The Seaford poltergeist

From 3 February 1958, a family in Seaford, Long Island, reported broken objects and bottles opening and spilling in their home. Police, reporters and parapsychologists looked into it.

The Psi Encyclopedia of the Society for Psychical Research reports that the first incident came on 3 February 1958. James Herrmann came home from school and found a broken ceramic doll and a broken ship model on his dresser. His mother, Mrs Herrmann, found a little holy-water bottle lying on its side on her dresser with the cap off and the contents spilled. Over the next 45 minutes, the family heard bottles open and spill in various rooms. A bottle of bleach, half a gallon in size, broke on the floor roughly six feet from James and his mother.

On 9 February, Mrs Herrmann phoned the police. With the whole family in the living room, Patrolman J Hughes heard noises come from the bathroom, and a bottle lay on its side. Later, Hughes told the researchers he had looked over that room before the noise. A podcast retelling adds that reporters watched overnight and that a priest was brought in, before the disturbances stopped abruptly.

Researchers offered different explanations. A physicist proposed a magnetic field from underground water streams. Parapsychologists, according to the University of Maryland Baltimore County's collection on the case, theorized that James, aged 12, had unconsciously caused the bottles to pop. Wikipedia says William Roll and Joseph Gaither Pratt investigated in 1958, and that Roll suggested some events might have been pranks while others were recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis. Wikipedia adds that mainstream science has rejected that idea.