The Jaboticabal poltergeist (Maria José Ferreira)

December 1965. Jaboticabal, a town approximately 200 miles north of São Paulo. Inside the home of the Ferreiras, a Catholic family, pieces of brick began falling seemingly from nowhere. Stones came through windows and doors. Knocking sounded in the walls. Furniture was said to be walking.

The family called the local priest, who performed an exorcism. After he left, the activity reportedly became five times more violent than before.

João Volpe was a dentist, a Spiritist and a neighbour. He first visited on 21 December 1965 and concluded that the focus was the family's 11-year-old daughter, Maria José Ferreira. He took her into his own home. There, the bombardment of stones and eggs began.

Volpe kept count. By his tally, 312 stones had fallen inside his home since Maria arrived. One weighed 3.7 kg. Another split in two on its way down, the pieces flying in different directions. A stone tapped three people on the head, a touch they compared to a ball of compressed air. Her "invisible companions" also brought gifts. Candy at her feet. A brooch. Flowers and sugarapple fruits that had been stored indoors.

For three weeks, plates, glasses and even heavy flower vases were thrown around the house in all directions. Chairs, a large sofa and a gas cylinder followed. Pictures and a mirror were torn from the walls. Maria José was slapped and bitten. Cups were placed over her mouth while she slept.

Then the needles. They appeared deep in the flesh of her left heel, and fifty-five had to be removed at the same time. On 14 March 1966, her clothing began to smolder with fire while she ate lunch at school. That same day the Volpes' bedroom burst into flames. Volpe was badly burned.

Maria José was taken to the Spiritist centre of the medium Chico Xavier in Uberaba, Minas Gerais. A spirit reportedly spoke through him. "She was a witch. A lot of people suffered and I died because of her." Prayer and magnetic hand passes eased the worst of it. Fruit and vegetables were still thrown.

After about a year with Volpe, Maria José went back to her mother's home. In 1970 she died after drinking a soft drink laced with pesticide. Accounts differ. One gives her age as fifteen or sixteen. Another says she was found dead three days after coming home from Xavier's centre, and that an autopsy led to a ruling of suicide. One retelling says all the poltergeist activity ceased with her death.

Volpe's report was said to be witnessed and signed by many respected people. It has never been located. No police inquiry, scientific study or contemporary press coverage has surfaced, and nearly every account traces back to Guy Lyon Playfair's The Indefinite Boundary (1976), often by way of Rosemary Ellen Guiley's encyclopedia. No hoax finding has been published. The usual sceptical answers, a child secretly throwing objects or wounds a distressed girl inflicted on herself, have never been argued for this case.

Those who accept the events offer two readings. Volpe reportedly saw a poltergeist as the repressed frustration of a family member, close to the view researchers call RSPK. Xavier's spirit spoke of revenge for a past life. The needles invite comparison with the Lamb Inn case in Bristol in 1761, and Playfair reportedly set the fatal outcome beside the Bell Witch. It remains one of the darkest poltergeist stories on record.