Chicago, 1878: a locked parlor where the furniture kept moving.

What the paper reported

For several nights an idle, gaping crowd gathered outside a little frame cottage on Finnell Street that was said to be haunted, until police moved them along. The family said furniture kept rearranging itself in a locked front parlor, and bedclothes ended up piled on the floor. The paper thought the stories exaggerated, but it never explained the moving furniture.

Exhibit A · Transcription

Haunted.

Mysterious Manifestations.

For two or three nights past people of weak nerves, and predisposed to more or less of a belief in the supernatural, living in the neighborhood of No. 58 Finnell street, have gone to sleep with visions of ghostly apparitions, chalky-hued as to their faces, and clad in the traditional sheet allowed to all well-behaved ghosts, before their eyes. For as many days the little frame cottage at the number above mentioned has been the object of very curious gazes from an idle, gaping crowd, and significant remarks have been whispered around to the effect that it was haunted; while as soon as dusk set in the adjacent sidewalks and curbstones have been pre-empted as vantage ground by the same would-be ghost-seers, whose reflections have, however, been interrupted in their bloom by the approach of several officers wearing police uniform, at whose suggestion they have moved off and taken walks around the block, only to return again, and again be bounced. All sorts of absurd stories, fearfully and wonderfully made, were retailed to everybody that cared to hear them. But, as usual with stories of haunted houses, they were very, very much exaggerated. For the deal of smoke there was a decidedly small amount of fire.

Later in the same article (not in the image)

A few days ago, they say, some very unaccountable things began to happen. One morning after they had gotten up and went out, the furniture was moved. At another time, when they were out of the house, it was again moved around, and the bed-clothes pulled off the bed and piled upon the floor. This began to be monotonous, but it went on,—always, however, when they were out of the house, or at least out of the front room—a parlor—where the moving was carried on. Nobody else was in the room, they say, for after this moving got to be a regular sort of thing they looked carefully over the room, went out, locked all the doors to it so that nobody could get in, and awaited the result. It was always nearly the same. The bureau would be moved forward, the vases and other ornaments on it placed on the floor, the chairs arranged in pairs back to back, and the bedclothes hung up on the floor. It was all very puzzling.

Transcribed from the page image, spelling as printed; line-end hyphens joined. Checked word by word against the Library of Congress’s OCR text.

Newspaper

Chicago Daily Tribune

Published in

Chicago, Illinois

Headline

Haunted.

Date

August 6, 1878

Page

8

Permalink

www.loc.gov/resource/sn84031492/1878-08-06/ed-1/?sp=8

Source

Library of Congress, Chronicling America. Public domain (published 1878).