Phoenix, 1898: The Stones That Followed a Family

In September 1898, an elderly woman living on the east side of Phoenix went to the county authorities. Someone, she said, kept throwing stones at her house. The officials assumed a prankster, which was a reasonable guess. What followed was a week of crowds, two newspapers’ worth of coverage and a mystery that nobody ever solved.

This file is about a real family, poor and Mexican-American, who were living through something frightening while half the town came to watch. The 1898 coverage calls her by condescending labels. We don’t repeat them.

What the Republican reported

The Arizona Republican’s story ran on 23 September 1898 under the headline “Assaulting Ghost.” We’ve read it only through the Library of Congress OCR text, so this is mostly a paraphrase. The stones had started, the paper said, a night or two after a lodger died in her house. She moved to a house on Seventh Street near Jefferson, and the stones followed. By the evening of Thursday 22 September, more than 200 people had crowded in. Some said they saw stones break windows or drop onto her shoulders from nowhere. Some said the stones were warm, and others ice-cold. A police officer, George McClarty, was said to have seen one land and handed it, still warm, to C. S. Scott of the rival Phoenix Herald.

The paper itself didn’t know what to make of it. In the OCR text it calls the story weird and says the hoax “has not been discovered if there be a hoax.” The next day an editorial compared the case to the famous Amherst, Nova Scotia haunting and observed that “Most Americans believe there is a hoax somewhere, but they have not been able to find it.” Both quotes were checked against the LoC OCR text by the research desk.

Two papers, two names

The Republican names the woman Josefa Nunez. The Phoenix Weekly Herald of 29 September names her Angela, wife of Sacramento Verdugo. Both papers put the family at Seventh and Jefferson, and the Herald adds a brick house east of Phoenix Park and a ranch outside town, so they seem to be describing the same household. But we can’t tell whether this is two names for one woman, a reporter’s mix-up or something else. We give both names and don’t merge them.

The test at the ranch

The Phoenix Weekly Herald of 29 September 1898 (page 2, “Ghost, Devil or Magic”) describes a test at the family ranch with about fifty people present. As she walked into an inner room behind a brick partition, a rock of four or five ounces fell from her shoulder. Someone then proposed repeating the test with her escorts, her own son and daughter, searched first. The family, in the paper’s words, were “highly incensed at the suggestion that they were parties to the old lady’s distress” and refused. The same account notes that a night test was hard to judge in the dark. One stone was described as warm, as if it had been carried in a pocket.

We’ve now checked this on the original page in the Library of Congress collection. The blog The Fortean, which first transcribed it, calls the paper the Weekly Republican; it is the Phoenix Weekly Herald.

Nine months later

On 9 June 1899 the Republican (page 5, “Mysterious Stone Throwing Recalled”) came back to the story. Everyone who saw the manifestations, it said, believed there was a trick, but “it was never exposed.” District Attorney Flannigan and Constable Joe Balsz had visited the family, who by then were destitute and living in a hut near the park.

Explanations on the table

• A trick by someone close to her. The Herald says only her son and daughter were in a position to do it, and they refused a search. The 1899 follow-up says witnesses suspected a trick. That’s suspicion, not proof.
• An outside harasser trying to drive the family off. This was the family’s own early belief, and officials first treated it the same way.
• Suggestion in the dark. Crowds, night, expectation, and stones that felt warm, as if they had been carried in a pocket.
• A genuine poltergeist. That’s how the Republican framed the lodger’s death, and modern Fortean writers read it that way too. Nothing in the record tests it.

Ledger status

Marked open (unexplained). Two competing daily papers covered it in the same week, and they agree on the address, the crowds and the suspicion of a trick. No one was ever caught, and the paper said as much nine months later. The Herald account and the 1899 follow-up have now been checked on the original pages. The family’s name is still unresolved.

No pin. These were private homes, and the period landmarks don’t give a citable location today. For the territorial press behind stories like this, see Tubac Presidio, where Arizona’s first newspaper was printed.

Next checks: any city or county record of the family’s request for protection.

Sources

• Arizona Republican (Phoenix), 23 Sep 1898, p.8, “Assaulting Ghost” (OCR checked by the research desk) — loc.gov
• Arizona Republican, 24 Sep 1898, p.4, editorial (OCR checked by the research desk) — loc.gov
• Phoenix Weekly Herald, 29 Sep 1898, p.2, “Ghost, Devil or Magic” (OCR checked) — loc.gov
• Arizona Republican, 9 Jun 1899, p.5, “Mysterious Stone Throwing Recalled” (OCR checked) — loc.gov
• Earlier transcriptions: “Angela and the Stones,” The Fortean, 13 Jan 2021 (which calls the paper the Weekly Republican; it is the Phoenix Weekly Herald) — thefortean.com; “Señora Nuñez and the Burning Stones,” The Fortean, 19 Sep 2019 — thefortean.com