The Worksop Poltergeist (Joe White's house, Worksop, Nottinghamshire, 1883)

Worksop, Nottinghamshire. 1883. Joe White, a small horse dealer, lived in a semi-detached house on St John's Road, in the area called the "New Building Ground". With him were his wife Lydia, his brothers Tom and John, and three small children. Around 20 or 21 February, Mrs White was "washing up the tea-things at the table" when "the table tilted up at a considerable angle". The candle was upset. She insisted "she exerted no pressure whatever upon the table."

On Monday 26 February, with Joe away, Mrs White let a girl of about ten come to stay and share her bed. Her name was Eliza Rose.

Thursday 1 March. About 11:30 p.m. A corkscrew, clothes pegs and a salt cellar "came tumbling step by step down the kitchen stairs." Tom White was upstairs. He denied throwing anything. About twenty minutes later, hot coals came down too.

Friday night, about 11 p.m. A surcingle and pieces of carpet came down the stairs, faster and faster. White said: "As I was just coming into the room the candle which I held in my hand went out." Then "something hit me on the forehead." He saw "the little china woman jump off from the mantelpiece." It fell on its side. Then it righted itself.

Then the basin. It rose "slowly from the bin" and got "two or three feet in the air". It "went slowly, wobbling as it went, up to the ceiling, and when it reached the ceiling, it fell down all at once." PC William Higgs saw "a large glass jar" come out past him and smash in the yard. "No one was near it," he said. "I don't think White or the girl could possibly have done the things which I saw."

Saturday, about 8 a.m. A nearly empty port wine bottle leaped about four feet into the air and fell into a bucket of milk. Arthur Currass, a coal miner, watched an American clock come from the wall, "slanting wise about seven feet." According to Andrew Lang, it had been silent for eighteen months. It struck before it fell. A pot dog leapt from the mantelpiece and broke. Currass said "there was no one near it."

Neighbours Solomon Wass and his wife backed the family. Dr Lloyd saw some events himself and reportedly said "the devil must be in the house." Crowds of "excited persons" gathered outside. On 7 March the Nottingham Journal ran the story as "Mysterious Affair At Worksop. Spirit Rapping Extraordinary." White lost about £9 in broken goods. When Eliza Rose left, it all stopped. "Wherever the lass seemed to go," White said, "things seemed to fly about."

On 7 and 8 April 1883, Frank Podmore of the Society for Psychical Research arrived. It was one of the earliest poltergeist cases the society investigated. He found a filthy house "stuffed with bacon" and no sign of machinery. White, Higgs and Currass signed his notes. Podmore wrote that "the character of the movements, in many cases, was such as to preclude" throwing by hand. White had no motive. He had lost money. The report appeared in the society's journal in 1884.

In 1896, Podmore changed his mind. He now put the case down to fraud by Eliza Rose, whom he called "half-witted" but of "abnormal cunning". He cited discrepancies in the accounts, memory's exaggeration and frightened expectation. He admitted that, thirteen years on, nothing could be proved.

Andrew Lang disagreed in the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica. Several witnesses had watched at once. And he asked: "how could she throw things from above into the room where she was picking up the things as they arrived?"