The flying napkins of Hahn and Kern
With the lights burning, Hahn, Kern and an inspector named Knetsch watched two napkins float up to the ceiling and knives and forks fly across the room.
Justinus Kerner's The Seeress of Prevorst, in Catherine Crowe's translation, tells of a night when an inspector named Knetsch stayed with two friends, Hahn and Kern. Crowe repeats the account in The Night-Side of Nature. Things were being thrown the whole time, but all three went to bed anyway.
With lights burning, they saw two napkins at the centre of the room lift slowly to the ceiling, spread out flat there, and drift back down. The china bowl of Kern's pipe flew around and smashed. Knives and forks were hurled, and a fork landed on Hahn's head, handle first. Objects had been thrown in the room for two months by then, and the three agreed to give it up, for that night at least.
"There were lights in the room, and presently all three saw two napkins, in the middle of the room, rise slowly up to the ceiling, and, having there spread themselves out, flutter down again. The china bowl of a pipe belonging to Kern flew about and was broken. Knives and forks were flung, and at last one of the latter fell on Hahn’s head, though fortunately with the handle downward: and having now endured this annoyance for two months, it was unanimously resolved to abandon this mysterious chamber, for this night at all events."
- The Seeress of Prevorst, Justinus Kerner, tr. Catherine Crowe (1845), Internet Archive
- Slawensik Poltergeist, Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology, via Encyclopedia.com