Overview
Newspaper reports from the 19th and early 20th centuries describe two unsettling cases in which ordinary homes allegedly became the sites of unexplained disturbances. One account, published in San Francisco in 1862, involved a family living near Telegraph Hill and a supposedly blood-dripping woman in black. A second case, investigated by Steven Mill, concerned a rural Oxfordshire household in 1918, where unexplained nighttime knocks were reportedly accompanied by a voice resembling that of a parrot. Neither episode can be independently verified today, but both illustrate how supernatural claims were recorded, circulated and interpreted by earlier generations.
The Telegraph Hill Apparition
The San Francisco case emerged in reports carried by the San Francisco Evening Bulletin in July 1862. The newspaper described a family living in a tenement on Kearny Street, between Greenwich and Lombard streets, as the target of repeated disturbances attributed to a mysterious Woman in Black. According to the account, the apparition appeared to drip blood and left bloody traces around the property. In one particularly violent episode, a ghostly arm was said to have appeared to a girl and beaten her so severely that blood reached her cheek, with finger marks allegedly remaining on her skin.
The reports portrayed the events as involving more than a single witness. One informant, identified in an initial newspaper item as George Easton—or possibly George Easton under an uncertain reading of the name—claimed to be among 16 people who had witnessed the phenomena. When the Evening Bulletin published a fuller account the following day, however, it identified the source only as “an intelligent disbeliever in ‘spirits’” and withheld the names of the family members involved. That lack of clear identification makes it difficult for modern researchers to establish who the alleged victims were or to trace independent testimony.
A City Primed for Ghost Stories
The setting added to the story’s macabre character. In 1862, Telegraph Hill was undergoing extensive excavation as San Francisco expanded. Contemporary reporting noted that thousands of tons of earth and rock were being removed for construction, street extensions and ship ballast. Workers also uncovered human bones and skulls, reflecting the hill’s earlier use as a burial ground by the settlement of Yerba Buena. The dangerous landscape—marked by blasting, falling rock and steep drops—provided a dramatic backdrop for reports of a haunting.
The case displays several features later associated with poltergeist narratives: physical attacks, unexplained stains, multiple witnesses and disturbances centered on a household. Yet the surviving material consists primarily of newspaper accounts, and the original reports do not establish whether the phenomena resulted from deliberate deception, misinterpretation, violence within the home or an unknown cause. The evocative image of a blood-covered apparition may also have been shaped by the sensational reporting style of the period.
The Oxfordshire Report
A separate case from Oxfordshire, dating to 1918, was examined by Steven Mill. In that account, resident Maud Turner reportedly experienced unexplained knocks during the night. The disturbances were accompanied by a voice that sounded like a parrot or mimicked the characteristic tones of one. The unusual combination of knocking and animal-like vocalization appears to have been central to the story’s enduring interest.
Unlike the Telegraph Hill report, the Oxfordshire episode is presented through a later investigation rather than as a contemporary San Francisco newspaper sensation. The available details do not resolve whether the sounds came from another person, an animal, environmental causes or a deliberately staged incident. Taken together, the two cases show how reports of hauntings often survive through fragments—newspaper notices, witness claims and later investigations—leaving historians to separate documented testimony from folklore and embellishment.
