Terror Night In Home Wrecked By Ghost.
Two
Sunday Pictorial representatives, Victor Thompson and Lionel Crane, yesterday spent the most amazing day in their lives. In a neat little house at Thornton Heath they saw miracles wrought by some malevolent ghostly force. They saw saucers – held in a woman’s hand – “exploded” into smithereens by an invisible power. Eggs, saucepans, fenders, rugs, wine-glasses, coal, and a score of other objects, sailed through the air before them – and sometimes, apparently, right through closed doors! – propelled by no human force.
It is the most amazing case of a poltergeist (“mischievous spirit”) ever known. The occupants of the house are Mr and Mrs Leslie Fielding, and their sixteen-year-old son, Donald. They have a lodger, Mr George Saunders.
“A few days ago the imprint of a hand with five fingers appeared on a mirror here,” Mrs Fielding told Victor Thompson and Lionel Crane. “Since then – ” Crash! – Her story was interrupted by a noise in the hall. Our representatives ran out of the living room and found that a heavy bronze fender from an upstairs bedroom had been hurled down the stairs. Nobody was upstairs.
Mrs and Mr Fielding said dozens of happenings like that had occurred in the last twelve hours. Tumblers had been hurtled across rooms and smashed against the wall. A pot of vanishing cream had fallen, apparently through a ceiling, on to Mrs Fielding’s head.
Our men themselves saw the following “miracles”;-
A saucer held in Mrs Fielding’s hands smashed into fragments, cutting her badly.
Eggs and crockery hurtling from the kitchen and falling at their feet.
A saucepan floating in the air.
A wineglass, apparently coming right through the door of a heavy oaken sideboard.
Late last night the eerie manifestations were still occurring. “I feel some terrible climax is approaching,” said Mrs Fielding. “We shall stay up all night to see it through. I hope it comes soon. Our nerves cannot stand much more.”
Cups, Pans and Coal Thrown About.
“Supernatural” Force.
Since Friday night last week strange things have been happening at the home of Mrs. L.E. Fielding, Beverstone-road, Thornton Heath. Crockery, glasses, saucepans, pieces of coal and an amazing variety of other objects are said to have been flung about the rooms of the house by some unseen power.
Cups and saucers are alleged to have been smashed as people in the house held them in their hands. Mr. and Mrs. Fielding believe that some supernatural force is at work and during the past weekend they engaged the services of a psychic research expert to try and solve the mystery of the strange happenings.
When a “Croydon Times” representative called at the house on Sunday evening, Mrs. Fielding, who opened the door, said “You have just missed that.” She pointed to a broken tumbler which she said had come hurtling down the stairs only a few seconds previously.
“We have been living here seven years and during that period many strange things have happened here from time to time,” said Mrs. Fielding. “At first people just laughed at me when I mentioned the incidents. Even my husband perhaps thought I was imagining things until last Friday night when, as we were lying in bed, two drinking glasses were hurled across the bedroom in quick succession and smashed to pieces against the opposite wall. Then the eiderdown was lifted and thrown over our heads. Things have become more violent since then. This afternoon, an electric bulb was thrown downstairs. We have examined all the electric fittings and cannot find where the bulb came from. Things are constantly being lifted by some invisible force and strewn about the house.”
Mrs. Fielding lifted a bandage on her right hand and showed our representative a cut over her thumb. “I received that,” she said, “when a saucer ‘burst’ into scores of pieces in my hand. There was no one near me at the time. Several people died in this house before we took it, but there is no history of any of them having died from violence. Just before anything happens, the house becomes terribly cold and a chill, dank wind rushes round.
“Some time ago, when I was in bed, I felt my father’s spirit speaking to me. When I came out of the trance, I found that a cross had been cut, as if with a knife, on my breast. Blood was coming from the wound. When I went to a doctor to have it dressed, he discovered that I had a growth below the cross.
“I have never dabbled in Spiritualism or anything like that. I cannot understand why these things should happen here.”
The other occupants of the house are Mr. and Mrs. Fielding’s seventeen-years-old son, Donald, and a boarder, Mr. George Saunders.
During the week-end, Professor Morisone, psychic palmist, of North End, Croydon, was called to the house to conduct a seance. He later paid a second visit to the house. When our representative called on Professor Morisone on Monday, he said, “It is quite true that some very strange things are happening at this house. During the seance which I conducted, a large piece of coal whizzed close to my head and, later, an egg came through one of the panels of a closed door. As an old Spiritualist my view is that Mrs. Fielding is a very strong carrier wave of ecto-plasm and what is taking place in her house is due to relative spirits trying to convey a message of warning. From my investigation of this case, I am convinced that spiritual influences, and not human influences, are responsible for what is happening there. The piece of coal which nearly struck me could not have been lifted by any human force. I believe these spiritual influences will continue to work in the house until the 26th of the month.”
Croydon Times, 23rd February 1938.
Police Guard at “Haunted” House.
Story of further queer happenings.
M.P.s at Westminster will probably discuss the alleged eerie happenings which have made a house at Beverstone-road, Thornton Heath, the focus of nation-wide interest.
Police have had to control sightseers following the story that the family living at the house have been terrified by remarkable happenings, such as objects flying through the air and a wardrobe being overturned without human agency.
Mr. E. Doran, a former M.P, who lives near the house, has informed the “Croydon Times” that Mr. A. Denville, M.P. for Central Newcastle, will put the following question in the House of Commons, probably to-day (Wednesday): “… To ask the Secretary of State for Home Affairs whether his attention has been drawn to the escapades of an alleged ghost and if he has caused strict investigation to be made into this ghostly visitation?”
Police were called to guard the house at the end of last week. Late at night curious crowds continued to line the footpath on the opposite side of the road, and the police maintained an incessant patrol, dispersing the groups of watchers.
The mysterious happenings in the house have not abated, it is said. There is, however, a greater air of secrecy about them. On Friday Mrs. Fielding, who lives in the house with her husband, Mr. Leslie Fielding, and Mr. George Saunders, a lodger, went to the offices of the International Institute of Psychic Research, Kensington. Mr. Fielding told a reporter that while she was there articles near her had acted as though moved by an invisible hand – just as they did when she was at home.
“A cup has just fallen off the table,” he said, when asked if any curious things had happened in the house during his wife’s absence.
At ten o’clock on Friday night the manifestations were stated to be still going on.
An officer of the Institute of Psychic Research who, with a companion, was making investigations, talked to a “Croydon Times” reporter, but declined to make any statement on what had occurred. He refused to confirm that queer things had happened during Mrs. Fielding’s visit to Kensington that day.
Asked how Mrs. Fielding was, he replied, “She is fine, but she does not want to see anyone. There are a lot of relatives here, and the occurrences are still going on. In the first place, when they started happening, she got in touch with the Press because she thought they could help her. Now she is tired of all the publicity this is getting.”
Asked his opinion of the prophecy made by the Croydon psychic palmist, Professor Morisone, that the manifestations were likely to cease that week-end, he replied: “We cannot say how long they are going on.”
The police, one of whom remained on duty all night, said they had neither heard or seen anything unusual.
The atmosphere of secrecy deepened on Monday, when the Institute of Psychic Research refused to make any statement at that time on their officers’ investigations. One of the officers gave a definite assurance to a representative of this paper on Friday night that a statement would be issued on Monday morning. When he telephoned to the Institute, however, the reporter was informed that investigations were continuing, and that the promised statement would not be forthcoming until Wednesday.
A reporter was successful in interviewing Mrs. Fielding. Looking tired and a little strained, she told a dramatic story of her fight against illness in order to see the finish of the extraordinary predicament in which she finds herself. Questioned about the state of her health, she replied: “Last night I collapsed, but I feel better this morning. I should have been in hospital weeks ago, but I must see this through tot he end. If I did not I should be more worried than ever. People have been unkind. They do not try to be helpful at all. It is bad enough without people throwing stones at the windows. It is definitely quieter in the house this morning. Two articles were broken yesterday, and things we are holding vanish from our hands and then fall down from the ceiling on top of us. It is extraordinary. They might vanish and turn up in [the] Psychic Research Institute. When I was over there the same things happened. I was told that things might stop happening this week-end. We are puzzled by mysterious crashes we hear. We hear a tremendous crash that shakes the house, and when we rush upstairs we find everything in place.
Croydon Times, 2nd March 1938.
Missing Goods Found at Institute.
The strange happenings in a house at Beverstone-road, Thornton Heath, has apparently quietened somewhat, but the “Croydon Times” understands that a new development has taken place. The manifestations, as far as wardrobes toppling over and crockery smashing is concerned, have finished. But they have been replaced by an even more remarkable development. Things now disappear silently from the house – and are found afterwards in the International Institute for Psychical Research, Walton-street, Kensington.
This is what Mrs. Fielding, who lives in the house, told a “Croydon Times” reporter on Saturday. A brass-bound brush and a pill-box were among the articles which had arrived at the institute without human agency, she said. “When they find anything there they ring up on the telphone, and then I go and find that the article has disappeared from the house.”
Mrs. Fielding’s health has much improved, and she is finding comfort in her newly-acquired interest in psychic matters.
Mysterious crashes in the house are still a source of wonderment. After people in the house have heard a tremendous crash, a search reveals everything normal and unmoved, she said.
When asked her opinion of the report that a question is to be asked in the House of Commons about the “haunting” of the house, Mrs. Fielding replied, “It is ridiculous. What can they do about it?”
She is now visiting the Psychical Reseach Institute twice a week, and officers of the Institute are continuing their investigations. “I have to be careful, when visiting friends, not to concentrate my mind,” she said. “If I do something might happen, or some crockery might get smashed. When I go to the hairdresser’s strange things happen. A comb or something else might disappear and be found somewhere else.”
The “Croydon Times” has received a letter from the Institute for Psychical Research. Referring to our report that the Institute refused a statement after giving an assurance that one would be issued, it explains that “it is not customary to make statements regarding scientific investigations whilst they are in progress.” The letter also dispels any impression which may have been gained from our report that investigations during Mrs. Fielding’s visit to Kensington were disappointing.
“I wish to make it clear,” the letter continues, “that the officials of the I.I. P.R. consider Mrs. Fielding’s case an excellent one for study and experiments. We have witnessed a number of outstanding happenings at her home and at this Institute for which we find no normal explanation. May I also say, however, that in my opinion the peace of Mrs. Fielding’s home is now almost completely restored, and that there is no justification for speaking of it as a “haunted house” any more. We appear to be successful in diverting the phenomena into an experimental channel, and hope that we may thus perform a service both to Mrs. Fielding’s family and to the cause of science.”
We have been informed by Mrs. Fielding that there are certain rumours in circulation to the effect that she is receiving payments for statements to newspapers. This, we are assured, is entirely untrue.
Croydon Times, 9th March 1938.
Trying to Photograph a “Ghost”.
Experiments at Thornton Heath.
“Somersaulting” chair.
Efforts to photograph the mysterious visitant which, it is thought, is responsible for the throwing about of crockery and furniture in the “haunted” house in Beverstone-road, Thornton Heath, are being made by officers of the International Institute for Psychical Research.
Two of these officers have been carrying out investigations in the house – home of Mr. and Mrs. Fielding – during the past fortnight, and have stated that they “appear to be successful in diverting the phenomena into an experimental channel.”
Mr. Fielding talked to a “Croydon Times” reporter on Wednesday night. The investigators, he said, had wrapped up photographic plates in thick paper and placed them near glasses or other objects which are in the habit of jumping about without apparent cause. Their efforts, however, had proved fruitless, despite the fact, it is claimed, that results have previously been obtained by this method.
Meanwhile, although the house is much quieter and the manifestations appear gradually to be decreasing, queer incidents continue to create wonder. Articles – among them a brass-bound brush and a pill-box, have disappeared from the house and made their appearance in the Psychical Research Institute, Walton-street, Kensington. Mrs Fielding is making visits to the Institute to attend experiments twice a week.
Also, Mrs. Fielding told a reporter this week that when she visits her hairdresser’s, combs and other things disappear from their places and are found later elsewhere.
Mr. Fielding said that while he was in bed on Saturday night, a chair standing beside the bed had “somersaulted over and over across the room.” The same night two electric light bulbs were found to be missing from their fittings. “It’s a bit of a shock,” said Mr. Fielding, with a smile, “to go out into the hall and try to put the light on and find that the bulb has gone. Another time we found a jug lying out in the hall, when all the doors were locked. We went into the front room and found an alarm clock which had been standing on the mantelpiece lying in an armchair. Thank goodness, there are not so many things being broken. The wardrobe falling over was the worst. It was a bit worrying at first, but we have got used to it now.”
The number of articles said to have been broken during the “haunting” of the house has reached alarming proportions. Besides various vases, other ornaments and a clock, eighteen egg cups, nearly two whole tea services, and the greater part of three or four dozen glasses have been smashed. No insurance claim can be made for these, no provision having been made in the insurance policies for such unusual forms of loss.
Mrs. Fielding assures us that certain circulating rumours to the effect that she is receiving payments for statements to newspapers are entirely untrue.
Croydon Times, 12th March 1938
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/sep/19/the-housewife-the-ghost-hunter-and-the-poltergeist
A letter from England.
By Dr. Nandor Fodor (Director of Research, International Institute for Psychical Research).
London, April, 1938.
The Thornton Heath Poltergeist.
I promised, in my last month’s notes, to give a detailed report of my experiments with the Thornton Heath Poltergeist. I cannot fulfill this promise as the data at my disposal are so abundant that a book would be needed for a thorough discussion. All I can do is to select the high lights of the most remarkable investigation I have had the good fortune to conduct.
Introductorily I may mention that, in the disturbances at the house of Mr and Mrs Leslie Fielding at 93 Beverstone Road, Thornton Heath, London, no young boy or girl approaching the age of puberty is involved. The Fieldings have a boy, aged 17, but it became apparent from the first day of my investigation that it was not he but Mrs Fielding herself who was the focal center of the phenomena. She is a 35 year old brunette, with an admixture of Spanish blood. She is pretty, vivacious and fun-loving, with a normal and happy outlook on life. Her married life is harmonious, she is very fond of animals, helpful to friends and neighbours, simple in her tastes, with no yearning beyond her social status and shows a remarkable absence of the jaundiced view of the universe which people afflicted with grave illnesses are likely to exhibit. Her medical history is very strange. There is an abundance of traumatic experience in it from early girlhood. As a result, she belongs to the psychic type. She has seen ghosts, has premonitory dreams and warnings, and has had, from time to time, other odd experiences for which she could not account.
For years past she has been suffering from an abscess on her kidney. The Poltergeist outbreak began a week after her last attack on the day that was the last to be spent in bed. On February 24th, when I arrived on the scene, I found the famimly reduced to a state of extreme nerves. Most of the family crockery and ornaments were smashed. They had no peace. The movable property was constantly on the wing, the breakable ones ending their flight with suicide.
As Mr Fielding exhibited the wreckage in the dining room, the door of which was shut behind us, with a loud bang something hit the panel on the outside. It was a clock in a bakelite case which, I was told, stood on the mantel piece in the bedroom upstairs. The door was indented, the case smashed, but the clock still going. There was no one in the hall but I had not been introduced yet to the family in the dining room and could not account for their movements. It was a promising beginning, and the promise was so abundantly fulfilled that from 11.30 in the morning until 10 in the evening I stayed in the house.
The Poltergeist In Action.
The real excitement began at lunch time. I was sitting on the sofa facing the open dining room door to the right of which the kitchen opened, eating sandwiches while the Fielding family (including Mr. George Saunders, a crippled bootmaker, who is their lodger) was having their midday meal. I shall quote a few paragraphs from my shorthand notes made immediately after each event:
12.50 p.m. Mrs Fielding was coming in from the kitchen with a plate held in both hands. I saw her clearly over the threshold.
ping. A tumbler flew off the table in the kitchen. I found it near the back door, unbroken.
1.50 p.m. Mrs Fielding came in from the kitchen with a pudding plate. From sheer nervousness she was holding everything with both hands. She was in full view.
ping. Behind her in the kitchen the same glass fell off the table, in a direction opposite to her, remaining unbroken.
1.55 p.m. Mrs Fielding came in from the kitchen with a saucer and three cups. She was hugging the crockery to her breast with both hands. She was in full view.
ping. The same tumbler flew off the kitchen table in the same direction, again unbroken.
There was no one in the house outside ourselves in the dining room. It looked as if an invisible elastic thread bound Mrs Fielding to her crockery and that as soon as this thread snapped, the rebound sent the object off in an opposite direction.
I timed the events. Something happened, on the average, every 15 minutes. Here is a remarkable incident:
2.15 p.m. Mrs Fielding is sitting near the fireplace. She had just emptied her teacup for the dog. With a loud ping, saucer and cup fly out of her hand. The cup falls a yard away unbroken. The saucer falls straight down on the hearthstone and smashes to pieces. The cup misses Mr Fielding’s head by the fraction of an inch.
I saw the cup flash by. I did not see it leaving Mrs Fielding’s hand. Had she thrown the saucer with the cup, both would have flown in the same direction. It seemed that the force which hit the cup and sent it flying was applied between the saucer and the cup.
Soon after this incident, Dr Wills, a member of the Council of the International Institute for Psychical Research, Mr L.A. Evans, my assistant, and a friend of his, the Marquis des Barres, arrived. From then on the happenings were recorded on united observation. I shall only mention those which we all considered excellent.
At 4.45 p.m. the telephone in the sitting room rang. We were in the dining room. Mrs Fielding answered it. As she came back and stepped over the threshold into the dining room, myself almost colliding with her, there was a crash in the kitchen. We found a wine glass on the floor broken.
5.20 p.m. Mrs Fielding was coming in from the kitchen. All of us in the dining room. Myself and Dr Wills sitting on the sofa.
crash. I saw her falling with both hands against the lintel of the door. Dr Wills’ field of view was wider. He saw her before I did. There was nothing in her hands. In the kitchen we found a tumbler smashed, base inclusive.
5.25 p.m. Dr Wills was in the kitchen with Mr and Mrs Fielding. Mr Fielding had just come in through the back door and, standing opposite to Dr Wills, with his back to the yard door, was taking off his collar. Mrs Fielding was standing by their side but with her back to them, filling the kettle, one hand holding it, the other on the tap. In Dr Wills’ full sight, at a distance of about four feet, a saucer suddenly appeared at the level of his eyes in the corner formed by the hinged end of the door and the wall, hovered for a split second, then, with a loud report, snapped in two and fell straight down. It was the cat’s saucer which stood outside in the yard. The identification was made from bits of fish which were sticking to the door and the wall where the plate broke.
Dr Wills was most impressed by this incident. He considered it unquestionably supernormal. He has since repeatedly stated to me that he will never go back on his report. It was his first experience in physical phenomena and it was entirely convincing. I wish to add that, though I was not fortunate enough to share in this remarkable experience, I accept Dr Wills’ testimony as I would expect the acceptance of my own.
6.35 p.m. I ask Mrs Fielding to go into the kitchen for a glass. As she comes out, holding it with both hands, plainly seen by myself and Dr Wills, he even seeing the space behind her,
crash. Dr Wills sees fragments of glass strike the floor. We find a tumbler broken. The tumbler was shattered with a terrific impact. Most of the fragments were near the back door about six feet away. I test Mrs Fielding’s heart. It is beating wildly.
8.06 p.m. I ask Mrs Fielding to walk back and forth from the kitchen. She is in full view of all of us.
crash. Two glasses simultaneously fall off the kitchen table. They were my glasses. One had an egg in it, the other a spoon. One glass is smashed, the other intact, the egg unbroken on the floor.
8.10 p.m. I am standing on the stairs, looking over the banister right into the kitchen, watching Mrs Fielding walking in and out. Dr Wills and Mr Evans are watching her from the door of the dining room and the sitting room. As she is coming out, facing me, I hear a ping, the glass jumps out of her hand and falls down broken. Mrs Fielding felt that something struck the glass. All of us had the same impression. But whatever struck it was invisible as Mrs Fielding’s hands were perfectly motionless.
The Effect of Indirect Gaze.
Dr Wills suggested that we should place a mirror on the gas ring opposite the kitchen table and watch the kitchen table from the dining room doorway through the mirror, thus eliminating direct gaze to which the Poltergeist seemed to object. Mrs Fielding made two walks with no result. Then I suggested that she should go back, stand at the sink with her back to the table and busy herself. The kitchen table was in full view. To see Mrs Fielding, we had to stretch a trifle further. She was standing on the same side as the mirror.
8.25 p.m. Mrs Fielding is still at the sink. We all see something flash behind the mirror and smash on the gas ring. It comes in a high arc, avoiding the mirror, as a streak of lightning. We are unable to tell what it is until we investigate and find, from the fragments, that it was a milk bottle. Had the milk bottle been thrown normally, we would have recognised it as such in its descent.
8.35 p.m. Mrs Fielding at the sink. Something falls from the direction of the ceiling. Dr Wills sees it dropping. It is a glass cover from a trinket set in Mrs Fielding’s bedroom. She had been upstairs a short while before. She left the door of the bedroom closed. Dr Wills verifies this. The object avoided the mirror.
8.40 p.m. Mrs Fielding is standing in front of us at the dining room door. Both her hands are visible.
crash. About a yard from her, towards the entrance door into the house, another glass cover falls. Witnesses: Myself, Dr Wills, Mr Evans, the Rev. Nicholle and Mr Dick Pope. We all agreed that there was no normal explanation as there was no one on the premises behind.
9.00 p.m. In the mirror Dr Frayworth, a visiting M.D., sees a tumbler flash down onto the kitchen table while Mrs Fielding is at the sink, with her back to it. The tumbler seemed to come from the same remote corner of the kitchen space as the milk bottle.
All other experiments to produce further crashes failed and an hour later we left, highly gratified with our success in getting the Poltergeist work under experimental conditions.
Apports In Daylight At The Institute.
The following day, on February 25th, Mrs Fielding paid her first visit to the Institute. By this time I was convinced that she alone was responsible for the phenomena, but it remained to be seen whether the Poltergeist would follow her. There was no examination. We felt that we could not propose it at this stage. But she herself suggested that we should search her bag and pockets. This we did and then proceeded into the seance room. We sat talking. After a while Mrs Fielding suggested that we should walk about the room as things happened at home when she was on the move. She was holding a glass between her clasped hands. Dr Wills, myself and Dr Frayworth were walking by her side. I quote from the notes:
3.30 p.m. We were in the middle of the room, opposite the closed door of the recording room, all turned away when there was a clatter. We saw a small object lying under the top of the doorway about 12 feet away. It was a brass-bound brush, warm. Mrs Fielding recognised it as her own. She last saw it in her bedroom. Her bedroom was about ten miles away. There is no doubt in my mind that she was holding the glass with both hands when we heard the clatter, and that she had no brush in her pockets or in her handbag when she came. We were extremely impressed by this incident as we noted no suspicious movement on her part.
Three-quarters of an hour later, under similar conditions, we had another apport, an empty pill box, also from Mrs Fielding’s bedroom. By this time we had other witnesses beside ourselves. They arrived during tea. Three of them saw the pill box in the air before it fell.
Then we made Mrs Fielding sit in front of the cabinet on the left, pulling the curtain behind her. Inside the cabinet on a table there were a number of glasses, out of her reach. On the chair behind her she felt something moving. I found on the seat the glass cover from her trinket set. She was holding all the time a saucer and teacup in both hands. Miss Tufnell, the Secretary, came in. The doorway was by now in darkness. I called out who it was. At that moment the cup and saucer flew out of Mrs Fielding’s hand, drenching Countess Wydenbruck, a member of our Council, with hot tea. The saucer went up about 2 feet and smashed in the air, the cup flew off almost horizontally.
Soon after this there was a bump in the cabinet. A glass, with a burnt out flashlight bulb in it, fell off the table. The flashlight bulb rolled out. The glass was standing on its base
under the table about three feet away from the medium’s legs, which were in full view.
The Magic Ride.
These happenings were very remarkable, but they waned in the light of the crazy events that followed in Dr Wills’ car as we were taking Mrs Fielding home to Thornton Heath. We took some crockery with us that the Potergeist should spare Mrs Fielding’s property. I placed them on the empty seat beside her and I sat in the front. Dr Wills was driving. We heard a loud report; looking back we saw a half wrapped saucer smashing about a foot above the seat. It split right across, with a half moon-like chip off the two halves.
The saucer at the Institute snapped in exactly the same manner and, later, we found this line of breakage repeating itself. I thought at first that with two thumbs above and the rest of the fingers below a saucer could be cracked in the middle if pressed hard, and that the chips were probably due to the impact with the floor. But there was no impact worth speaking of in the car. Moreover, we have found since that none of us, by exerting all our strength, could crack a saucer in this hypothetical manner. Here is, therefore, a clue to the mechanical method of the Poltergeist. As yet, however, we cannot read it.
As we proceeded, so many strange things were happening in the back of the car behind us that I asked Dr Wills to stop and I got in beside Mrs Fielding. Her bag flew out of her hand into my face. Then she lost one of her shoes. I bent down to search and found it gone. While in this position, the missing shoe hit me in th eback. Next, Mrs Fielding’s hat vanished from the top of her head. She said she felt it rising. I found it crushed behind her legs in the car. Then something fell to my left with a bang on the lid of a box. It was her imitation diamond clip, about 2 1/2″ long and 3/4″ wide. I put it back and tugged at it to see that it was well fastened. Five minutes later it fell again in the same position. I took hold of Mrs Fielding’s left hand with my left, laying it across her right wrist. Her left hand was ungloved. She thought that she must have dropped the glove which, on the right, came up almost to her wrist. I felt something soft under the fingers of my left hand. I was wondering what it was when Mrs Fielding cried out: “My glove”. Her right hand was bare. The glove was under it, touching my fingers. I was unconscious of any movement of her right hand. I could not believe my eyes. But wonders never ceased that night. Suddenly I caught the glove creeping on. It was three-quarters of the way up and stopped dead. The minute I took my eyes off, it slid on fully.
I got hold of both of Mrs Fielding’s hands, holding them firmly, glove off. The clip was still on her dress. Suddenly it was gone. While I searched behind Mrs Fielding, with a thud the missing clip fell near the door of the car. I put it back resuming my hold on Mrs Fielding’s hands. By the time we arrived, the clip was gone again but the missing left hand glove was under Mrs Fielding’s hand in her lap. In th ehouse as Dr Wills, Dr Frayworth and myself were talking to Mrs Fielding in the passage, at the bottom of the stairs with no one behind her, we heard a slight noise as if something dropped. About 6 feet behind her there was the missing clip on the carpet.
By this time we were quite inured to these crazy happenings. We laughed heartily and our laughter did Mrs Fielding good. Before, she was frightened when something happened, now she began to see the humorous side of things. The clip kept on going and coming. Then it was followed by her wedding ring. We made Mrs Fielding put on Dr Wills’ overcoat and put things in the outside pocket. All we had to do was to send her for a short walk, holding her hands clasped in front of herself. When she returned, the pocket was empty. It made no difference if she was followed and her clasped hands held. Whatever we gave her to hold between her hands or keep in her pocket, vanished in a second or two to reappear later in the same mysterious manner, in the pocket, in her hands or falling behind her.
I did not encourage this phase. It looked too much like a conjuring performance. I felt that our report on it would not impress anybody. So I only mention in passing that the following day (February 26th), in my own flat, a missing coin which she made vanish, turned up in the cup of tea which I had handed to her a minute before, that she made big and heavy bronze plaques disappear and return hot, and that she lost her pearls from her neck as she was coming out of my bedroom, facing a crowd of guests. My daughter saw the pearls glint on her. The next moment, with a shock, she clapped her hands on her throat; the pearls were gone. They returned, of course, as everything did. The breakage was the only loss. But the Poltergeist was quite considerate. It only smashed a water jug and a few glasses. My daughter lost her hair curler. But before we knew it, it turned up in Mrs Fielding’s hand in the car as she was being taken home.
Experimental Sittings.
It was now incumbent upon us to tighten the conditions and begin serious research. When, on March 1st, Mrs Fielding again came to the Institute, she was searched (but no undressed) and put into a one piece garment which buttoned at the back. We had a number of apports. But they all arrived in her hands, one inside her garment, none of them falling from the air. Though she made no suspicious movement, the results were not very satisfactory to those who saw her for the first time. But it meant progress. She was getting used to new conditions which gradually grew better and better.
On March the 4th, as the experiment was finished and she was leaving, a trick penny, recognised as belonging to her lodger, fell at the foot of the stairs as we were all walking down with her. This trick penny was seen by three people in her house an hour after she left. We obtained signed statements which either establish the genuineness of the apport or involve three other people whose honesty we have no reason to doubt in a conspiracy.
On March the 9th, for the first time, Mrs Fielding was undressed completely and given new clothes. We still had an apport. Then we took her for a day in the country to observe her for a length of time when in complete freedom. Remarkable things happened. On an open road, with not a soul in sight, a glass crashed behind her. We found a dump heap nearby and believe that the glass had come from there. She was walking between myself and Mrs Wills, Dr Wills being in front, when we heard the crash. The broken glass was standing on its base about 8 feet behind.
In Bognor we committed psychic shoplifting. We took her to two shops and allowed her to handle small objects of almost no value. Then we left. I handed her a tiny cardboard box to hold between her hands. We had hardly proceeded from 400 to 500 yards, when something rattled inside the box. There was the object chosen. Then we went to another shop. The magic box worked again and we got so scared that we cleared out of Bognor in a hurry.
By this time the breakage stopped in her home. It seemed that we became successful in diverting the phenomena into experimental channels. But the family, at home, for some reason opposed her coming to the Institute. She finally gave in and said: “All right, I won’t go”. At that moment things went crash and bang. The Poltergeist recommenced its destructive activity. As soon as Mrs Fielding loudly announced: “All right, I will go”, everything quieted down.
We never had the slightest trouble in making Mrs Fielding agree to our conditions. We made them tighter and tighter, always sitting in daylight or in full electric light. But the phenomena did not diminish, rather they showed constant development. Soon it became apparent that we were witnessing the unfoldment of a powerful apport mediumship. It became incumbent upon us to nurse it and prevent too much drain on Mrs Fielding’s delicate organism. We placed her under a contract with a retaining fee, forbidding her to experiment anywhere and stopped all test sittings for a period of quiet development in a small circle with the same sitters, sitting twice weekly around a table at the Institute. It appears that we have acted wisely. In spite of the absence of test conditions we had phenomena which in themselves were evidential. On March 28th we had our first living apport: a white mouse, which I suddenly saw crawling in Mrs Fielding’s lap behind her bag. She had two white mice apports before when alone, one in the train as she was coming to the Institute. Then, at th ehouse of a friend, she felt something wet in her back. Her friend fished out a live gold fish. We suggested this on a previous occasion and were rather interested to find that the suggestion worked. The humouring of our desires, though in a round-about manner by the Poltergeist, is a great asset.
Space forbids me to go into further discussion of this strange case. I shall sum up later the psychological aspects of the phenomena. But before I close I wish to record one extremely evidential happening on Friday, March 25th, after the first table sitting at the Institute. I said goodbye to Mrs Fielding at the door and went down to the darkroom. Before I shook hands with her, she had just emerged from the ladies’ room. Miss Scott, a member of our Council, noticed that she had left the light on in the wash room. She went in and turned it off. She made a mental note that a new tumbler was standing upside down on the glass shelf over the wash basin. The reason for this note was that on a previous occasion a glass from the same shelf jumped off after Mrs Fielding and smashed on the floor. Miss Scott closed the door of the wash room, pulled the door of the ladies’ room to and left th ehouse with Mrs Fielding and Dr Wills. They slammed the outside door and ten feet further on they stopped at the gate. It was raining. Dr Wills stepped out from under cover and went to bring around his car. As he turned the corner there was a loud crash behind the two ladies which he still heard, and returned running. Smashed against the boot scraper ten feet behind her there was a shattered glass. Miss Scott immediately opened the door with her key and went into the wash room. The glass from the shelf was gone. The fragments identified.
No one entered the ladies’ room from the moment the trio left. The glass could not have been thrown through a window from the house. The passage from our outside door to the gate is covered. There was no one about outside and no one to throw it from inside the house. How did the glass penetrate three doors? Our Poltergeist has not yet answered this exciting question.
Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, May 1938.
Findings, Keepings?
A nice little point of law arises if I am to believe what I am told by Mrs Fielding, of Beverstone-road, Thornton Heath, who lives with her husband, a house decorator, in what became known as “the haunted house.” Experts attributed all the funny business that went on – including an “Advertiser” reporter having a narrow escape from being crushed by a heavy wardrobe which fell on his bed for the night! – to poltergeist phenomena.
I met Mrs Fielding this week. She looked, as they say, a new woman. The last time I saw her she was haggard and ill. I was surprised to be told the phenomena persisted; even more surprised when she said if it got no worse than this she did not mind.
No wonder, too. “Jimmy,” as the poltergeist came to be nick-named by one of the experts investigating the phenomena, has practically reformed and is now doing what he can to repay the Fieldings for all the trouble he has caused in the past. I am telling you more or less what Mrs Fielding told me. Now, he doesn’t only just drop in and drop plates and other crocks here, there, and you wouldn’t believe where. He drops valuable old coins, lumps of gold quartz, brooches, and other quite useful ornaments!
The problem is, according to Mrs Fielding, that, unlike the articles that got smashed previously, these have never belonged to her, or her husband, nor have they been seen by either of them before. They come from “nowhere.” Are findings keepings in these circumstances? Just now she feels afraid to go out wearing a brooch “Jimmy” gave her in case someone should recognise it.
Croydon Advertiser and East Surrey Reporter, 12th May 1939.
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