From the Yorkshire Evening Post, 6th October 1925.
Haunted Mill Girl Cured of Furniture Throwing.
The “Poltergeist” dismissed. Odd Phenomena Cease. Relief
from Disorder that entailed both Discomfort and Danger.
Extraordinary details are available to-day concerning the
case of a Keighley mill-girl, who is believed to have been cured of what has
long been known as a poltergeist. When she was near, articles of furniture,
clothing, crockery, etc. were liable eto be thrown in all directions without
the slightest conscious effort on her part. After three months under special
care and observation in a London home, she has ceased to be a centre of these
disturbances, and is apparently restored to normal health.
Mill and Home Troubles. Keighley Stories of a Girl’s Strange
Powers. (From our Special Correspondent). Keighley, Tuesday.
For obvious reasons, it is not desirable to give the name of
the girl of whom the following facts are related, but, according to the
evidence of members of her own family, and of people with whom she worked, she
was in an astonishingly abnormal state of health nine months ago. To-day she is
completely free from troublous influences of any kind, and is happy in the
knowledge that the unconscious power that she formerly exerted has been lost.
She hopes that power will never return, whatever it was, and
asks no more than to be allowed to settle down quietly at work and at home,
like any other normal and sensible girl. She has no desire to make use of any
of her supposed psychic powers, and does not wish to be made the subject of any
psychic experiments or investigations.
The girl, whose name is omitted at the request of those
closely interested in her welfare, is a member of a respectable and
hard-working Keighley family. She is 20 years of age, tall and comely, and
possessing a rather striking mass of dark bobbed hair. There was nothing
unusual about her as a child, except that she was always regarded by the rest
of the family as “very highly strung.” No one else in the family has ever been
abnormal in any way, although one of the girl’s two sisters has been a
semi-invalid for some years.
It was towards the end of last year that girls working in
the same spinning mill began to notice that her presence had a curious influence.
Breakages of threads in the spinning frame are fairly common, but batches of
ends broke down with alarming frequency on three frames near which the girl
worked. A theory was advanced that the girl’s body was magnetic in some abnormal
way, and that the breaking of the threads was due to some electrical
disturbance. Colour was lent to this theory
by the knowledge that a small amount of electricity is generated by the
rapidly moving spindles. But strange things were also happening at the girl’s
home, and she became so troubled by the influence that she was unconsciously
exercising, and also by the gossip and questions of all who knew her, that she
became ill. One night she fainted several times, and a medical man was called
in and told all about the strange happenings in the home – the upsetting of the
table, and the breaking of crockery – and the incidents in the factory. The
doctor talked to the girl, tried, without success, to find out whether she
exercised any magnetic influence, and then frankly told the girl’s mother that
he could not find any evidence of an abnormal condition of health.
Eventually the girl went into a Bradford nursing home, and
the publicity which had been given to her case attracted the attention of Sir
Conan Doyle. It was through him that she went to the College of Psychic
Science, where she has been for three months. “She has now been home again for
a month,” said a member of the household today, “and she is undoubtedly cured
of whatever was wrong with her eight months ago. She is bright and happy, looks
the picture of health, and is certainly delighted at her restoration to a
normal state of health. She is so much better, indeed, that she can now laugh
and joke about her former troubles. If crockery happens to be broken, she will
laugh and say, ‘Well, that’s not me, any way.’ It was the breaking of crockery
and other things, and the unaccountable movement of furniture that were the
most alarming symptoms of her trouble. You will scarcely believe the strange
things that happened. I frankly admit I would not have believed them had I not
seen with my own eyes.”
“We were in the kitchen one day when the table had been laid
for dinner. There were four plates, one at each side, and suddenly two legs of
the table were raised into the air and the plates were all shot on to the floor
and broken. G—was standing about two yards or so away from the table, and there
is no question about it whatever that she did not touch the table or
consciously make any effort to life it. She was dreadfully upset, because it
was all as mysterious to her as to us. When I told my husband what had happened
with the table and pots, he could not believe me, but the following day he
himself saw similar strange happenings. Ornaments and a clock were swept off
the mantelpiece as if by an unseen hand, and ornaments were also upset and
broken in her bedroom. G—will not talk either to us or anyone else about her
stay at the College. Indeed she hates any sort of reference now to her illness,
and wants to forget all about the whole business. She had no special treatment
in the College, but they were very good to her, did their utmost to brighten
her up and forget her trouble, and it has done her a world of good.”
Investigators’ Theory. “Some kind of depletion of the nerve
forces.” (From a London Correspondent.) Fleet Street. Tuesday.
I have been able to obtain some further details of the
remarkable psychic manifestations and disturbances attending the mill-girl’s
stay at the British College of Psychic Science in London, where she has been
under treatment and observation for three months. All the medical men who saw the girl during
the time of the strange manifestations at the woollen mill were puzzled by her
case, but the psychic experts in London regard it as one of poltergeist
phenomena, probably due to “some kind of depletion of the nerve forces.” In the
treatment at the College of Psychic Science, the services of a trance medium
were employed, and clairvoyance, magnetism and suggestion also used, with
satisfactory results.
In the report of Mr. J. Hewat McKenzie, the principal of the
college, it is stated that the girl had had a nervous breakdown following an
unhappy love affair, and that this probably had much to do with her strange psychic
condition. During the early part of her stay at the college the most
devastating incidents happened. Mr. McKenzie’s report, now published in the
October issue of “Psychic Science,” states that even the heaviest pieces of
furniture, which it ordinarily took two or three persons to move, were knocked
about the room, quite independently of any act of the girl’s, and generally at
a distance of four or five feet from where she was sitting or standing.
In the scullery, where the girl was at work, an observer saw
a frying pan dash off the gas stove, sending the frying sausages flying about.
While she was in Yorkshire a similar incident had happened at a canteen, where
a pudding jumped out of a basin. In the kitchen of the college, one day, things
became particularly lively. A chair which stood by the fireplace jumped
seemingly over the table, for a cup was knocked off and broken, and the chair
was found seven feet away from its usual position. At another time, when the
housekeeper was preparing grape fruit for breakfast, a portion disappeared and
could not be found. She got two bananas to take its place, and laid them on the
table, when suddenly the missing grape fruit whizzed past her ear, and the
bananas vanished.
When the girl had gone to bed one night great noises of
banging and tearing were heard, and on going into her room Mrs. McKenzie found
the girl in bed, “but the room looked as if a tornado had swept over it.
Everything that could be thrown down lay on the floor. The girl stated that the
moment she got into bed the legs went, letting her down on the floor, and the
mattress seemed to rise up. When she got into bed again the frame of the
washstand went over, a mahogany armchair was thrown down violently and the arm
support was splintered. Another chair, also thrown over, had a piece broken off
the back by its fall, and a small wicker table lay on the floor. All the girl’s
clothes and trinkets lay on the floor, also in a wild heap.
It was not only at the college, but at other places visited
by the girl, that these mysterious things happened. Once, when the girl went
into the dairy for milk, a great milk churn on the floor near her fell over, this
showing (as the report states) “how the force accompanies the person of the
girl, and is not located in one place.” In his observations on the case, Mr
McKenzie says: “Direct observation, as in so many similar cases, seemed to foil
its own end, but enough was actually seen by Mrs McKenzie, myself, my daughter
and secretary, and some students staying in the house, as well as the constant
view of damage to crockery and furniture, to leave us without a shadow of a
doubt as to the girl being the focal centre of some unexplained force. In the
case of this Yorkshire girl,” Mr McKenzie adds,” it was noticed that things
fell with great force after she had moved beyond them, as if the energy were
drawn from her back and limbs, and was much greater than anything required for
tipping a table over in the ordinary way. An ordinary fall will not break a
solid table or chair. They need to be thrown with vigour and intention for this
to happen. I tried to find if the girl felt anything while the heavy articles
were thrown about. Only once, during a particularly bad disturbance, did she
say that she felt a peculiar drawing in the limbs, which would suggest the
extension of the psychic body, well known in cases of physical phenomena. On
this sole occasion, before the question had been put to the girl, Mrs McKenzie,
going into the kitchen during the disturbance, and standing where the girl had
been a moment before, became aware that she stood in the centre of force of
some sort, a kind of electrical discharge affecting her limbs, such as is
sometimes noticed in a psychic group.”
In conclusion the principal states that the report is “a
continuous record, made from day to day by people competent to judge such
cases, neither afraid of the forces operating nor making light of the
seriousness of the matter for the girl who was involved. There is nothing exaggerated.
The wish of all observers was to report correctly and to secure relief for the
victim as speedily as possible. I hope this cure will remain effective. At the
end of September she was reported still free from disturbances, and has resumed
her daily work in the mill.”