The Flying Pansini Brothers

Sometime in 1901, a mason and architect named Mauro Pansini brought his family to live in an old house near the Palazzo Municipale in Ruvo di Puglia, in southern Italy.  Then things got weird.

Very weird.  Even for this blog.

A few days after the family moved in strange and terrifying things began happening.  Mysterious and eerie noises were heard throughout the house.  Pictures fell from nails.  Plates, glasses, and bottles flew into the walls, shattering them.  Then the furniture took to moving itself around.  The Pansinis assumed their new home was possessed by demons, and called in a priest to perform an exorcism.  This had the usual depressing lack of results.

So far, what we have here is a pretty bog-standard poltergeist case.  But then the two Pansini boys, seven year old Alfredo and eight year old Paolo, got into the act in a big way.  One evening, Alfredo went into a trance, and began speaking to his family in a voice that was not his own.  This voice said that he had been sent by God to drive away the demons.  The boy started to fall into these trances often, where this strange voice would perform recitations in French, Latin and Greek.

For a while, it looked like the Pansinis were at least being pestered by a generous pack of spirits.  Before their eyes, food would suddenly appear in the pantry or on their dining table.  Various sweets and candies were brought to them by invisible hands.  One night, Alfredo announced that he was witnessing a battle between the good and bad ghosts.  His increasingly rattled parents took him to church, where he instantly fell unconscious.  He only revived when the bishop spoke his name.  Alfredo stayed with the bishop for a few days, but as this failed to bring him out of his uncanny state of mind, he was returned to his family.  The Pansinis sent him to a seminary school, hoping that the change of scene would bring him back to normal.  Unfortunately, all his new surroundings did was inspire him to add telepathy to his growing list of weird talents.

After Alfredo returned home two years later, the High Strangeness really got into gear.  One morning around 9 a.m., the two boys were in Ruvo di Puglia.  Just half-an-hour later, they appeared at the Capucine convent in Malfatti, thirty miles from where they had last been seen.  A few days after this, the Pansinis were sitting at their dining table.  Paolo was sent to fetch them wine.  He did not return.  Half an hour after this, Alfredo also disappeared.  The instant Alfredo vanished, both he and Paolo suddenly appeared in a fishing boat at sea off the port of Barlatta.  The fisherman--who was just as terrified as the boys--brought them to dry land, where they were lucky enough to find a coachman who knew them and was able to take them home. 

One day, as the mother was discussing her problematic sons with the bishop, the boys--who had been nearby, within view--both vanished.  A few minutes later, they got word that Alfredo and Paolo had been seen several miles away.  Their father, thinking they had merely run away, locked them in their room.  A short time later, the boys suddenly appeared at the home of an uncle, many miles away.  On another occasion, they disappeared from a moving carriage, only to be found at their intended destination.

In the same inexplicable, instantaneous fashion, the brothers continued their unwilling visits.  They would suddenly appear in a number of far-distant towns, with nobody--most particularly the boys themselves--able to say how in the world they got there.  Alfredo and Paolo were investigated by various scientists and doctors, only to leave these “experts” completely baffled.  They could only mutter that the boys were suffering from some sort of “ambulatory automatism”--in other words, a form of amnesia.  Of course, this failed to explain how the boys could travel such vast distances in such a short time.

The brothers could only conclude that they were transported “through the work and power of the Holy Spirit.”  In 1905, Alfredo told the editor of the “Corriere delle Puglie,” “I don’t know how to explain what happens to me.  What happens seems to be a succession of events without any reason, without cause.  The change of place seems to happen before my eyes, with no one making it.  And my own person, suddenly, is located in another place without knowing how and why.”  Intriguingly, he said that an older brother of theirs was also plagued by these involuntary transportations before he joined the military.

The Pansini brothers continued their unwanted disappearances and appearances until they reached puberty, when, luckily for them, the teleportations stopped.  Their adult lives, as far as anyone knows, were perfectly normal.

Imagine the stories Alfredo and Paolo had to tell their kids.

One Night in Paris: A Ghost Story That Wasn't

One Henrietta Leslie wrote the following account, which appeared in the “Occult Review” for January 1920, under the title “An Extraordinary Experience.”  When I first read this story, I fully expected that “Gillespie” had died, and was making one last ghostly visit to a close friend.  The fact that it ended otherwise (spoiler alert!) makes the tale somewhat unique.

A rather remarkable happening was experienced a few years ago by a friend of mine who was spending a week or two in Paris.  Seized with a sudden impulse to attend a late evening service at the Madeleine, she left the friends she was with, promising to meet them later at a much frequented restaurant.  The music at the beautiful church, however, being particularly grand and her mood one of extreme depression, she stayed on and fell into a deep reverie, from which she was at last aroused by the verger touching her upon the shoulder and informing her that they wished to close the church for the night. He indicated,moreover, that she must leave by the side entrance, the large west door being already shut.

On passing out, the girl found herself facing the flower market, which flanks the great church on both sides. It was summer, and the twilight was gradually creeping up and chasing away the remnants of day. She went slowly down the steps, and, as she reached the last, she became suddenly conscious of a group of three people--a man and two women--talking together in animated tones.

The man, who must have caught sight of the girl over his shoulder, for he was standing with his back to her, immediately left his companions and came towards her, raising his hat. She stared at him in amazement through the half light, for it was a friend--one James Gillespie--whom she had last seen in London, and from whom she had, during her Paris sojourn, received several letters, in none of which had he made any mention of coming to France.

“Hullo, Laura!" was his greeting. "Surprised to see me, are you? Let me drive you to your hotel.” And he hailed a passing fiacre.

As my friend was about to step into the conveyance, a little barefooted urchin came running by, with a single bunch of violets upon his tray; these Gillespie purchased and tucked into the girl’s coat. He then gave Laura’s address to the driver--unprompted by her--and the pair set off.

They conversed intimately of subjects known only to themselves, until suddenly, and for no apparent reason, Gillespie seized my friend in his arms and embraced her affectionately.

“You mustn’t do that,” she protested. ”Think of your fiancée.”

“Oh yes--Estelle,” echoed Gillespie, with a blank look.  ”Forget all about it, Laura, please. I want you to meet Estelle.  She’s in Paris now. Will you come to lunch tomorrow--Café de la Lanterne, near the Bourse, you know--at half-past twelve.”

”I should like to come very much,” Laura replied; ”perhaps you’ll write the name down for me. I’ve got no memory at all,” and she handed him her little diary, in which he duly inscribed both hour and address of the projected meeting.

By this time they had reached their destination, and Gillespie, descending from the cab, helped Laura to do likewise and paid the driver.

The hotel proprietor was standing in the doorway of the house and Gillespie wished him a cheery good evening; after which, once more reminding Laura of the morrow’s appointment, he bade her good-bye and disappeared into the night.

At a quarter to twelve the following morning, Laura sallied forth to the Café de la Lanterne, a small restaurant, essentially Parisian in character, with its small check cloth covered tables and sunny veranda. She waited until past one o’clock, and then, as neither Gillespie nor his Estelle had put in an appearance, she wended her way back to her hotel.

In the doorway, as last night, stood mine host.

”Back already, mademoiselle?” he greeted her.

”My friends have failed me,” she told him. ”Did you hear the gentleman who came with me last night mention any hour?”

”Oh no, mademoiselle.” replied the old fellow; ”I only bade ‘ce Monsieur’ bon soir.”

Laura took one more look at her diary, which convinced her that she was not in fault, and resigned herself to the inevitable.

A few weeks later she returned to London. She had made no attempt to clear up the mystery by writing to Gillespie, for she felt that the first explanation was due to come from him.  When she had been home a few days, however, the telephone bell rang and her friend's voice came to her over the wire.

"You’re a nice one,” he abused her, ”leaving a poor fellow to languish like this. What’s the meaning of it, may I ask?”

”Have you any need to ask,” she rejoined, “after what happened in Paris?”

“Paris!” he echoed. ”Why, what did happen there?”

“The way you behaved to me," she enlarged.

“I dare say I should have behaved atrociously had I been there," he laughed, “but, unfortunately, I haven’t--at least, not for about six years. I've not left London since I saw you last.” 

And so it proved to be. Mutual friends gave a detailed corroboration of Gillespie’s account of his doings for the night when Laura had supposed him to be sharing her fiacre from the Madeleine.

Yet against this was the spoken evidence of the hotel proprietor and the written evidence in Laura’s diary. The whole mystery seemed impossible of solution, and has indeed remained unsolved to this day.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Whenever a 17th century pamphlet promised "strange and wonderful news," they generally weren't kidding around. This account of a Cornish man's odd adventure was reprinted in the "Western Morning News," February 8, 1926:

The truth of the account here given of what lately occurred in Cornwall is confirmed by letters from gentlemen of great worth and integrity of the neighbourhood where this remarkable accident happened, to which might add, were needful, the strict examinations and enquiries that were made by the aforesaid gentlemen, before they would write anything touching this matter; together with many other passages that sufficiently demonstrate the reality of the thing; but the general belief it hath obtained in the west saving that labour, I proceed to the relation those letters give.

Sunday, the eighth May [1637], one Jacob Mutton, whose relations are of good repute, being a servant to William Hicks, Rector Cardinham at a tenement he hath in Egloshale, called Park, as his Hynde, near the town of Bodmyn in Cornwall, going up in to his chamber about eight o'clock that terrible evening with the lad that was his usual bedfellow, the man was undressing and the boy in bed, when a hollow voice uttering "So hoe, So hoe, So hoe," occasioned his going to the window in the next room, which was seventeen foot from the ground, whence the voice seemed to come; and had no sooner laid his hands upon an iron bar thereof, than all gave way.

The cross-bar was found on the ground under the window, but the bar was the next morning found in this man's hand, who lay sleeping in a narrow lane four miles beyond Stratton in the said County, where he never was before his life, and which place is about thirty miles distant from the aforesaid tenement called Park.

The persons that found him were the earliest goers to Stratton fair, then held, where having no acquaintance, after he was waked out of sleep by the said passengers, amazingly asking them where he was, was by them conducted to Stratton fair, and thence directed home that Monday night so far as Camelford in the said County, about twenty miles from the said place where he was found, and on Tuesday morning returned to his Master's estate without any hurt at all, only very melancholy, saying, "That a tall man bore him company all that journey over hedges and brake yet without weariness or hurt." But what became his fellow traveller he can give no account, nor when he left him; or if he had the iron bar, or his companion, whilst they were on the journey, he does not at all remember nor how it came into his hand.

To conclude: this young man who is the occasion of this strange and wonderful relation was never, before this accident, accounted any ways inclinable to melancholy, but on the contrary esteemed a very airy, brisk, and honest young fellow.