The Ghost That Loved Bread: More Welsh Weirdness

The following poltergeist account is frustratingly brief and unresolved, but it’s such a delightfully quirky deviation from the usual pot-throwing, wall-banging polt that I thought it deserved a post.  It was written by Mary L. Lewes in the “Occult Review” for December 1912:

In the year 1907 the Rev. A. B. Clarke was Vicar of Llanarfon in Carmarthenshire. From a certain date in that year up to the time of Mr. Clarke leaving the parish on obtaining his new preferment in the next year, the following extraordinary circumstance repeatedly occurred: Whenever a loaf of bread was placed and left upon the table in any room, no matter what, of the vicarage house at Llanarfon, it was invariably found nibbled all round, when the room where it had been placed was again entered. This happened so often as to cause considerable annoyance to Mr. and Mrs. Clarke and the members of their household, and every possible attempt was made to discover who or what the marauder was.

Rats, mice, or even possibly a neurotic servant-maid were suspected; but the charge in each case was incapable of being sustained. More than once was a loaf placed upon the dining room table, the windows of the room shut and fastened, a chimneyboard placed in the fire-grate, the furniture moved out from the wall, the door locked from the outside, and both door and windows afterwards watched. And yet on entering the room the loaf was invariably found gnawed, and this even when, for the sake of experiment, it had been suspended from the ceiling by a string.

On one occasion a young man, with the approval of the master and mistress of the house, concealed himself in the dining-room, and the loaf was still found to have been nibbled, though the young man declared he had heard and seen nothing. However, he may possibly have fallen asleep and not cared to acknowledge he had done so. This unpleasant happening went on for more than twelve months, and several outside persons besides Mr. Clarke and his family are cognizant of it. It is not generally known whether it still occurs, the subject being, we understand, taboo by those interested in the benefice of Llanarfon.