The Surabaja Poltergeist.
Instances of poltergeist phenomena, especially those which are carefully observed and reported, are relatively infrequent. (A poltergeist – literally a “noisy ghost” – is the term used to describe noises, the hurling of missiles, and similar disturbances which do not appear to have any physical explanation.) Their scarcity is shown by the fact that in the several thousand spontaneous cases collected at the Parapsychology Laboratory of Duke University there have not been more than half a dozen reports of this type.
Not long ago in Java, however, a poltergeist case turned up that was unusual in the number of first-hand witnesses and in the amount of detail reported. The phenomena persisted for some weeks and were recounted in a group of reports collected and published by Mr G. Zorab in the January, 1953, issue of the Dutch Tidjschrift voor Parapsychologie. One report was that of Mr. Krom in whose household the occurrences took place. “Mr and Mrs Krom,” wrote Mr Zorab, “related their experiences to me viva voce, Mr Krom, whom I personally knew before he left for Indonesia, is an excellent witness. He and his wife are about 30 years old, and both are clear-headed, well-educated young people who never had anything to do with the occult, and hardly knew what parapsychology means.”
Three other accounts by first-hand witnesses were published: that of Mr J. J. W. Bijl, the police inspector; that of Mr. J. Mittelhauser, a newspaper man, and that of Mr C.F. Stemmerik, a visiting business, who was a member of the Dutch Society for Psychical Research. As this Bulletin is being written, Mr Zorab has sent in the recent statements of another Dutch couple, Mr and Mrs Arnouts of The Hague, who were daily visitors in the Krom household.
Mr Zorab summarized the case approximately as follows: “In the beginning of November, 1950, stones were thrown, apparently in a paranormal way, on and in a house at Surabaja, Java. The inhabitants of this house consisted of Mr and Mrs Krom, a young Dutch couple without children, who went to Indonesia in 1949. There was also a Javanese female servant (the baboe) and her husband, both about 35 years of age, and two adopted children: Soeka, a girl of about 10, and a boy of about seven named Die. Mr Krom was chief editor of the Dutch Surabaja newspaper the Nieuwe Courant, and his wife, too, worked on the staff of the paper.
“One day at the beginning of November, some stones came bumping down onto the roof of the Kroms’ bedroom while they were having their siesta during the hot hours of the afternoon. As the days folllowed and this throwing of stones continued disturbing the young couple in their afternoon rest, Mr Krom got very annoyed and started to accuse his neighbours of making fun of him. In the beginning he was convinced that some naughty boys and girls were the culprits. He informed the police, but since the Indonesian police are extremely slow in taking action he had to resort to other measures. So he started to bombard his neighbours’ roofs with large stones. This quickly brought out the police in strength, and they started to investigate the case.
“Gradually the Kroms became more and more convinced that mortal hands had nothing to do with the bombardment inflicted on them. During a watch in the hot sun to catch the miscreants Mrs Krom suddenly saw two stones coming out of the closed shutters of her empty bedroom, and coming straight at her! In general, the flying stones behaved in an extraordinary manner: they fell in places where it was humanly impossible to throw them. They were observed to turn at a sharp angle at the end of their course in order to avoid certain obstacles in their path. They even continued to fall in closed rooms, though no holes could be seen in the ceiling or walls after the falling of the stones.
“The police inspector, Mr Bijl, states in his report that he saw the stones coming toward him over a wall, that they more or less floated in the air, and that when one struck him he could hardly feel the impact. This stone was about three inches by one and a half inches in size. On Mr Bijl’s first visit he locked up the three Indonesian occupants of the house (Mr and Mrs Krom being away from home on that occasion); and as he stood in an empty room, he suddenly heard a stone hit the door with such force that it could only have been thrown from a short distance. Though Mr Bijl reached the opening of the door overlooking the courtyard in one bound, not a soul could be seen. The event repeated itself once or twice. The police inspector, a native of Amsterdam who had come to Java only a few years before, had at first viewed the reports with skepticism, but the extraordinary behaviour of the falling stones, which was contrary to all known laws of ballistics, speedily convinced him that he was witnessing paranormal happenings.
“This was also the opinion of several of Mr Krom’s European friends who many times could observe the stones falling and the tricks these stones would play on the inmates of the house. One of these friends, Mr J. Mittelhauser, a reporter on the daily paper, Dagblad De Vrije Pers, gave a report of his experiences in this case. Among the curious occurrences he related were his observations regarding the Kroms’ dogs: ‘The young and very playful dog of the Krom family usually ran after anything thrown about, retrieving it. But his behaviour towards the falling stones was a different one. He generally ran after such a stone, but never retrieved them. After smelling at such a stone he left it where he had found it and turned away. We experimented with other more “normal” stones, and these he never failed to retrieve.’
“Life in the Kroms’ house had become a nuisance. Stones kept falling in the boiling rice and dirtying the newly washed linen hung up to dry. Once a stone struck Mrs Krom with such force in her back that the excruciating pain nearly made her faint. Yet, her back was not more than a yard away from the wall of the room in which she was standing. The stones were thrown in large quantities, and hundreds of these projectiles were collected. One day the little native girl, Soeka, told Mr Krom that when one threw away a stick, the thing would at once be thrown back. Mr Krom watched Soeka throw a stick over a wall into the neighbouring courtyard where nobody was to be found at the time. He heard the stick drop lightly onto the concrete floor; a fraction of a second afterwards, it lay at his feet.
“The Resident of Surabaja, Mr Pamudji, visited the Kroms’ house to see what it was all about. Stones and orange peel were thrown at him and he bolted off saying he would send a doekoen (witch doctor) to drive away the evil spirits. The latter, when he came, conducted various rites and predicted an end to the difficulties. Though there was some abatement, the phenomena continued.
“The stones fell only during the day. After about ten o’clock in the evening the poltergeist stopped its pranks. The phenomena finally came to an end when the household was broken up and the Kroms left in order to stay with some friends before returning to Holland. The whole episode had lasted for about six weeks.”
As Mr Zorab points out in his discussion of the Surabaja case, poltergeist phenomena often appear to be associated with the presence, or influence, of some particular person. Frequently this person is an adolescent boy or girl. Unconscious psychological factors of one kind or another, it is supposed, are the motivating power which set off the phenomena. In the Surabaja case there is no evidence pointing to any one person, nor is there any clearly defined motive. Mr Zorab concluded from his investigation that neither Mr nor Mrs Krom was likely to be the poltergeist medium but that more probably one of the Indonesian inmates was responsible.
The phenomena started at the time when Mr and Mrs Krom announced that they were going to return to Holland. However, they were on very good terms with their servants and they made it clear in announcing their plans that the servants would not suffer because of the change since the Kroms would see that they were well rewarded. A further indication that the servants were not responsible for the phenomena is the fact that at one time or another each one of the Indonesians was away from home when the phenomena were occurring, but the stones did not stop flying about during that time. It is possible, of course, that the medium does not have to be present in order that the effects should occur.
One clue which might be meaningful is the fact that the stones were usually hurled at the women – mainly Mrs Krom and the baboe. The men were seldom hit, and never hurt.
If such phenomena as those just described are genuine, they indicate a large task of exploration which still awaits science. So long as they must remain spontaneous and it is not possible to experiment with them, it is all the more important for parapsychologists to get hold of all the evidence they can whenever opportunity offers. The Surabaja case should help to alert interested observers everywhere to the need for more understanding of what these happenings signify.
Parapsychology Bulletin, No. 34, May, 1954.