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WELLINGTON - A spooky experience in Wellington 37 years ago has been listed by a British newspaper as among the weirdest events of the 20th century.
The Independent On Sunday listed the mystery of the Brooklyn stone-slinger alongside encounters with flying saucers, weeping statues and a man struck by lightning seven
times.
The so-called Brooklyn Dodger transfixed Wellington at the time. For four nights, the residents of Ohiro Lodge guesthouse, 145 Ohiro Rd, were bombarded with coins and stones.
The barrage started at 9.30 pm and continued until 5 am the first night, breaking 12 windows and damaging woodwork.
Police were called but a search by 12 officers and 20 civilians failed to find the culprit.
The bombardment continued the next night, reducing boarders to nervous wrecks, the Evening Post reported at the time.
Members of the public suggested that the mischief was the work of a poltergeist.
The Evening Post reported that one caller, "obviously Irish, suggests leprechauns."
A Maori woman said some tree trunks of recently felled macrocarpas on the property were hiding an evil spirit.
The phenomenon ceased - until the guesthouse was demolished three years later.
Labourers claimed to hear strange sounds coming from the half-wrecked building.
A block of flats was built on the site in 1967.
Claire McEwan, who has lived in one of the flats since then and never seen anything odd, said the old guesthouse had been a lovely building.
She believed the "dodger" was a small group of university students who hid in nearby pine trees as they pelted the house.
- NZPA
