A polite Spanish ghost.
Talks down the chimney.
From our own correspondent. Madrid, Nov. 23.
A friendly ghost which speaks down the chimney of an economical cooker is a phenomenon sufficiently rare to cause some sensation even among the matter-of-fact inhabitants of Saragossa, who have set out to trace the mystery to its source. The “spirit” occupies a detached house, so it is difficult to imagine how a practical joker could be at work in a neighbouring building.
An architect and some workmen were called in. They searched the building from roof to cellar, but without finding a possible hiding place for a joker. Finally, the architect said: “Measure the chimney pipe.” “You need not trouble, the diameter is just 6in.,” said the ghost, politely. It was.
The police were summoned and stood in front of the cooker. While they were taking notes some inquisitive youths climbed on to the roof and lifted most of the tiles. All the afternoon people gathered. One person endeavoured to gain admittance by presenting the visiting card of a former Cabinet Minister. So large did the crowd become that the police several times had to line up and threaten to charge to make a way for the traffic in the Calle Gascon de Gotor. The director of the local lunatic asylum, on being interviewed by a journalist, said that he hoped the experience would prove useful to science, but he refused to venture an opinion until he had himself spoken up the chimney pipe.
The Times, 24th November 1934.
Chimney Ghost of Saragossa.
Exorcism with holy water.
From our own correspondent, Madrid, Nov. 25.
The chimney ghost of Saragossa keeps in good spirits. The authorities having decided to act, the voice, located in the flue of an economical cooker, warned the occupants of the other eight flats in the house of the approach of the guardians of the law, calling each of them by name. The police escorted an examining magistrate, accompanied by two medical men. The water and light services were again examined by an expert and all wireless apparatus in the building confiscated. The inhabitants of the haunted flat were removed and accommodated elsewhere and a mixed posse consisting of several policemen, a doctor, and three volunteers from neighbouring flats are preparing to remain on guard all night. The public is prevented from approaching the house nearer than 30 yards.
The economical cooker has been sprinkled with holy water from the shrine of Our Lady of the Pillar, Patron of Saragossa, and the women living in the flats have gone to be exorcised to prevent bewitchment. It is reported that all yesterday afternoon the ghost talked almost incessantly. Last night the police were kept busy chasing fellow-apparitions which appeared on roofs and at dark street corners wrapped in sheets and cutting capers which scared a number of timid persons. Six of these volunteer ghostly brothers were arrested.
It is not known if the ghost is of Aragonese extraction or an interloper. If it is Aragonese it is not likely that it will easily relinquish its apparently comfortable quarters in this flue. Even Napoleon found the Saragossans particularly unmanageable, and it is the tradition that if a hammer does not suffice they are prepared to knock a nail home with their heads rather than give it up.
A special tourist excursion by motor-car from Bilbao to the haunted house has been organised.
The Times, 26th November 1934.
A Spanish Ghost.
The news from Spain has so long been concerned with nothing but a singularly rancid brand of politics that it is refreshing to find that the Spanish people have at last found something different to interest them – a ghost of apparently unique characteristics. The scene of the visitation is Saragossa, or more particularly a block of flats in that city. It is probably the first occasion on which so distinctively modern a type of architecture has been haunted.
But this spirit is modern or nothing, for its particular focus within the tenement is the flues of an up-to-date “economical cooker.” Apart from its remarkable taste in a home, the Saragossa ghost has but one trait – it talks incessantly. Nothing can stop it.
Church and State, so long at variance, have combined to lay the apparition. The Church has performed the ritual of exorcism against the economical cooker, and has sprinkled it with holy water. The State has mobilised the police and the forces of science and plumbing. Both have worked in vain. The ghost goes on with its interminable oration, and has rendered at least two flats in the block uninhabitable.
But not necessarily unprofitable, for special tourist excursions have been organised by motor car from as far away as Bilbao, and a constant stream of visitors listens to the mystic voice.
In due course, no doubt, the Spanish Society for Psychical Research will pronounce upon the subject. Meanwhile we have to rest content with the knowledge that a breach has been made in the old technique of haunting, and in a manner which suggests that the spirit world is taking cognisance of the fact that we have reached the era of the loudspeaker.
Dundee Courier, 27th November 1934.
Saragossa Ghost Silent.
From our own correspondent, Madrid, Nov. 26.
More intimate contact with the majesty of the law appears to have intimidated the Saragossa ghost. Sitting solemnly through the night in front of the economical cooker and its mysterious flue, a police guard heard no voice. The report to the magistrate this morning being negative, that official has washed his hands of the affair, saying he can find no ground for charges against anybody. Medical circles are still interested, however, and the public is awaiting expectantly the return of the evicted family to their flat.
The Times, 27th November 1934.
Saragossa “Ghost” Again.
48 hours’ silence broken.
Madrid, Tuesday.
Early this morning the ghost at Saragossa spoke again. The police guard had been withdrawn in view of the 48 hours’ silence. A group of neighbours were in the flat idly conversing with several visitors from Barcelona and Madrid when a slightly-angered voice called out, “Cowards, cowards, cowards. Here I am.”
“How many are we?” asked one of those present. “Fourteen,” promptly replied the voice quite correctly. recovering its good humour, the ghost went on to give his astonished audience permission to smoke if so inclined.
Professor Royo Villanova, of the Faculty of Medicine at Saragossa, has written to the local newspaper saying that the ghost had visited him and confessed itself a ventriloquist. The doctor has a reputation as a humorist as well as a savant.
While a spiritual meeting was being held in another part of the city a woman attending it fell dead. Doctors certified death from natural causes, but the ghost is suspected in some quarters of having a hand in wrecking a motor car conveying a Madrid doctor and a journalist to Saragossa to investigate the case. The accident took place about 100 miles from Saragossa. The car came into collision with a lorry on the highway, and all the occupants were injured, the doctor severely. The police have re-established the guard in the haunted flat.
— “Times” Telegram, per Press Association.
Belfast News-letter, 28th November 1934.
“Ghost” to Broadcast.
Microphone to be installed in Saragossa house.
Madrid, Wednesday.
The Saragossa “ghost” may be said to have scored in the first round. It had not spoken since last night when it startled two policemen on guard in the kitchen by announcing, “I am coming, I am coming.” Nothing, however, followed.
This occurred after the members of the evicted family had returned to the flat. Apparently their nerves are no longer equal to staying there, for it is announced to-day that they propose to leave Saragossa and reside at San Sabastian.
The Barcelona wireless station has asked leave to put a microphone in the kitchen in the hope that the “ghost” may oblige with a special broadcast.
– “Times” telegram, per Press Association.
Belfast News-Letter, 29th November 1934.
Saragossa ghost mystery.
Townspeople exasperated.
From our own correspondent, Madrid, Nov. 29.
The inhabitants of the flat in which the Saragossa ghost has taken up his headquarters and all the townspeople are becoming exasperated. The mistress of the flat was so irritale yesterday as she departed that she flung a bottle of wine at a cinema operator who was recording the removal of her furniture as hopefully as if it contained the ghost. The bottle missed the man but broke the apparatus.
Citizens one and all are heartily hoping either that the police will get to the bottom of the mystery or that the ghost will accept one, any one, of the numerous offers of hospitality telegraphed or written to the Saragossa post office, not only from Spain but from foreign countries. Several of these invitations offer generous terms.
There was a rumour in Saragossa today that several detectives from Scotland yard were on their way out to study the phenomenon. Under this threat Spanish patriots expect the ghost to take a supreme resolution.
The Times, 30th November 1934.
A Ghost for the Milion.
It is an age of disillusionment. Hopelessly committed to a material future, pushed and pulled onwards by the hands of science, the world looks back with a sense of admiration to the few things which remain unchanged. Love and human nature, we have lately been told, are still the same, and we have heard it with relief. But now one more beloved convention is being attacked, and in a most treacherous manner. That essence of spirituality the ghost, by definition uncontaminated by any material contact, is surrendering to modern influence.
There is at this moment a ghost at Saragossa in Spain which defies every law of ghostly decency. Disdaining the moon-swept turrets and rheumaticky dungeons that were good enough for its fathers, it has taken up its abode in the chimney-flue of an economic cooker in a modern flat. There, like the ghost of Hamlet, “doom’d for a certain term to walk the night, and for the day, confined to fast in flames,” it addresses all who come to visit it in no uncertain terms.
The police (whom the ghost announced by name on their arrival) at first frightened it into a very human silence, but lately they too have been addressed as “cowards” and warned of the ghost’s intention to show itself. But so modern a ghost lays itself open to modern methods, and if it has succeeded in driving the occupants away it has only attracted attention in other quarters. Special exursions are being run from Bilbao, and the Barcelona wireless station has asked leave to put a microphone in the kitchen with the hope that the ghost will consent to broadcast. If it does, every house in Spain will be able to have its ghost (after the weather and news), but its power will be gone. A voice in the chimney is at least mysterious, but a voice in a box deserves nothing more than to be quickly and contemptuously switched off.
The Manchester Guardian, 30th November 1934.
The Saragossa Ghost.
Civil Governor’s Request To The Press.
From our own correspondent, Madrid, Nov. 30.
The Civil Governor of Saragossa has issued a statement with reference to the ghost. His Excellency esteems it is high times that the farce should cease. “I think that we will soon discover the joker” (the Governor says) “and thus dispel the groundless anxiety which this incident has aroused. For this purpose I beg the Press to give ear to my request for silence, whereby not only will a proof of common sense and love of Saragossa be given but a contribution made to the success of the measures taken to discover the trick. This is on the point of being achieved.” It remains to be seen if the Governor can make the air breathable for a ghost which haunts the chimney flue serving 14 flats.
The Times, 1st December 1934.
Confession by “ghost”.
Voice transmitted through chimneys.
The famous ghost mystery of Saragossa has been solved. The hearing of a “spirit” voice is a flat supposed to be haunted led to a permanent watch by the police, but though the voice was heard for ten days it remained a mystery, states the Central News.
The voice has not been heard for the last 72 hours, and to-day the Madrid police received a letter from one Comrade Masnou, giving an address in Barcelona, confessing that he was the “ghost,” and claiming to have discovered a system for transmitting a voice through the house chimneys from one house to another.
The police are searching for the writer.
Sunday Sun (Newcastle), 2nd December 1934.
Ghost comedy in Spain.
The voice from the chimney.
Friendly talks with the lodgers.
From our own correspondent. Madrid, November 29.
In these days when the strict Government press censorship keeps much interesting news from the columns of newspapers, the “chimney ghost” of Saragossa has come as a welcome diversion to journalists and readers. The “ghost” takes the form of a mysterious voice which emerges from the chimney leading up from a kitchen range. The “ghost” chats away in familiar style, calling the inhabitants of the flat by their names and answering questions which are put to it. Such large crowds of people pressed around the house that the police had to charge repeatedly in order to disperse them. Over a dozen youths were found on the roof of the house pulling off the slates, presumably expecting to find the ghost hidden away underneath.
Large numbers of people flock from far and wide to the house, which is, however, cordoned off by the police, and as journalists are not permitted to enter several of the more enterprising reporters have had to adopt disguises in order to enter and obtain details. One photographer was able to enter the house and take photographs without the police realising his identity.
The “ghost” is already receiving considerable mail and even telegrams. The fact that the voice proceeds from a kitchen stove-pipe leads to the supposition that ventriloquism is responsible, and that the occupant of some other flat in the house is a practical joker.
—
At Random.
When a ghost speaks from a chimney, the best plan is to light the fire. No doubt that has been tried at Saragossa, in addition to the sprinkling of holy water. It is desirable that the mystery should be solved. Only one ghost has any right to be in chimneys – and then only on the evening of December 24.
I suppose the Saragossa ghost would be technically classified as a poltergeist, except that, though obviously mischievous, he does not throw things about. The classic case of the poltergeist is that of the Wesleys, whose haunting lasted for two years (1716-1717). At first the visitation was thought to portend death, but when it was found that all the family remained in good health, the matter became a joke and the ghost was named “Jeffery.” Poltergeists seem, on the whole, to be the silliest type of a class which is never very strong in intelligence.
The Observer, 2nd December 1934.
A “Ghost” Arrested.
Madrid, Monday.
The Saragossa “ghost”, which has been disturbing the city for the past fortnight, was arrested to-day. The “ghost” always spoke from the kitchen of a private flat, and to-day it turned out to be a 16-year-old servant girl named Pascuala, who was employed at the flat. The girl, who is an epileptic, did not know that she had spoken. – Reuter.
Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, 4th December 1934.
Saw through the ghost!
Arrest of “spectre” of Saragossa.
The ghost of Saragossa – the elusive spectre which has annoyed the civic heads of that Spanish town for the past fortnight, has been laid – “it” was only a servant girl after all. The hauntings took place in the kitchen of a private flat from which mysterious voices were heard by the tenant, Senor Antonio Palazon, his family and their maid, Pascuala. Yesterday, says Reuter, the “ghost,” in the person of Pascuala, was arrested.
It is stated that Pascuala spoke in her ghost scenes without knowing it. Pascuala was taken by the police to the “haunted” flat to-day and commanded by the judge, who was present, to speak. She complied, saying “Pascuala is the voice.” The girl, who is an epileptic, did not know that she had spoken.
Daily Mirror, 4th December 1934.
A “Ghost” arrested.
Servant girl “haunts” a kitchen.
Madrid, Monday.
The famous Saragossa “ghost” which has been disturbing the city for the past fortnight, was arrested today. The “ghost” always spoke from the kitchen of a private flat. Today the “ghost” turned out to be a 16-year-old servant girl, by the name of Pascuala, who was employed at the flat. She spoke in her ghost scenes without knowing it. Her voice was heard through a combination of ventriloquism and auto-suggestion.
Pascuala was taken by the police to the “haunted” flat to-day, and commanded by the judge who was present to speak. She complied, saying: “Pascuala is the voice.” Meanwhile the girl, who is an epileptic, did not know that she had spoken.
Belfast News-Letter, 4th December 1934.
The Saragossa Ghost.
This is a sceptical age, but it would seem to keep a kind spot for ghosts. That was not a very effective specimen that was arrested in Saragossa yesterday, but its feeble fame has been spread far and wide during the past fortnight. All it did was to talk down the tin flue of a cooking-stove in a modern flat, and its manifestations have now been traced to a sixteen-year-old servant girl who has been taken into custody. She produced her effects, we are told, “through a combination of ventriloquism and autosuggestion,” which has a certain modernist flavour, though it might have been better to work in something about psycho-analysis and vitamins. Even calories would not have been out of place in a kitchen ghost; too many or too few might have led to faulty metabolism that set up the psychic manifestations. For this “ghost” was in need of all the modern assistance it could get, and one may suspect it would never have been heard of at all if its performances had not centred round a flat instead of a haunted grange.
As an example of the “poltergeist” or rackety ghost (a type which has been often traced to ailing children or adolescents) it falls far short of many recorded British disturbances before and after the Cock Lane imposture which Dr Johnson helped to expose. Even our Victorian times were capable of poltergeists who played the banjo and threw crockery from one end of a room to the other. They also evaded exposure for far longer periods. Talking once or twice down a stove-pipe during a mere fortnight is not that much of a performance. Now that the Saragossa “ghost” has been arrested it is hoped that she will be turned over to a doctor. She is probably more in need of his attention than of any form of penal correction.
The Manchester Guardian, 4th December 1934.
Saragossa Ghost Laid.
Servant’s “Unconscious Ventriloquism.”
From our own correspondent. Madrid, Dec. 4.
Late last night the Governor announced that the “ghost” of Saragossa had been located. The servant girl employed in the haunted flat, he said, was “an unconscious ventriloquist.” He added that this discovery disposed of the affair. The Governor gave no more details, but the magistrate who has been making investigations made an interesting statement to the Press.
Several days ago, accompanied by the servant girl and two other persons, he locked himself in the kitchen while police were posted to prevent anyone from approaching the flue or its connexions. The voice was then heard. On a second occasion the experiment was repeated successfully. Finally, last night, in the presence of more numerous witnesses, the “ghost” spoke its swan song. The servant girl was then allowed to return home, and the mystery officially declared at an end.
For many persons it is deeper than ever. Nobody seems to know what an “unconscious ventriloquist” is. The servant girl is stated to be quite unaware that she was impersonating the “ghost” or pronouncing any words. If, as is suggested, she was acting as a medium, some other person should really be considered the “ghost.” The magistrate, who states that “he can hear the ghostly voice whenever he wants to,” explains that the mystery is due to “a psychic phenomenon produced only in certain circumstances,” but he has not divulged what the circumstances are. It is reported that the hostile attitude of the subject and her family is impeding medical investigation of what now seems to be no longer a joke, but a remarkable case for neuropaths.
The Times, 5th December 1934.
The Saragoss ‘ghost’ mystery: the servant of the ‘haunted’ flat, who was alleged in some reports to have produced the voice from the chimney by means of ventriloquism.
The ‘ghost’ of Saragossa manifested itself in a mysterious voice apparently issuing from the cooking-stove chimney in the kitchen of a flat in the Calle Gascon de Gotor, occupied by a family named Palazon and their servant, Pascuela, aged sixteen. The voice is said to have been first heard by Pascuela, two or three weeks ago, and after that its utterances, continued at intervals, were heard by many other people. Search by architects and police failed to locate any possible hiding-place of a practical joker. Eventually the family moved. The story spread and caused so much sensation that the building was besieged by crowds, which the police dispersed by force. The civil governor of Saragossa then appealed to the Press to refrain from giving the ‘ghost’ publicity. On December 3, a Madrid message alleged that the voice had been found to be that of Pascuela, who, it was stated, was “a ventriloquist without being aware of the fact,” and had demonstrated her powers before a judge, doctors, police, and other witnesses, falling into a trance at each of five utterances.
The ‘haunted house’ (a block of flats) in the Calle Gascon de Gotor at Saragossa, where a mysterious voice issued from a stove flue.
The apparent source of the mysterious voice: the chimney (marked with a cross) of the stove in the kitchen of the ‘haunted’ flat, which caused such a sensation at Saragossa.
Illustrated London News, 8th December 1934.
The Saragossa Ghost.
From our own correspondent. Madrid, Dec. 7.
The former occupant of the haunted flat at Saragossa has written to the Press protesting against the official declaration that the affair is at an end. He declares that the investigation is not complete. He points out that the voice was heard on several occasions when the servant girl to whom it has been attributed was absent from the kitchen, and he thinks it remarkable that whereas the medical specialists who examined her declared that she emitted the voice unconsciously she should not be continuing to do so. The servant returned to service three days ago and her actions are quite normal.
The Times, 8th December 1934.
It is singular how “a ghost” turns up periodically in some part of the world. A few years ago the haunted house in the Clifton Street area of Belfast provided a week’s sensation. If I remember rightly the midnight apparition just petered out, and the house was let as usual. News of the latest ghost comes all the way from Saragossa, in Spain. It is an entirely new type. There is no rattling of chains or yawning of churchyards. The “ghost” takes form of a mysterious voice which emerges from a chimney. It is an invisible but friendly spirit who holds conversation with visitors, calls them by their Christian names, and answers any questions they put. The house where “the ghost” is in residence has attracted such large crowds that all the police in the district are on traffic duty. Over a dozen youths were found on the roof of the house pulling off the slates in the hope of having a peep at the mysterious stranger, but it was labour in vain. The “ghost,” according to the enterprising journalists in direct contact with the spirit, is receiving considerable mail, and even telegrams.
Ireland’s Saturday Night, 8th December 1934.
Spanish Ghost Mystery.
Saragossa has a ghost of which it is heartily and officially tired; so much so, in fact, that the civil governor has appealed to the Spanish press for help in killing the publicity which the ghosthas gained throughout Spain and the consequent ridicule which is falling on the town.
The trouble began when a mysterious voice – now known throughout Spain as “The Voice of the Ghost” – was heard coming through a kitchen grate in a flat tenanted by Senor Antonio Palazon, his family and their servant Pascuela. Pascuela was the first to hear the voice, but since then everybody in the flat has heard it, including police who were sent to keep watch before the mysterious grate.
Dr Royo Villanova, of Saragossa, has received a message addressed to “The Ghost of Saragossa” in his care, following a statement he made of an extraordinary interview with an unknown man. This man, the doctor states, came to consult him professionally, but finally confessed under the seal of professional secrecy that he was the ghost. The doctor, unfortunately, cannot readdress the letter, as he omitted to ask for the man’s address.
Meanwhile, expert builders are engaged in examining the house where the Palazons lived in the hope of finding some as yet unknown acoustic communication which might allow a voice to be transmitted from one flat to another.
The Advertiser (Adelaide, SA), 15th April 1935.
The Saragossa Ghost.
The Saragossa ghost, the story of which went around the world from Spain towards the end of 1934, deserves a unique place in the annals of psychic events. It was more than a ghost. It was a symptom; a high water-mark of ignorance in matters pregnant with significance; matters about which psychic students claim to have amassed some knowlege but which are shunned by the general public and the world of science alike. This ignorance is so much more exceptionable as the ghost had a very good press. It was in the limelight for about two weeks. It had the distinction of editorial discussion in the Morning Post and the Manchester Guardian. Moreover, it had broken a fresh trail in the “Thunderer” [The London Times] by a display of pictures covering eight pages on December 4th. When even The Times devoted so much attention to an event which caused no mean stir all over Spain, there was a definite chance of learning something. But the chance was allowed to slip. As if all correspondents had conspired to concentrate on the irrelevant, it is only between the lines that one may catch glimpses of the true story. Provided always that we know the ways of the poltergeist – this elusive visitant from what we may provisionally call another world.
That it is not quite in this world, for so much the indications are fairly impressive. The day may not be distant when scientists will be as keen on reports of similar manifestations as on the conjunctions of Mars or ona total eclipse of the sun. Running the poltergeist to its lair will rank amongst the triumphs of science. It will not be a light undertaking. It may easily lead to an admission of a belief in ghosts. That requires as yet considerable courage. But courage is one thing and duty another. The choice between facing the facts or playing blind man’s buff should not be a difficult one.
One fact to be faced emerges clearly from all the beating around the bush in which the Saragossa Ghost engaged a host of newspaper reporters. It is that the ghost has beaten the press, has beaten the police and has beaten the doctors that were called in. They retired in disordered ranks, announcing lamely the discovery of “unconcious ventriloquism.” They dropped it as a hot chestnut lest it burn their fingers. No one knows what unconscious ventriloquism is. No one has ever heard of it or had had any experience in it. On the other hand, it is abundantly clear to all psychic students what the convenient term covers. It covers an important statement of facts; it covers an admission which should rouse all psychologists and physiologists in the world, an admission by a commission of doctors and police officials (all of them specially trained in observation) that voices claiming to belong to a ghost, that is, to a discarnate entity, were heard in daylight in the presence of a young servant girlwho was somehow responsible for the phenomena.
But let us hear the story as one may piece it together from scrappy newspaper reports sent in by correspondents whose inexperience in reporting psychic phenomena was equal to their incompetence to deal with them. One need only add that not one editor in England has found it worth while to ask a psychical researcher to comment. Need we wonder, then, that the readers were as hopelessly bewildered as those who should know how to serve them better.
Under the title “A Polite Spanish Ghost,” The Times reported on November 24th from Madrid as follows: “A friendly ghost which speaks down the chimney of an economical cooker is a phenomenon sufficiently rare to cause sensation even among the matter-of-fact inhabitants of Saragossa, who have set out to trace the mystery to its source. The ‘spirit’ occupies a detached house, so it is difficult to imagine how a practical joker could be at work in a neighbouring building. An architect and some workmen were called in. They searched the building fromroof to cellar, but without finding a possible hiding place for a joker. Finally, the architect said: ‘Measure the chimney pipe.’ ‘You need not trouble, the diameter is just 6 in.,’ said the ghost politely. It was.”
The rest of the telegram concerns the doings of the police. The last few lines are curious. They read: “The director of the local lunatic asylum, on being interviewed by a journalist, said that he hoped the experience would prove useful to science, but he refused to venture an opinion until he had himselfspoken up the chimney pipe.”
The report is meagre but sufficient to stimulate imagination. There is a house in Saragossa (the street is given as the Calle Gascon de Gotor in the report) in which things of a highly mysterious nature keep on happening. The house is detached. Voices issue from the chimney. The voice either claims to be a spirit or is taken for such. It talks in daylight. (No architect or workmen would be called in for a search at night). It is intelligent. It can hear people and can answer them. The phenomenon is so puzzling that the whole town is seized with excitement. Numbers volunteer to track down the ghost. The police are summoned. In the meantime an enterprising journalist interviews the director of the local lunatic asylum, and he expressed the hope that the experience would prove useful to science. Why? Apparently, he knew more than he cared to say, or The Times cared to quote. No hoax would prove of any use to science, only a genuine phenomenon. Shall we, therefore, assume that the director believed in the ghost, or in some other supernormal cause?
You will note that nothing is told of the setting in which the phenomena occurred. Nor of how the disturbance began. One has to wait for days before the information is divulged. So let me advance here that the flue from which, as from a dark cabinet, the voices were heard to issue, served eight other flats in the house. The ghost, however, concerned itself with a family named Palazon and their sixteen year old servant, named Maria Pascuela. One may assume that it was the other tenants who, terrified, called in the police. The ghost certainly talked to them, also. It called each of them by name and advised them of the arrival of the police. It certainly had a sense of humour and a gift of the gab. “All yesterday afternoon,” reports The Times on November 26th, “the ghost talked almost incessantly.”
The police went for the ghost with all the thoroughness they could muster. They were not to be fooled by the Palazon family. So they evicted them and sat up for the ghost. Alas, the ghost would not be parted from its friends. “Sitting solemnly through the night in front of the economical cooker and its mysterious flue, a police guard heard no voice. The report to the magistrate this morning being negative, that official has washed his hands of the affair, saying that he can find no ground for charges against anybody. Medical circles are still interested, however, and the public is awaiting expectantly the return of the evicted family to their flat” (The Times, November 27th).
There is not a word about what happened to the family during their absence from the house. Apparently, it occurred to no one to ask whether their absence was undisturbed or if the ghost had followed them. But it seems that the public fully expected the return of the manifestations with the return of the Palazons, and that medical circles also knew better than the police.
Of the steps which the former took, we learn from the Morning Post, November 28th. For the first time we read that “the kitchen maid was examined by medical experts,” also that “a local neurologist believes that either the maid-servant is gifted with ventriloquial powers or that some clever person is using some unknown apparatus.” So at last we are getting near the central point of the disturbance. A first year psychic student could have suggested that, in most cases, poltergeist trouble focus about adolescent persons approaching the age of puberty. That it was so in this case was fairly leaping to the eye. As revealed in The Evening Standard, December 5th,
“the whole trouble started one morning… when Maria, the maid… was lighting the fire in the kitchen range in order to get breakfast. She nearly fell over backwards when a voice came out of the chimney and greeted her effusively. Her mistress, who came to see what all the fuss was about, was also startled out of her wits.”
Why the age of puberty should be marked, in certain instances, with such uncanny phenomena, no one is able to answer. But it is a legitimate inference that the life force which blossoming sexual powers represent is finding an abnormal outlet. Biologically, the disturbances spring from the organism of the afflicted person. But whether the mischievous intelligence can also be traced to the psyche of the adolescent really forms the crux of the poltergeist problem.
How difficult that problem is, and what annoyance it caused in Saragossa, was revealed by subsequent events. His excellency the Civil Governor of Saragossa felt compelled to issue, on November 30th, the following statement: “I think that we will soon discover the joker and thus dispel the groundless anxiety which this incident has aroused. For this purpose I beg the press to give ear to my request for silence, whereby not only will a proof of commonsense and love of Saragossa be given but a contribution made to the success of the measures taken to discover the trick. This is on the point of being achieved.”
An extraordinary statement, this! An appeal to the press to keep silent because of the anxiety which the incident had aroused! Steps promised to discover “the trick”! No wonder that an explanation HAD to be found. The Civil Governor of Saragossa committed himself to trickery as the only possible solution of the mystery. Who would run the risk of his ire? Who would take the responsibility of further public excitements? The days of the Duende de Zaragoza, as the ghost was called in Spain, had been counted. He became a public nuisance. He had to be laid. If not factually, at least by words. And laid it was. It is well worth quoting the ghost’s obituary in full from The Times of December 6th. This was the report:
“Late last night the Governor announced that the “ghost” of Saragossa
had been located. The servant girl employed in the haunted flat, he
said, was “an unconscious ventriloquist.” He added that this discovery
disposed of the affair. The Governor gave no more details, but the
magistrate who has been making investigations made an interesting
statement to the Press.
Several days ago, accompanied by the
servant girl and two other persons, he locked himself in the kitchen
while police were posted to prevent anyone from approaching the flue or
its connexions. The voice was then heard. On a second occasion the
experiment was repeated successfully. Finally, last night, in the
presence of more numerous witnesses, the “ghost” spoke its swan song.
The servant girl was then allowed to return home, and the mystery
officially declared at an end.
For many persons it is deeper than
ever. Nobody seems to know what an “unconscious ventriloquist” is. The
servant girl is stated to be quite unaware that she was impersonating
the “ghost” or pronouncing any words. If, as is suggested, she was
acting as a medium, some other person should really be considered the
“ghost.” The magistrate, who states that “he can hear the ghostly voice
whenever he wants to,” explains that the mystery is due to “a psychic
phenomenon produced only in certain circumstances,” but he has not
divulged what the circumstances are. It is reported that the hostile
attitude of the subject and her family is impeding medical investigation
of what now seems to be no longer a joke, but a remarkable case for
neuropaths.”
According to reports in other newspapers, the last bow of the ghost was rather spectacular. Twenty people were present, police officials and medical doctors mostly. They all heard the ghost in full daylight. The fact that they did not dismiss the case as of conscious ventriloquism, but qualified it as a super-normal phenomenon by the “unconscious” rider, does credit to their courage and love of truth. The Governor was satisfied. There is magic in the word “ventriloquism.”A peg was found to hang on something mysterious, and it was left to the public to accept it or not. Telepathy, which originally was meant to denote the passing of information from mind to mind outside the recognised channels of sense, is another peg, called in as an explanation instead of being thought of as an unknown process. There is a great future for “unconscious ventriloquism.” It describes very conveniently what is known in psychical research as the direct voice. It does not explain it. But it is a name and the public seldom wants more.
The report of The Times could leave no doubt in any reader’s mind that the facts, from which the presence of the ghost were deduced, were facts. The question whether the ghost was a ghost is a question of personality and evidence. If the ghost claimed to be a ghost, he had to claim to be a definite somebody. That identity could have been traced or established by tests. It is this fact of the Saragossa mystery which assigns it a particular place in poltergeist disturbances. As a rule, poltergeists do not speak. They break crockery and perform many acts of mischief, sometimes of malignant persecution. In the Saragossa case nothing else but speaking appears ot have been done. If the voices had not been heard in daylight, direct voice mediumship instead of poltergeist might have been the explanation.
Why should a poltergeist have more power to speak in the daylight than the “controls” of the voice Mediums? We don’t know. There is very little we know about the ways of the ghosts. Facts come first, reasoning after. The Saragossa ghost did speak in daylight. It was a far more efficient communicator than the direct voice “controls” are. The question “why?” could have been, perhaps, elucidated had some psychical researchers succeeded in establishing a good relationship with the ghost. Perhaps they did or, perhaps, the phenomena ceased as mysteriously as they came. However it may be, the records in their imperfection and fragmentary nature, are sufficiently good to establish withoutany possibility of doubt, that Anno Domini 1934 in the city of Saragossa, a manifestation occurred which claimed to have its agency in another world of intelligence than our own, and which claim defied the efforts of the authorities to ascribe it to trickery or normal causation.
Nandor Fodor.
Historic Poltergeists, by Hereward Carrington and Nandor Fodor, Bulletin of the International Institute for Psychical Research, and the American Psychical Institute, 1935.
this was reprinted in ‘Haunted People’ (same authors) 1951, with the following addition:
This article was written in the crusader’s spirit for British consumption. In its militant tone, now that I am mellowed by sixteen years of further research, I am amused to find a touch of the same fanaticism which it criticises in the unbelievers. However, my summary of the case is fair. It reveals a genuine mystery, and the facts represent a challenge to science; but my approach to the facts has changed.
The word “ghosts” no longer has for me the literal meaning which I was apt to ascribe to it in my report. Nor would I say any more that the theory of unconscious ventriloquism is an absurd one. Sixteen years ago it may have been an odd term to use, but recently the idea was dramatically portrayed in a Universal motion picture entitled ‘At Dead of Night.’ In this picture Michael Redgrave, who plays the part of the ventriloquist, loses control of ‘Hugo’, the dummy, and Hugo contrives to bring about his master’s destruction. As a tale of paranoid schizophrenia the picture is very convincing. We are given to understand that ‘Hugo’s’ voice really emanates from the ventriloquist’s unconscious, which finds itself in deadly conflict with his conscious mind.
Looked at it in this light, the servant girl of Saragossa, around whom the vocal phenomena were centred, differs from our ventriloquist only in the fact that her sanity was not questioned. The diabolical ingenuity displayed by the voices issuing from the chimney is quite on a par with Hugo’s. I am not advancing this clever piece of fiction as an explanation of the Saragossa Ghost. I use it only as an illustration of the only available psychiatric or psychoanalytic approach. Elsewhere, I have tried to establish a casefor thePoltergeist Psychosis, which I consider an episodic mental disturbance of the schizophrenic order. On this basis, the voices would represent a split-off part of the personality of the servant girl. But in considering this theory, we run into the great difficulty of explaining how voices can be projected by someone who is not a trained and professional ventriloquist before an audience which is aware of such possible deception. The problem is essentially the same as that of the “direct voice” of the seance room. The “ectoplasmic” theory clearly establishes a connection between the voice and the medium, while postulating the entrance of an extraneous intelligence on the scene. It appears easier to accept a spirit than a free-floating fragment of a living personality. I shall try to deal with this difficulty as best I can in my treatment of the case of the Bell Witch.
In the meantime, I would no longer hold to this statement: “If the ghost claimed to be a ghost, he had to be a definite somebody. That identity could have been traced or established by tests.” Today I consider this statement rather naive. Ghostly voices may claim to emanate from a spirit, and yet we may never be able to prove the claim.
Given a tendency to autonomous organisation, what other choice is open to a fragment of the human personality that emerges – virginally as Botticelli’s ‘Venus on the Shell’ – from the depth of the unconscious into the daylight of strange flesh-and-blood creatures? It was up to the ghost, and not to the researchers, to prove itself. The fact that it made no attempt to establish its identity with someone deceased, or make revelations asto the conditions in which it existed, speaks in favour of a schizophrenic dissociation, even though such a construction of the case leaves many problems as yet unsolved.