Spooks in a Dugout

Levin Daily Chronicle, 2 March 1918, Page 4

Spooks in a Dugout

MYSTERIOUS HAPPENINGS NEAR FOLKESTONE. All Folkestone was a few weeks ago talking about "spooks" and a mysterious affair at Cheriton. Mr Jacques, owner of an ancient but rensvated house known as Enbrook Manor, Cheriton, decided to have a wine cellar made in his garden, which would serve also as a shelter during air raids. He employed a local working builder, Mr Eolfe, who soon, found himself the victim of annoying interferences and a few hard blows from pieces of rock in the cutting. . At first he took little notice of his candle being blown out time after time by a thin blast of white sand'. Nor did the fact that streams of sand were blown down his back cause him more trouble than the fashioning of a canvas helmet and neck cover. But when his candle began to move in the air without apparent hitman agency, and pieces of rock 251b or so in weight, and a sledge hammer weighing as much, and a pickaxe with awkward points, all travelled unaided, he began to wonder.

Several times he spoke to Mr Jacques about it, but the latter, a clear-headed Northerner, despite his name, only laughed. But he also, later, found cause for wonder, although he is certain there is nothing supernatural about the matter.

"I came home one day," he says, "at a time when Eolfe and the boy who assist him were at dinner. I went down into the dug-out, and as I came away pulled the door behind me. Immediately I heard the sound of a large stone being thrown at the door. Before I could decide whether to open it again there were seevral other pieces of rock apparently thrown against the door from inside, and when I opened it I found quite a lot of pieces which I don't believe were there before.''

Mr Jacques' housekeeper, a lady of old-fashioned type, who goes to bed and sleeps when others seek shelter in dugouts, says: "I was in tho garden, and Eolge called to me. 'Come now, you'll see they're at it again. Quickl' I wont to the square entrance at the eastern end of the dug-out and saw there were some bricks lying at the bottom. I saw them begin to move slightly. Then they were lifted clear from the ground, two of them knocking together and chipping each other. One was lifted quite in the air about 3ft, and I could have seen if there was anyone holding them or if there was any string or wire attached to them." Mr Heskcth, chief of the Borough clectric works, who as a scientific investigator rejects nothing as impossible spent part of a day in the dug-out, and he assured' me that he saw Mr Eolke struck on the hand by a piece of stone, the blow drawing blood. Mr Hesketh later communicated with j Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and others, but ! a semi-public investigation gave no results.