Poltergeists (10 page)

At one time, four lights were burning simultaneously although no human agency could be held accountable for it. For weeks on end the Leutholds were harassed by the poltergeist’s game of turning the lights on.

“Finally I said one day,” Leuthold explained, “it is strange that the lights should only go on, but never off by themselves. I had hardly finished when I stood in total darkness in the stables—the light had been turned off.”

“As if the ghost were listening?” I said.

Leuthold nodded and smiled somewhat sheepishly. “But it really got worse later in the week,” he said, and showed me the entry for the eighth of December.

December 8, 7:40 a.m
. Elfi goes to feed the chickens, but the pot containing the chicken feed is gone. She finally finds it in front of the barn door. Six pumpkins, used for decorative purposes, are scattered around the yard. The rabbit hutch is open and two rabbits are running around outside. The feed tray for the rabbits has disappeared. It is later discovered by my wife on a cart in the carriage house.

Evidently, the ghost had it in for the domestic animals as well as the people. The following day, matters got even worse.

December 9, 7:30 a.m
. The pot with the chicken feed is gone again. The plate for the cat is again on top of the refuse heap. Elfi prepares new chicken feed in another pot, puts it down for a moment on the stairs and goes into the kitchen. When she gets back just seconds later, the new chicken feed is also gone. She comes to tell me about it. I go back with her and find the chicken feed hidden behind the stairs, covered with a burlap bag.

The Leutholds were beginning to get furious. Mrs. Leuthold decided to trap the furtive ghost. She put the chicken-feed pot onto the window sill near the house door, and tied a nylon string to it, with a small bell at the other end, putting it down in the corridor leading away from the entrance door. That way they thought they would hear any movements the pot might make.

By 9:30
A.M
. the pot had moved twice in both directions, yet no human agency could be discovered!

That very afternoon the poltergeist played a new kind of trick on them. When Mrs. Leuthold entered the barn
around 2
P.M
., she found all sorts of boots scattered around, and in one of them four receipts for cattle, which Mr. Leuthold distinctly remembered to have placed high on a shelf that very morning. The ghost stepped up its activities in the following days, it seems. Not content with moving objects when nobody was looking, it now moved them in the presence of people.

December 10, 9:30 a.m
. The light goes on by itself in the hayloft. The missing pot for chicken feed is finally found near the door of the old stables. 6:30
P.M
. the light goes on in the barn, nobody is there. I put it out just as Elfi enters and tells me the milking brush is gone. We look everywhere, without success. Just then I notice the umbrella which is usually found in front of the house door hanging from the window sill of the pigsty! Elfi takes it down and replaces it next to the entrance door of the house, and we continue our search for the milking brush. Suddenly, the umbrella lies in front of us on the ground near the old stables! Three times the lights in the barn go on and I have to put them out. There is, of course, nobody in there at the time.

Whatever happened to the missing milking brush, you’ll wonder. The next morning, a Sunday too, Mrs. Leuthold was doing her chore of feeding the pigs. In one of the feed bags she felt something hard and firm that did not feel like pig’s feed. You guessed it. It was the milking brush. The Leutholds were glad to have their brush back, but their joy was marred by the disappearance of the chicken-feed pot. If it wasn’t the pigs, it was the chickens the ghost had it in for!

“I remember that morning well,” Mr. Leuthold said grimly. “I was standing in the stables around quarter to eight, when the light went out and on again and a moment later something knocked loudly in the hayloft, while at the same moment the light went on in the barn! I didn’t know where to run first to check.”

Those who suspected the somewhat simple maid, Elfi, to be causing these pranks did not realize that she was certainly not consciously contributing to them. She herself was the victim along with others in the house.

On the 12th of December, for instance, she put the milk cart into a corner of the barn where it usually stood. A few minutes later, however, she found it in front of the chicken house.

That same day, Paul Leuthold again came to grips with the ghost. “It was 9:15 in the morning and I walked up the stairs. Suddenly the window banged shut in the fruit-storage room ahead of me. There was no draft, no movement of air whatsoever.”

“Your wife mentioned something about the disappearing applesauce,” I said. “This sounds intriguing. What happened?”

“On December 13th,” Leuthold replied, refreshing his memory from his diary, “my wife put a dish of hot applesauce on the window sill next to the house door, to cool it off. I came home from the fields around 4:30 in the afternoon and to my amazement saw a dish of applesauce on the sill of the old stable, across the yard from the house. I went to the kitchen and asked Elfi where they had put the applesauce. ‘Why, on the kitchen window, of course.’ Silently I showed her where it now was. Shaking her head, she took it and put it back on the kitchen window sill. A few minutes later, we checked to see if it was still there. It was, but had moved about a foot away from the spot where we had placed it.”

That, however, was only the beginning. All day long “things” kept happening. Parts of the milking machine disappeared and reappeared in odd places. Lights went on and off seemingly without human hands touching the switches. These switches incidentally are large, black porcelain light switches mounted at shoulder height on the walls of the buildings, and there is no other way of turning lights on or off individually.

At 7:45
P.M
., dinner time, the entire family and servants were in the main room of the house. The barns and other buildings were securely locked. Suddenly, the lights in the barn and chicken house went on by themselves. The following morning, auditory phenomena joined the long list of uncanny happenings.

December 14, 6:50 a.m
. As I leave the chicken house I clearly hear a bell, striking and lingering on for about half a minute, coming from the direction of the other barn. But, of course, there was no bell there.

“This is going too far,” Mrs. Leuthold remarked to her husband. “We’ve got to do something about this.”

She took the chicken-feed pot and placed it again on the stairs from where it had disappeared some days before. Then she tied a nylon string to the pot, with a small bell on the other end; the string she placed inside the corridor leading to the door and almost but not quite closed the door. In this manner the string could be moved freely should anyone pull on it.

The family then ate their breakfast. After ten minutes, they checked on the string. It had been pulled outside by at least a foot and was cut or torn about two inches from the pot. The pot itself stood one step below the one on which Mrs. Leuthold had placed it!

Once in a while the ghost was obliging: that same day, around 8
A.M
., Elfi, the maid, took a lumber bucket to fetch some wood. As she crossed by the rabbit hutch, lights went on in the cellar, the hayloft and the chicken house. Quickly Elfi put the bucket down to investigate. When she returned to pick it up again, it was gone. It was standing in front of the wood pile, some distance away—where it was needed!

Daughter Elizabeth also had her share of experiences, Leuthold reports:

December 14, 5:30 p.m
. Elizabeth is busy upstairs in the house. She hears something hit the ground outside. Immediately she runs downstairs to find the six ornamental pumpkins scattered around the yard, all the way to the pigsty. When she left the house again an hour later, she found that somehow the carpet beater and brush had found their way from inside the house to be hung on the outside of the door!

And so it went. Every day something else moved about. The chicken-feed pot, or the boots, or the milk can. The lights kept going on and off merrily. Something or someone knocks at the door, yet there is never anyone outside. Nobody can knock and run out of sight—the yard between house and barn and the village street can easily be checked for human visitors. The milk cart disappears and reappears. The washroom window is taken off its hinges and thrown on the floor. The manure rake moves from the front of the barn to the inside of the washroom. The pigsty gate is opened by unseen hands and the pigs promenade around the chicken house. Lights keep going on and off. Even Christmas did not halt the goings on.

December 24, 3 p.m
. My cousin Ernest Gautschi and I are talking in the stables, when suddenly the light goes on—in the middle of the afternoon. 5:30
P.M
. I enter the barn to give the cows their hay, when I notice the lights go on by themselves in the old barn. I go back immediately and find the dog howling pitifully at the light switch! I went on to the house to see if anyone was outside, but nobody left even for a moment. My son, Paul, returns with me to the barn. It was he who had left the dog tied up outside half an hour earlier. Now he is tied up inside the barn, and the barn door is locked tight. How did the dog get inside?

Evidently, the poltergeist had now begun to turn his attentions towards the dog.

December 25, 7:30 a.m
. The dog is found locked into the stables. Yet, half an hour ago Elfi left him roaming freely outside after giving him his food.

February 2, 5 a.m
. I went to the stables and the dog, which slept in the barn, followed me into the stables. He became noisy and one of the calves seemed to get frightened, so I said to the dog, “Go outside at once!” As I am turning around to open the door back into the barn for him to let him out, I see him already outside the barn. Who opened the door for him? I didn’t.

The children also got their attention from the obnoxious spirit. That same day, February 2, Leuthold reported in his diary:

February 2, 6:15 p.m
. The three sleds, which normally are stacked in the corner of the barn, are found across the manure trough.

The Leutholds took their unseen “visitor” in stride, always hoping it would go away as it had come. Their spiritualist neighbor insisted that “Leo the Ghost,” as they had dubbed it, was somehow connected with Elfi, a notion the Leutholds rejected instantly, since they were in an excellent position to vouch for the maid’s honesty and non-involvement. The phenomena continued unabated.

March 14, 6 a.m
. The window in the dining room is taken from its hinges and found in a flower pot in front of the house. 7:30
A.M
. My slipper disappears from the barn and reappears in another part of the stables beneath a shoe shelf.

March 29, 7:30 a.m
. The dog lies in the yard. A few minutes later he is locked into the old stables. Everybody in the house is questioned and accounted for. Nobody could have done it. 7
P.M
. Elfi and I empty the skimmed milk into four pails which we then place next to the door to the pigsty. At 9
P.M
. we find the four pails directly in front of the door.

Elfi got married in April and presumably her “uncommitted” vital energies were no longer free to be used in poltergeist activities. But the Maschwanden ghost did not obey the standard rules laid down by psychic researchers. The disturbances went on, Elfi or no Elfi.

August 9, morning
. As I clean my boots, I find below the inner sole a small tie pin which I had missed for three months.

August 10, 5:30 p.m
. A pitchfork is left stuck in a bag of mineral salt. It took two men to pull it out. Half an hour before the same fork was still in the barn.

August 19, 4:45 a.m
. Angelo, the Italian working for us, misses one of his boots. He finds it 3 yards distant inside the barn and a heavy pitchfork on top of it.

Similar events took place for another few weeks, then it gradually became quiet again around the Leuthold farm.

I looked around the house, the stables, the barn. I talked to all members of the family, except the Italian, who had only shared their lives briefly, and Elfi, who had left long ago for wedded bliss.

I asked, “Did anyone die violently in the house?”

Paul Leuthold Sr., thought for a moment. “About ten years ago we had an Italian working for us. His pride was a motorcycle, but he could not afford insurance. One day he decided to return to Italy with some friends for a vacation. To get an early start, they would leave around three in the morning. The night before my mother warned him, ‘Be careful, and don’t get home with your head under your arm.’ He replied, shrugging, ‘If I am dead, it doesn’t matter either.’

“He started an hour late the next morning. When he got to the St. Gotthard, his motorcycle started to kick up. The other fellows went on ahead and promised to wait for him at the height of the mountain. He went to a garage and had his machine fixed, determined not to miss his colleagues.
He would have been better off had he stayed behind, for a short time later a piece of rock fell down onto the road and killed him instantly.”

“And you think it may be his ghost that is causing all this?” I asked.

“No, I don’t,” Leuthold assured me. “I’m only wondering who is doing it.”

I gathered that Leuthold had some suspicions about his neighbors. Could an active spiritualist “cause” such phenomena to happen? Not a spiritualist, I assured him, but maybe a black magician.

Nobody had died violently in the house or farm. But then, an older house of which we know nothing may have stood on the spot. The Leuthold children are now beyond the age of puberty where their untapped energies might have contributed the power to make the phenomena occur.