The Vienna Workshop Poltergeist: Job Zimmerl's Smithy at Lerchenfelder Straße 158

Lerchenfelder Straße 158, Vienna. A large house inhabited by tradespeople and workmen. At the end of a long court, in the half-basement, was the workshop of Job Zimmerl, a smith of about 63. He worked there with two apprentices, aged about 15 and 18.

The house had a history. From about the start of 1906 until about March, a man in a small room above the shop complained that his furniture was being moved about. Then nothing. Until early July.

It began with tools. "Tools, bits of iron, screws, his pipe, etc." were thrown off the benches and flung about. Zimmerl suspected his apprentices. Then objects flew while the boys were outside, from a direction where there was only solid wall.

A rather heavy hammer repeatedly whirled close past Zimmerl's head. His pipe flew across the shop and back to the anvil. Once it stood on its clay head, made "a vicious 'peck'" and broke. His notebook flew out of the window "like a butterfly." Two petroleum lamps were smashed overnight, and by then seven window panes were broken.

Monday 16 July 1906. August Wärndorfer arrived for the Society for Psychical Research. On the blackened ceiling he noticed a mark, left, he was told, by a tin box of plaster of Paris thrown up the evening before. It was shaped like a comet, with a nucleus and a tail. Every particle was round. He could not conceive how it was made without some trace of wiping along.

Then the objects found him. A piece of iron about the size of a walnut touched the top of his felt hat. A small blade of steel struck the back of his neck. A fragment of clay pipe followed. He had put such pieces on a shelf well out of the boys' reach.

About 4.30 he watched the boys drilling a hole in a piece of iron, hands fully occupied. The younger one screamed, bent double with pain and fright. A pair of big iron compasses from the bench a yard behind had hit him on the temple, leaving a swelling and a little blood. In three hours Wärndorfer saw, heard or felt exactly 30 objects thrown about. With about 12 or 15, he was perfectly certain no one present could have thrown them.

Police found the walls solid and in good order. An electrician tested the neighboring dynamo with precision instruments and detected no electrical or magnetic reaction. Reporters came, followed by spiritualists who sat with the boys at night. Afterwards, the phenomena had increased.

A detective had been at the shop for some time. He watched the apprentice who had always been considered the medium put his right hand frequently into his coat pocket. As the boy took out a handkerchief, an iron ring flew against the wall. The boy was arrested. The judge would have no discussion of occult matters, fined him 3 kronen and dismissed the case in less than ten minutes.

Wärndorfer accepted the court's silence on the occult but stood by what he had seen. Miss A. Johnson of the SPR called him "an unusually cool-headed and competent observer." His report appeared in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research in 1907, and W.F. Barrett retold it in 1911. The SPR's Psi Encyclopedia now files it as the Vienna Workshop Poltergeist. The court took less than ten minutes. The 12 or 15 objects no one could have thrown were never part of it.