The Rutherglen Poltergeist, Stonelaw Road (2016)

Stonelaw Road runs through Rutherglen, a town in South Lanarkshire just south-east of Glasgow. In early August 2016, a mother and her son, a boy described as in his early teens, were living in a private house there. The family were devout Catholics. Their names have never been published. The trouble began small. Then it grew worse. Items were moving around on their own. Candlesticks, lamps and phones. The mother called the police.

8 August 2016. Police Scotland officers came to the house. "The officers attended expecting it to be a mental health issue," one police source later said, "but they witnessed the lights going off, clothes flying across the room and the dog sitting on top of a hedge."

When the lights came back on, the lampshades were upside down. The oven door opened and closed by itself. A mobile phone flew across a room. The family's chihuahua was found on top of a seven-foot hedge. Nobody said they saw it rise. It was simply there.

At least three officers were involved. Some had more than 20 years' service, and they said they had never seen anything like it. They called in senior officers to see for themselves. Police were called to the house again on 9 August. "These were incidents that were witnessed by our own officers," a source said. "Incidents that are not easily explained."

The mother and son were described as extremely distressed. Police asked the Catholic Church for help. A priest came to the house and performed what The Register said was "euphemistically called a 'blessing'". Other outlets used a stronger word. Exorcism. Police also checked the history of the property for similar reports from earlier residents, and doctors and social services were reported to be involved. The mother and son went to stay with relatives.

Who broke the story is unclear. Several outlets credit the Daily Record, while a 2023 retrospective names the Rutherglen Reformer. The Telegraph ran it on 14 August 2016. Within days it had reached Greece and the United States. The mother later complained about the media attention and about local teenagers hanging around the house.

Police Scotland's own words were plainer. In 2022, Freedom of Information response 22-0197 confirmed officers were contacted on 08 and 09 August 2016 "to attend a disturbance within a property in Rutherglen". On arrival, "no criminality was established", and "suitable advice was given to the occupant". In November 2025, a second request, FOI 25-3549, asked for the incident reports. Police Scotland refused, citing personal data and section 34(1)(b) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002. The records exist. They remain closed.

The officers had first expected a prank or a mental health issue, and said what they saw fit neither. Douglas Dickie's 2023 Halloween retrospective in the Scottish Daily Express gathered the theories that followed. One is the classic poltergeist idea of adolescent energy, centred here on the teenage son. Another points to wind or air moving up from old mine workings beneath Rutherglen. A third suggests a small earthquake, never verified. No hoax was ever alleged, and no sceptic organisation went on record. The sourcing is thin, though. Every account traces back to unnamed police sources in one or two Scottish papers, and the details grew with each retelling. The chihuahua became "levitating". The blessing became an exorcism.

The case is often set beside the Enfield poltergeist, another household centred on young people, with a police officer among the witnesses. Spooky Isles and the Sunday Post have both retold it. The gap between the vivid press accounts and the bare official phrase "a disturbance" is still the heart of the mystery.