Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

It’s time for that ever-popular Fortean staple, the mysterious shower of rocks!  The “Abilene Reporter-News,” November 10, 1962:

BIG BEAR LAKE Calif. (AP) Pebbles from the sky--or someplace--have pelted a house without apparent explanation for four months.

Why? Nobody knows, the sheriff's office says. 

It was spooky for the W.M. Lowe family. They don't believe in goblins, but on Halloween night they gave up and moved out. 

“The rocks were falling from all directions" they reported. 

Ever since the Lowes moved into the one-story house in this Southern California mountain resort last June 15: About four times a week--at all hours of day and night--rocks up to four inches long have rained on the house and an area of about two city blocks around. So say sheriff's deputies, and Lowe, 44, a former Fullerton, Calif., real estate man. 

Sheriff’s investigators theorized that somebody had it in for the Lowes, who endured the mysterious barrages for a month before they sought help. 

But, say officials, they’ve found no pebble tossers, even though they've been Johnny-on-the-spot when: 

A rock dented the hood of a patrol car parked near the house. 

A rock whistled past Deputy Jack H. Cox's ear on Halloween night and hit the house. 

Two window panes in Lowe’s house have been broken, others cracked. Eight windows in a neighboring house were broken. One of the Lowes' five children was bruised by a missile from nowhere. 

Sometimes they come from bright blue sky, says Lowe, sometimes at 4 a.m., noon or midnight. 

Sum result of more than a score of trips by eight different men from the San Bernardino sheriff's office: "The sheriff’s office is investigating.'’ 

The sheriff doesn't believe in goblins, either. 

Lowe's own theory: "I think it might be the wind blowing off that rocky ridge a tenth of a mile away--the closest hill. I have seen pine needles streaming past at treetop level during when rocks fell.”

As far as I know, the mystery was never solved.