiciously. The day’s bombardment reached a climax that evening when a stone fell vertically into one of the bedrooms, while outside a shower of missiles poured into the courtyard. This final assault proved too much for the nerve-wracked servant girl. She rushed, shrieking, indoors and flung herself headlong under the dining-room table from where she was rescued in a state of collapse and sent home.
Next day, just after seven in the morning, the assault began again. This time more stones than ever fell, and mixed in among the stones were other objects, too. One in particular caught Mr Rick’s eye. About seven inches long, wedge-shaped, with a round hole near its thinner edge, it was to become very familiar before the disturbance ended, appearing here and there all over the house. Another of the projectiles was a large iron shackle minus its holding pin (the kind of tool used to link pieces of chain). It had been lying inoffensively in the courtyard for months, yet now it was flying dangerously about without apparent cause.
Again the police were summoned. At least two stood guard inside the house all day, while outside a third found himself a perch high up in a tree from where he had a bird’s eye view of the bungalow, its grounds and the surrounding areas. His watch was fruitless. By the time night came and the barrage ended no one had been apprehended yet scores had fallen, many inside the building even though all doors and windows were firmly closed.
The next day, Wednesday, the activity grew worse. In his own account, first published in The Forum of Johannesburg, Mr Ricks set down the details of this appalling experience:
While the cook was preparing breakfast, a large steel nut, that also lain in the court during the whole of my tenancy, apparently fell from the low roof of the kitchen (the door and window being closed), and dashed a dish to pieces from her hands. In an outside bathroom I was struck on the shoulder by a six and a half pound stone that had risen from the ground six feet away and entered the small room by a six-inch space above the door that gave it light. The inspector, who at that moment was leaning against a tree about six feet distant, had seen nothing. Only a thick bath towel saved me from injury.
Of the last four stones that fell this morning, one fell on a thin china plate on the dining table without even cracking it, although it had been observed to fall with something of a crash. Another fell between the necks of three bottles standing together on the sideboard: it looked as if it had been placed there with the greatest care, instead of having come to rest after a flight of at least twenty feet. The third stone fell behind me in a corner of the dining-room, and, as I sprang up and turned around, the fourth one fell on the seat of the stool on which I had been sitting. Door and windows were closed and had been for some time. The room was a small one, and there was no heavy furniture behind which even a child or a monkey could successfully hide.
My wife and baby, with the two servants, went to her mother’s house, a quarter of a mile away, and the stones went there too, and began to fall. A retreat was made to a neighbour’s house, but the stones followed again, to smash up pot plants and a table, and make a mess of the veranda generally. In desperation I collected my small family and took them to a hotel, where only three stones fell from noon onwards. At midday I returned to the house to find the naneine (the servant girl) washing baby clothes at the outdoor tap. I told her to make a cup of tea, and as she crossed the veranda to enter the house I saw a large stone rise of its own accord from the side of the steps to a height of about five feet and make straight for her. She fled into the street and was with difficulty coaxed back to complete her task.
Later, when she was laying the study table to serve the tea, a stone rose over the veranda rail and flew into th ehouse between the partially open swing doors. It was travelling straight at my stomach, and as I stooped to catch it in its flight, it swerved some forty degrees to the right and fell onto the table, to smash glassware and a milk jug and knock to the floor a full glass jar of jelly. At this turn in the proceedings I came to a decision – that the naneine must leave us, for it had been forced in my notice that the stones fell only when she was in or around the house. But when I called for her she was not to be found. She was bolting for home.
More than three hundred missiles fell in the house and on the veranda this day, including the one with a hole in it which I had already pitched into the court on two successive days; it had become an old friend! I spent the night in the house alone, with nothing to disturb my rest, but at the usual time in the morning of the fourth day the missiles came as before, inside the house and on the veranda. Though I did not then know it – doors and windows being closed – the naneine was at her usual morning task in the courtyard and had been for some time. In an hour and a half, with doors and windows still closed, fourteen stones, up to five pounds in weight, an unripe melon, and a quantity of seeds fell in the dining-room and the adjoining bedroom. At 9.30, I gathered these up and placed them on the bed with a note for the detective officer whom I had been told to expect at ten o’clock.
I then left for my office, after thoroughly searching and locking up the house. I had to fight my way out of the outer courtyard door, round which morbidly interested people were tightly packed. The naneine was at the tap. I had not been in the office more than a few minutes when I was called on the phone. Pandemonium had broken out in the house a few minutes after my departure. The police broke in and found the dining-room a mass of wreckage, caused by the fourteen stones that I had left with the note on the bed. The communicating door had been closed and locked, but the stones travelled horizontally from one room to another by way of a deep window recess that was common to both rooms, and in their passage had broken a window pane and a medicine bottle, and had torn down the curtains and scattered from the windowsill magazines and journals, that were now lying strewn around the dining-room floor. Everything of a breakable nature on the table and sideboard had been smashed; also the hanging lamp and the clock.
In the bedroom the seeds were found to have entirely disappeared, and the wardrobe doors, which were perfectly fitting and had been securely locked, were found to be wide open, though nothing was missing. The green melon reposed alone on the bed.
I returned to the office just in time to receive another phone call, this time from the proprietor of the hotel, who, although I was on the most friendly terms with him, instantly demanded that I removed my family at once. There was nothing to be done but comply with his very reasonable demand, exasperating though it was. So I brought my people back to their home hoping for the best, while fearing the worst. A minute after leaving the hotel, and while driving through the city’s main thoroughfare, a stone rose in front of the car and entered between the open leaves of the wind-screen. It struck one of the party on the shoulder, without inflicting any injury, however, and came to rest on the rear seat. I picked it up. It had a hole in it, and it should have been lying in my courtyard a mile away, for I had pitched it there only a few hours before.
When we arrived in the rue Touraine, it was to find a thousand or more people filling the house, court and road outside. These were quickly dispersed without ceremony, and with them the naneine – and not a stone fell afterwards…
Chapter 5 of “Great Ghosts of the World” by Aidan Chambers (1974).