The Seaford Poltergeist ("Popper"), Herrmann House, Long Island, 1958

The Herrmanns lived in a green ranch house with white trim in Seaford, on Long Island. James M. Herrmann Sr., 42, was an airline representative who commuted 35 miles a day. His wife was Lucille. Their daughter, also Lucille, was 13. Their son James, known as Jimmy, was 12.

Monday, February 3, 1958. About 3:30 in the afternoon. The children found a ceramic doll and a plastic ship model broken on a dresser. On their mother's dresser the holy water bottle stood open and spilled.

Mrs. Herrmann phoned her husband. "All the bottles in the house…are blowing their tops!"

First came a loud pop. Then the family would find a bottle uncapped, tipped over or moved. Decades later the daughter remembered it on television. "All of a sudden, you'd hear this loud noise, like a popping bottle sound, and you'd look around and find a bottle that was 12 feet away from where it was supposed to be and all the contents were missing and the bottle was hot to the touch."

On February 9, Mr. Herrmann and Jimmy watched two bottles move in the bathroom. "One moved straight ahead, slowly, while the second spun to the right for a 45° angle." After that he stopped suspecting his son. Mrs. Herrmann called the police. Patrolman James Hughes checked the bathroom, and then a shampoo bottle tipped over in the room he had just searched.

After that the objects moved more violently. On February 15 their cousin Marie Murtha watched a porcelain figurine "wiggle…like a worm cut in pieces" and fly. An ink bottle lost its cap and sailed toward the front door. On March 4, John Gold of the London Evening News watched a flashbulb that "sailed 12ft across the room, hit a wall, ricocheted against a curtain, and fell to the floor."

From February 11 the Nassau County police had Detective Joseph Tozzi on the case full time. The Long Island Lighting Company tested for ground vibration and found none. Building inspectors found the house sound. Physicist Robert Zider of Brookhaven National Laboratory brought a dowsing rod and suggested an underground stream or magnetism. Tozzi found no hoax.

J. Gaither Pratt and William G. Roll of the Duke Parapsychology Laboratory catalogued 67 disturbances. Their pressure tests showed that pressure inside a bottle does not unscrew its cap. In 17 incidents, witnesses placed the children where they could not have touched the object. In their June 1958 paper they reported no evidence of fraud and proposed a name for what they had seen: recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis, or RSPK.

The doubts started early. Karlis Osis, a parapsychologist himself, concluded that Jimmy could have caused the events by normal means. Stage magician Milbourne Christopher showed reporters how thread and a hidden helper could produce the same effects. The parents refused a lie detector for the children. In 2012 Joe Nickell went through the police file. The events clustered around Jimmy and stopped when he was away, and the objects dusted with UV powder were never disturbed. Nickell argued that each movement fitted "simple trickery such as a boy could effect."

LIFE and TIME both covered the case on March 17, 1958. Christopher called it "the most discussed poltergeist case of the twentieth century." Later writers have often called it an inspiration for the 1982 film Poltergeist. Nobody ever proved a hoax. Nobody ever ruled one out either.