Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/416

378 into fits, and that, when the chapel was opened (July, 1844) for the burial of a corpse, the coffins were found displaced, and "lying in a confused pile." They were replaced, and the chapel was locked. The elder Guldenstubbé, father of the narrator, with two of the Buxhoewden family, secretly visited the chapel, again found the coffins all in a heap, had them put in order, locked the chapel, and consented to an investigation. A Committee of the Consistory, including the Baron, the Bishop, the Burgomeister, an atheistic doctor (M. Luce), a Syndic, and a secretary, with two clergymen, were the Committee. They reopened the chapel; all the coffins but three were "in a painfully dissolute state." No robbery of jewels buried in the coffins had occurred. The pavement of the vault was taken up; it had not been disturbed. The place was put in order once more, and the doors were locked and sealed with the official seal of the Consistory, Wood ashes were strewn everywhere, to detect footsteps, and a military guard was posted for three days and nights. The Committee then returned, and found all in order: seals undisturbed, ashes untrodden, but the coffins were standing on their heads. The lid of one was open, and a hand, that of a suicide, protruded.

An official report was drawn up, which "is to be found among the archives of the Consistory, and may be examined by any travellers, respectably recommended, on application to the secretary of the Consistory." The troubles continued, till the dead were taken out and buried in earth. Dale Owen (1860) adds that the next generation will perhaps regard this tale as "an idle legend of the incredible."

In 1899 Dr. Alfred Russell Wallace had a controversy with Mr. Frank Podmore about Poltergeister, or unexplained disturbances, and gave the Ahrensburg story as