Mystery Stones.
French Farm Pelted.
“Poltergeist or practical joker?” is the question that the police are trying to solve at a farm outside the village of Tourettes-Levens, near Nice. Stones varying in size from small pebbles to two-pounders have been striking the roof and walls of the Collet farmhouse. The people at the farm are old Dominique Simon and his wife (in their seventies), Marius Simon, their son, his four children, and two old retainers, Adrien Canestrier and his sister, also both in their seventies. Adrien is already feeble-minded.
A police sergeant kept watch with two constables patrolling the ground round the farm, but stones continued to strike the roof or walls, and sometimes the inhabitants. Finally, Captain Chandille, of the gendarmerie, with four men spent the night watching in the farmyard while his men were posted at good observation points. Stones fell beside the captain, struck one of his men and one of the Simon children, but where they came from or how they were propelled remained a mystery.
Captain Chandille refuses to believe in any phenomena which are not recognised by French civil and criminal law.
The Newcastle Sun (NSW), 12th September 1936.