Newspaper Clipping of the Day

via Newspapers.com

This Fortean mystery comes from the "Great Falls Tribune," August 4, 1957:

Tulsa, Okla--Mr. and Mrs. C. V. Wilkinson and their 12-year-old daughter packed their belongings and moved out of the house they claim is "haunted" by an electrical phenomenon.

"I'm about to crack up," Mrs. Wilkinson said. "I wish someone would come forward and tell us what's causing all this."

The family thought their troubles had ended after Wilkinson, an oil company employee, dug up water pipes around the house and removed a new metal fence he believed responsible for creating a magnetic field.

The family slept in their car after tables and chairs went on a weird "dance" and overturned. They are puzzled as to what's causing electrical plugs to blow up without being connected, a sweeper to go on an aimless course through the house, and various household articles to start hopping around.

The "mystery" has damaged their $1,300 electrical organ, caused the refrigerator motor to blow out twice and knocked the clock from its shelf six times.

Wilkinson said be had lived on the property for 23 years without prior incident, until this month. "We don't know if the thing is a magnetic field, uranium, an old gas pocket under the ground, or what," said Wilkinson, "but it has us completely unnerved and so upset we can't live a normal life here. We're moving."

An August 4 article in the "Springfield Daily Leader" added a particularly creepy detail:  One night, the Wilkinson daughter came into her mother's room complaining that the sweeper was "crawling over her stomach."  When Mrs. Wilkinson went into the girl's bedroom, she saw that the sweeper's extension cord had been wrapped around the bed several times, and the vacuum itself was sitting on the bed, apparently waiting for someone to tuck it in for the night.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find any more about the Wilkinsons, so I'm unable to say if the "electrical phenomenon" was ever explained.