!["The Baltimore Poltergeist" by Michael Naver and Travis Kidd, From Tomorrow, Vol. 8, No. 2, Spring 1960, page 10 [continuing from following page] memories of his fire-fighting career and still keeps an especially tuned radio in the house to keep him posted on fire alarms. His wife, a small, pert woman in her sixties, has no time for such matters. To her falls the job of running the house, keeping things running smoothly. She is efficient and almost totally pre-occupied with family and household chores. Also living in the house are the couple's son-in-law and daughter, Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Pauls. Mrs. Pauls works in the accounting department of a large department store, and her husband drives a cab. Neither of them spends much time at home, except for sleeping. And last, but far from least, is the Pauls' seventeen-year-old son, Ted. Ted is a shy, brooding youngster who talks knowledgeably about being "introverted." He explains that he "cannot speak at length with people whom I have not been acquainted with for some time." Ted has left school and does not work, so he spends most of his time at home. His family says he left school at sixteen, the legal age, because he was so brilliant that classes bored him. So shy is he, and so few are his friends, that his major interests are solitary ones. He reads a good deal, mainly science fiction and tales of the supernatural. In addition, he is the teenage writer and editor of a mimeographed newsletter which he issues from the basement and mails to a selected list of friends. From January 14 to February 8, Ted Paul's shyness was put to an extreme test. He was the center of more attention from the world outside his home than ever before in his life. Fifteen Exploding Pitchers The series of events, uncanny to some, merely unexplained to others, and which may become known as the "Baltimore Poltergeist Case," began on the morning of January 14, when fifteen miniature pottery pitchers blew up on a dining room shelf. This was the first incident in what was to be a month of intermittent havoc, that left the house looking as though a holocaust had hit. In the next few days, these things happened: A ceramic flower pot, shaped like a shoe, jumped from a shelf in the dining room and crashed [page ends here]](https://library.umbc.edu/specialcollections/garrett/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2024/06/Baltimore-Poltergeist-2-scaled.jpg)
Note the description of the members of the Jones family. Mrs. Jones’s description draws from contemporary gender roles of the nuclear family. Similarly, note the order in which their daughter is mentioned. Much of the focus is on Ted’s description due to his believed association with the poltergeist. Some similarities can be seen within the descriptions of Ted and the children suspected in the Seaford and Poultry Farm cases – notably their intellect and perceived peculiarity. Editions of Ted Pauls’ fanzine can be viewed within the Eileen J. Garrett Parapsychology Foundation Collection at UMBC’s AOK Library Special Collections.
See: first page
“The Baltimore Poltergeist,” Michael Naver and Travis Kidd, from Tomorrow, Vol. 8, No. 2, Spring 1960, pg. 10, Folder “Baltimore Poltergeist,” Box D, Eileen J. Garrett Parapsychology Foundation collection, Collection 331, Special Collections, University of Maryland, Baltimore County (Baltimore, MD).