Tale of a timepiece
Mysterious movement in a Southsea house.
Most people have read of household furniture and fittings being moved by unseen hands. Though there is no longer a general belief in spooks and haunted houses, many persons still maintain that those who have passed beyond the pale are not altogether lost to the earth, and attribute such manifestations to spirit intervention.
In one Southsea residence during the week-end there was a somewhat weird experience. A large clock, weighing probably five or six pounds, and in a mahogany case, was on the mantelpiece as usual on Saturday night. On Sunday morning it was in the middle of the room, three or four yards away from its proper position. A lady in the house heard a thud about seven o’clock on Sunday morning, and this was no doubt caused by the mysterious movement of the timepiece.
The mantelpiece is fully two inches wider than the clock; it slopes upward rather than downward; there was no cat or other animal in the room, and no member of the household went in there during the night or early morning. There was no sign of any intruder having effected an entrance, and there was no heavy traffic in the roadway which might have shaken the house and caused the clock to shift. The works of the timepiece were in order, which fact disposes of the thoery that a violent release of the spring might have caused the clock to jump from the shelf.
We may add that the veracity of the owner cannot be questioned. He is a Corporation official! Moreover, he went straight home on Saturday night, and keeps no spirits in the house – at least, none that he knows of.
This is no sort of ordinary cheap and rotten timepiece, either for it was a valuable presentation clock, given by a local Association to the gentleman concerned in recognition of highly valued services.
Hampshire Telegraph, 2nd March 1923.