A Casa do Demo: the Anllóns poltergeist and the Santiago archdiocese inquiry, 1900

Anllóns is a village in the parish of San Fiz de Anllóns, in the municipality of Ponteceso, in the comarca of Bergantiños in A Coruña. In 1899 an elderly widow, Juliana Rodríguez, lived there in a small stone house with her granddaughter, María Cundíns. Her husband, José García Pérez, had died a few months before.

Then the trouble began. Furniture was found moved every morning. Eggs were found emptied, and something stirred the embers of the hearth. Juliana feared it was punishment. She had let her husband's anniversary Mass go unsaid.

Early February 1900. Juliana told everything to her parish priest, Juan Antonio Combarro. "Naturally I began by taking her story for old wives' tales," he later wrote. He told her to pray the Rosary and sent watchers to spend the night. The next day one of them asked him to bless the house.

He did. "Suddenly a little stone falls before my eyes, gently projected to the floor." Soon a counterweight from a steelyard scale fell beside him, then an umbrella handle. Six or seven potatoes dropped softly and scattered on a stone. The household did not recognise the objects as their own, and Combarro was convinced "the thing was prodigious." He never went back inside.

The attacks grew. Stones and a small slab fell from the ceiling. Burning brands rose from the hearth. Potatoes fell and settled one on top of another "in the shape of a pyramid," staying "in perfect balance." Juliana's hair was pulled. She was slapped and spat on. The oven lid flew off and struck her in the back.

At first the girl was spared. Later a rope appeared in the air and wound around María's neck, until her grandmother and another witness freed her. Nobody ever saw the agent. Witnesses "saw only the movement, with great force."

Combarro reported to Cardinal Martín de Herrera, the Archbishop of Santiago de Compostela, and wrote to the journalist Prudencio Landín. From 19 May 1900, El Eco de Santiago ran long chronicles. The pharmacist Severiano Mesías, the municipal judge Señor Mosquera and their companions searched the house for tricks. They marked stones and potatoes. The marked objects vanished and turned up elsewhere, some split in two with the fresh juice showing. On one visit, in daylight, a basket of potatoes appeared upside down in the middle of the group, and the potatoes did not fall out.

The notary Manuel Vázquez Amarelle drew up an official record at the house and saw phenomena himself. An archdiocesan commission took sworn statements. The archbishop was at first sceptical of a demonic cause. He later authorised exorcisms "and all the Church's remedies."

Juliana blamed the missed Mass. Others pointed to spiritism. Her late husband had reportedly belonged to a spiritualist society in America and brought its books home. Combarro, the priest and author Ricardo Sánchez Varela and eventually the archbishop treated it as diabolical. The witnesses had tested for fraud, and no hoax finding or confession is recorded.

The two women left for different houses, and the phenomena stopped. According to one account, the exorcism was never performed. Juliana died months, or a few years, later, and María emigrated to America, where her trail was lost. The house stood empty for about 100 years. Today, restored by the biologist Javier Nogueira, A Casa do Demo is let to tourists. Popular writers call it the first documented poltergeist in Spain, a title also claimed by the Casa del Duende in Valencia in 1915.