SEAFORD POLTERGEIST

1. Public Record

Seaford, Long Island, 3 February 1958, about 3 to 5 p.m. James Herrmann is at Air France on Fifth Avenue when Lucille calls. Jimmy, what's going on here. All the bottles in the house are blowing their tops. Six screw-tops down in four rooms: holy water, nail polish remover, peroxide, rubbing alcohol, starch, bleach. Children Lucille, thirteen, and James, twelve, are home. A ceramic doll and a ship model already broken on the boy's dresser, as if the doll had hit the ship.

Forty-five minutes of noise. A half-gallon of bleach leaves its box and smashes six feet in front of mother and son. Over about five weeks J. G. Pratt and W. G. Roll log sixty-seven events. Contents: starch, medicine, wine, ammonia, shampoo, antacid, paint thinner, perfume, ink. From around 13 February, figurines fly and break. Two bathroom bottles on the 9th slide at right angles and land at Jimmy's feet while he brushes his teeth. Police and the Times cannot end it. Sceptics say the boy. Pratt and Roll say the boy as a centre, not as a simple thrower.

The house becomes a month-old file in the Times on 3 March after four quiet days and a kick-up the night before. Then it thins. No engine is found in a wall.

All the bottles in the house are blowing their tops.

2. Date of Incident

From 3 February 1958, about five weeks. Peak February into early March.

3. Location

Seaford, Long Island. Approximate 40°40 N 073°29 W.

4. Official Narrative

Police baffled in public. Official narrative is a short suburban mystery. No charge sheet on a spirit or on the boy.

5. Witness Layer

James and Lucille Herrmann. The two children. Pratt and Roll. Times desk. Neighbours and officers in and out.

I'm thirty-five miles away.

Sixty-seven disturbances over about five weeks.

6. Recovery Logistics

Broken glass and empty bottles. Investigator notes. No hidden wire recovered.

7. Assessment

A bottle file. Keep the holy water next to the bleach so the week is ordinary and then not. Keep Jimmy's feet and the two paths at right angles. A twelve-year-old at the centre is the American cousin of Hetty trembling at Epworth. Do not close it as a prank because that is easy. Do not open it as a spirit because sixty-seven is a list, not a proof.

8. Materials & Remains

Times 1958. Pratt-Roll notes. No preserved bottle as relic.

9. Key Personnel

James and Lucille Herrmann : The house.

James Jr : Twelve. The centre in most readings.

J. G. Pratt / W. G. Roll : The log.

10. Aftermath

Seaford sits in American poltergeist lists as the bottle house. The family leaves the news. Roll takes the case into later books on RSPK.

11. Current Archive Status

Status: Seaford Feb-Mar 1958. 67 logged events. Bottles first. No engine found.

Confidence: High that bottles opened and objects broke in that house over five weeks. High that investigators logged sixty-seven items. Low that a discarnate agent is shown. Low that every event is a boy's throw.

Filing note

A man at a midtown desk, a wife on the telephone, six caps off in four rooms, holy water and bleach in the same hour, a doll into a ship, sixty-seven lines in a log, a boy brushing his teeth while two bottles take two paths.

Blowing their tops. Her joke before she knew it was the file's title.