Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

A brief news item, but the headline was not to be resisted.  The “South Wales Argus,” June 14, 1950:

Bracquegnies, Belgium--A Belgian woman, on honeymoon here, said to-day that a ghost with a hair-do like Mistinguette, had torn her nightdress.

“It had a saucer eyes, a hooked nose, and a crooked chin,” said 20-year-old Madame Marie de Roeck-Bonvarlet.

Her husband, 22-year-old miner Hector de Roeck-Bonvarlet, added:  “I am going scatty.  I live in a constant sweat and change my pyjamas three times a night.”

The couple are not the only ones to have seen the ghost.

The village priest spent a night in the haunted house trying to solve the mystery, and said afterwards: "I was scratched by an invisible hand."

Monsieur Duret, Burgomaster of this town, is organizing ghost-hunts assisted by most of the 9,000 population.

Hector said the ghost walks from just after midnight until 4 a.m. It starts by grabbing people by the throat and kicking their bodies as they lie in bed. Tonight the young couple will go to bed with doors and windows barred while villagers mount guard outside.

This sounded like it had the potential to be a first-rate haunting, but, alas, the story seems to have quickly disappeared from my available newspapers.