The Logrosán poltergeist: flying objects in a house on calle Teatro (1982)

Logrosán lies in the province of Cáceres, in Extremadura, between Guadalupe and Trujillo. In the autumn of 1982, the film Poltergeist was showing in Spanish cinemas. On calle Teatro stood a humble house, then under renovation. It belonged to María San Román, a widow of 80 who had never known fear. Her unmarried son Ulpiano, 49, lived with her. So did her grandson Andrés, 13. Her husband, José Sánchez, had died about fifteen years before.

The night of 2 October 1982. A calm evening. Ulpiano was at the tavern with friends. At home, a loud crash. The curtain between the bedrooms and the living room lay on the floor. María hung it back. It fell again. Then the framed pictures came down, as if all at once. Through the night she and Andrés heard objects striking the floor tiles. In the end María stacked the pictures on the floor. Neither of them slept.

In broad daylight, a sack of plaster began to burn. The mason working in the house put it out. Then loud knocks came from the table behind him. He turned. His trowel was sliding across the board toward the edge. He set it back in the centre. Minutes later, it fell to the floor. He left his tools and never came back.

Don Evaldo, a local lawyer and a sceptic, came looking for misinterpretations. A watermelon on a plate flew into the air, untouched. It smashed on the floor. He left visibly shaken.

Jars, bottles and kitchen utensils flew and broke. Tomatoes struck the walls. Hams caught fire. One account tells of the shadow of a hand moving through the walls. Ulpiano, who had doubted at first, barely slept. And the objects had a direction. Some crashed at Andrés's feet. Never toward anyone else.

Within days, journalists and students of the paranormal filled the town, and the case reportedly reached many national media outlets. A team of parapsychologists came to Logrosán expressly, and later accounts say they certified the phenomena as authentic. Their names and any report have never surfaced. The family looked for a natural cause and found none. They suspected a vow José Sánchez may have made to the Virgin of Guadalupe and never fulfilled. They went to Guadalupe and had a Mass said for his soul. The activity continued.

The parapsychologists pointed to Andrés. At puberty, they suggested, he was the unconscious source. Objects landed at his feet, and when he moved to his parents' farmhouse, it all stopped. Every account adds that this could never be confirmed, and nothing similar followed him to his new home. Sceptics who study poltergeist cases generally read the same pattern another way, as a young focus person throwing things unseen. No one was ever caught, and no one confessed.

No 1982 clipping or police record has resurfaced. The earliest known text is a 2009 local news article, now offline. Fuller accounts followed in 2011, on a Cuarto Milenio web page and in the blog of mystery journalist Gonzalo Pérez Sarró. The tellings disagree in places. One has the husband's portrait falling beside an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Another says it was one of only two objects that never moved.