Jam-eating ghost was not the Truth

- 1 May 1989

NZ Journalist, September 1988

The Press Council has not accepted that a jam-eating poltergeist was a logical explanation for a series of events reported in a Truth story.

The council has upheld a complaint by Mrs Hetty Turner of Christchurch about a Truth story: “Poltergeist! Bizzare Spook has Pensioner in a Jam.”

In October 1987, Mrs Turner wrote to the Truth asking if the newspaper would, through its “Silent witness scheme,” carry an announcement that she would offer a reward of $500 for information leading to the conviction of a person or persons responsible for vandalising her home during the previous four years.

She says she received a phone call from Truth’s Auckland office saying they would not only announce the reward but would pay it. The Auckland caller, Mrs Turner told the Press Council, said the newspaper’s Christchurch representative would call on her, but she said that did not happen. She prepared a list of the acts of vandalism that had occurred in the home, but claims that, after a change of mind, she did not forward this to Truth with a second letter she wrote to the editor on November 6, and had no further contact with the newspaper.

In its issue of November 24, Truth carried an article headed “Poltergeist! Bizzare Spook has Pensioner in a Jam.” The article said a jam-eating poltergeist was making life hell for Mrs Turner. It not only ate her jam, but tore her curtains, typed phantom messages on her typewriter, made nocturnal cups of tea in her teapot, and put her to sleep at night with a whiff of chloroform. The article included quotes attributed to Mrs Turner in addition to quotes from the letter she had written to the editor.

After the article was published, Mrs Turner wrote to the editor saying there was no question of ghosts or poltergeists in her home. The intruders were human beings. She asked for a correction to the report that supernatural powers were active in her home.

In her complaint to the Press Council in April this year, Mrs Turner claimed that the article was a deliberate attempt to destroy her character and reputation. It ridiculed and humiliated her and had caused her great embarrassment. She had never met or spoken to the journalist whose byline appeared on the story.

Truth in reply said the reporter who wrote the story based it on Mrs Turner’s telephone conversation with another staff member and on her two letters. In view of this he felt no need to contact her for amplification or verification, and in view of the fact that the police had found no evidence of foul play or of human activity, he felt a poltergeist was the most logical explanation. The story was treated systematically and was not meant to make Mrs Turner look ridiculous. No aspersions were cast on her character. The staff member who spoke to Mrs Turner by phone was positive she had mentioned chloroform and said her night visitors were making themselves cups of tea.

The Press Council, in its decision, said the reporter’s opinion “that a poltergeist was the most logical explanation” was illogical in the extreme. There was no mention of poltergeists in either of Mrs Turner’s letters to Truth, and the newspaper made no claim that they were mentioned in the only telephone conversation between her and the newspaper.

The reference to a poltergeist which occurred several times in the article was the concoction of a reporter who had not spoken to Mrs Turner, and appeared deliberately to misconstrue what she believed had happened in her house. Even if no harm were intended, it should have been obvious to the newspaper that the story tended to belittle Mrs Turner and was calculated to cause her embarrassment in the eyes of friends, neighbours and relatives.

Accordingly the complaint was upheld.