The Mäkkylä Ghost: the Heinonen poltergeist of Espoo, 1946

Mäkkylä, autumn 1946. A small cottage stood south of the Turku road and the railway, next to the Mäkkylä railway halt, on what is now Fonseenintie. It belonged to the Leppävaara police district. Today the spot lies on the border of Helsinki and Espoo. Here lived August Heinonen, a retired constable, with his wife Maria, their daughter Elisa and Elisa's son Martti, aged 14.

10 October 1946. At dusk, stones began to strike the house. They kept coming until about 10 p.m. The next evening, they came again. For nearly two weeks the house was stoned evening after evening. Once a stone flew in through the window and nearly hit Mrs Heinonen on the head. Another struck Elisa's leg.

The police assumed vandalism. One evening more than ten officers surrounded the house. They used a searchlight. An officer threatened to fire. The stones kept hitting the walls.

21 October. Now it was happening indoors. Stove doors burst open and the contents flew out. The coffee pot, the boiling kettle and the iron flew to the floor by themselves. A heavy table rose into the air and crashed back down. The dish cupboard took a hard blow to its top and split down the middle. Light bulbs were unscrewed from the chandelier. Locked doors opened at night.

The fuses would not stay put. They flew out of the electricity meter, even after being wired back in, and nearly hit a senior constable on the head. Ilmari Heinonen nailed his beret over a fuse. The fuse reportedly went through the beret without loosening it. Electrician Väinö Kanteleinen saw the coffee pot, kettle and iron fall.

26 October. The story reached the press. Helsingin Sanomat quoted a constable: "Kyllä minä nyt uskon." Well, now I believe it. Crowds followed, and police often had to move them on. Some called the family readers of the Black Bible. When Heinonen refused to let one group in, a man struck him. Around the turn of October and November, about a month after it began, it stopped. The cottage was later demolished.

The Leppävaara police said the stone-throwing was real but the indoor events were sensationalist exaggeration. No officer admitted seeing them, and they denied the famous remark. Martti was questioned at the station, yet the disturbances continued while he was away. Elisa was suspected too, at one point of causing it unknowingly because of her sleep problems. Ilmari Heinonen sent an account to the Parapsychological Research Society.

In 1996, Reino Lindfors, a Leppävaara officer in 1946, told his son it had been a hoax. Versions differ on the culprit: a man just over 20 pulling stones from his pocket, a young man in the house, a teenage boy living there. The claim is second-hand. No 1946 record of an arrest has been found.

Researcher Heikki Tikkala included the case in his 1993 book on Finnish poltergeists, counting five eyewitness stories, light phenomena and no communication. It sits beside stone-throwing cases at Kuhamäki, Nikkilänmäki and Halola. In 2025 a University of Jyväskylä thesis found that the Mäkkylä coverage brought crowds to the site and marked a broadening of press attitudes in the 1940s.