
A Fortean who was mostly off the reservation, though central to one of the key Fortean Society issues of the mid-1940s.
Benjamin (or Binjamins) Walter Dunkelberger was born 14 March 1913 in Sanborn, North Dakota. His parents, Benjamin Walter Dunkelberger (Sr.) and Ethel Griesel had come from Indiana. According to on-line genealogy pages, they were married 25 September 1907, when Sr. was 23 and Ethel 20. In 1910, Walter, as he was often known, was proprietor of a barbershop. The Fargo city directory of 1917 has him in the same occupation. But by 1918, he’d made a career change, going to work as a storekeeper for Union Light Heating and Power. Benjamin Walter, Jr., also often known as Walter, was Walter and Ethel’s only child. They both stated in North Dakota for the rest of their lives, as would their son.
Walter Jr. attended Fargo Central High, where he was in the a cappella chorus, the orpheus club (a musical club)—he was an award winning “low voice” singer, the band orchestra, theater, and science club. He then attended North Dakota Agricultural College—now North Dakota State University—where he his musical extra-curricular activities, joining the glee club and gold star band. He performed in plays, was part of “Bison Brevities”—the school’s Vaudeville troupe—and belonged to the Faust Club, YMCA, Atelier Chat Noir (architectural club) and engineer’s club. He majored in electrical engineering graduating in 1937. According to online genealogical sites, he married Lorraine Marian Hendrickson on 2 July 1935, when he was 22 and she was 21. Her family had come from Minnesota.
Benjamin (or Binjamins) Walter Dunkelberger was born 14 March 1913 in Sanborn, North Dakota. His parents, Benjamin Walter Dunkelberger (Sr.) and Ethel Griesel had come from Indiana. According to on-line genealogy pages, they were married 25 September 1907, when Sr. was 23 and Ethel 20. In 1910, Walter, as he was often known, was proprietor of a barbershop. The Fargo city directory of 1917 has him in the same occupation. But by 1918, he’d made a career change, going to work as a storekeeper for Union Light Heating and Power. Benjamin Walter, Jr., also often known as Walter, was Walter and Ethel’s only child. They both stated in North Dakota for the rest of their lives, as would their son.
Walter Jr. attended Fargo Central High, where he was in the a cappella chorus, the orpheus club (a musical club)—he was an award winning “low voice” singer, the band orchestra, theater, and science club. He then attended North Dakota Agricultural College—now North Dakota State University—where he his musical extra-curricular activities, joining the glee club and gold star band. He performed in plays, was part of “Bison Brevities”—the school’s Vaudeville troupe—and belonged to the Faust Club, YMCA, Atelier Chat Noir (architectural club) and engineer’s club. He majored in electrical engineering graduating in 1937. According to online genealogical sites, he married Lorraine Marian Hendrickson on 2 July 1935, when he was 22 and she was 21. Her family had come from Minnesota.

The 1940 census has Walter, Jr., and Lorraine living together in Fargo. He was chief projectionist of a theater. A 1945 city directory lists him as working at the New Isis Theater, and this theater may have been the same one as in 1940. His mother, Ethel, died on 31 March 1944, when she was only 57. The same 1945 city directory has Sr. living with a Jean Dunkelberger, who may have been Walter Sr.’s niece from Indiana. His dad would live until 20 April 1957, dying at age 73. Walter, Jr., would only outlive him by five years, passing 19 May 1962 at age 49. Lorraine lived in North Dakota for over three more decades, dying on 31 July 1997.
For a time in the mid-1940s, Walter Dunkelberger., Jr., was an active science fiction fan. In 1943 he put out the ‘zine “Nuz from Home”—fans loved alternative spellings—also called “Nuz from Stfandom.” (One issue of the ’zine, titled simply “Nuz” has Lorraine as the editor.) In 1944 he took over “FaNews,” which had been started as a gossipy postcard report on the fan community in 1943 by Bob Tucker and passed through a couple of more editors before Dunkelberger. Fan historian Harry Warner writes, “It gave the most thorough coverage of fandom and prodom of any newszine in history, and claimed 339 issues when it suspended publication in January 1948. This numbering is controversial, however, since Dunkelberger was in the habit of sending out simultaneously a thick sheaf of pages identified as a specific number of issues in apparently arbitrary manner.” In addition, Dunkelberger became associated with the National Fantasy Fan Federation, editing its ‘zine “Bonfire” for a time in 1944 and acting as president in 1946. In polls, he was chosen as one of the most popular fans.
Dunkelberger’s time in science fiction was marked by intense activity and lots of confrontation. Warner has him as “excitable.” He constantly experimented with the size of “Fanews,” sometimes putting it on a postcard, sometimes on a full sheet; its distribution, attempting to get a British version of the ground; and its frequency, at some points putting out the ‘zine at the remarkable rate of once per day: an old-fashioned blog! He attempted to get The Saturday Review of Literature to recognize the National Fantasy Fan Federation. He attended and hosted science fiction conventions. He feuded mightily with fan Jack Speer. His presidency of the National Fantasy Fan Federation was turbulent. Dunkelberger came to dislike the Shaver mystery developing under Ray Palmer’s editorship of Amazing Stories, like many other fans seeing it as ridiculous, particularly when a proponent authoritatively cited books from Miskatonic University—which was a fictional school! But while Forest Ackerman wanted fans to ostracize Palmer and Amazing Stories, cutting off all connections, Dunkelberger didn’t think such a dramatic gesture was necessary. If some people enjoyed it, let them.
Apparently, Dunkelberger burned himself out on fandom by 1948. At least, that’s when his last issue of “FaNews” appeared, and he did very little after that: a few issues of the ‘zine “Mag Without a Name” in 1950 and 1951. Indeed, the next several years of his life are meagerly documented. Walter and Lorraine had at least two daughters, Jacqueline (b. 1937) and Geraldine (b. ca. 1940)—likely his children kept him from being drafted into World War II—and it may just have been that raising two children, then aged about 11 and 8, plus work, just took most of his time. Some support for this supposition comes from later events. Dunkelberger was a Mason, and a committed one. Harold Sackett, in his history of North Dakota Freemasonry, says, “No other Mason gave as unsparingly of his time and talent to Sunrise lodge, as Walter Dunkelberger.” He took over mastership of the lodge in 1960—with Jacqueline having been married for six years and Geraldine about twenty years old.
It is also the case that Dunkelberger’s involvement with Forteana covers the same time period as when he was an active fan, which may indicate, again, that mundane events interfered with his extra-curricular activities. Or it may indicate that there was a connection for him between science fiction and Forteanism, the two covering some of the same intellectual territory. Or it may be a bit of both, with Dunkelberger leaving Forteana at the same time as science fiction because he was burned out and then developing other interests. Certainly his previous avocations indicated he had a lot of enthusiasms.
Dunkelberger’s Forteanism is best seen away from the Fortean Society, in relation with his science fiction activities—though probably his most prominent moment as a Fortean came with his one mention in The Fortean Society Magazine. “Fanews” was gossipy, so not likely to run Fortean items, but it attracted a number of Forteans, among them Donn Brazier, George Wetzel, Robert Bloch, and Lilith Lorraine. (Admittedly, anti-Forteans such as Jack Speer were also mentioned in the ‘zine.) The gossip, though, indicated Dunkelberger’s Fortean interests. Numbers 242-3 (25 November 1945) included the note:
“Donn Brazier reports that DOUBT, Fortean Society mag, carries items of std interest. Some notes by Art Joquel II; Derleth and Arkham House; Some new law of physics that questions Newton’s third law; (this was discovered by a 4 1/2 year old); A note about Cahill’s Butterfly map (method of laying out the world on paper and still keeping it in correct proportions) being copied by orthodox map mares without giving Cahill credit and an article by Lt. B.F. Pinkerton questioning whether the atomic bomb actually splits atoms or is just a high explosive. The Fortean Society address is Box 192, Grand Central Annex, New York City.”
A 1946 issue reprinted “Worlds Within,” column from the July 1946 issue Pageant Magazine which was “devoted to data of Fortean interest.” The same year, Dunkelberger eulogized Brazier’s Fortean ‘zine “Frontier” and announced his intention to start a similarly-themed publication “Research Review,” which would focus on science and philosophy, fantasy and science fiction, and music and art. “Its policy will be a search for true values in understanding and appreciation,” he said. (The ‘zine doesn’t ever seem to have appeared.) Two years later, he did include a few Fortean reports—of mysterious blasts—as well as a discussion of Fortean Lilith Lorraine’s would try bringing about peace by publishing a ‘zine that was devoted to the subject, turning humanity’s mind from bloody destruction. That issue of “Fanews,” dated 6 January 1948, also recommended R. DeWitt Miller’s new book Forgotten Mysteries. Dunkelberger wrote, “He will find his place among such seekers as Ambrose Bierce, Andrew Lang, Lt. Commander Gould and Charles Fort.” The list of names shows how Dunkelberger thought of Fort. Bierce was one of the seminal writers in fantasy fiction; Lang collected folklore and also founded the field of psychical research; Gould had written early books on anomalies, though had only come to the attention of Dunkelberger’s colleagues in the 1940s; and Dewitt wrote what was mostly a compendium without a unifying theme. The context suggests that Dunkelberger though of Fort as outlining potentially unrecognized scientific laws.
That view of Fort—not as arch skeptic, but prophet of a new science—also explains Dunkelberger’s sole appearance in the pages of Tiffany Thayer’s Fortean Society Magazine. He showed up on issue 10 (autumn 1944). Thayer seems to have been rethinking the magazine in light of the objections he had received to his anti-war issues. There had been no spring issue—perhaps because Thayer married Kathleen McMahon on 22 January. But also perhaps because he was playing with the magazine. He was looking for a new distributor in Washington DC, would change its name to Doubt with issue 11, and started a new pagination system. Issue 9 ended on page 14. Issue ten picks up on page 137. Thayer was making the magazine more provocative, more incisive, after a few issues that had been relatively quiet—and as he was being investigated by the FBI for subversiveness. Among the subjects that especially exercised him was the lie detector, and the magazine saw increasing references to this threat to American liberty:
“Politicians tells us that ‘the price of liberty’ is eternal vigilance’ and go on to prove that vigilance can be no more eternal than voting for them will make it, but despite the abuse of that truism it is high pertinent here. No single despotic power Congress has turned over to the President is so great a menace to the vestige of ‘liberty’ remaining to us as the ‘rapidly spreading’ use of the ‘lie detector’ . . . This is no abstract ‘issue’ which Forteans may regard objectively. It is a matter of immediate, vital, personal concern to every one of us. It is of particular Fortean interest because the power being invoked to gain absolute supremacy over mass mentality is awe for and confidence in Scientific ‘achievement’. This is the same bludgeon which forced upon us compulsory vaccination and Wassermann tests, but whereas both those grafts have a modicum of virtue to support them, the ‘lie-detector’ has not a leg to stand on. If we permit its adoption as standard equipment in our police departments and law courts, we shall be—in essence—kneeling before a myth, first cousin to that other omnipotent wraith, the truth-loving Holy Ghost. We are not yet quite powerless to combat this machine’s encroachments upon liberty and reason, despite its sponsorship by the Saturday Evening Post. We can invariably refuse to submit to its use—even for the purpose of proving it wrong. We can urge lawyers and judges of our acquaintance to laugh it out of court. In certain localities as the issue of purchase arises, we can refuse to grant the use of tax money to buy this glorified Ouija board or to pay any of its practitioners their fee for consultation.”
And that is where North Dakota came in. Events there put authorities between the proverbial rock and a hard place, either affirming the presence of Fortean poltergeist or denying the efficacy of lie detectors. It is time to look at another Fortean event of the 1940s.
March 28, 1944. Bismarck, N.D.State Fire Marshal Charles Schwartz takes a call from R. L. Swenson, Stark County Superintendent of Schools. There have been disturbing events at Wild Plum, a one-room school some 20 miles south of Richardton. That day, Mrs. Pauline Rebel and her eight pupils watched as a pail of coal near the stove began to stir. Pieces popped out of the pail, bouncing around the room, knocking into walls, and hitting one student on the head. The bucket turned out and the lumps of coal ignited. Window blinds smoldered, a dictionary moved, and a bookcase caught fire. School officials were called, and saw that the coal was still moving about “reacting to a mysterious force.”
March 29, 1944. Richardton, N.D. Schwartz arrives in town. Pauline Rebel and the eight children are all subjected to a lie detector test. All of them pass. He also collected the coal and sent it to Dickinson State Teachers College, The University of North Dakota, and the FBI. The FBI also received the dictionary and the pail. Tests would later reveal nothing unusual about any of them. Mrs. Rebel wondered if the events had something to do with a threatening letter that she had received. Rumors also circulated of a hooded man. Further investigation would reveal that odd events had been occurring since January. The school was closed.
News of the weird events at Wild Plum appeared in newspapers around the country on the 13th and 14th of April, sent over the wires by the Associated Press. Time magazine reported on the “witchery” in the 24 April issue. The magazine tried to explain the events with a baroque bit of scientific speculation, suggesting that the accidental organization of molecules caused the coal to jump. This hypothesis was based on George Gamow’s Mr. Tompkins Explores the Atom. Forteans are riveted. “No event since the boom in the sky over Brooklyn has been reported reported by so many members or covered so thoroughly by them,” Thayer said in The Fortean Society Magazine 10.
Johnny-on-the-spot, of course, was Walter Dunkelberger. He applied himself to the story with his expected diligence, clipping reports in newspapers and even corresponded with state officials. In all, he compiled an 18 page “dossier l’affaire Prunelle Sauvage,” as Thayer called it. Dunkelberger’s interest in the case suggests that what he saw in Forteanism was a chance to look for new scientific laws and undiscovered forces. For the only solution to the mystery, as of the middle of April, was witchcraft or a haunting—by poltergeists, those active ghosts that Fort had discussed in his final book Wild Talents. “To put it mildly,” Schwartz said, “we are puzzled.”
Thayer, though, did not get to the story until the fall, by which time there had been some incredible developments. It is unknown when Dunkelberger sent in his dossier, but it was almost certainly after that turn of events, in the last third of April. (And, indeed, was around the time that he started editing “FaNews.”) The events were all to the good for the Fortean Society, though: Thayer had caught the authorities with their pants down.
18 April. Dickinson, N.D. Associated Press reports “The case of the leaping lignite at lonely Wild Plum rural school in southern Stark county is solved.” Late the previous evening, Schwartz and Special Assistant Attorney General W. J. Austin questioned the students again, in front of their parents. This time four of them said that they—with the help of “several other students”—had created the hoax. (Given that there were only eight kids in the class, the report would suggest that all, or maybe all but one, were involved in the prank—if it was a prank.) According to Austin, Mrs. Rebel was extremely near-sighted, and gullible. So the kids threw coal. They planted matches. They used sticks and rulers to jiggle the pail of coal and knock it over. They pounded on their desks and floor, then rush to the door, announcing that they saw a hooded man running outside. The two oldest pupils, girls both, aged 12 and 15, wrote threatening, sometimes obscene notes, and tacked them to the door.
Time magazine ran a follow-up story in the 1 May issue, digesting the report from the AP. But the solution was less than satisfactory. For one, school officials had reported seeing the coal move, as well. And parent George Steiner told journalists that one piece of coal had jumped about in his hand. Time and the Associated Press just chalked the reports up to more gullibility. For another, the pranks seem especially dangerous, burning bookcases and books in a lonely school house likely to lead to disaster. Thayer printed a letter from Nelson S. Bond pointing out some of the absurdities:
“Of course, it is a common occurrence for little school-children in Bismarck, N.D., to start throwing lumps of coal at their teacher! And of course there was no ‘teacher’s pet’ in this school-room to inform on his (or her) schoolmates over a period of three weeks! And of course it is altogether likely that the moment the coal started flying at Schoolmistress Rebel’s head, Mrs. Rebel instantly took off her glasses to keep them from being damaged . . . and thereby rendering herself as blind as a bat! And, having experimented, I know how easy it is to set fire to a bookcase. I have just completed a fine laboratory experiment on one of my own bookcases. I find that by rubbing two volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica together one can concoct a fine, cheerful blaze. Or a blowtorch can be used, of course. School children frequently carry blowtorches to school with them in their lunch-pails . . . in Bismarck, N.D.” [All ellipses in original.]
There is also a weird bit of sociology going on here—or, better said, an under-explained bit of sociology. According to one news report, five of the students were children of George Steiner—that is to say, five of the eight students in the class, meaning the school essentially catered to the Steiner family. That more than half the students were siblings may account for the hoax: it seems easier to imagine that family members might have all got up to no good together. But then was Steiner in on the joke, or that easily gulled by his children? Would not authorities have been more suspicious early on that five of the eight kids were family members? According to the 1940 census, Richard and Francis Steiner were Russian immigrants who had eight kids, George’s family having emigrated when he was young, and he having grown up in North Dakota. They owned a farm. The two older girls posting the notes would have been their daughters Helen and Ismara. It is worth noting that Pauline Rebel was also likely the daughter of Russian immigrants, born Margaret Obrigewitsch in North Dakota.
The holes in the explanation and obviously specious reasoning—at least as presented by the AP andTime—did mother bother Thayer, though; it delighted him. Because in dispensing with the idea that the school’s weird events could have been caused by some form of wild talents—it is worth noting that the teen and preteen girls seem to have been the leaders, and Fort thought that girls in that age range were especially likely to demonstrate telekinetic powers or be associated with poltergeists—in rejecting all of that Fortean claptrap, the authorities had to admit that the lie detector had not worked.
That the lie detector had been defeated by eight children.
That, as Thayer said, “a group of backwoods infants and adolescents had made a monkey of the ‘lie-detector.’ We Forteans win either way in this deal.”
For a time in the mid-1940s, Walter Dunkelberger., Jr., was an active science fiction fan. In 1943 he put out the ‘zine “Nuz from Home”—fans loved alternative spellings—also called “Nuz from Stfandom.” (One issue of the ’zine, titled simply “Nuz” has Lorraine as the editor.) In 1944 he took over “FaNews,” which had been started as a gossipy postcard report on the fan community in 1943 by Bob Tucker and passed through a couple of more editors before Dunkelberger. Fan historian Harry Warner writes, “It gave the most thorough coverage of fandom and prodom of any newszine in history, and claimed 339 issues when it suspended publication in January 1948. This numbering is controversial, however, since Dunkelberger was in the habit of sending out simultaneously a thick sheaf of pages identified as a specific number of issues in apparently arbitrary manner.” In addition, Dunkelberger became associated with the National Fantasy Fan Federation, editing its ‘zine “Bonfire” for a time in 1944 and acting as president in 1946. In polls, he was chosen as one of the most popular fans.
Dunkelberger’s time in science fiction was marked by intense activity and lots of confrontation. Warner has him as “excitable.” He constantly experimented with the size of “Fanews,” sometimes putting it on a postcard, sometimes on a full sheet; its distribution, attempting to get a British version of the ground; and its frequency, at some points putting out the ‘zine at the remarkable rate of once per day: an old-fashioned blog! He attempted to get The Saturday Review of Literature to recognize the National Fantasy Fan Federation. He attended and hosted science fiction conventions. He feuded mightily with fan Jack Speer. His presidency of the National Fantasy Fan Federation was turbulent. Dunkelberger came to dislike the Shaver mystery developing under Ray Palmer’s editorship of Amazing Stories, like many other fans seeing it as ridiculous, particularly when a proponent authoritatively cited books from Miskatonic University—which was a fictional school! But while Forest Ackerman wanted fans to ostracize Palmer and Amazing Stories, cutting off all connections, Dunkelberger didn’t think such a dramatic gesture was necessary. If some people enjoyed it, let them.
Apparently, Dunkelberger burned himself out on fandom by 1948. At least, that’s when his last issue of “FaNews” appeared, and he did very little after that: a few issues of the ‘zine “Mag Without a Name” in 1950 and 1951. Indeed, the next several years of his life are meagerly documented. Walter and Lorraine had at least two daughters, Jacqueline (b. 1937) and Geraldine (b. ca. 1940)—likely his children kept him from being drafted into World War II—and it may just have been that raising two children, then aged about 11 and 8, plus work, just took most of his time. Some support for this supposition comes from later events. Dunkelberger was a Mason, and a committed one. Harold Sackett, in his history of North Dakota Freemasonry, says, “No other Mason gave as unsparingly of his time and talent to Sunrise lodge, as Walter Dunkelberger.” He took over mastership of the lodge in 1960—with Jacqueline having been married for six years and Geraldine about twenty years old.
It is also the case that Dunkelberger’s involvement with Forteana covers the same time period as when he was an active fan, which may indicate, again, that mundane events interfered with his extra-curricular activities. Or it may indicate that there was a connection for him between science fiction and Forteanism, the two covering some of the same intellectual territory. Or it may be a bit of both, with Dunkelberger leaving Forteana at the same time as science fiction because he was burned out and then developing other interests. Certainly his previous avocations indicated he had a lot of enthusiasms.
Dunkelberger’s Forteanism is best seen away from the Fortean Society, in relation with his science fiction activities—though probably his most prominent moment as a Fortean came with his one mention in The Fortean Society Magazine. “Fanews” was gossipy, so not likely to run Fortean items, but it attracted a number of Forteans, among them Donn Brazier, George Wetzel, Robert Bloch, and Lilith Lorraine. (Admittedly, anti-Forteans such as Jack Speer were also mentioned in the ‘zine.) The gossip, though, indicated Dunkelberger’s Fortean interests. Numbers 242-3 (25 November 1945) included the note:
“Donn Brazier reports that DOUBT, Fortean Society mag, carries items of std interest. Some notes by Art Joquel II; Derleth and Arkham House; Some new law of physics that questions Newton’s third law; (this was discovered by a 4 1/2 year old); A note about Cahill’s Butterfly map (method of laying out the world on paper and still keeping it in correct proportions) being copied by orthodox map mares without giving Cahill credit and an article by Lt. B.F. Pinkerton questioning whether the atomic bomb actually splits atoms or is just a high explosive. The Fortean Society address is Box 192, Grand Central Annex, New York City.”
A 1946 issue reprinted “Worlds Within,” column from the July 1946 issue Pageant Magazine which was “devoted to data of Fortean interest.” The same year, Dunkelberger eulogized Brazier’s Fortean ‘zine “Frontier” and announced his intention to start a similarly-themed publication “Research Review,” which would focus on science and philosophy, fantasy and science fiction, and music and art. “Its policy will be a search for true values in understanding and appreciation,” he said. (The ‘zine doesn’t ever seem to have appeared.) Two years later, he did include a few Fortean reports—of mysterious blasts—as well as a discussion of Fortean Lilith Lorraine’s would try bringing about peace by publishing a ‘zine that was devoted to the subject, turning humanity’s mind from bloody destruction. That issue of “Fanews,” dated 6 January 1948, also recommended R. DeWitt Miller’s new book Forgotten Mysteries. Dunkelberger wrote, “He will find his place among such seekers as Ambrose Bierce, Andrew Lang, Lt. Commander Gould and Charles Fort.” The list of names shows how Dunkelberger thought of Fort. Bierce was one of the seminal writers in fantasy fiction; Lang collected folklore and also founded the field of psychical research; Gould had written early books on anomalies, though had only come to the attention of Dunkelberger’s colleagues in the 1940s; and Dewitt wrote what was mostly a compendium without a unifying theme. The context suggests that Dunkelberger though of Fort as outlining potentially unrecognized scientific laws.
That view of Fort—not as arch skeptic, but prophet of a new science—also explains Dunkelberger’s sole appearance in the pages of Tiffany Thayer’s Fortean Society Magazine. He showed up on issue 10 (autumn 1944). Thayer seems to have been rethinking the magazine in light of the objections he had received to his anti-war issues. There had been no spring issue—perhaps because Thayer married Kathleen McMahon on 22 January. But also perhaps because he was playing with the magazine. He was looking for a new distributor in Washington DC, would change its name to Doubt with issue 11, and started a new pagination system. Issue 9 ended on page 14. Issue ten picks up on page 137. Thayer was making the magazine more provocative, more incisive, after a few issues that had been relatively quiet—and as he was being investigated by the FBI for subversiveness. Among the subjects that especially exercised him was the lie detector, and the magazine saw increasing references to this threat to American liberty:
“Politicians tells us that ‘the price of liberty’ is eternal vigilance’ and go on to prove that vigilance can be no more eternal than voting for them will make it, but despite the abuse of that truism it is high pertinent here. No single despotic power Congress has turned over to the President is so great a menace to the vestige of ‘liberty’ remaining to us as the ‘rapidly spreading’ use of the ‘lie detector’ . . . This is no abstract ‘issue’ which Forteans may regard objectively. It is a matter of immediate, vital, personal concern to every one of us. It is of particular Fortean interest because the power being invoked to gain absolute supremacy over mass mentality is awe for and confidence in Scientific ‘achievement’. This is the same bludgeon which forced upon us compulsory vaccination and Wassermann tests, but whereas both those grafts have a modicum of virtue to support them, the ‘lie-detector’ has not a leg to stand on. If we permit its adoption as standard equipment in our police departments and law courts, we shall be—in essence—kneeling before a myth, first cousin to that other omnipotent wraith, the truth-loving Holy Ghost. We are not yet quite powerless to combat this machine’s encroachments upon liberty and reason, despite its sponsorship by the Saturday Evening Post. We can invariably refuse to submit to its use—even for the purpose of proving it wrong. We can urge lawyers and judges of our acquaintance to laugh it out of court. In certain localities as the issue of purchase arises, we can refuse to grant the use of tax money to buy this glorified Ouija board or to pay any of its practitioners their fee for consultation.”
And that is where North Dakota came in. Events there put authorities between the proverbial rock and a hard place, either affirming the presence of Fortean poltergeist or denying the efficacy of lie detectors. It is time to look at another Fortean event of the 1940s.
March 28, 1944. Bismarck, N.D.State Fire Marshal Charles Schwartz takes a call from R. L. Swenson, Stark County Superintendent of Schools. There have been disturbing events at Wild Plum, a one-room school some 20 miles south of Richardton. That day, Mrs. Pauline Rebel and her eight pupils watched as a pail of coal near the stove began to stir. Pieces popped out of the pail, bouncing around the room, knocking into walls, and hitting one student on the head. The bucket turned out and the lumps of coal ignited. Window blinds smoldered, a dictionary moved, and a bookcase caught fire. School officials were called, and saw that the coal was still moving about “reacting to a mysterious force.”
March 29, 1944. Richardton, N.D. Schwartz arrives in town. Pauline Rebel and the eight children are all subjected to a lie detector test. All of them pass. He also collected the coal and sent it to Dickinson State Teachers College, The University of North Dakota, and the FBI. The FBI also received the dictionary and the pail. Tests would later reveal nothing unusual about any of them. Mrs. Rebel wondered if the events had something to do with a threatening letter that she had received. Rumors also circulated of a hooded man. Further investigation would reveal that odd events had been occurring since January. The school was closed.
News of the weird events at Wild Plum appeared in newspapers around the country on the 13th and 14th of April, sent over the wires by the Associated Press. Time magazine reported on the “witchery” in the 24 April issue. The magazine tried to explain the events with a baroque bit of scientific speculation, suggesting that the accidental organization of molecules caused the coal to jump. This hypothesis was based on George Gamow’s Mr. Tompkins Explores the Atom. Forteans are riveted. “No event since the boom in the sky over Brooklyn has been reported reported by so many members or covered so thoroughly by them,” Thayer said in The Fortean Society Magazine 10.
Johnny-on-the-spot, of course, was Walter Dunkelberger. He applied himself to the story with his expected diligence, clipping reports in newspapers and even corresponded with state officials. In all, he compiled an 18 page “dossier l’affaire Prunelle Sauvage,” as Thayer called it. Dunkelberger’s interest in the case suggests that what he saw in Forteanism was a chance to look for new scientific laws and undiscovered forces. For the only solution to the mystery, as of the middle of April, was witchcraft or a haunting—by poltergeists, those active ghosts that Fort had discussed in his final book Wild Talents. “To put it mildly,” Schwartz said, “we are puzzled.”
Thayer, though, did not get to the story until the fall, by which time there had been some incredible developments. It is unknown when Dunkelberger sent in his dossier, but it was almost certainly after that turn of events, in the last third of April. (And, indeed, was around the time that he started editing “FaNews.”) The events were all to the good for the Fortean Society, though: Thayer had caught the authorities with their pants down.
18 April. Dickinson, N.D. Associated Press reports “The case of the leaping lignite at lonely Wild Plum rural school in southern Stark county is solved.” Late the previous evening, Schwartz and Special Assistant Attorney General W. J. Austin questioned the students again, in front of their parents. This time four of them said that they—with the help of “several other students”—had created the hoax. (Given that there were only eight kids in the class, the report would suggest that all, or maybe all but one, were involved in the prank—if it was a prank.) According to Austin, Mrs. Rebel was extremely near-sighted, and gullible. So the kids threw coal. They planted matches. They used sticks and rulers to jiggle the pail of coal and knock it over. They pounded on their desks and floor, then rush to the door, announcing that they saw a hooded man running outside. The two oldest pupils, girls both, aged 12 and 15, wrote threatening, sometimes obscene notes, and tacked them to the door.
Time magazine ran a follow-up story in the 1 May issue, digesting the report from the AP. But the solution was less than satisfactory. For one, school officials had reported seeing the coal move, as well. And parent George Steiner told journalists that one piece of coal had jumped about in his hand. Time and the Associated Press just chalked the reports up to more gullibility. For another, the pranks seem especially dangerous, burning bookcases and books in a lonely school house likely to lead to disaster. Thayer printed a letter from Nelson S. Bond pointing out some of the absurdities:
“Of course, it is a common occurrence for little school-children in Bismarck, N.D., to start throwing lumps of coal at their teacher! And of course there was no ‘teacher’s pet’ in this school-room to inform on his (or her) schoolmates over a period of three weeks! And of course it is altogether likely that the moment the coal started flying at Schoolmistress Rebel’s head, Mrs. Rebel instantly took off her glasses to keep them from being damaged . . . and thereby rendering herself as blind as a bat! And, having experimented, I know how easy it is to set fire to a bookcase. I have just completed a fine laboratory experiment on one of my own bookcases. I find that by rubbing two volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica together one can concoct a fine, cheerful blaze. Or a blowtorch can be used, of course. School children frequently carry blowtorches to school with them in their lunch-pails . . . in Bismarck, N.D.” [All ellipses in original.]
There is also a weird bit of sociology going on here—or, better said, an under-explained bit of sociology. According to one news report, five of the students were children of George Steiner—that is to say, five of the eight students in the class, meaning the school essentially catered to the Steiner family. That more than half the students were siblings may account for the hoax: it seems easier to imagine that family members might have all got up to no good together. But then was Steiner in on the joke, or that easily gulled by his children? Would not authorities have been more suspicious early on that five of the eight kids were family members? According to the 1940 census, Richard and Francis Steiner were Russian immigrants who had eight kids, George’s family having emigrated when he was young, and he having grown up in North Dakota. They owned a farm. The two older girls posting the notes would have been their daughters Helen and Ismara. It is worth noting that Pauline Rebel was also likely the daughter of Russian immigrants, born Margaret Obrigewitsch in North Dakota.
The holes in the explanation and obviously specious reasoning—at least as presented by the AP andTime—did mother bother Thayer, though; it delighted him. Because in dispensing with the idea that the school’s weird events could have been caused by some form of wild talents—it is worth noting that the teen and preteen girls seem to have been the leaders, and Fort thought that girls in that age range were especially likely to demonstrate telekinetic powers or be associated with poltergeists—in rejecting all of that Fortean claptrap, the authorities had to admit that the lie detector had not worked.
That the lie detector had been defeated by eight children.
That, as Thayer said, “a group of backwoods infants and adolescents had made a monkey of the ‘lie-detector.’ We Forteans win either way in this deal.”