(From The San Francisco Examiner, dated Sunday 19th December 1926)
Scratches On Her Face Left by the Evil Spirit's Claws
Perplexing Case Of Little Eleanore and Her "Poltergeist" That Smashes Dishes, Throws Things Around, and Marks Her Skin With Its Unseen Fingers
Frequently Little Eleanore Complains That Her "Devil", or "Dracu" as She Calls It, Is Scratching Her Face With Its Invisible Claws. And, Sure Enough, in a Moment or So Scratches and Welts, Like Those Which Would Follow Contact With Sharp Talons, Appear Upon the Child's Skin Without Any Visible Reason to Account for Them.
LONDON, Dec. 5
A little fourteen-year-old Rumanian peasant girl named Eleanore Zugun has thoroughly mystified a number of sober scientists who have been trying to find out why furniture dances, small metal objects whiz through the air and plates smash themselves on the floor and walls when she is around. Also why needles jump out of workbaskets and are, apparently, stuck in her arms and cheeks by an invisible hand.
Even stranger than all this, welts suddenly appear on her face and arms, and now and then these curious markings assume the shapes of letters. Sometimes the welts are red and scratchy, just as though they were made by talons of a claw or long fingernails scraping the skin.
All these curious happenings take place in full sunlight or in the glare of electrics.
The committee which examined Eleanore at the National Laboratory for Physical (This should be Psychical - DF) Research here included Professor William MacDougal, of Harvard University; Professor A. C. Rankine and Hans Thirring of Vienna; Doctors R. Y. Tillyard and Alfred Eddows. distinguished English scientists, and Dr. Henry Price, (and this should be Harry Price! - DF) the director of the laboratory. They were able to find no trace of trickery, either concious or unconcious, and while they decidely do not believe that the strange happenings are caused by any "poltergeist" or malicious spirit which has attached itself to little Eleanore, they are inclined to think that she has demonstrated the possession of some force within her which is able to move objects beyond the reach of her hands.
Nor do they believe that the marks which appear upon her body are made by the unseen claws of any demonic attendant. They say that they belong to a class of little understood mental phenomena whereby the mind of itself is able to cause "stigmata" or marks to appear upon the skin without the use of any instrument. History has recorded a number of such cases, among the most notable of which are the wounds of the Crucifixion which are said to have appeared on the hands and feet of St. Francis of Assisi.
But Eleanore is firmly convinced that she is accompanied wherever she goes by a playfully malicious demon, a "poltergeist," as the Germans call it. Eleanore is not afraid of "it," whatever it is. When "it" is good she leaves out food at night which she believes it likes. When "it" is naughty she leaves out food which she thinks it detests as a punishment.
The devil, according to her story, was saddled on her by a grandmother's thoughtless "curse." Up to about eighteen months ago she was a perfectly normal child with no noisy "spook" to make her conspicuous. Then one day, while she and her brother were on their way to visit their grandmother, she found a silver coin in the woods near her home. She showed her grandmother the money and told her that she was going to buy some candy with it.
"You must not do that. It does not belong to you!" ordered the old woman. "But I want to," said stubborn little Eleanore. The pair had a quarrel about it, and at last the granmother, thinking to frighten her, exclaimed :
"If you spend that coin may the devil haunt you!"
But Eleanore was not frightened. On her way home she spent the money.
She had just returned to her home and was undressing to go to bed when she turned to her mother and said :
"Mother, I feel a hand on my arm. It is cold and has long nails and it is scratching something on my skin."
The mother began to laugh, but stopped as she watched with amazed eyes what appeared to be red welts rising on the little girl's arm. They were exactly like those which appear on tender skin after a scratch from a blunt fingernail.
They began to form into letters. The letters formed a word :
"Dracu." It is the Rumanian word for demon, or devil.
"A dracu! A devil!" the horrified mother cried. "Our Eleanore is possessed by a devil!"
From that time on all sorts of queer things happened in the Zugun household and everywhere else the child went. A heavy chain would begin to dance ponderously, a table would rear up like a frightened horse and tilt off all it held to the floor, dishes fell from the shelves or hustled across the room. Eleanore was not a pleasant visitor to have and all the superstitious villagers were frightened half to death. They shut the doors and closed the windows when they saw her coming.
She was no more welcome in her own home. The village priest tried his best to exorcise the "devil," but failed. And at last Eleanore was sent away to a home for the insane, and everybody was secretly glad to be rid of the poor little "devil child," as they called her.
The great lady of the district is Zoe, Countess Wassiko-Serecki. She heard about Eleanore and pitied her.
So the Countess took the little girl out of the insane asylum. They, too, were glad to get rid of her, because she had made it seem even crazier than such an institution is supposed to be. Little Eleanore went to her titled rescuer's home in Vienna.
The Countess Wassiko-Serecki gives the account of some of the strange things she has watched happen :
"When Eleanore was safely established in my home in Vienna, the first thing I noticed was that she herself was entirely unable to control the manifestations. They appeared to be connected only with her presence in the room and in no way actuated by her will.
"Eleanore has been with me now for twelve months and during that time I have observed as many as 1,700 examples of the mysterious powers that she unwittingly possesses.
"I was in the room with her one day with Dr, Harry Price, and we were both observing her closely. She was winding up some wool into a ball, a perfectly harmless occupation which kept both her hands busy.
"Suddenly we were transfixed with horror.
"On the opposite wall hung a stiletto, a long gleaming dagger of steel, and before our eyes we saw it move, point towards us, and with the speed of a hurricane come whizzing past us. It launched itself without any human help right across the room and plunged into the door near which we had been standing. There it remained deeply imbedded and quivering with the force of the impact.
"Eleanore was aware of this uncanny incident, and she was frightened and came running to my arms. She had dropped the ball of wool on the table, Next moment we were further astonished to see the ball of wool vanish into the air. On opening the workbox later we found the identical ball of wool there. Ten minutes later it reappeared on top of the lid of the box.
"It is not unusual for rings, money and other small objects to disappear when Eleanore approaches, but they are never permanently lost, reappearing again at some other time and place. Metal objects such as brooches seem to be attracted by her. They are never actually found in her possession, but appear to drop from the ceiling of the room she is in or to slide down the wall until they reach the floor.
"Pins and needles thrust themselves into her cheeks, inflicting painful wounds. I have seen the needles jump out of the work basket and project themselves at her, and when I have looked at her I have seen her face a mass of pins, as if she was one of those Indian fakirs who inflict all sorts of tortures upon themselves.
"On our way over from the Continent, when we were in the train between Folkestone and London, there was a continual banging upon the windows of our compartment as though some invisble body outside was trying to gain an entrance. I was more frightened than the child.
"It is the devil trying to get in to me," she said.
"I listened again. Crash! Crash! The blows rained outside the train, which was then travelling at nearly sixty miles an hour. If it really was the devil, he must have borrowed some wings to help him fly along with us!"
The National Laboratory of Psychical Research at London is maintained out of private funds for the scientific investigation of just such cases as Eleanore's. Its membership includes some of the richest, most intelligent and highly placed men and women in England. Two of these members, Lord Charles Hope and Susan, Countess of Malmesbury, are friends of Countess Serecki. It was upon their investigation that she brought the girl to the laboratory.
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| Little Eleanore and Investigators at the Psychic Laboratory, The Shelves Were Covered With a Net to Prevent Her From Using Trickery to Make Objects Upon Them Move, But Nevertheless, Two Jars Were Thrown to the Floor and Another Hurled Through the Net While She Stood There. |
Every precaution was taken against fraud, concious or unconcious. All the tests were carried out in bright light. Yet, while Eleanore's hands and feet were held fast by the investigators, coins, weights up to a pound and rings were moved about without any visible ageny on the table. Letters about two inches high and cut from metal arranged themselves into words while the girl was sitting in a chair, bound, and six feet from them.
Nets were arranged around the laboratory so that no threads or strings could be used by the child to move objects on shelves. Nevertheless, these objects did move. Once a pair of jars were hurled to the floor and another crashed through the net.
At another time, while Eleanore was standing at the end of a passage and Dr. Price was standing at the door of the room where the experiments had taken place, a marked coin which had been placed on top of a cabinet leaped off it and rolled to the window. A second marked coin "jumped" from the lintel of the door.
Again, a ring which had been lost by the secretary for a few hours rolled off a shelf while Eleanore was being held fast in her chair by Professors Thirring and Rankine. An interesting account of the (*another error in the text here! Next line is missing, and instead the following line is repeated. - DF) made by the claws of her "evil spirit" is made by the claws of her evil spirit is thus given by one of the investigators :
"Eleanore was sitting at the table tying up in its box the toy I had given her the day before when she suddenly winced violently as if acute pain.
"On looking at her face we found long 'scratches,' which gradually developed into white weals.
"A few minutes later, when she was standing near the window in a corner of the laboratory to be photographed, she winced again and pointed to her arm. What looked like teeth marks quickly formed. Other clearly defined marks, including two that seemed like attempts at the letters B and O, also appeared.
"Within fifteen minutes Eleanore looked, indeed, as if she had been tattooed all over her face and arms.
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| A Photograph Of Eleanore Showing the Marks Upon Her Face, Which She Says Are Made by the Claws of Her Attendant "Evil Spirit" - And They Do Appear Like Marks of Long, Sharp Fingernails. |
"At the time the markings appeared those present in the room were Mr. H.W. Seton-Karr, F.R.G.S., the well-known explorer, big game shooter and explorer ; Colonel Hardwicke, a member of the council of the laboratory and an experienced and skeptical investigator, and Miss Kaye, secretary of the laboratory.
"All agreed that there was no sign of trickery. Mr. Seton-Karr and Mr. Robert Blair, entirely independent inquirers, both insisted that they had Eleanore under the closest observation and were satisfied that she did not cause the marks by her own physical action."
What is known as the "poltergeist" phenomenon has been observed for many centuries by writers in all countries. The word itself means "rackety," or, better, "pelting ghost." The "manifestations" consist of furniture being moved and broken, objects picked up and thrown around rooms, dishes being broken and strange noises. These take place as much in daylight as at night. Although some have translated the word "poltergeist" as hobgoblin, this is not strictly true. The hobgoblin belongs to the realn of fairyland, and is a partner of the elves, gnomes, fays and the court of Queen Titania. The "poltergeist" belongs to the realm of demonology.
The word "geist" is not to be taken in the sense of "ghost" or "spook," but in the older sense of evil spirit or devil. It is considered to be more mischevious than malignant, although legends tell of it inflicting serious injury by pulling out chairs from under people and hitting them with plates and even heavier objects. Old Martin Luther tells in a rare book of his of an encounter with a "poltergeist" that threw walnuts at him, and Ben Johnson, back in the seventeenth century, investigated a notorious case of a "poltergeist" in London.
It is a fact that while investigation has shown that almost every case has been due to trickery on the part of some person - usually, strangely enough, young girls about the age of Eleanore - there is a considerable residuum of queer happenings for which no cause has ever been found. But, of course, this may be due to the superior cunning of the afflicted person in such cases.
The unusually unfortunate or unusually adroit little Eleanore, having been given up by the English invsetigators, is now in Berlin for similar experiments. Perhaps the Germans may have sharper eyes.
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