Oops! Paper Given a Bad Rap on Haunted House Story

In writing about a haunted house in Huntington Beach the other day I was unfair to the Orange Coast Daily Pilot, which reported the story.

I said newspapers that reported such phenomena, without skepticism, only perpetuated superstitious beliefs. “If the Daily Pilot runs true to form,” I predicted, “there will be no follow-up story. No explanation will be forthcoming and the paper’s readers will be left to believe that such things really happen.”

I received a complaint from William Lobdell, editor of the paper, pointing out that the story I read was itself a follow-up to a previous story, and that a third report on the house was published on the very day that my column appeared.

So, if anyone was guilty of slipshod reporting, I was.

In the first story, a police officer who had been left behind by his sergeant reported seeing a stool overturn at the kitchen counter when no one was there. The family (husband, wife, teen-age son) said that books fall from shelves, objects fly across the rooms, doors unlock and open by themselves and walls thump.

I noted that, “curiously,” the story did not name the residents or give their address. The first story pointed out that they had “pleaded” for anonymity, which is understandable.

The first story also said that a police chaplain had been sent to the house and that furniture began to move while he was praying with the family. Evidently the chaplain’s prayers were no more successful in exorcising the spirits than those of a Catholic priest, who had not only blessed every room with prayers and holy water, but also ordered the spirits to leave in an authoritative voice. The spirits withdrew for only two days.

A parapsychology teacher from Orange Coast Golden West and Coastline colleges was quoted as advising the family to urge the spirit to leave in a firm voice. Fear and curiosity tend to encourage spirits to stay around longer, she said.

It might not be a ghost or spirit at all, the parapsychologist allowed.

Such phenomena are sometimes produced by people who are “extremely emotionally and physically overactive,” she said. She added that such people may have the ability of moving matter with their minds.

The third story was a “reporter’s notebook” column by Holly J. Wagner, who had also written the second news story. She was very annoyed with me for suggesting that she had not done her job.

After writing the second story, she said, she had been assigned to spend “a few nights in the house” and try to find out what was going on. That certainly suggests that the Daily Pilot was not guilty of the usual lack of reportorial zeal.

Wagner also noted that her colleagues showed the skepticism that one would expect of a newspaper staff.

“Boy, have I been taking a razzing in the newsroom. . . . The jokes began before I even went to the house. Like the family’s puzzled neighbors, everybody in the newsroom was humming the ‘Twilight Zone’ theme and telling me to go to the door and announce, ‘I’m heeeeere!’ ”

Mostly, she said, the poltergeist, or whatever, performed when her back was turned or she was in another room. But, she told me by phone, she did hear pounding on her bedroom wall, and she saw a ceramic tile dislodge itself from a counter and fly about eight feet across the room.

“Now I’m no fool,” she assured her readers. “I’m a little crazy, maybe, but not stupid. But I’ve seen a couple of things that are pretty hard to believe. . . . I’m sure something is going on in this home. I’m not sure just what.”

Lobdell said he has instructed Wagner to stay with the assignment and to keep an eye on the teen-age son, since I had suggested that teen-agers are often the culprits in poltergeist reports. “If you’d like to join her some night, I could probably arrange it,” Lobdell added.

That’s an attractive proposal, but I think I’ll pass. I’m sure Wagner can do the job without my help.

I must accept her first-hand account of the tile that flew across the room. As a reporter, she would not make it up. I can not explain it any more than she can. I do not, however, believe it was caused by any spirit, ghost or poltergeist. I do not believe in such things.

I also find it hard to believe that any college would employ a teacher who believes that houses can be haunted by dead spirits that will leave if asked in a firm voice. In the absence of proof, I also reject the notion that people can move matter with their minds.