Queer Story at Cardiff.
Ghostly doings in a house. Mats ‘walkabout’. Principal Griffiths’s investigation.
Some mystifying occurrences, which for the present have been put down to occult agencies, have taken place at Seymour-street, in the Splott district of Cardiff. There may be a very prosaic explanation of all the events, but so far the neighbourhood has given itself up to sheer excitement.
So far back as the Friday preceding Whit-Monday certain things occurred which could not be explained. A young woman who was staying at No.19 with some friends found her clothes torn to shreds, and ever since certain sounds have been heard and movements of ornaments have taken place which cannot be accounted for. On Sunday night and Monday morning there were developments which have puzzled not only Mr. and Mrs. Henry Williams and their children, but the neighbours at No.17, who were so disturbed that on Monday morning they removed their furniture.
First of all the disturbance was put down to a slight earthquake, but inquiries which have been made dispose of that idea because earthquakes do not remove ornaments and crockery from one place to another without causing a breakage. Yet this is what occurred on Sunday night and Monday morning at Seymour-street.
Heavy articles of ware, such as washhand basins and jugs, were removed from their stands and placed on the floor. Photograph frames were transferred from one room to another, and it is related that a police-constable actually saw three mats in the passage roll themselves up and march into the dining-room. He “captured” one of them by putting his foot against it. Another police-constable saw the cover of a teapot lift itself off the table and quietly rest on the carpet, which was on the boarding of the floor.
The family tell still more extraordinary things, and the statements which were carried from house to house quickly brought a crowd together, and throughout Monday there were on an average about 500 people outside No.19. Police0sergeant Wootton and Police-constable Neldecott managed to keep the crowd in good order until they were relieved by other members of the city police.
Mrs Williams, mother of the tenant of the house, came up in the evening, and was astonished by the number which surrounded the premises. “Have all the people gone mad?” she plaintively asked Police-constable Richards, who happened to be on duty.
Henry Williams, the occupier of No.19, Seymour-street, gave a very intelligent description to one of our representatives of the strange proceedings in the house. “This is not a new experience to us,” he said. “It goes back to the time when a Miss Maisey, of Moulton, came to stay with us before Whitsun. She was going home on the Saturday before Whit-Sunday, and that night her clothes were torn to pieces. The material was torn and the buttonholes were ripped open. There was a peculiar thing that followed on Whit-Tuesday – there were four raps outside the kitchen wall.”
“From No. 17, your neighbours wanted to talk to you?”
“No, there was nobody there.”
“Do you think your daughter Elsie could have done the damage?”
“It was impossible. She could not have done it. Miss Maisey went home on the Saturday, and nothing happened.”
“Now, come to Sunday night. You were not in the house when the first thing happened?”
“No. I went out at half-past five and returned at ten o’clock. My wife told me that things had been moving all over the house. The mats were piled up in a heap in the passage, and the ornaments were down off the mantelpiece in the front room. The contents of the sideboard drawer were put on the floor. There were other evidences of disturbance. A flower was placed on the floor, but the pot from which it was taken was on the table. I thought these things might have been caused by electricity, but that was at once disproved by the fact that clocks were going all right. There was one extraordinary thing. The policeman saw the mats from the passage rolling up and coming into this room. He stopped one of them with his foot.”
“Where were your children then?”
“In bed, and I was staying down talking with a lamp-lighter until 1.30. Just after I heard Elsie call out, ‘Mamma, come here, quick.’ I went upstairs at once, and everything was off the dressing-table and strewn over the floor. I picked them up and put them back again. Soon after the little girl shouted, ‘Come here, mamma, there is something jumping about.’ I went up again, and found this time that everything was off the mantelpiece and on the floor. The basin and jug from the washstand-table was also down, but not broken.”
Principal Griffiths and Professor Burrows have given a simple solution of the mystery, but, unfortunately it does not fit in with the facts. They have jumped at the conclusion that the articles were removed by the child Elsie, but when policemen and others were present on the ground floor and the child was in bed, their conclusion cannot hold good.
When our representative saw Mrs Williams in the afternoon she was nearly tired out by the events which had happened and the relation of those events to her neighbours. She was kind enough, however, to give our reporter a succinct account of her experiences. “In the first place,” she commenced in answer to a question, “there has been no shock of earthquake so far as I know, and there are no cracks in the walls as I hear have been reported.”
“Well, tell me your experiences,” asked the pressman. “On Sunday evening I was in the front room. My husband was out, and the children – Elsie, aged eleven, and a younger daughter – were playing in the street. One of them came in and said to me, ‘Oh, mamma, what have you been doing in the kitchen?’ I went to see what she meant, and found a poker, tongs, and saucepan on the kitchen floor. I took them back to the scullery, and put them in their places. Nothing further happened until between six and seven o’clock, when the things which were upon the mantelpiece all came own – a candlestick, ornaments, and pictures being among them. Looking round, I found a drawer in the side table open, and its contents strewn over the middle of the room. It took me some time to put things right again. When I returned to the front room things were going about there just the same. It appeared that things were in some mysterious way moving all over the house.”
“And you had no experience of any shock?”
“I heard the window shake a little in the bedroom. I put the children to bed about ten o’clock, and afterwards sent for a policeman. He said he would like to see something happen while he was there. While he was in the house I said I would not light the lamp for fear of an accident, and all at once down came a candlestick off the table, the oilcloth at the same time being crumbled up. The lamp was on the table as well, but just escaped being rolled over.”
“Did that complete the Sunday night’s experiences?”
“Yes; we heard nothing more during the night, but this morning Elsie jumped out of bed and pointed out that three or four drawers in a chest were open and things hanging out. I should have told you that at eleven o’clock last night all the things came down off the mantelpiece. A jug and basin by some agency were moved from the stand and deposited on the floor without being broken, and even the things which fell from the mantelpiece on Sunday night remained unbroken on the floor.
“When I came down this morning,” continued Mrs Williams, “there was nothing fresh. That was about eight o’clock, and after sweeping up the kitchen I went upstairs and stated that nothing had happened during the night. Elsie afterwards went down, and returning, asked, ‘Oh, mamma, what did you want to say everything was all right. I went down and found the kettle had been removed from the hob to the floor.’ A saucepan had found its way from the scullery to the kitchen, taking a step about eight inches high during its progress. Books were in a heap on the floor, and my work-basket was upset, a good deal of crockery was displaced and some of it broken, my little girl’s shoes were spoiled by the button-holes being cut through, and a lot of damage was done.”
The kitchen was strewn with broken pieces of cups and saucers when our reporter visited the scene, and Mrs Williams was thoroughly upset by what had happened. Photo frames had moved from the front room to the back, and there was every evidence that some mischief-maker had caused the disturbance in this quiet home. But how he could have managed without being observed to do such extraordinary things as Mrs Williams relates is at present a mystery.
A theory put forward is that the extraordinary performances are those of an uneasy ghost, and a gruesome story of a past horror is unearthed. It is a tragedy of many years ago, and it is said that the victim – a woman – was buried close by. It is the wraith of this woman which the superstitious now imagine, after long years, has returned to work purposeless havoc with goods and nerves. It is a strange story, and this explanation is the strangest part of all.
Similar extraordinary things appear to have happened at No.17, Seymour-street, and Mrs Jones, whose husband occupies the house, made the following statement:-
“Mrs Williams and the girls came in here this morning, and the first thing I knew was the lamp, which had been on my dresser, had fallen down with a crash. I was in the back kitchen then.”
“Where was Elsie?”
“She was near the dresser,” was the reply.
“Don’t you think that Elsie could have accidentally knocked the lamp over?”
“Well, I cannot say as to that,” answered Mrs Jones, “because my back was turned; but there were so many other things that happened where nobody was near, so that I should say no living person had anything to do with them.”
George Harris, the lodger, then chimed in, “I saw Elsie trying to shift the lamp back. When I saw the crockery falling down I took three cups away into the front room, and, would you believe it, they actually came back into the kitchen of their own accord and smashed!”
Mr Jones, who had been sent for from his work, and reached home at 12.30, was inclined to the opinion that in their state of excitement the occupants of the houses had been mistaken as to what had really happened. “However, here is the fact that one cannot get over,” he said. “Here are all these things smashed.”
Mrs Jones, continuing her narrative, said the carpets were rolled up; a toilet set upstairs was placed on the floor, while the cover of a sewing machine had been lifted. A plate had also rolled into the kitchen and smashed without it being possible for anyone to have touched it. She was convinced of that.
A visitor to Seymour-street on Monday evening up to eleven o’clock and later would return convinced that the interest aroused by the seemingly uncanny occurrences had not waned, but was in a fair way of developing into genuine excitement. The thoroughfare for about 50 yards on each side of the house occupied by the Williamses was crowded with people, who propounded theories as fantastic as the unravelled gyrations and smashings of the crockery are puzzling.
Two police-constables had to be drafted to the spot on special duty, and, from the point of view of the curious and critical, the pity is that nothing creepy happened since the early afternoon, when the newspaper paragraphs began to draw interested spectators to the scene. When our representative paid his visit about ten p.m. Police-constable Richards was being pestered with all kinds of queries, and a Salvation Army captain was to the fore, eager to get to the bottom of the mystery. Lights flickered in the front rooms of No.17, the adjoining house, and inquiry showed that Mr. T.F. Jones was about removing his last bit of furniture from the house. He was sick of the whole thing, he said, and for the sake of his wife and child, he was clearing off to his brother’s house in Moorland-road.
“I have been put to great expense,” he added,”but I do not wish to lay blame on the little girl next door, who had been here, nor anyone else, remember.”
Mr Jones and the lodger, Harris, had a number of helpers removing every stick during the day, and even the garden clothes-props, the last of his possessions on the premises, were taken away before the door was locked on the outside about 10.30 o’clock.
At No.19, Mrs Williams, who is a smart, attractive little woman, and Elsie, her bonny eleven-year-old daughter, bore up quite cheerfully, notwithstanding the conversion of dozens of pieces of crockery into a litter of chippings, which had been swept behind the door, and were being crunched smaller and smaller by the feet of the neighbours and sundry visitors who had come to see the “haunted house,” to ask innumerable questions, and to offer impossible solutions. One of the children slept peacefully in a cot amidst the hubbub of footsteps and voices, and the domestic cat, having forsaken her kittens in the back, was curled up cosily on the dresser. By the way, a peculiarity of the matter is that only breakable earthenware and glass seems to have attracted the agency to which the damage is to be ascribed.
Mrs Williams repeated to our representative the experiences related above, and tailed off the story with an extraordinary narrative that the mysterious came into her life about three weeks ago, when a little girl relative of hers, whilst on a visit at No.19, was startled by a half-sheet of note-paper splitting clean in half as soon as she had filled it with writing, which she intended posting to her mother. When she had rewritten her letter on a fresh sheet that also split in half unaccountably, and they became alarmed, and alarm became fright when the envelope split in half after the address had been written on it. Even the stamp chipped at the corner when it was being put on, and she had to assist the little girl to put the stamp on in two pieces. She wanted to post the letter herself in order to be on the safe side, but the little girl insisted upon taking it to the letter-box herself, in order to see whether it would disappear from her hand or not. But it didn’t, and it was posted!
“You have been put to great expense, Mrs Williams,” said our representative.”Yes, we have,” was the reply, “but our landlady, Mrs Thomas, of Stacey-road, has been here, and she says she will do all she can to help us to re-place the things.”
On the floor of the back room, which was devoid of furniture, was a collection of unbroken jugs and other crockery, which had been taken there for safety, and it is to be hoped for the comfort of the family, that no further damage will take place, or else they will have to resort to hardware instead.
Shortly before eleven o’clock the venue of the excitement was for a time changed to No.32, on the opposite side of the street. There the occupier of the house was shaking the front door violently, and another ghostly visitation was taken for granted. Without any warning the man pushed his way back to the pavement, and, with a strong lunge at the door, burst the lock and gained entry. In this case there was a solution forthcoming. The good wife had closed the door without taking the key with her, and the husband had to resort to extremities! Seymour-street will henceforth become the Splott showplace.
Western Mail, 19th June 1906.
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Western Mail, 19th June 1906
A Strange Afternoon Tea Story.
The Splott “ghost” was rather discouraged on Tuesday. A lot of unfriendly criticism has been poured out by people who affect to disbelieve in ghosts, and, naturally, the visitant is discouraged. The usual result of scepticism is apparent, and there has been a break in the manifestations. Nevertheless, some eerie things still remain to be chronicled, and these are here set down in as veracious a manner as is possible when humans deal with the doings of beings they cannot see and of whose existence they are – in broad daylight – more or less sceptical.
Our representative, who visited the haunted house in Seymour-street on Tuesday, is firmly of the opinion that the “ghost” has now been well and truly laid, worried to its final rest by uncomplimentary and unfriendly critics. No.19 was closed when our man appeared on the scene – Mr Williams being at work, and Mrs Williams and Elsie (the much-talked-of, happy-featured little daughter) having, on the advice of neighbours, gone to complain of the implication made in a certain quarter that Elsie is in some way responsible for the smashing of the crockery, and that fingerprints were to be found on some of the pieces.
There were still groups of gossipers all along the street, but there was no policeman needed to prevent a raid upon the door of the house, as on the previous evening. It had gone forth that no disturbance had taken place during the evening, and the public appeared to be keenly disappointed. People are now beginning to talk of the affair with their tongues in their cheeks, and sly winks may be detected if one is on the look-out for quiet indications of their inmost thoughts, which they are unwilling to openly express. “I have my own opinions, bu, good gracious me, why should I worry myself?” is the nearest approach to confidence which can be reach up to the present.
During the excitement of Monday evening, Mrs Belmont, an old lady living in No. 32, on the opposite side of the street, was asked to allow her friends, the Williamses, to have a refreshing cup of tea quietly in her kitchen, and she readily consented, like the kindly neighbour that she is. Elsie came there, and, funnily enough, shortly afterwards, when Mrs Belmont proceeded to answer a knock at the front door, she heard the crockery dance on the table and smash on the floor. It was most perplexing to the old lady, and she went back to the kitchen in a flurry, but little Elsie, who had seen the same thing happen at her own home, seemed highly amused and laughed loudly at the funny position of things.
A little later Elsie shouted from the scullery that the things on the gas-stove had fallen down and smashed, and Mrs Belmont found it to be too true. “There was another very funny thing,” said the old lady. “You know, I went to the trouble to make them some nice toast ready for their tea, and I had put it on the table. There was a knock at the door, and I went, and – would you believe it? – when I returned I found the toast all over the floor under the table.”
“Where was Elsie?” “She was standing up, pointing to the toast and laughing at it all. I am sure I don’t know what to think about it.” Our representative asked if any of the crockery on the hooks fairly high up on the dresser and wall had been disturbed, and he received a negative reply, with the further remark that the walls were so bare because some stranger, with good intentions, had on the previous evening taken all the things down and carried them to the front room.
“Did you actually see the things smash?” “Oh, no; they were all smashed when I was somewhere else. I only heard the crash, and then found the pieces on the floor near where little Elsie was.” “Well,” asked our man, looking straight at the honest-faced old lady, “what do you really think of it, Mrs Belmont?” “Oh,” was the smiling reply, “don’t ask me, please; I would rather not say anything about the affair,” and she was pressed no more.
“Look at this,” said Mrs Belmont’s daughter, bringing in a bucket half full of broken china; “that is what was done to our crockery.” “Well, what is your opinion?” was the question levelled at her, but she, too, preferred to keep her own counsel.
Police-constable Richards, who has been on duty in Seymour-street this week, confirms, so far as he saw, the extraordinary story told by Mr and Mrs Edward Williams. “Mrs Williams called me into the house about a quarter past ten on Sunday night,” said the constable to our reporter, “and I found three mats from the passage in the front room. Mr Williams said that when he came home at 8.30 he saw those mats roll themselves up and walk into the front room. I put them back in the passage, and went to the middle room, where I saw a table-cloth being pulled to the floor. I put it back on the table in the presence of Mr and Mrs Williams. Candlesticks were put on the table and candles beside them. We all returned to the front door, and afterwards I searched all the rooms in the house, but found nobody there. I went to the front door again with Mr and Mrs Williams and the two children. We heard a noise in the kitchen, and on going there found the cloth off the table and a candlestick rolled up in it underneath the table.”
“This is very wonderful. Are you sure that there was nobody in the house except yourself and the members of the family?” “Certain.” “Could any of the members of the family have performed the miracles?” “Certainly not. On Monday afternoon a glass in my presence jumped off the table and fell on the floor without any one touching it.” “The occupants of No. 17 have gone?” “Yes, they brought a van and took their furniture away this afternoon.”
Another constable, who is a recruit in plain clothes, and declined to give his name, related some extraordinary experiences. While he was sitting in one of the rooms the lid of a teapot suddenly arose from a table and fell on the floor without breaking. “I went to No. 17,” said the constable, “and there I was told some remarkable things. An earthenware pipe, which was used as a stick and umbrella stand, was by some invisible agency removed to the kitchen, where it broke. The cover of a sewing machine was lifted off the machine and placed on a sofa without a hand touching it. George Harries, who lodged at No. 17, took nine cups from the kitchen into the front room, put them in a cupboard, and closed the door. When he went into the kitchen again four of the cups had ‘returned,’ and were broken on the floor. He went to the front room and found there were only five cups where he had placed nine.”
Both constables testified to things falling down from mantelpieces and moving about in their presence.
On Tuesday the Williamses left No.19 to stay with their relatives, and much annoyance was caused to Mrs Williams and her two children by the crowd that followed them from the house to the car. Mr Williams’s people are in a good way of business in Cowbridge-road, whilst his wife’s reside in Constellation-street.
Inquiries at 43, Marion-street, Splott, where the Williamses stayed in apartments for eighteen months prior to their removal to Seymour-street, did not elicit any suggestion of disturbances following in the wake of the family in the past. “They were a very quiet, superior family,” said the landlady, “and I am quite astounded at the suspicions which some people seem to bear towards the little girl.”
Seymour street was the scene of a merry crowd until nearly three o’clock on Tuesday morning. At one a.m. they were so demonstrative that a few venturesome spirits burst open the front door of No.17, which had been vacated by the Joneses, and Mr. Williams, the father of Elsie, had to get up and turn them out of the house.
Western Mail, 20th June 1906.
The Earthquake. Felt from Liverpool to Cornwall. Panic in Welsh Coal Mines. Curious Incidents. Originated in Severn Valley.
Further details of the earthquake shock on Wednesday morning [27th] show that it was felt over a large area extending from Flintshire on the north to Plymouth on the south, and from Pembrokeshire on the west to Bath, Bristol and Birmingham on the east. The length of the tremors is variously given as from two to ten seconds, and, although a good deal of alarm was caused, especially in the mining districts of Glamorganshire, no serious damage is reported. The shocks were greatest, however, in South Wales. Reports from correspondents in thirty important towns show that the exact time of the earthquake was 9.45 a.m. The shocks lasted three seconds. The movement was from east to west, and seems to have originated in the Severn Valley.
Severe Tremors at Cardiff. At Cardiff the shock was felt at about 9.50. It was preceded by a noise like the rumbling of a passing train, and lasted from eight to ten seconds. The severest tremors were felt at the docks. The steamship Italians, lying on the blocks in Hill’s Dry Dock, was badly shaken, and the boilermakers and other workmen on board rushed off her and refused to go back to work for some time. Several cracks were made in the walls of the Windsor Rope works and the Brattice cloth works. The buildings in Mount Stuart-square and at the Exchange oscillated from three to four inches, the motion being from north to south. Heavy tables swayed, books were thrown from their shelves, windows and doors creaked, and pictures were shaken from their positions on the walls and were left hanging aslant. Many of the clerks, giving way to panic, rushed into the square. The officials of the Exchange Company made a rapid inspection of the building soon after the disturbance and reported that it had not in any way damaged the building or its foundations. At the Cardiff Pose-office the long-distance wires were affected. At the offices of Messrs. W. Cory and Sons, Buet-street, one of the clerks gave the following account of what had occurred:- “The shock occurred at about a quarter to 10, or perhaps a little later. It was a very distinct shock, and at the offices of the Powell Dyffryn Company a message was received from their collieries at Aberaman asking if we had felt it at Cardiff. It lasted between eight and ten seconds, and the sensation was like that of the jolting of a railway carriage. The stairs and all the woodwork in the offices creaked as though something terribly heavy had bumped against the building, and my first impression was that an electric car or something had run away and struck the office.” […]
Gloucestershire Echo, 28th June 1906.
Mischievous Ghosts
Houses turned topsy turvey.
Ghosts are evidently holding high carnival this year. The Spotlands district of Cardiff is now intensely agitated, says the “Morning Leader,” over mysterious occurrences, which are attributed to supernatural power. Two houses in Seymour-street have been turned topsy-turvy by some unseen agency, and the occupants are almost mad with terror. The excitement created in the district was so great that the services of two or three policemen had to be requisitioned in order to control the crowd which surrounded the houses. Amongst those who have been investigating the matter are Principal E.H. Griffiths, of the University College of South Wales, and Prof. Burrows.
It is said that in the immediate neighbourhood a tragedy took place many years ago, and that the victim, a woman, was buried close by. Superstitious people believe that it is the woman who has now started to remove heavy articles of furniture from one room to another, to send plates careering from one part of the house to the other, to collect mats together and move them upstairs, to disarrange bed clothing, to open drawers and strew the floor with their contents, to take saucers from under cups off breakfast tables, and to perform many other weird pranks.
At 19, Seymour-street, where the first incident occurred, the occupants are Mr Edward Williams, his wife and children. Mrs Williams, speaking to a “Morning Leader” reporter, said: “I was in the front room, my husband was out, and the children – Elsie, aged 11, and a younger daughter – were playing in the street, when one of them came in and said, “Oh, mamma, what have you been doing in the kitchen?”
“I found a poker, tongs, and saucepan on the kitchen floor, and took them back to the scullery and put them in their places. Nothing further happened until between six and seven o’clock, when the things which were upon the mantelpiece all came down with a crash, including a candlestick, ornaments and pictures. Looking round at once, I found a drawer in the side table open, and its contents strewn all over the room. It took me some time to put things right again, but when I returned to the front room things were going about there just the same. It appeared that all kinds of articles were in some mysterious way moving about the house. I put the children to bed about ten o’clock, and afterwards sent for a policeman. He said he would like to see something happen while he was there, and while he was in the house I said I would not light the lamp for fear of an accident. Just then down came a candlestick off the table, the oilcloth at the same time being crumpled up. The lamp was on the table as well, but just escaped being rolled over.”
The next morning Mrs Williams went upstairs to dress the baby, leaving everything in order. She was soon called down by Elsie, and found the place upside down. “In the kitchen a big kettle was off the hob, and my crockery was broken. Bits of plates and saucers were all over the place. I went upstairs and found the drawers had been opened and clothes thrown out. A mirror had been taken off the mantelpiece as well as ornaments. A wash-hand stand basin was on the gronud with the jug in it, and a water bottle and soap dish were by its side. Nothing had been broken in the bedroom.
“We didn’t know what was going to happen next. I saw the glass of a lamp which had been in the middle room downstairs fly out into the kitchen, and a saucer which had been under a little fancy cup on the front room table came into the kitchen and was smashed.”
Next door, at No. 17, Mr J. Francis Jones and his wife reside, and here similar incidents have occurred. A large lamp first fell from the dresser with a crash. George Harris, a lodger, states: “I saw the little girl trying to shift the lamp back, but when I saw the crockery falling down I took three cups away into the front room, and they actually came back into the kitchen of their own accord and smashed.”
Mrs Jones said the carpets were rolled up, a toilet set upstairs was placed on the floor, and the cover of a sewing machine had been lifted. A plate also rolled into the kitchen and smashed without its being possible for anyone to have touched it.
P.C. Richards, one of the officers called, said that he could give no explanation whatever of the mystery. He locked the back kitchen door, searched the scullery and the back kitchen, and then placed the cloth on the table and put upon it a candlestick and candle. All the members of the family, he added, were taken into the front room and the passage by him, and he was positive that nobody could have got into the kitchen at all. Suddenly he heard a crash, and, on going into the kitchen, saw the tablecloth half on the floor, as though it had been dragged, and the candlestick and candle on the floor.
Preston Herald, 23rd June 1906
A Cardiff “Ghost.”
Some excitement was caused in Cardiff on Sunday evening when it became known that a house in Seymour street, occupied by Mr E Williams, a carpenter, his wife, and chihldren, was supposed to be haunted. Mrs Williams was first called to the kitchen by her little daughter, and found that various articles had been distributed about the floor, and shortly afterwards the same state of things was observed in the sitting and other rooms.
On Monday morning several ornaments were smashed by the mysterious agency, and a large crowd of persons gathered to investigate the matter. Suddenly there was a loud crash in another room, and a journalist who was present caught the little daughter of the house in an attitude which made it quite clear that she was the “ghost.”
South Wales Weekly Argus and Monmouthshire Advertiser, 23rd June 1906.
Mr Charles Green says the full account [Hornsey Rise case] in last night’s Evening News recalls to him his recollection of similar happenings at Splotlands, Cardiff. “I saw a large crowd of grown-up people and children gathered round a house. I inquired what was wrong, and was told things were moving about the house. Furniture moved from one room to another. Lamps tumbled down, and the crockery smashed from the dresser. A little girl living in th ehouse got a sound smacking from her mother, and was then taken to a neighbour’s house for her misdeeds to be expatiated upon. Immediately things began to tumble about in the neighbour’s house. The police arrived, and I walked about the house with them. We saw the wreckage, but could find no explanation: and the people decided that the little girl had ‘got electricity.’ They decided they could not stay in their house, so went to some relations, and there the strange things happened again.”
Evening News (London), 23rd December 1915.