The Wild Plum Poltergeist

In 1887, on the Nebraska frontier, a homesteader family experienced poltergeist phenomena that baffled the isolated prairie community. Far from cities, libraries, or the developing Spiritualist movement, the settlers of Wild Plum encountered something they could only call “witchcraft” or “the devil’s work.”

The Setting

Wild Plum was barely a community—a scattering of sod houses and claim shanties on the Nebraska plains. The families who settled there were focused on survival, working the difficult land and enduring harsh winters. They had little time for imagination and less for superstition.

The affected family—their name was not preserved in surviving accounts—had been on their claim for approximately three years. They had established a reasonably comfortable soddy and were beginning to prosper when the phenomena began.

The Phenomena

It started with small things going missing, then reappearing in impossible locations. Tools vanished from where they were left and turned up in sealed trunks or outside in the fields. Food disappeared from the table while the family sat eating.

Then came the movements. Objects flew across the single room of the soddy. The iron stove shifted position when no one was near it. The family’s few precious possessions—a clock, a mirror, some china—were thrown and smashed.

Stones appeared from nowhere, falling inside the house despite the solid sod walls. Fire broke out in bedding and clothing that could not have been ignited by any normal means.

Community Response

Word spread across the scattered community. Neighbors came to see for themselves. Many witnessed phenomena—objects moving, sounds emanating from empty spaces, the stone falls that seemed impossible inside the thick-walled soddy.

The witnesses had no vocabulary for what they saw. Some called it witchcraft and looked for an enemy who might have hexed the family. Others blamed the devil and urged prayer and repentance. A few suggested that spirits of Indians who once lived on the land were responsible.

None of the explanations fit the phenomena. The poltergeist followed patterns that would later be recognized as typical, but no one on the Nebraska frontier in 1887 had any way of knowing that.

The Focus

As in other poltergeist cases, the activity seemed connected to a specific person—in this case, a teenage daughter. She was present during most incidents. When she was sent to stay with distant neighbors, the activity in her home decreased.

The girl denied causing the phenomena and seemed genuinely frightened. She was not accused of deliberate fraud, though some suspected she might be unconsciously responsible.

Resolution

The phenomena ceased after several weeks. No definitive explanation was ever found. The family remained on their claim, though they rarely spoke of the experience in later years. The story was preserved only through scattered newspaper accounts and local oral tradition.

Significance

The Wild Plum case demonstrates that poltergeist phenomena occurred on the American frontier, among practical people with no knowledge of or interest in the supernatural. The settlers’ bewildered responses—attributing the phenomena to witches, devils, or angry spirits—show how such experiences were interpreted before scientific frameworks existed.

The case adds to the global pattern of poltergeist activity: the adolescent focus, the stone-throwing, the spontaneous fires, the eventual resolution. Whatever causes poltergeist phenomena, it operated on the Nebraska plains in 1887 just as it operated in European cities and Asian villages.