The Dagg poltergeist, "the ghost that talked", Clarendon Township, Quebec (1889)

The Dagg family farmed near Shawville, in Clarendon Township, Pontiac County, on the Quebec side of the Ottawa River. George Dagg was 35. His household included his wife Susan, their young children, and Dinah Burden McLean, an 11-year-old Scottish "Home Child" the Daggs had adopted. An orphan boy named Dean worked on the farm.

15 September 1889. George gave Susan a $5 bill and a $2 bill to put in a bedroom drawer. The next day Dean found the $5 bill on the kitchen floor. The $2 bill turned up in his bedding. Dagg had the boy arrested. Dean was released. The trouble did not stop.

Animal dung appeared on the floors. Milk buckets were emptied and butter vanished from jars. Then came the fires. As many as eight broke out in one day, six in the house and two outside. Curtains burned in daylight, while stones were "thrown by invisible hands through the windows, as many as eight panes of glass being broken."

Much of it circled Dinah. Her braid was yanked, then almost completely severed, as if sawn through with a knife. She was slapped and kicked by something no one could see. Once she said she saw a black shadow and struck at it with a bullwhip. There was a strident squeal, like that of a pig.

A note then appeared pinned to the wall. "You gave me fifteen cuts." When Rev. Horner came, his Bible disappeared and reappeared in the oven. The entity laughed.

In mid-November, Percy Woodcock arrived from Brockville, Ontario. He was an artist, part-time journalist and early psychical investigator. He found Dinah near the woodshed and asked, "Are you there, mister?" A deep, gruff voice answered. "I am the Devil; I'll have you in my clutches; Get out of this or I'll break your neck!"

Woodcock kept talking. The exchange reportedly ran over five hours, with multiple witnesses. The voice said it acted for its own amusement and never intended to hurt the family. It claimed Mrs. Wallace, a neighbouring widow, had sent it with spells buried in a swamp. Woodcock had Dinah fill her mouth with water, but the voice went on cursing him as loudly and clearly as ever.

On the night it promised to leave, more than 50 locals gathered at the farm. The voice changed. "I am not the person who used the dirty language, I am an angel from Heaven, sent from God to drive away that fellow." It sang hymns in a sweet soprano. Around 3 a.m., it was gone.

Only the children saw the forms. A tall thin man with a cow's head, horns, tail and cloven foot. A large black dog. A man with a beautiful face, long white hair and white clothing, crowned with stars. On the final morning, they said, a beautiful old man in shining white garments rose into the sky.

Before publishing in the Brockville Recorder and Times, Woodcock gathered seventeen signatures on a statement dated 17 November 1889, declaring the events "actually occurred as below described." Not everyone agreed, and an Ottawa Journal headline that month read "DINAH A VENTRILOQUIST." Modern writers see Dinah as a classic poltergeist focus, conscious or not. Coverage reached the New York Herald in 1890, and later retellings included the National Film Board of Canada's 1957 dramatisation The Ghost That Talked and a Fortean Times feature. Dinah was later sent to the Fairknowe Home in Brockville, but her final whereabouts remain unknown.