Introduction
Two further unsigned installments of the poltergeist saga of Hornsey follow. These unidentified works will serve to bridge the gap between Arthur Machen’s certain involvement at the beginning and at the end of this ghostly tangle of a tale. The modern reader will surely detect the feel of filler in the pieces below, for each adds little to the overall story, except, perhaps, to keep up public interest. If this was indeed the purpose, it is difficult to gauge its success. However, though the first article was placed on the front page, the second was pushed back to page three of the subsequent edition.
The Banging Ghost of Hornsey
Unsigned
February 18, 1921
I have taken the opportunity (writes an Evening News correspondent) of going over some points in the story of the house in Ferrestone-road with Mr. Frost, and an old family friend, Mr. Millard.
I was under the impression from conversation with Mr. Frost’s son, that his father has actually seen, for instance, the flight of the brooms into the kitchen last Sunday morning.
“With An Explosion”
“No,” said Mr. Frost. “I didn’t see the brooms coming into the kitchen. They were just there. With a terrific explosion.”
“With a terrific explosion”; this strikes me as possibly significant.
The disturbances of other objects than coal are attended “with a noise like a bomb,” “with a terrific explosion.”
A similar explosion goes with the fall of china, saucers, ash trays, bread platters, stepladders and so forth. I went into this point very particularly:
“You mean,” I said to Mr. Frost, “that when these things, brooms and stepladders and tea trays and the rest fly into a room, or jump up and down or fall to the ground, the noise is not a natural noise that would be expected; not the noise that would be made if you or I took hold of a couple of brooms in the passage and flung them into the kitchen?”
That was exactly what Mr. Frost did mean. It was a noise quite different from the rattle and clatter that one would expect, and much louder.
A Fairy Lamp
As far as I can gather, then, the noises of the house in Ferrestone-road resemble such as would be produced by the explosion of some fulminating substance.
Another point seems to deserve note. The Rev. A. L. Gardiner, Vicar of St. Gabriel’s, Bounds Park, was standing, I am told, in a room in Mr. Frost’s house. Both the boys were behind him.
The vicar saw a “fairy lamp” move from its place on a shelf and fall. But the manner of the fall was peculiar. The lamp did not drop instantly to the ground as it moved off its shelf.
It went out in a straight line in the air for about two feet, and then fell.
The turning movement manifested in some of the affected objects may have some significance.
To-day also I heard of the case of some saucers. There was a pile of three on a shelf.
Two fell down and were smashed; the third remained on the shelf, but twirled about.
Mr. Maskelyne Sceptical
“We have never been satisfied that there was an atom of the supernatural about such incidents as those at the Hornsey poltergeist house,” said Mr. Nevil Maskelyne, the celebrated “magician,” in an interview to-day.
“But,” he added, “I am open to conviction even now.”
Hornsey Ghosts Refuse To Be Laid
Unsigned
February 19, 1921
Mr. A. Mortimer Gunnell, of New Southgate, a member of the Society for Psychical Research, who is investigating the strange manifestations at the home of the Frost family in Ferrestone-road, Hornsey, to-day gave an Evening News representative his impressions.
He declared himself satisfied that incidents had occurred which could not be ascribed to human agency.
“To suggest that what has happened has been produced by trickery,” said Mr. Gunnell, “would be to presuppose the presence not of one conjurer but of a troupe of most wonderful conjurers ever known.
Shower on a Sceptic
“Assuming the possibility of human agency in relation to some of the incidents, there remains a large residue still inexplicable.
“I have never known or investigated or read of any case of Poltergeist (the ‘rackety spirit’) in which the evidence had been more abundant or so convincing.
“I interviewed one man at the house who ridiculed the idea of any supernatural cause, but while this man was there, down came a shower of coal.
“And though the man rushed upstairs, and searched everywhere, he was utterly unable to account for it.”
The Spirt Knew
During the several hours Mr. Gunnell was at Ferrestone-road last night, the rackety spirit was quiescent.
“There were about 25 people present in the house,” he said, “and the conditions were altogether unfavourable for a calm inquiry.
“The whole family seemed unnerved.”
Some of the incidents Mr. Gunnell pointed out have occurred when the children have not been present.
Although children were in the bedroom when the boots and the orange were thrown about yesterday morning, they were in bed; and the orange, “rising up from a chair,” fell on the girl’s head.
Dead Sister’s Worries
“As knockings have been heard three at a time, it would seem that some intelligence was trying to communicate with the family,” said Mr. Gunnell.
“I have asked Mr. Frost to think over carefully any matters that might have been worrying his sister before her death.”
[Mr. Frost’s sister, Mrs. Parker, died about a year ago, and according to the boy Gordon, appeared to him as he lay in bed last Monday night.]
“I shall continue my inquiries in the hope of finding a solution,” Mr. Gunnell added.
The Theory
“In Poltergeist cases we have to accept the hypothesis of the existence of discarnate beings whose thoughts are sufficiently intense to light up the lowest depth of consciousness and cause action in material substances.
“The nature of consciousness is not known.”
“The fact that it temporarily neutralises gravitation, as is evident from many of the manifestations, makes me feel certain that further discoveries in the cosmic ether will ultimately lead to a solution.”
The Weekly Machen
Previous: Hornsey House of Nightmares
Next: The Racketty Ghost Breaks Out Again
darklybrightpress.com 
Thanks for these! The additional details are inherently interesting, whether “filler” or not. It would also be interesting to read a detailed Maskelyne analysis of particular “incidents” described – assuming he could avoid giving away too many ‘trade secrets’ in doing so. The only thing my quick search for A. Mortimer Gunnell found was a note that from 1935-38 he was Principal of a girls’ school named ‘Kings Court College’ in what was built in 1894 as a house in Chandler’s Ford, Hampshire.
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I did some quick word searching in the Project Gutenberg transcriptions of two books by Harry Houdini – Miracle Mongers and Their Methods (1920) and A Magician Among the Spirits (1924) – and found no results for ‘poltergeist’, but the latter (according to Wikipedia “co-authored with C.M. Eddy, Jr., who was not credited”) included this (p. 236)!:
“‘In a house on Ferretstone Road, Hornsey, London, explosions like bombs were heard, lumps of coal were propelled by some unknown agency in all directions. Brooms were thrown violently from a landing into the kitchen. Glass and china had been smashed and windows broken and to top it all off a boy sitting on a chair had been raised with the chair from the ground.’ (The London Evening News, Feb. 15, 1921.)”
The chapter is entitled “What You Must Believe to Be a Spiritualist” but there were no detailed remarks as to how any of this could be faked.
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