Laying One Ghost Story to Rest: Just Had Gas

1916

A Simple Solution to the Mystery of a "Haunted" House

The mystery of a "haunted" house was explained in a recent number of Science. It was a large, handsome structure in Boston's Back Bay district. The trouble centered in the third and fourth stories, where the slumbers of servants and children were disturbed by strange sensations.

It was a common occurrence for them to awake in the night with a feeling of oppression, "as if some one were tapping upon me." Sounds also were heard, as if some one were walking about or overhead. Once a child rushed screaming into the nurse's room, crying that a man was waking him up and asking why she let him frighten him so. In the morning the children were pale and sluggish, even cold water lacking its usual power to enliven them.

Investigation at length revealed a comparatively simple, mechanistic solution in the escape of a large amount of furnace gas. Often the sulphur in it was so strong as to make the eyes water and to hurt the throat, while the sensations of oppression were typical of carbon monoxide. The noises may have been actual sounds coming from an adjoining house, although any noise at all would probably be exaggerated in the minds of persons awakened in the night while suffering from poisonous gas.

—Stevens Point Daily Journal, Stevens Point, Wisconsin, July 29, 1916, page 7.