Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

This tale of a Welsh poltergeist--complete with all the classic trimmings--appeared in the “Buffalo Sunday Morning News,” January 16, 1910:

(Special Cable to the Sunday News)

CARDIFF. Jan. 15. A quaint tale of a spook comes from the small Carmarthenshire village of Llanarthney, and in this case the ghostly visitant seems to be peculiarly vicious, missiles being hurled through the air by an unseen hand.  The mysterious happenings which have terrified the peaceful villagers have taken place at the Emlyn Arms Inn, and a local correspondent says appearances go to show that this old-fashioned hotel must either be haunted or that an exceedingly marvelous conjurer has been able to completely defy police and other detention. 

On Wednesday night, just after closing the inn, Mrs. Meredith, the landlady, whose husband was spending his holidays in North Wales, was pelted with stones as she was tending the cattle. She attached no significance to this, but when her servant girl, aged 13, who bore her company, responded to a knock at the front door a candlestick came whizzing through the passage. Yet not a soul was seen either in or about the premises. 

More mysterious still, various missiles were presently hurled from every quarter of the kitchen, and, terrified in the extreme, Mrs, Meredith shrieked for help. Mrs. Jenkins, wife of the village constable, and her sister-in-law, Miss Jenkins, hurried to the house of mystery at midnight, but so eerie were the antics of the presumed visitant from the spiritual world that neither dared enter the Inn, nor would others venture therein, until the arrival at 2:30 A.M. of Police Constable Gwilym Jenkins, who had cycled through the colliery districts on duty. 

He believed that his services were needed to arrest a burglar, but search where and how he would, no person could be found, although he heard the tramping of "padded feet" on the stairway and in the upper chambers. Bottles fell at his feet and were smashed, says our correspondent. A heavy black varnished stone ornament "jumped off" a bedroom mantelpiece and fell close to his head as he was looking under the bed for a burglar, and stones which bad been immersed in white lime went hither and thither in most inconceivable fashion, while teapot covers and covers of other things came hurling down, to the astonishment of the constable, his wife, sister-in-law, post office officials and the occupants of the inn. 

The spectators, it is said, saw a polished box fall from Meredith's waistcoat, which was hanging in the kitchen. This waistcoat was ironed by Mrs. Meredith on the previous evening, and she could not have failed to notice the box had It been there then. At 3:30 in the morning mistress and maid sought refuge in the house of a mason employed by Earl Cawdor, who owns the inn, but when they returned the following morning with the constable the mysterious happenings were resumed. 

These occurrences were witnessed by other people, including the vicar and curate of the parish. Constable Jenkins, who has been in the Carmarthenshire constabulary about nine years, asserts that this narrative is true in detail, and that it is not the imaginings of Christmas hilarity, for the spectators were perfectly sober and he is a strict teetotaler himself.

The whole affair is simply inexplicable. The constable had the house surrounded by workmen, and had a burglar been at the inn he would have been captured.

I couldn’t find any updates to this story.  Possibly this was one of those polt incidents that comes and goes almost immediately.