Mystery of Bells.
Uncanny ringing puzzles a London household.
Police search futile.
From the tenants of a house in Shepherd’s Bush (West London), The Weekly Dispatch received a narration of [illegible] ringing of bells, which is reported to be just as it was told to our representative.
The house is a large one and a boarding house, and it will readily be understood how unfair and inconvenient it would be to give names and the address. These, therefore, are suppressed. All that need be said by way of comment is this: the story is not offered as an account of supernatural events, the tenants believe there is a rational solution, but what it is neither the police nor the landlord can suggest.
It has points of similarity to other cases that have attracted both students and believers in so-called psychic mysteries and those who try to furnish material explanations of such incidents.
The Weekly Dispatch representative, calling at the place, was taken to the basement, and there the proprietress and her husband gave the story that follows. The landlady says she is anything but superstitious, and a glance at the robust, broad-shouldered, smiling husband is enough to satisfy one that he is not the man to believe in “spooks.”
“We have lived in this house two years,” said the landlady. “Until six weeks ago we had no cause to think the bells eccentric. There they are (this was in the lobby of the basement) above your head, about nine feet from the ground. There were ten of them. Now you see only eight. They are on springs, and are ordinarily rung from the rooms by bell-pulls of the old-fashioned kind, connected with the bells themselves by wires that run along the walls, and, joining under the dining-room boards on the ground floor, penetrate to this basement.
“It is, as I say, six weeks since we heard the first ringing that we could not account for. One night one of my boarders was seized with pleurisy, and on that night several of the bells began to ring most violently. A servant hurried to the room upstairs, and everyone denied having rung. We thought it curious, and there were a few more unexplained ringings afterwards. Soon the boarder recovered, and we had no further experiences of the puzzle.
“Last Tuesday another boarder was taken ill with double pneumonia. On that night the curious ringing recommenced. The bells pealed with alarming force, and the din reached the upstairs rooms. It could be heard plainly in the street though the doors were closed. We made sure that no one was playing pranks by going in all the rooms. In fact, the whole of the boarders were so startled that they all gathered on the stairs, while my husband, myself, and servant were standing at the foot of the staircase. We all stood there and saw one bell after another ring – seven of them altogether. Some of the people were frightened, and the sick man heard the noise and was troubled by it.
“The ringing continued, and at half-past eleven, when we could stand it no longer, we sent out for a policeman. One came from the corner. He thought, he said, that there might be someone in the empty house next door. He was not very happy about exploring it, we supposed, and, at any rate, he sent word to the police station, and two more constables arrived. They went into the empty house near midnight and searched every room with their lanterns. Presently they returned to say there was nothing next door to explain the ringing. While they were standing in the lobby the bells began to swing about on their springs again, and the clamour was so great that people stopped outside on the doorstep, wondering what was happening.
“The three policemen, I thought, were either bewildered or nervous, and one of them remarked that it was about the queerest job he had ever been engaged upon. Anyhow, like good fellows, they took off their helmets, belts, and coats on learning that the wires passed under the dining-room floor, and, going upstairs, took up the boards and found the wires, and saw that neither rats, loose wood, nor any kind of entanglement could have done it. We have no rats nor mice that we know of. The dining-room floor was replaced. That night we had no more ringing. The police went away.
“Next morning they called to ask if we had traced our cause. We said we hadn’t. And at 9.45 that morning and every morning since the bells have begun ringing and have rung at odd times throughout the day. One of the boarders said he could not bear it, and must go to live in an hotel. We have had to answer the bells every time if the ring was a single one, thinking someone might want us at the door or in the rooms. When two or more have rung, we have taken no notice, knowing the mystery was on us again, but it has made most of us fearfully nervous. We are not thinking of omens or anything of the sort. We only say that the thing is exasperating and uncanny.
“We have called in the man who put up the bells and wires. He has examined them from roof to basement, and says he cannot explain the mystery. We called in the owner, too, and he was jocular, and simply asked, ‘Have you paid the rates?'”
The husband of the landlady said: “There are no electric bells in the house and there is no electric light. There has never been an electric wire on the walls. The pipe above the bells is a gas pipe from the meter, and it does not come in contact anywhere with electricity. Now, here is the remakable point. When the ringing began, the first bell from the kitchen was the noisiest. I wrenched it off. Then the second bell rang madly while we stood there. I wrenched that off, spring and all. Then the third immediately began to ring! One of them, as you see, has rung so vigorously that the spring has turned from its parallel with the wall into a right angle position. Another bell, as you see, lies horizontally instead of simply hanging downward. It has been jammed that way by the force of its own ringing.
“I should like to finish off the story, perhaps, by saying that the bells I wrenched off rang when I laid them on the table. I can’t satisfy those who believe in spirits so far. I am looking for a rational solution. We have an electrician in the house, and he has examined the whole house and the whole course of the bell wires, without coming upon any cause. There is not enough vibration from traffic to shake the basement, and the ringing, in any case, is far too vigorous. You would have to give a bell-pull a hard tug indeed to get anything like the long, loud, and sustained ringing from the bells that we have heard daily. It stops, at the latest, a quarter of a hour before midnight, so that we laugh once more at ghost theories – because anyone knows that ghosts never come out till midnight.
“The solution is not to be found in practical joking, for, finally, I have cut the wires of all the bells but three – and the bells ring as loudly now as before the wires were disconnected from them! You can see the cut wire here. Can anyone tell me how the bells continue to ring in the craziest manner? I leave it to scientific people. We have not exaggerated nor invented any part of the narrative. We should be only too glad to know the cause and deal with it, for a disturbance like this is harmful to our business.”
Weekly Dispatch (London), 11th April 1909.