Who says the things beyond our understanding have no sense of humor?
Not I. I am convinced the best reason to scare a living person, if you are not one of them (and even if you are), is so that you can laugh at the look on their face when they are exposed to the very core.
But perhaps, sometimes, scaring people gets old. Boring. Tiresome. What do you do next?
According to Beetlejuice, you make them do a Harry Belafonte Song.
That’s all fine and dandy for today’s day and age, but what did you do a hundred years ago, before Harry had written such a catchy tune?
According to The Book of the Damned: The Collected Works of Charles Fort, you made them walk on their hands whenever they came home.
The book states that on May 1st, 1907, the London Daily Mail reported the case of Mme. Blerotti, who sought assistance from the Magistrate, by filing a complaint against an unknown person. She claimed that every time she entered her flat, which she shared with her son and her brother, “she was compelled by some unseen force to walk on her hands with her legs in the air.”
Her story was backed up by both her brother and her son, who reported that everyone who entered the flat felt the same compulsion.
Their story was backed up by their landlord who admitted he thought his tenants had gone mad, until he, himself, entered and felt the same compulsion.
The magistrate apparently determined they had all been afflicted with a mysterious malady and ordered the flat disinfected.
As there seems no follow up to this curious story, it seems it can be safely assumed that ghostly entities do not like disinfectant. Personally, Fantastik® can drive me away at a hundred yards per spray.
What appears to be a New Zealand newspaper’s re-print of the original article can be found here:
http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&d=AS19070615.2.120