Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 59, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 March 1920 — SPOOK IS HUNGRY [ARTICLE]

SPOOK IS HUNGRY

“Hant” Makes Announcement, but Can’t Be Located. Providence (Rhode Island) Clthrena Have a Real Sensation In •Manifestation*” Which Hav* Baffled Elucidation. Residents of Pond street, in Providence, R~ L are *ll on edge, for the house at 207. they assert, is undoubtedly “haunted.” For a week “manifestation*” have been going on there, and when it camo to the point where the cellar was Jammed Ml of curiou* people and * Une was waiting out through th* yard into the street, the police took hold. Tenants said they would move If they could only find a place to move to, and both up and down the street dwellers said if someone did not do something pretty soon they would think of' moving.

It all came about through a “strange voice” which, the neighbors say. emanates from the cellar. A week ago, quoting one of the Pond Streeters, a tenant went Into the cellar and was startled by the voice saying: “Give me something to eat, I’m starving. The tenant upset his coal scuttle, but was not nervous about It He did not want to worry the other tenants, *O he said nothing until someone else, entering the cellar, heard distinctly. •Take me out o’ here.” There was a consultation; tenants laughed when they looked at each other, but they listened when they passed the cellar stairs. A neighboring marketman was called Into consultation. Ha went downstair* “to be shown” and with amazing promptness an eerie voice from behind the confines of the cellar announced: “I know you; you’re the butcher.” Comparison of notes led to the observations that the voice was heard most frequently at 12 noon and at 9 a. m. Noises In the night and the report that a gas range Jazzed across the kitchen floor and back have all been orally chronicled to prove that there is something the matter. Patrolman McLaughlin, the man on the beat, was called in. He heard noises and went In the second day. Then he took the matter up with Captain Higgins. They went down in the cellar together, explored the walls for pipe ends, but found no improvised speaking tubes. They looked the house over outside and discovered no rosincoated twine attached to it, as juveiine telephones are sometimes contrived, and then they shook their heads. Between thirty and forty persons at * time visited the cellar each day. hoping to obtain direct evidence of the “manifestations.” Everybody who went away after waiting In vain heard meanings but, of course, had not expected -anything Intelligible from the “haunted” house with such a big crowd on hand. —Boston Herald..