Note 75 — Chapter IV

For the sake of comparison, I give the latest American case which comes under my notice. The scene is Akron, a bustling town in the State of Ohio; the time October, 1878. ‘Mr. and Mrs. Michael Metzler, middle-aged Germans, with their little daughter, ten years of age, and Mrs. Knoss, Metzler’s mother-in-law, recently moved to a brick house in the suburbs known as Hell’s Half Acre. The house is a good, substantial building, situated in a somewhat open space, and surrounded by a lonesome deserted air. A few days after they had moved, they were disturbed by sharp rappings all over the house, produced by small stones or pebbles thrown against the window panes. Different members of the family were hit by these stones coming to and going from the house. Other persons were hit by them, the stones varying in size from a pea to a hen’s egg. Mrs. Metzler said that when she went after the cow in the evening, she could hear these stones whistling around her head. Mr. and Mrs. Metzler, who are devout Catholics, had Father Brown come to the house to exorcise the spirits which were tormenting them. The reverend father, in the midst of his exercises, was struck by a stone, and so dismayed thereby that he went home in despair.’ (Newspaper account.)