An Attractive Girl.
A Phenomenon who can make stones jump.
A strange phenomenon has been observed in a girl of twelve residing at Vladikavkas in the Caucasus. The girl is the daughter of a workman named Luba. It is stated that every object which she approaches begins to move. If she goes near a dresser with plates upon it they begin to dance, washing hung on a line flies off it, a bottle standing on a table is raised in the air and, falling down, is broken in pieces, and stones lying on the ground leap in the air and fall again.
The girl is perfectly healthy, and laughs at the occurrences called forth on her appearance. No one can explain them, although a number of doctors and professors of physical science have been consulted. The child’s parents are very poor, and wish to send her out to domestic service, but she always loses her places owing to the assertion of ignorant people that she is possessed of a devil, and that she should be sent to Father John of Cronstadt, in St. Petersburg, to have the demon exorcised. At present the means are being collected to send the child to St Petersburg for her marvellous magnetic powers to be examined by medical authorities.
Dublin Evening Mail, 6th May 1904.
An even queerer story comes from the Caucasus, where a young girl, daughter of poor peasants, has some mysterious quality that sets everything on the move when she approaches. Dishes and plates begin to dance, washing hung on the line flops up and down, and furniture, in an ecstacy of magnetic excitement, rises in the air and – breaks. Scientists say she has a strange magnetic quality; housewives who employ her as a servant, and lose half their crockery in an hour, say she has a devil, and they want him beaten out of her. They can get a fair amount of crockery and furniture smashed, without any magnetic aid.
North Devon Gazette, 10th May 1904.
Child “Sorceress.”
Some further amazing details of the powers of the “magnetic girl” at Vladikavkas, in the Caucasus, are sent by the correspondent of the “Novoe Vremya,” in that town, telegraphs a St Peterburg press correspondent. It will be remembered that the girl, who is only twelve years old, apparently possesses the property of causing objects to fly into the air at her approach.
The correspondent states that during the Russian Lent when it rained heavily for several days in succession, those in the house with the girl were greatly surprised to see water constantly pouring on her head and shoulders, which were always wet, so that she could hardly find time to dry herself. When the weather became finer the weird manifestations changed their character. Things began to fly about the house, and dozens of glasses and plates were broken.
Once while the girl was sitting with a child in her arms various objects such as blankets and pillows flew out of the basinette, which was standing about five feet away. They moved, however, in the direction opposite to that in which the girl was sitting. On another occasion as she was approaching a sideboard a glass of oil on the top shelf, which she could not reach, spilt itself on her. It has been noticed that not only glass and metals, but such things as india-rubber boots jump into the air at her approach.
The correspondent adds: “The phenomena I have described were also witnessed by me in my own house.”
Leominster News and North West Herefordshire and Radnorshire Advertiser, 13th May 1904.