The Sauchie Poltergeist ("Wee Hughie"), Sauchie, Clackmannanshire, 1960

Autumn 1960. Virginia Campbell was 11 years old and far from home. Her family had farmed in County Donegal, Ireland. Her father stayed behind to sell the farm. He kept her dog.

Virginia and her mother Annie came to Sauchie, a mining village in Clackmannanshire, and moved into a relative's small house on Park Crescent. Annie found work at a boarding house some miles away. Virginia shared a bed with nine-year-old Margaret.

Tuesday, 22 November 1960. The girls heard a "'thunking' noise like a bouncing ball, first in the bedroom, and then on the stairs." It stopped when Virginia fell asleep. Virginia, it is said, would give it a name. Wee Hughie.

The next day, a sideboard moved five inches out from the wall and back. That evening, loud knocks were heard all over the house. Rev. T. W. Lund, the local Church of Scotland minister, watched "a large wooden chest full of bed linen rock and levitate slightly, move some eighteen inches across the vinyl floor, and then return." The following night he saw Virginia's pillow rotate some 60 degrees with her head lying on it. Dr W. H. Nisbet heard knocking and a sawing noise, and watched a ripple run along the pillow.

It followed her to school. On Friday 25 November, her teacher, Miss Margaret Stewart, saw the girl's desk lid rise steeply. Then an empty desk behind Virginia rose about an inch off the floor and settled back down. The next Monday, a blackboard pointer on the desk began to vibrate, then fell to the floor. Stewart felt it vibrating. The desk itself was not moving.

At home, the girls felt poked and pinched in bed. On the Sunday, Virginia appeared to fall into a trance, calling for her dog and her best friend in Ireland.

Thursday, 1 December. Dr Nisbet and Dr William Logan set up a film camera and a tape recorder in the bedroom. From about 9 to 10:30 pm, the noises came, from tappings to agitated knocks. At about 11 pm, Lund and three other ministers held a fifteen minute service of intercession. The tapes caught "loud peremptory knocks", a "harsh rasping, 'sawing' noise" and a scream from Virginia. Then the disturbances weakened and died out. Almost. About seven weeks later, a flower bowl on Miss Stewart's desk moved across its surface.

In early 1961, the Cambridge mathematician A. R. G. Owen came to Sauchie. He interviewed the family, the neighbours and all five professional witnesses. He noted that everything happened around Virginia while she was awake. He ruled out hallucination and hoaxing. A surveyor found no ground movement, so G. W. Lambert's underground water theory failed too.

His conclusion: "Economy of hypothesis thus suggests that as the result of a peculiar condition of the relevant times in Virginia's body or mind certain unknown physical forces operated on matter in the vicinity." He pointed to puberty, and to a girl cut off from her parents, her dog, her best friend and her home. His 1964 book, Can We Explain the Poltergeist?, won the McDougall Award.

The tapes were broadcast on BBC radio in the 1960s. Sauchie-born researcher Malcolm Robinson rediscovered the audio and played it at Sauchie Hall on 20 November 2021. He reports activity at other Park Crescent houses in 1969 and 2020. "I can't think of any other street in Scotland with such a concentration of ghostly activity," he said. Popular retellings still ask whether Wee Hughie was a hoax. No one has ever shown that it was.