Priest’s Strange Experience.
Blow on door from unseen hand.
What he describes as an “uncanny” experience is related by Canon McKenna, of St Helens Catholic Church, Westcliffe, in his church magazine. At a very late hour, the canon states, two men “who looked and spoke as if they had been oppressed by criminal consciences,” called at the presbytery. They had been to a spiritual seance.
One of the men stated that they had consulted the spirit of his dead brother, asking which form of Christianity to adopt; the answer was, “go and consult Father Bellini.” The canon consulted a clerical directory for Great Britain, but could not find the name.
“Then a wooden door of a small opening between the kitchen and the dining-room in which we were seated received such a resounding blow from some unseen agent that the pictures on the walls and the furniture were shaken. There was not a living soul in the kitchen at the time. I admit I was scared. I advised my nocturnal visitors to give up spiritualism. Afterwards I sprinkled the house with holy water, and tried hard for several hours to compose myself to sleep.”
Midland Counties Tribune, 6th September 1929.