Sidoardjo = Sidoarjo one would imagine.
Under the heading of “Psychic Phenomena in Java” the following curious incidents are related by J. B. T. Mulder, in “Het Teckomstig Leven.” They occurred during his stay in Sidoardjo, close to the Chinese quarter. The natives who lived there were nightly, and in some instances even during the daytime, greatly disturbed and terrified by stones, bricks, heads of fishes, and other refuse being thrown about, apparently by an invisible hand. Mr Mulder was an eye-witness of these disturbances, and declares that the current reports were in no wise exaggerated.
The stones fell vertically on the front part of the roofs of the houses and the pavements below, but although a large number of people were often congregated together, not a single instance is recorded of anybody being hurt by the missiles.
A Chinese baker who suffered much by these mysterious disturbances asserted that they were occasioned by a terrible “susah,” a malicious enemy in the spirit world, and related that one day, as he was on the point of putting the dough into the oven, a shower of sand and gravel spoiled his entire baking for the day.
Mr Mulder himself and his wife were the victims of one of these “susahs.” On a certain night, when the whole household had retired to bed, they heard a peculiar noise in the adjoining bath-room. It sounded as if somebody were engaged in washing linen. The servants rushed from their rooms armed with all sorts of incongruous weapons, thinking that burglars had entered the house. The bath-room door was found standing wide open, the bath itself filled with water to overflowing, and some small articles floating on it. Mr Mulder could find no reasonable cause for this disturbance, the bath being in perfect order, but when he told a Chinese lieutenant of it, the latter remarked smilingly that he knew all about it, the house having belonged to him formerly, but that he had to sell it on account of these nocturnal occurrences.
As in all such cases, the police were called upon to discover the offenders, but their efforts proved useless. Perhaps it would have been more advisable, as someone remarked on a similar occasion, to have summoned the aid of the “spirit-police.” They would have known better how to deal with such mischievous spirits than our own guardians of the peace. F. D.
Light, 25th April 1914.