The Mayanup Poltergeist, Boyup Brook, Western Australia, 1955

Keninup was Bill Hack's farm near Mayanup, south of Boyup Brook in Western Australia. Gilbert Smith, a Noongar farmhand, had worked there for years. He lived in a hut on the property with his wife Jean and their children.

17 May 1955. About 10 p.m. Stones began falling on the Smiths' roof. Gilbert came to ask Mr Hack to "find out what was throwing stones on his roof." Ethel Hack, Bill's wife, wrote in her journal: "Although we did not believe his story, we knew that these people were genuinely scared."

Bill Hack caught one pebble as it hit him. It was a very cold night. The pebble was warm. Stones that fell in the rain were "quite dry and still very warm." Doug Hack, Bill's brother, put them at "about blood heat."

They moved like nothing else. One "hovered for a few seconds and then dropped on the table." Others landed dead and never rolled. "They'd drop and stop," Ethel said, "as if something had just exploded there." Mrs Hack watched them appear as specks and grow until they dropped.

A stone the size of a large hen egg came through the wall of the Smiths' hut. Bill Hack's diary records a stone weighing 35 lbs that "fell gently on to the tank." Bottles, potatoes, knives and a child's doll moved too. Jean Smith saw a small, round, bright light hovering about five feet above the ground. Ethel heard a whistle, "a low mournful sound sustained in the one key."

About 30 neighbouring farmers kept night watch with torches, spotlights and shotguns. Large stones landed among them and on the house roof. Nobody was seen throwing them. A ploughed strip around the house showed no footprints. Hugh Schmitt of the Australasian Post, who reportedly had a stone land on his car, wrote: "this thing is no hoax!"

Scientific men from Perth came. Stones sent to Perth showed no fingerprints, and an unnamed expert found two of them magnetic. A Reuter report said the Criminal Investigation Branch was inquiring. Psychic researchers visited. On 5 July 1955, Sammy Miller of Mount Barker and Freddie Winmar held a ceremony at Kojonup to deal with the spirit Miller called a "Jannick."

The falls went on, with breaks, until about 1957. Related outbreaks followed at Pumphrey in March 1957 and at George Dickson's place that September. Ethel's journal links further episodes in 1958 and 1961 to the Smith family.

Ethel Hack could not accept a spirit, and wrote that the place "must be allied with some strong force like electricity or magnetism." Others suggested gas from rock fissures, vibration from passing cars, uranium, or Dr Stuart Pennycuick's "homeotronics." At Pumphrey, the Deputy Government Mineralogist found the stones were local laterite. The activity followed one extended family, and 1955 press attention fixed on a 14-year-old girl. Still, no hoax was ever proven.

In 1991 folklorists John Meredith and Peter Ellis recorded Ethel and Doug Hack. Helen Hack published The Mystery of the Mayanup Poltergeist in 2000, and the documentary Spirit Stones let Noongar witnesses tell the story. A jar of the stones still sits on the Hacks' desk.