Spooky GoodiE-ness

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Bonus Stories!

 

1: Yet Another Rock Throwing Poltergeist

 

You might think rock throwing poltergeists are just an old world phenomena but there have been some pretty big happening in the USA too, albeit, before it was the USA.

On Great Island, New Hampshire - now called New Castle, New Hampshire- The summer of 1682 was not marked by the usual rhythms of colonial harvest or trade, but by a relentless, terrifying siege from…from..well your guess is as good as mine.   

        George Walton, referred to in all historical texts as “a man of substance” and a tavern keeper, found his world fractured by “an intelligence that defied the laws of God and man”. This was the birth of Lithobolia—the Stone-Throwing Devil—and it remains perhaps the most chilling, well-documented poltergeist outbreak in American history. Although few today know about it, even if you follow the paranormal.

 

It began on a quiet June day, but the silence was soon shattered by a sound that would become a terrible nightmare: the rhythmic, violent thud of stones against timber. At first, it was easy to ignore as perhaps a prank by a gang of local youth, or if you’re the hard to shake up type, maybe a series of rocks kicked by passing horses that just happen, by chance, to hit in the same place. But then the stones began to defy physics, causing even the hard to swallow explanation of horse hooves “to be bitter to the tongue.” In contemporary terms, hard to swallow.

 

     Witnesses, including the Secretary of the Province, Richard Chamberlain, watched in paralyzed horror as rocks, bricks, and even heavy iron tools appeared to materialize out of thin air, accelerating with impossible velocity and fly toward their targets.

 

The paranormal nature of the assault was so clear and undeniable to everyone, not just the common man, but also to government officials. To people in charge, the stones didn’t just fall; they were thrown, and thrown hard. They struck with the “force of a musket ball”, in one statement it was said they often emerged from empty rooms or through solid walls. Inside the tavern, the air grew thick with a cold, oppressive weight. Objects didn't just move; they danced with a malevolent, mocking agility. A pewter pot would levitate and hover, spinning with a low, vibrating hum before crashing into a wall. The family of the tavern owner, huddled in terror, as they watched chairs upended and beds shaken by unseen forces.

 

      The entity—or whatever kind of malicious thing it was—seemed to possess a cruel, predatory consciousness. It targeted the family’s most vulnerable moments. During the night, the bombardment would intensify, the house groaning under the impact of stones. Those stones seemed to pass through the very fabric of the building. It was as if the house itself was being digested by an invisible, stone-wielding, building eating monster. The atmosphere was paralyzing but vibrating at the same time, as if your body couldn’t move, yet your innards couldn’t stop quivering, and all the air around you smelled of damp earth, a sensory signature often associated with high-energy, spontaneous psychokinesis these days.

 

Walton’s desperate attempts to defend his home were futile. He fired his musket at the source of the stones, only to have the projectiles pass harmlessly through the air, or worse, have the stones return with increased fury. It was a battle between a man of the physical world and a force that existed in the cracks between realities. The psychological toll was immense; the family felt watched, judged, and hunted by a presence that knew their every move.

 

In the eyes of the 17th-century settlers, this was the work of a witch, specifically a neighbor, Hannah Jones, with whom Walton had a bitter land dispute. They viewed the stones as physical manifestations of a curse, a demonic corruption of the material world. But looking back through the lens of the paranormal, we see a classic, high-octane over the top poltergeist event. The "Stone-Throwing Devil" as it came to be called was not a creature of horns and hooves, but a raw, chaotic eruption of psychic energy, likely fueled by the intense, repressed emotions of the household that gave it a form of intent.

 

When the bombardment finally ceased in September, it left behind a community forever changed. The stones were cleared away, but the memory of the "Devil" lingered like a stain on the landscape.

 

 

Now, lets look at the next story. It takes place almost 200 years later and about 150 miles away. The 1874 poltergeist outbreak in North Pownal, Vermont. This one also remains one of the most unsettling, yet often overlooked chapters in American paranormal history. While the era was rife with spiritualism and a fascination with the occult, the events that unfolded at the farmhouse of the local residents were not merely parlor tricks or mediumistic séances. Instead, they were violent, physical assaults that defied the rational constraints of the 19th century, leaving observers to grapple with the terrifying possibility that something unseen had laid claim to their homes.

 

The disturbances began with a subtle, rhythmic tapping, a common precursor in poltergeists of this nature found in literature, but like so many, quickly escalated into a relentless, high-velocity bombardment. Stones—ranging from small pebbles to heavy, jagged rocks—began to strike the exterior of the house with such force that they it was like they were being shot out of an invisible projection weapon. Witnesses, including neighbors and local officials who arrived to investigate, were stunned to see stones materialize out of thin air, sometimes passing through closed windows or solid wooden doors without leaving a point of entry. People were terrified.

 

What was causing the North Pownal case was clear to everyone, including the investigators, was not simple vandalism but was the unseen, and sometimes clearly impossible to explain. An uncanny, predatory intelligence was behind the activity. The stones did not just hit the house; they tracked the occupants. If a family member moved from the kitchen to the parlor, the barrage would shift, following them with a precision that suggested a conscious, watchful entity. 

 

      The atmosphere inside the farmhouse became thick with a palpable, static charge, a sensory anomaly that frequently accompanies high-energy psychokinetic events. Witnesses reported that the air grew unnaturally cold, and the very structure of the house seemed to vibrate, as if the entity were  drawing sustenance from the physical environment.

 

The paranormal nature of the event was made more indisputable by the way the objects behaved. Stones would often hover briefly before striking, or travel in impossible, curved trajectories, going around obstacles to hit their target. When the family attempted to fortify the windows and doors, the bombardment simply intensified, as if the entity was either mocking their efforts to maintain order or angered by their efforts to keep it at bay. The psychological impact was profound; the house, once a sanctuary, had been transformed into a site of constant, unpredictable danger.

 

In the context of the 1870s, the North Pownal incident was viewed through a lens of contemporary belief and religious apprehension. To the local community, most, if not all, believe that it was the angry ghost of the Widow Krieger who was falsely accused of being a witch and put on trial the traditional way for the time, she was tied up and tossed in the river. If she floated she was a witch and would be hung. If she sunk and drowned, she was innocent, but unfortunately dead. It made perfect sense to people of that time.

 

However, viewed through the modern framework of parapsychology, the episode fits the classic profile of a spontaneous, localized poltergeist outbreak. These events are often theorized to be "spontaneous psychokinesis," where intense, repressed emotional energy—often centered around a specific individual within the home—is discharged into the environment, manifesting as physical movement, often with intent, albeit, not easy to see.

 

When the activity finally subsided, it left the North Pownal community with more questions than answers. No logical explanation—neither human prankster nor natural occurrence—could account for the sheer intensity and duration of the bombardment. The stones were eventually cleared away, but the farmhouse remained marked by the experience.  Sometime, within the next generation or so, the farm was let to go to waste and eventually the house was abandoned. Now, only a cellar hole remains in the brush and woods.

 

These two stories of Lithobolia, (in Greek mythology means evil spirit that throws stones), remain a testament to the fact that, even in the earliest days of our history, the veil between the known and the unknown was paper-thin. It was a time when the darkness didn’t hide its secrets; it threw them at our feet, demanding that we acknowledge the terrifying, inexplicable power that occasionally can easily tear through the fabric of our reality, reminding us that sometimes, the darkness does not just watch us—it throws stones.

 

 

2: Calls From The Dead

 

If you’re a fan of the paranormal you probably heard of the story of the older couple that lived just east of Reno Nevada.

 

The man, John, passed away, and not long after that his wife, who apparently had been suffering from dementia, started calling 911 several times a week, sometimes a day, asking for simple things that one would assume John would do for her, like - could you please make something for dinner tonight. Could you please turn the kettle on.  Can you put the heat up/down. Things like that. Some of the stories I researched had the request worded a bit different but they were all basicly the same,

 

The 911 responders were very kind to her and explained they were an emergency only line.  After a bit, the dispatchers offered to send social services out to her, but she kindly refused. very sweetly explained she was just a bit confused but she had help, thanked them, and hung up. So no emergency personal were ever dispatched.

 

This went on for some weeks. One day she called and started yelling for John (her  dead husband).  “John, please come home! Help me! I need help! Where are you?!”

Police were dispatched right away.

 

When they arrived the house was quiet. When they went in all seemed in order, except there was no heat on, and it was cold in the house. Otherwise, the house was empty of sound. They searched and found the woman laying dead in her bedroom as if she were asleep.  Her body was cold and in a state of total rigor mortis. Full rigor mortis generally takes 12 hours, and if it’s cold it can take even longer.  This made it impossible for her to make the phone call that brought the emergency services.

 

The woman was removed by the usually means, and taken to the morgue. While at the morgue another phone call from the woman arrived, again crying in distress about needing help from John. The police returned to the house to check for a second resident who might be hiding and making the calls, but there was no one.  During their investigation, not only did they learn that John was her dead husband but that depending on which account I researched, the phone had been disconnected for non-payment from 4 days before her death, or a week after her husband’s death.

 

Most reports say that the calls kept coming from the number, but despite the fact that no one at 911 wanted to answer them, by law they had to. At first the woman’s voice was low and said things like, where is John. After a while there was only silence on the other end, but number continued to call 911.

 

In most reports, not long after this, the house burned to the ground. After it was demolished, all the phone calls stopped.  

When this story first appeared in the public, it had so much less detail and far less contradicting facts.  Such is the internets effects on the truth or embellishments on a story that can make something with strong evidence into an urban legend. Regardless, there had to be something there to build on.

 

Now for a story you may not know about.  A story that happened far back when telephones were first getting popular and a few people still had party lines, no more than a couple of people heard this.  And believe it or not, it became the inspiration for an old horror story now about a century old.

 

Back in those days, all phones were run on lines that were hung on poles like electrical lines are today. There were no plastics then so electrical lines were covered in rubber and phone lines in cloth. Then set on arms across poles like crosses at least 4 to 6 feet apart.  This was because if the high voltage of the power lines and the low voltage of the phone lines crossed, almost anything could happen, from the rarely seen signal interference to most often seen instant fire, and deadly shock.

 

One night in the early 1920’s in Portsmouth, NH there was a storm. It was nothing unusually harsh, but the wind hit a telephone pole that was in some loose, soggy ground, just right and it toppled over onto a grave yard wall and broke, causing the electrical line and the telephone line to intersect and fuse together, laying on a grave stone. Luckily there was no fire or shock.

 

The rain didn’t let up for several days, and it was impossible to approach the pole until it stopped and the area around the pole dried enough so the repair crew could safely fix the damage. Remember this was before all our technology.

 

This is where things get interesting.  The gravestone was of a man whose desendants have asked me not to use his real name anymore when I tell this story, as there has been some vandalism after one story telling event I did. So I’m just going to call him Jack. 

 

Jack was a veteran who died in World War 1, before this incident. That night, the phone buzzed. 

 

Now, this is important. Listen carefully, Party lines were phone lines that worked like extensions on landlines, or shared cell phone lines.  What I mean, is they were common shared calls. Everyone in a city who had a phone had a party line. Of course the etiquette required that if  you picked up the receiver and heard someone using the phone you immediately hung up. You did not listen. But few did this.  They just got very quiet, afterall, who can resist some juicy gossip.  Each Party phone rang (or in the 1920’s buzzed) in all the houses at one time, since technically they were one line. To maintain privacy each customer had there own buzz with a special code.  But this didn’t stop the busy bodies.

 

So late afternoon, while Alice, Jacks wife was looking at the rain cover the setting sun, having no idea the telephone pole had fallen, she heard the buzz code on her party line phone break through her daydream. Of course, she wasn’t the only one in town to pick it up and listen.  This was how we got the witnesses to the events below.

 

“Hello”, Alice said. She was met met with only static. “Hello”, she said again.

 

The static grew louder, then broke to silence, then you could hear the rain. The phone hung up from that far end,

 

Not 10 minutes later it rang again

She said “hello”.

This time the static grew louder quicker, and she heard what she clearly knew was her husband Jack’s voice say. “Hello Sweetheart, can you hear me.” She dropped the receiver.  When she picked it up the phone had been hung up,

 

This happened 2 more times before the sun had set and the dark of night engulfed the sky.  Each time she picked up the phone, Jacks voice in the static asked if she could hear him. Though she said on the second call, “Yes”, again and again,

 

For several days she kept getting calls that she would answer and hear greetings from her husband, who was surely dead, calling her sweetheart and asking if she could hear him.  She asked him questions, he never answered. She told him her feelings of loss and her love, he was silent. Then the call hung up.

 

He always called between dusk and sunset; 3-4 times a night.

She called her parish priest to come hear the calls, that’s when the message changed. When the priest picked up the phone the ghost of Jack said he was on his way home from the war, as if he had no idea he had died on the battlefield.

 

The priest gave a blessing over the phone and then told Jack he was going to his grave tomorrow at 7 a.m. to perform the bless of Last Rites. After hanging up, he suggested to Jack’s wife she come with him. 

 

The next morning was bright and clear when they started off for the cemetery. As they did, half the town came out to walk with them, many holding crucifixes and holy objects.  They were all talking about Jacks calls and what they overheard on the party line,  At least a dozen of them jabbering behind Alice and the priest.

 

As they approached the graveyard there was a utility crew working to remove the broken telephone pole.

 

“We’re sorry,” one of the men said, “you can’t come any closer, these wires still have dangerous current passing through them.  You can get hurt if you get any closer.”

 

Alice insisted she and the priest had to get to her husband’s grave. The line worker, assuming he knew what was going on, said, “When the broken line landed on top of that grave it scorched the stone and burned the grass a bit. The stone just needs a good scrub to get the ash off and we can pull out the charred grass and replant it for you.  Don’t fret, I promised I’ll make sure my men do it before they go.

 

The crowd watched through the rest of the morning from a distance as the fallen pole was sawed and taken away, an another one was raised up and secured where the first use to stand.  The lines were fixed and rehung with funny glass caps holding the new wire together to the old and the people wandered away. Alice and the priest went forward as soon as they were allowed to, even before all was done, and bless the grave.

 

That night as the sun went down, the whole town waited at their party lines, but not one rang. It seemed that Jack was gone.

 

The priest told everyone it was the blessing. But everyone else believed it was the wires crossing and touching the gravestone and ground.

 

By the way, Low Frequency Energy (LFE) is a subset of Electro Magnetic Frequency (EMF). I have no idea, but water, as in the rain from the storm, can conduct it. But to any useful extent for this purpose is questionable 

 

So what happened back 100 years ago in Portsmouth, NH?  I know the family believes Jack phoned Alice. And they believe that they are together. A person in the family says they have even had several strange phone calls themself they believe to be from family passed on.

 

As for me, I believe it. Too  many people on the party line. Too many other reports from hundreds of people since phones have existed that talk of calls from the dead. And of course there was this time I picked up a 000 number to hear my mothers voice say, “Mitch, Mitch is that you?”  I replied.. Mom?  And the phone hung up.  Mom never talked much.

 

And please, if you ever call me from the other side, don’t call me Mitch. I hate that name.  And my mom knows that.