Boy with an unruly spirit.
His food and toys snatched by “ghost.”
London doctors to investigate.
The amazing case of Damodar Ketkar, a ten-year-old Indian boy, apparently possessed of an unruly spirit, is shortly to be investigated by a committee of London doctors, says the “Daily News.” It is said that the boy’s food and toys are repeatedly snatched from his hands, and his drink from his mouth, in spite of his efforts to retain his hold on these things.
Toys rush from the cupboard in which they are kept, and the boy is surrounded with broken glass and with bottles hurled from their accustomed places. When he goes into another room he is pelted and sometimes struck, but never hurt. On one occasion it became necessary to remove all glass objects from the bathroom and to feed the boy by hand.
The phenomena-ridden child has been brought to the notice of the National Laboratory of Psychical Research by Miss H Kohn (a lecturer in languages at Deccan College, Bombay University) , who lives with her married sister and her husband, Mr and Mrs Ketkar, at Poona. Six years ago the couple adopted the boy, whom they found in an orphanage, and he is now known by their name.
Miss Kohn, while in London, is to give a detailed account of the manifestations which she had witnessed during the past 12 months. She made careful notes of these weird happenings, beginning in April 1928. According to her notes, on a day in June, 1928, objects were flung about in such terrifying fashion that members of the family left the house. Later in the same month Damodar complained of having been lifted off his seat in the garden and carried bodily and placed in a motor car in the garage. The shock of this experience was such that he was afterwards ill.
“On several occasions,” says Miss Kohn, “we saw coins fall among us from above. This was always when the boy was in the house. Generally the coins were one-piece or two-annas. In some cases these seemed to be coins which were missing from our purses; in others we could not account for the coins. In every case it was most obvious that the boy was not himself during the mischief. At a kind of seance, suddenly Damedar, who was sitting on my sister’s lap, held out a five-rupee note and said, “This has just come in my hand.” At our request all our guests examined their purses, but no one missed any money. Neither was anything missing from our locked cupboards.”
Damodar is described as quite normal, except for the unwilling and unconscious part he plays in the pranks of the spirit that possesses him. Except for trouble with his eyes, he is healthy, eats well, is fond of games, plays with children of his own age, and is a jolly little fellow in every way. He is very intelligent, fond of his lessons, but is inclined to be afraid of the results of his unpleasant experiences.
Derry Journal, 18th October 1929.
“Haunted” boy who walks about amid a hail of missiles.
Ghost’s companion coming to England for a test.
“Spirit that howled like a dog.”
A remarkable story of a ghost that hurls ink bottles about was told to members of the National Laboratory of Psychical Research last night by Miss H. Kohn, a B.A. of London University. A committee of London doctors is shortly to test the authenticity of this ghost, which is reputed to accompany Miss Kohn’s nephew, Damodar Ketkar, everywhere.
Damodar is only ten, and his home is at Poona, India. He was adopted by Miss Kohn’s sister and brother-in-law when only four years old, and he is coming to England. “Sometimes,” said Miss Kohn, “the manifestations are harmless and at other times definitely destructive. There was a time when it looked as if this mysterious spirit (or spirits) was making a determined attempt on the boy’s life. Things were so rapidly smashed that it became necessary to feed him by hand, and all glass objects had to be removed from the bathroom. As the child moved through the rooms he was surrounded by broken glass, scattered liquids appeared to have an especial aversion.”
Miss Kohn described how on one occasion fruit was put out especially for the “spirit.” In a few minutes it had disappeared, and later the skins were flung from nowhere bearing the marks of teeth. On one occasion, Miss Kohn’s sister declared she heard a spirit howl like a dog. Ink bottles, plates, glasses, cups and saucers were constantly being thrown about by no apparent agency.
Nottingham Journal, 23rd October 1929.
A Berserk Bogey.
Poltergeist of Poona.
Some of its pranks.
Twelve months in the life of Damodar Ketkar, a 10-year-old Brahmin boy, were related by Miss H. Kohn, a B.A. of London University, and lecturer in languages, Deccan College, Poona, in an address to members of the National Laboratory on Psychical Research at the Queen’s Gate Hall, South Kensington, last night.
Damodar, who is said to be the victim of poltergeist disturbances, was adopted by Miss Kohn’s family six years ago, and Miss Kohn gave an account of the manifestations which she has witnessed. “On one occasion,” she said, “the boy’s toys, which were in his cupboard, came flying at him, being hurled by the invisible being or beings with great force. When he went to the other rooms to avoid the missiles the toys continued to be thrown at him. The objects came in such rapid succession and with such fury that my sister and nephew were powerless with fright.”
“A friend came to dinner one night,” said Miss Kohn. “He brought two sweet limes, saying: ‘These are for your invisible friends.” No sooner had he said the words than an empty bottle crashed by his head.”
Miss Kohn told how on one occasion fruit was put out especially for the “spirit.” In a few minutes the fruit had disappeared and later the skins were flung from nowhere bearing the marks of teeth.
Ink bottles, plates, glasses, cups and saucers were constantly being thrown about with no apparent agency. Once a five rupee note suddenly appeared from the air in the middle of a dinner party. Nobody claimed it and it was marked and locked away in a trunk. Later it disappeared and was never found again. Money was always appearing and disappearing.
Daily News (London), 23rd October 1929.
From ‘Poltergeists: A Problem for the Materialist’ by Herbert Thurston, in ‘Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review’ vol.24, no. 93 (March 1935), pp 85-95.
… On March 31, 1934, a letter appeared in the well-known London weekly journal The Spectator, the substance of which runs as follows:-
I carefully investigated a remarkable case here in Poona a few years ago. My friend Dr. S.V. Ketkar and his German wife, both persons of culture (the doctor is the famous Marathi historian and encylopedist), suffered terribly for many years, both in name, in estate, in all their affairs… loss of their servants and of their general health. Briefly I may say that when I first visited the house that was “afflicted,” the testimony of various witnesses convinced me that it was impossible to attribute all the amazing disturbances to their son, a lad of eight, around whom these activities seemed to gather.
When I entered, I asked all those present to leave the room. I placed the lad (stark naked) on a small bed, felt his pulse, and told him to “lie down quietly.” I then closed the door and windows and sat down on a chair in a corner of the room. I looked at my watch; it was exactly 1.30 p.m. I put a sheet over him. In about fifteen minutes I saw the bedclothes pulled off the bed on which the lad was lying, the bed was pulled into the middle of the room, and the lad actually lifted off the bed and deposited gently on the floor. The lad could feel the arm of an unseen person at work.
A bottle of ink that was on the table by the window was flung towards me, and so was a glass paper-weight which narrowly missed my head. The lad’s toys were violently flung about from a corner of the room. I was astounded, and told the parents that I found that mal-observation, illusion, etc., could not (as I had previously suggested) account for all this.
Let me interrupt this account to explain that the writer, Mr J.D. Jenkins, was apparently a medical man who had been invited professionally to give his opinion of the case. The boy, whose proper name was Damodar Bapat, had only been adopted by the Ketkars. His father, a Brahmin like Dr Ketkar himself, had died shortly after the child’s birth; the mother, who seems to have been troubled by strange visions or delusions, had committed suicide. Whether Mr Jenkins was at the time acquainted with these facts is not clear, but at any rate his letter continues:-
The next day I called again accompanied by some friends, a police officer and an irascible old Major (who had settled the whole problem by the simple process of calling me a liar when I related to him the happenings of the day before). On this day even more remarkable and unaccountable phenomena occurred. Here I can only mention one incident. It was broad daylight (2 p.m.); a small table, apparently untouched by anyone, came hobbling across the room to the verandah where we were all sitting and talking. It came directly towards my friend the Major, imprisoning him in the armchair in which he was sitting.
That evening we were all invited to dinner at the house. All went well until half way through the meal. My friend’s glass fell down. The salt-cellar began to “do the Charleston,” so to speak, before our eyes. The whole contents of the table were cleared by unseen hands. My friend the Major promptly got up and said “good night” and left. The police officer also very suddenly remembered that he had another urgent case to investigate of a more terrestrial nature.
All this and many thousands of other instances are recorded in a day-to-day diary of events which I kept from June 1928 to January 1930. Most of them were published in The Times of India and in The Statesman. After infinite havoc had been wrought, they slowly subsided and the family has been enjoying comparative peace and rest ever since.
Mr Jenkins’s diary of these events was not the only record which had been kept. While the phenomena were still in full eruption, i.e., in the early months of 1929, I had chanced in a curious way to receive a letter from Dr Ketkar’s sister-in-law, Miss H Kohn, who was residing with him and his wife at Poona. Though a German by birth, she was a graduate of London University and held an official post as Teacher of European Languages for the Deccan College, Poona, in connection with the University of Bombay. Miss Kohn is not a Catholic, but her work brought her into contact with one of our Jesuit Fathers engaged like herself in the higher education of the native races. When the disturbances in the Ketkar household, above referred to, began to be talked about, Miss Kohn, who took no interest in Spiritualism and knew nothing of poltergeists, chanced to speak of the matter to her Jesuit acquaintance, and he lent her one or two of the articles I had contributed on this subject to The Month or to Studies.
Conceiving the very mistaken idea that I might possibly have some remedy to suggest – for the distress caused in the family by these occurrences was acute – Miss Kohn wrote to me and forwarded a typed copy of the notes she had taken of the case. For the greater part of the time she had been present in the house and had been an eye-witness of almost all that had happened. The account was very full. If printed at length, it would occupy forty pages of this review, but I have every reason to believe the statement made in her accompanying letter: “I took especial care,” she says, “to avoid even the slightest exaggeration or inaccuracy, and the events were always recorded immediately after their occurrence.”
The narrative covers a period of over eleven months. Shortly after writing this, Miss Kohn took advantage of the leave then due to her to pay a long visit to Europe, part of which she spent in London. She came to see me more than once, and she impressed me, as she did others to whom she was introduced, as an exceptionally intelligent and level-headed observer. Her narrative was printed a little later, together with some introductory remarks by Mr Harry Price, in Psychic Research (March to May, 1930).
The character and intelligence of the witnesses is so important a matter in any record of astounding phenomena, that it does not seem out of place to point out that Miss Kohn’s sister, Mrs Ketkar, is, like her husband, a scholar […]
While Miss Kohn does not disguise the fact that the adopted son Damodar was suspected by many of slyly and mischievously producing the distubances himself, and though she admits that appearances sometimes pointed in that direction, she also suggests as a result of her close observation of the case that the supernormal agency, whatever its nature may have been, purposely so contrived things on certain occasions as to make the boy appear responsible although he was really quite innocent. This, of course, is a view which the sceptic will receive with derision and which it would be very difficult to prove. On the other hand, in the case of a great number of the more startling phenomena any guilty participation on the child’s part (he was only eight years old) seems absolutely out of the question.
For example on Sunday July 8, 1928, Miss Kohn records: – A small glass jar containing vegetable extract, which stood among other jars in the closed cupboard in the dining room, was hurled forcibly from that room into my bedroom at the moment when Damodar in my presence was undressing for bed. In order to land where it did the jar must have turned a corner. It broke into many pieces.
So again on the next day: – At 5 p.m. while we were having tea in the dining-room (in the presence of a friend, Miss H.) Damodar stepped into my bedroom. At the same moment, a small screw-top jar, in which my brother-in-law had succeeded in preserving some ink for some days, was hurled from his study in the front of the house, across the dining-room in which we were sitting, into my bedroom where Damodar stood. It broke, spilling the ink.
Similarly on June 24 we have the note: – At 9 a.m. a man called to see my brother-in-law. I crossed the room and was in the act of picking up a pad and pencil for him, when an aspirin bottle which had stood on a shelf in the dining-room was suddenly hurled in my direction by “an invisible hand” with such tremendous force that I involuntarily screamed, anticipating a violent crash. However the bottle fell gently by my feet, without breaking; only the metal stopper was dented. At the moment when this happened, my nephew (Damodar) was standing quietly near me.
Hardly anything is more characteristic of poltergeist phenomena than this pretence of alarming violence which is suddenly checked. Giraldus Cambrensis in the twelfth century speaks of the things thrown by invisible agencies “more in mockery than to do bodily harm,” and William of Auvergne, Bishop of Paris, a little later, lays stress upon the fact that never or hardly ever was anyone seriously injured by such missiles. Both Giraldus and the bishop, of course attribute these vexations to the malice of evil spirits, the latter in particular insisting that divine Providence controls any such murderous assaults and renders them innocuous. But this feature occurs again and again in the descriptions we possess, most of them unmistakably written by simple people who had never heard of any similar occurrence and who believed that their own experience of the attack of these mysterious agencies was altogether unique.
Sometimes heavy objects seem to be deliberately aimed, but whizz past, missing the human target by a hair’s breadth, and are shattered against the wall. In other cases a blow is struck and felt, but the damage done is altogether disproportionate to the amount of violence apparently employed. Among the astounding phenomena which occurred in the Dagg household in 1889 – this was a Canadian example – we are told that “on one occasion a large stone came hustling through the open door and struck the little four year old daughter of Mr Dagg in the breast, strange to say not hurting her in the least.” So in the recent English case alluded to above, I have seen a letter written this year by the young servant maid who was the principal focus of the disturbance and who had been several times struck on the head by flying or falling objects. After leaving the place and the manifestations having in that way come to an end, she wrote to her mistress: “Really and truly I had the terrible feeling that in the end something would have hurt me; I think my head must have been made of wood, nearly; don’t you, Mrs X.” Her surprise that she had in fact sustained no damage is evident enough.
To return to the Poona disturbances, it seems to me impossible to reject the evidence of conscientious witnesses who are both free from any abnormality and highly intelligent. The one purpose of the Ketkar family was, not to advertise these strange happenings, which brought them nothing but trouble and suspicion, but to discover some means of bringing them to an end. There were times when they could never be sure of finding in the house even materials for the next meal. Herre is Miss Kohn’s account of a typical incident:
While our friends were still in the house, my sister observed that the heavy padlock on the cupboard in her room was hanging open, though no one was in that room and she had seen it properly locked a few minutes before. The reason why she chose that moment to inspect that cupboard was that while she crossed the dining-room (in our presence) an empty round basket was flung at her head from a great height. This particular basket was the identical one which she had that day locked into the cupboard in her room, and the basket had, when she saw it last, contained forty-one eggs. We inspected the cupboard and these eggs were entirely missing. We looked in all the corners of the house, even under the beds, as on previous occasions eggs had been found so concealed. But we saw nothing of our eggs. We fully expected them to come crashing one by one from mid-air, as had been experienced on former occasions. However, no more has been seen of these particular eggs.
These sudden disappearances, which affected not only comestibles but money and all sorts of household requisites, must have been intensely annoying; but there was occasionally a humorous incident. That same morning (July 22, 1928) on which day the forty-one eggs disappeared at a later hour, Miss Kohn had wanted to go out and wished first to polish her shoes.
However (she says) I missed the tin of polish from its usual place on the shelf. I asked every member of the household. All denied having taken my polish. I was irritated at the petty nuisance, and after hunting for five minutes decided to go without. Damodar was standing in my room with me. He was at the table sorting some papers which I had given him, and I saw both his hands busy with the papers at the instant when I took up my hat to put it on. At the same moment I was startled by a very swift thud, and behold the missing tin of polish came from mid-air from some point beyond Damodar and landed precisely at my feet. It did not roll, but came through the air swiftly; yet the aim taken by the invisible one was so sure that the object stopped dead still the very instant when it reached my foot.
The next morning the tin was again missing, but when Miss Kohn called out “shoe-polish, please,” it came to her gently as before. Very curious also were the many incidents connected with the disappearance of money. Notes were taken from locked receptacles. Sometimes they were never recovered, but sometimes also an equivalent was returned in the form of small change. Miss Kohn writes: –
On several occasions in broad daylight we now saw coins fall among us from above. This was always while the boy was in the house…. At first we could not always see the coins in mid-air, but merely saw them fall, being startled by the contact of the coin with the floor. Soon, however, we were able to observe more closely, and actually saw the money appear in the air. Generally the coins were one-pice or two-annas. In some cases these seemed to be coins which were missing from our purses; in other cases we could not account for the coins. In every instance it was most obvious that the boy was not himself doing the mischief.
These citations supply what is perhaps even too ample a specimen of the type of evidence which has come to hand since I wrote upon this subject in Studies seven years ago. The manifestations as a rule endure for a brief space and then suddenly come to an end. Sometimes the phenomena are all over in twenty-four hours; sometimes, as in the Poona case, they continue for months.
What, I think, is hardly appreciated by any but those who have given a good deal of time to investigating the question is the enormous amount of evidence available. Much of this, no doubt, is unsatisfactory, consisting as it does of newspaper reports such as those referred to at the beginning of this article. But even in these cases it is often hard to see how simple people, who plainly know nothing of the existence of other similar phenomena, should describe over and over again just the same peculiar happenings which are attested elsewhere by eye-witnesses of the highest credit.
The pulling off of the bedclothes from people asleep at night, the dragging across the floor of heavy bedsteads or articles of furniture – feats beyond the physical strength of the children suspected of playing pranks – the curved path taken by missiles which sweep around corners or twist in and out as a living bird might do, the gentle descent to the floor in some cases of large pictures or mirrors whose cords and supporting hooks remain intact, the flight of showers of stones which seem to come from space and are only perceptible when quite near, the sudden and harmless arrest of swiftly moving objects which threaten destruction to anything that impedes their progress, the spontaneous bursting open of securely fastened doors in full view of watchful observers, the escape from closed receptacles of articles stored therein without any discernible means of exit, the constant disappearance and hiding of domestic odds and ends specially needed which are often afterwards restored in ways equally mysterious, the sudden outbreak of a conflagration in places where no spark or source of fire existed – these features recur all over the world in countries as far remote from each other as Canada and the Dutch East Indies.
Moreover, not to speak of several medieval examples, we find highly respected divines in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Catholics as well as Protestants, suffering from similar visitations and giving identically the same descriptions of the phenomena as those we read to-day.
For my own part I find it impossible to believe that such manifestations as are attested by the late Sir William Barrett, F.R.S., Professor Lombroso, or Baron von Schrenck Notzing had no real existence, but were due to hallucination. There are dozens of other records – some of them based upon the painstaking examination of witnesses before a legal tribunal – which offer every guarantee of genuineness. Even the newspaper accounts are not likely to have been all written unscrupulously with a view to sensation. Many give proof of a sane and critical attitude on the part of the reporter at the same time that he finds himself constrained to yield to the evidence which he has collected on the spot.
Although, as the reader will infer, I am myself quite satisfied of the reality of many of these poltergeist phenomena, notably in such a case as that of the Ketkar household at Poona, I have no thought of contesting the fact that nothing more purposeless – one might say, nothing more childish – could be imagined than these incomprehensible displays of some Puck-like spook bent on every exasperating form of mischief. In the words of Alice in Wonderland, “he only does it to annoy, because he knows it teases.” Nevertheless these phenomena seem to me to have their value as a proof of the existence of a world of spiritual agencies, not cognoscible directly by our sense perceptions.
For the crude materialist such incidents must surely be very difficult to explain away. The stones have fallen, for they are solid and still to be seen; but who has thrown them? Crockery, chimney ornaments and glasses have been smashed, heavy pieces of furniture have been moved, pictures have jumped from the walls, but witnesses declare that they stood by and saw that no human hand came near them. Now it would be a very violent supposition to maintain that any human being is so psychically endowed that by taking thought he can make material objects external to himself fly about in eccentric paths, that he can move furniture, spirit away the contents of receptacles closed and locked, or set a curtain on fire by merely looking at it.
What the nature of the agency is that performs these marvels we are not called upon to determine. Divines of all creeds in the seventeenth century were satisfied that such alarming phenomena could only be the work of the devil. I am not prepared to declare that they were wrong, though this solution cannot, I submit, be treated as a matter of certainty. But, be this as it may, we may reasonably call upon materialists who deny the possibility of miracles either to provide a physical explanation of these extraordinary poltergeist disturbances, or to submit some reasonable ground for rejecting the mass of evidence by which their reality has been established.
Herbert Thurston.