wheels of the car had dropped into a deep rut, and that the car had jolted into the river.
Upon May 3rd—see the London Evening Standard, May 6—William Farrance and Beatrice Villes, of Linomroad, Clapham, London, were driving near Tunbridge Wells, when the car suddenly plunged toward a hedge at the left of the road. Farrance succeeded in forcing the car to the right. Again something drove it toward the hedge. Farrance was powerless to stop it, and it broke through the hedge, overturning, killing the girl.
A schoolgirl, Beryl de Meza, was shot by somebody unknown and unseen while playing in the street, near her home at Hampstead, London.
At Sheffield, there was an occurrence that was atrocious, but that may not be uncanny, but that attracts my attention because of the fiendishness of something else with which it associates. At the Soho Grinding Works, it was found, morning of April 29th, that grinding wheels had been chipped, and that belting had been stripped from pulleys. Nails had been driven, points upward, in chairs upon which the grinders sat. Tools had been thrown into motors, and currents had been turned on, causing much damage. All this looks like sabotage, malicious but scarcely “fiendish”: but in a building next door there had been doings that are so describable. Chickens had been tortured: combs cut off, legs broken, the head of one burned; others mutilated, and their injuries smeared with white paint.
London Evening Standard, May 5—“Mystery of four shooting affairs.” A boy, playing in Mitcham Park, London, was shot in the head by an air gun, it was thought, though no air gun pellet was found. At Tooting Bec-common, an “air gun pellet”—though it was not said that an air gun pellet was found—passed through the windshield of a motor car. In Stamford two men were shot by an unknown assailant. London Sunday Express, May 8—Mr. George Berlam, of Leigh-on-Sea, motoring on the road from London to Southend—he heard a report, and his windshield was splintered. In accounts of the punctured windshield, at Tooting Bec-common, the driver of the car was quoted as saying that he had heard a report, and at the same time a laugh, “though nobody was about, at the time.”
Wounds have appeared upon people. Usually the explanation is that they were stabbed. Objects have been mutilated. Windowpanes and automobile windshields have been pierced, as if by bullets, but by bullets that could not be found. Such were the doings of the “phantom sniper of Camden” (N.J.). He appeared first, in November, 1927: but the first clipping that I have, relating to him, is from the New York Evening Post, Jan. 26, 1928—a store window pierced by a bullet—the eighth reported occurrence. Later, the stories were definitely of a “phantom sniper” and his “phantom bullets.”
New York Herald Tribune, Feb. 9, 1928—Collingswood, N.J., February 8—“The ‘phantom sniper,’ if it was the work of South Jersey’s mysterious marksman, scored his most sensational attack tonight when a window in the home of William T. Turnbull was shattered by what appeared to be a charge of shot.
“Police at first believed it an attempted assassination, but, as in all the other cases, no missile was found.
“Turnbull, a Philadelphia stockbroker, and a former president of the Collingswood Borough Council, who was seated near the window, reading, was spattered with glass. He said that an automobile had stopped in front of the house a few minutes before. The absence of any grains of shot added to the mystery.”
I have sent letters of enquiry to all persons mentioned in the various reports. I have received not one answer. It may be preferable to some readers to think that there are no such persons. Still, I note that not one of these letters was dead-lettered back to me.
The attacks continued until Feb. 28, 1928. Windowpanes and windshields of automobiles were pierced by something that made no report of a gun, and that was
Upon May 3rd—see the London Evening Standard, May 6—William Farrance and Beatrice Villes, of Linomroad, Clapham, London, were driving near Tunbridge Wells, when the car suddenly plunged toward a hedge at the left of the road. Farrance succeeded in forcing the car to the right. Again something drove it toward the hedge. Farrance was powerless to stop it, and it broke through the hedge, overturning, killing the girl.
A schoolgirl, Beryl de Meza, was shot by somebody unknown and unseen while playing in the street, near her home at Hampstead, London.
At Sheffield, there was an occurrence that was atrocious, but that may not be uncanny, but that attracts my attention because of the fiendishness of something else with which it associates. At the Soho Grinding Works, it was found, morning of April 29th, that grinding wheels had been chipped, and that belting had been stripped from pulleys. Nails had been driven, points upward, in chairs upon which the grinders sat. Tools had been thrown into motors, and currents had been turned on, causing much damage. All this looks like sabotage, malicious but scarcely “fiendish”: but in a building next door there had been doings that are so describable. Chickens had been tortured: combs cut off, legs broken, the head of one burned; others mutilated, and their injuries smeared with white paint.
London Evening Standard, May 5—“Mystery of four shooting affairs.” A boy, playing in Mitcham Park, London, was shot in the head by an air gun, it was thought, though no air gun pellet was found. At Tooting Bec-common, an “air gun pellet”—though it was not said that an air gun pellet was found—passed through the windshield of a motor car. In Stamford two men were shot by an unknown assailant. London Sunday Express, May 8—Mr. George Berlam, of Leigh-on-Sea, motoring on the road from London to Southend—he heard a report, and his windshield was splintered. In accounts of the punctured windshield, at Tooting Bec-common, the driver of the car was quoted as saying that he had heard a report, and at the same time a laugh, “though nobody was about, at the time.”
Wounds have appeared upon people. Usually the explanation is that they were stabbed. Objects have been mutilated. Windowpanes and automobile windshields have been pierced, as if by bullets, but by bullets that could not be found. Such were the doings of the “phantom sniper of Camden” (N.J.). He appeared first, in November, 1927: but the first clipping that I have, relating to him, is from the New York Evening Post, Jan. 26, 1928—a store window pierced by a bullet—the eighth reported occurrence. Later, the stories were definitely of a “phantom sniper” and his “phantom bullets.”
New York Herald Tribune, Feb. 9, 1928—Collingswood, N.J., February 8—“The ‘phantom sniper,’ if it was the work of South Jersey’s mysterious marksman, scored his most sensational attack tonight when a window in the home of William T. Turnbull was shattered by what appeared to be a charge of shot.
“Police at first believed it an attempted assassination, but, as in all the other cases, no missile was found.
“Turnbull, a Philadelphia stockbroker, and a former president of the Collingswood Borough Council, who was seated near the window, reading, was spattered with glass. He said that an automobile had stopped in front of the house a few minutes before. The absence of any grains of shot added to the mystery.”
I have sent letters of enquiry to all persons mentioned in the various reports. I have received not one answer. It may be preferable to some readers to think that there are no such persons. Still, I note that not one of these letters was dead-lettered back to me.
The attacks continued until Feb. 28, 1928. Windowpanes and windshields of automobiles were pierced by something that made no report of a gun, and that was
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