Poltergeists are the ultimate ghost. Instead of just being a transparent weirdo in the corner of your bedroom like your usual ghost, poltergeists can attack you! The scariest thing about them is they don’t just exist in horror films, they have also shown up in our city’s history. Dun dun duuun!
For this story, we will go back in time, long before you and I were born, to the 1960s. Back when there was no internet and a T.V. wasn’t yet in every house. It begins in our very own suburb of Brooklyn where there was a boarding house called Ohiro Lodge (it has now been replaced by apartment buildings – the ones on the left-hand side of the road just as you arrive into Brooklyn) which was owned by an older couple named Mr and Mrs Beaty. It was a normal place until something quite strange happened.
Felled trees at Ohiro Lodge, Brooklyn, Wellington.. Dominion Post (Newspaper): Photographic negatives and prints of the Evening Post and Dominion newspapers. Ref: EP/1963/1066-F. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. /records/22697333
It started with the cutting down of some trees on the property. This doesn’t sound like much of an event but the following night a flurry of rocks, coins and pebbles started pelting the outside of the building. Hitting the place so hard that windows were smashed. These attacks went on for hours into the night and continued for the following 3 nights. It became huge local news and hundreds of spectators (one night it was 800 people!) came to watch this strange occurrence and the media coined it the Brooklyn Dodger.
The police got involved but struggled to find the cause. Some watchers started to suspect that it was the work of a poltergeist (and one person suggested a leprechaun…). It was quite distressing for the couple who owned the lodge, but the lodgers all seemed to be enjoying the excitement.
Mr and Mrs R A Beaty of Ohiro Lodge, Brooklyn, Wellington. Dominion Post (Newspaper): Photographic negatives and prints of the Evening Post and Dominion newspapers. Ref: EP/1963/0966-F. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. /records/22749450
As much as I love the idea of a poltergeist in Wellington, there were reports later of a boy who had been caught by the police with a slingshot and after a bit of a telling off, it did coincide with the end of the rock throwing.
So, what do you think? Did this kid spend night after night pelting this one building with an endless pile of rocks or do you think it was an environmental poltergeist angry at the removal of the trees? Personally, I think it was the leprechaun.
If you want to learn more and you’re a nerd for old stuff, this radio program from the 1970s did a great piece on the Brooklyn Dodger. You can find it online at Ngā Taonga, Sound & Vision.
Our new ghost investigation kits will be available soon to borrow, so keep an eye out if you’re experiencing your own ghostly problems at home.
P.S. If being scared by ghosts is your vibe, here are some books to fill the void in the meantime:
The Midnight Club / Pike, Christopher
“In a hospice for terminally ill adolescents, five young people meet every evening at midnight to share terrifying stories. Some are invented, some are true. The strangest are somewhere betwen the two… The club members make a pact: whoever dies first will try to contact the others from beyond the grave. The most incredible of their stories is about to begin.” (Catalogue)
The spirit bares its teeth / White, Andrew Joseph | audiobook available | ebook available
“Set in an alternate Victorian England where mediums control the dead, sixteen-year-old autistic transgender boy Silas must expose a power-hungry secret society while confined to a cruel finishing school designed to turn him into the perfect wife.” (Adapted from Catalogue)
The girl from the well / Chupeco, Rin | ebook available
“Okiku has wandered the world for centuries, freeing the innocent ghosts of the murdered-dead and taking the lives of killers with the vengeance they are due, but when she meets Tark she knows the moody teen with the series of intricate tattoos is not a monster and needs to be freed from the demonic malevolence that clings to him.” (Catalogue)
The dead and the dark / Gould, Courtney
“When Logan, the adopted daughter of reality television ghosthunters, teams up with Ashley to search for missing teens in Snakebite, Oregon, they find themselves falling for each other as they uncover a hidden evil. Teenagers are disappearing, some turning up dead. All fingers seem to point to TV’s most popular ghost hunters who have just returned to town.” (Adapted from Catalogue)
Anna Dressed in Blood / Blake, Kendare
“For three years, seventeen-year-old Cas Lowood has carried on his father’s work of dispatching the murderous dead, traveling with his kitchen-witch mother and their spirit-sniffing cat, but everything changes when he meets Anna, a girl unlike any ghost he has faced before.” (Catalogue)
House of salt and sorrows / Craig, Erin A | audiobook available | ebook available
“In a manor by the sea, twelve sisters are cursed. Annaleigh lives a sheltered life at Highmoor with her sisters and their father and stepmother. Loneliness fills the grand halls now that four of the girls’ lives have been cut short. Disturbed by a series of ghostly visions, Annaleigh becomes increasingly suspicious that her sisters’ deaths were no accidents.” (Adapted from Catalogue)
Cemetery boys / Thomas, Aiden | audiobook available
“Yadriel, a trans boy, summons the angry spirit of his high school’s bad boy, and agrees to help him learn how he died, thereby proving himself a brujo, not a bruja, to his conservative family.” (Catalogue)
Belladonna / Grace, Adalyn
“Signa has been raised by a string of guardians, each more interested in her wealth than her well-being– and each meeting an untimely end. Her remaining relatives are the Hawthornes, an eccentric family. When their mother’s restless spirit appears claiming she was poisoned, Signa realizes that the family she depends on could be in grave danger.” (Adapted from Catalogue)
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