In late 1903, a poltergeist was causing trouble at Mardy Farm in the Monmouthshire village of Coedkernew. It had turned pictures with their faces to the wall, compressed a piece of beef into a jug while the farmer’s back was turned, carried a bundle of hay from the stable and dumped it in the yard, dropped many pieces of crockery in the kitchen without breaking them and carried beds round a room and partly down the stairs. Other paranormal pranks included putting soda into a tub of newly clarified lard, emptying a jar of pickled cabbage into a large quantity of cream, unhooking bacon from a wall and then returning it, and tracing the name of Mrs Parson’s first husband on the glass of a lamp. Ten people, including the local constable, sat up one night waiting for something to happen. They were beginning to assume that the policeman’s presence had intimidated the entity when suddenly there was an eerie sound that “made the hair of the more sensitive begin to rise” – and the policeman was hit in the eye by half a pound of butter. Daily Chronicle, 16 Jan; Evening News, 26 Jan 1904.
On 28 March 1905, Mrs Elizabeth Pratt, of 22 Virginia Avenue, Jersey City, read with great interest the news story of a man “blown up through the East River” [I don’t know what this means]. Later that day, she travelled to New York, and while walking down Madison Avenue, at 40th Street, stepped on the iron cover of a manhole. Just then there was a. [For more on flying manhole covers, see ]
