The Guyra Ghost: the Bowen family stone-throwing poltergeist

The four-room weatherboard Bowen cottage, with its tin roof, stood just outside Guyra in the New England district of New South Wales. William Bowen worked for the council. The eldest of three children was 12-year-old Minnie Bowen. According to one later account, her sister May had died about three months before. A journalist described Minnie as "tall, thin and dark, with peculiar dark, introspective eyes that never seem to miss any movement in a room."

April 1921. Minnie said a man chased her, throwing stones. He was never found. The next night, Constables Stennett and Taylor were shocked when a pane of glass was smashed by what appeared to be "a pea rifle bullet."

Then came the thumpings. Blows struck the walls hard enough to be heard about 100 yards away. Ornaments fell from the sideboard. To those inside, the sounds seemed to come from outside. To those outside, they seemed to come from within. A police sergeant sat about a yard from Minnie and heard thumps "sufficient to shake the cottage to its foundations." Stones the size of walnuts fell on the roof. They came through Minnie's bedroom window onto her bed. They followed her across the paddocks. Almost every window was smashed.

Up to 80 armed volunteers formed a double cordon around the house at night, alongside local police. When the knocking began, they closed in. They found nothing.

The spiritualist Ben Davey of Uralla said Minnie asked the knocker whether it was her sister. Three knocks answered. "I can tell you my hair stood up on end," Davey said. Minnie reported that May spoke: "Tell mother I am perfectly happy where I am."

The disturbances paused. Then they began again. In May, the trouble seemed to follow Minnie to her grandmother's house in Church Street, Glen Innes. "While the family were having tea a stone crashed against the dining room window."

The state government sent detectives from Sydney. Inspector-General of Police James Mitchell felt the entire thing was a joke. Around 27 April, a headline announced the mystery solved. Minnie had admitted to Sergeant Ridge that she caused three rappings "for a joke" and threw three small stones on the roof. She denied everything else. Later accounts say Ridge and Hardy, an officer from Sydney, watched her throw stones, though no primary source for this has yet been traced.

H. J. Moors, a merchant from Samoa and a friend of Conan Doyle, saw it differently. With five assistants he removed sections of the roof to make lookout posts, and set traps. He concluded the events were "not the product of trickery" but poltergeist activity.

Karen Stollznow has argued for a stressed child's prank that grew beyond her control. A local museum volunteer recalled Minnie as a ventriloquist. Others proposed a prowler or local larrikins. Paul Cropper sees Minnie as "unconsciously the focus" of genuinely strange events.

Within weeks, the story became The Guyra Ghost Mystery, a five-reel silent comedy that mocked Moors as "Sherlock Doyle." The film is now lost. Minnie married, lived in Armidale, and was later killed by a car. Guyra still carries the name, in its rugby team and its museum. Writers have revisited the case in Fortean Times, books and podcasts, but it has never been completely solved.