A strange sound was heard throughout Portugal for about three months in 1920. Some described it as sounding like a phantom sewing machine.
Could this be similar to the Taos, New Mexico hum, and other strange sound events that have taken place throughout the world?
Portugal is Agitated by Sewing Machine Ghost
LISBON, Portugal. October 29, 1920. — Portugal, always a hotbed of superstition, now is agitated by what is described as “a phantom sewing-machine.”
Columns of the daily newspapers are filled with letters reporting cases in which a mysterious sound resembling that produced by a sewing machine has been heard.
Other communications are from scientists, philosophers and spiritualists attempting to explain its origin.
The Lisbon newspapers say the strange sound was first heard about three months ago in a house in Oporto at midnight and the newspapers add that hundreds of people have heard the same sound since but at different places.
It is reported that one family abandoned their house at a fashionable bathing resort because they had heard the sound for six successive nights.
At Sinfaes a young girl is seriously ill from fright and her parents declare they heard the sound for several hours each night apparently coming from the bed railings.
The popular explanation is that the soul of a seamstress has been doomed to haunt the world to expiate a sin and, all through the provinces, the peasants are praying for her repose.
Source: The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. (Richmond, Ind.), 29 Oct. 1920.
