The Stone-Throwing Devil of New Hampshire

The summer of 1682 brought a peculiar terror to the small coastal settlement of New Castle, New Hampshire. George Walton, a prosperous tavern keeper and landowner, found his household under siege from an enemy that could not be seen, confronted, or stopped. Stones rained from empty skies, crashed through windows, and flew through rooms with apparent intelligence and malice. The bombardment continued for months, witnessed by dozens of people including Richard Chamberlain, the Secretary of the Province of New Hampshire, who documented the extraordinary events in a pamphlet he titled “Lithobolia, or the Stone-Throwing Devil.” His account remains one of the most detailed records of poltergeist activity in colonial America, a document that bridges the gap between the supernatural beliefs of the seventeenth century and the paranormal investigations of the modern era.

Colonial New Hampshire: A World on Edge

To understand the events at George Walton’s household, one must first appreciate the world in which they occurred. New Hampshire in 1682 was a frontier settlement, a thin line of English habitation pressed between the vast Atlantic and the even vaster wilderness of the American interior. The colonists who lived there existed in a state of perpetual anxiety. Relations with the indigenous Abenaki people were fraught with tension that would eventually erupt into devastating frontier warfare. The political situation was equally unstable, with competing land claims, disputed boundaries, and uncertain governance creating an atmosphere of chronic insecurity.

The spiritual landscape was equally precarious. The Puritan worldview that dominated New England held that the wilderness was Satan’s domain, that the forces of darkness were active and present in daily life, and that God might at any moment withdraw His protection from a community that had strayed from righteousness. This was not abstract theology but lived experience for colonists who saw divine providence and demonic interference in every turn of fortune. Unexplained phenomena were not curiosities to be investigated but evidence of cosmic warfare between good and evil, and the consequences of being identified as an agent of the devil were fatal, as the Salem witch trials would horrifyingly demonstrate just a decade later.

George Walton himself was a figure of some consequence in this small community. He operated a tavern and owned substantial land in the Great Island area of New Castle. His property included the tavern building, outbuildings, and agricultural fields that stretched toward the harbor. Walton was not universally beloved, however. Land disputes were common in colonial New Hampshire, and Walton had been involved in several contentious disagreements with his neighbors over property boundaries and rights. These disputes would become central to the interpretation of the events that unfolded that summer.

The Bombardment Begins

The first stones fell on a Sunday evening in June 1682. George Walton and his family were inside their home when they heard a sudden clatter on the roof, as if handfuls of gravel had been hurled against the building. Stepping outside to investigate, Walton found stones scattered across his yard and more falling from above. There was no one in sight who could have thrown them. The stones continued to fall intermittently throughout the evening, striking the house, the yard, and the nearby fence. Some of the missiles were small pebbles; others were substantial rocks that could have caused serious injury.

What made the stone-throwing immediately strange was not merely the absence of a visible thrower but the behavior of the stones themselves. Witnesses reported that the projectiles did not follow the natural arc of thrown objects. Some appeared to fall straight down from a clear sky. Others flew horizontally or even seemed to curve around obstacles. Several stones were described as arriving with less force than their weight and trajectory should have produced, as if they had been placed rather than thrown. Other times, the impacts were violent enough to break windows and dent walls.

The attacks quickly escalated. Within days, stones were not only striking the exterior of the house but appearing inside it. Rocks materialized in closed rooms, dropping from ceilings or flying across spaces where no windows were open and no human hand could have launched them. The phenomenon seemed to concentrate on certain rooms and certain times of day, though it was unpredictable enough that the household lived in a state of constant apprehension.

Richard Chamberlain happened to be lodging at Walton’s tavern when the disturbances began, and his presence transformed what might have remained a local curiosity into a documented historical event. Chamberlain was an educated man, the Secretary of the Province, accustomed to careful observation and precise record-keeping. He approached the phenomena with a combination of genuine fascination and methodical documentation that makes his account invaluable to modern researchers.

Chamberlain’s Testimony

Chamberlain’s pamphlet, published in London in 1698 under the full title “Lithobolia, or the Stone-Throwing Devil, Being an Exact and True Account (by way of Journal) of the Various Actions of Infernal Spirits, or (Devils Incarnate) Witches, or both; and the great Disturbance and Amazement they gave to George Walton’s Family, at a place call’d Great Island in the Province of New-Hampshire in New England,” provides a day-by-day account of the phenomena he personally witnessed.

Chamberlain described being struck by stones on multiple occasions. He noted that some projectiles were warm or even hot to the touch when they landed, as if they had been heated before being thrown. This detail is particularly significant to modern poltergeist researchers, as anomalous temperature in thrown objects has been reported in numerous poltergeist cases across cultures and centuries. Chamberlain also observed that some stones that struck him seemed to have been thrown with great force yet left no bruise or injury, while others that appeared to drift gently through the air struck with surprising impact.

On one particularly dramatic evening, Chamberlain recorded that he was sitting in a room when a stone the size of a fist materialized near the ceiling and dropped onto the table before him. He picked it up and placed it on a shelf, only to see the same stone—which he had marked with a distinctive scratch—appear moments later on the table again. This apparent teleportation of objects would be reported in poltergeist cases centuries later, from the Bell Witch of Tennessee to the Enfield Poltergeist of 1977, but Chamberlain was among the first to document such a phenomenon in detail.

The Secretary also noted that the disturbances were not limited to stone-throwing. Objects within the house moved on their own. Furniture shifted position. Kitchen implements flew off shelves. A cheese press was found in an impossible location. Strange sounds echoed through the building at night—scratchings, bangings, and what some witnesses described as a grunting or breathing from an unseen presence. On at least one occasion, a gate that had been securely fastened was found open, with no evidence of human tampering.

The Expanding Phenomenon

As the weeks wore on, the disturbances expanded in both scope and intensity. The stone-throwing was no longer confined to the Walton household but extended to the surrounding property. Stones fell in the fields where Walton’s workers labored, driving them from their tasks. They struck the tavern when guests were present, causing alarm and driving away business. They even followed members of the Walton household when they ventured away from home, as if the invisible attacker were targeting specific individuals rather than a specific location.

This targeting behavior is another detail that resonates with modern poltergeist research. Many documented cases show the activity centering on a particular person rather than a place—the so-called “focus” or “agent” of the poltergeist. In the Walton case, the phenomena seemed most intense in the presence of George Walton himself, though other family members also experienced attacks. Whether this reflected a genuine supernatural targeting or simply the tendency of a stressed household to notice and remember events that confirmed their fears is impossible to determine at this remove.

The stones themselves presented a puzzle. Some were identified as common rocks from the local area, the sort of thing one might pick up from a beach or field. Others appeared to be fragments of worked stone, as if they had been broken from walls or foundations. A few were described as types of stone not commonly found in the immediate vicinity, raising questions about where the invisible thrower was obtaining its ammunition. Chamberlain carefully collected and preserved many of the stones, though their subsequent fate is unknown.

Animals on the property were also affected. Walton’s cattle became agitated and difficult to manage. His dogs, which might have been expected to alert to an intruder, seemed as confused as their owners, barking at empty air or cowering without apparent cause. One account describes a cat being struck by a flying object and thrown across a room, though it was uninjured.

The Specter of Witchcraft

In the charged atmosphere of colonial New England, the question of who or what was responsible for the attacks inevitably turned toward witchcraft. George Walton had been involved in a protracted land dispute with a neighbor named Hannah Jones, and suspicion quickly fell upon her. Jones had reportedly uttered threats against Walton during their disagreements, and in the seventeenth-century mind, the step from verbal curse to supernatural attack was short and logical.

Hannah Jones was widely rumored to be a witch, though the specific basis for this reputation is unclear from surviving records. She may have been the sort of woman who attracted such accusations in colonial society—elderly, perhaps eccentric, possibly living on the margins of the community in ways that invited suspicion. The connection between the land dispute and the timing of the stone-throwing seemed too convenient to be coincidence, and many in the community concluded that Jones had summoned diabolical forces to persecute her enemy.

The accusation placed the community in a difficult position. Formal prosecution of witchcraft was a serious matter with potentially fatal consequences, as the horrors at Salem would soon demonstrate. While many believed Jones was responsible, the evidence was circumstantial at best. Stones thrown by invisible hands could not be traced to a specific person, and the colonial legal system, even in matters of witchcraft, required some form of proof beyond popular suspicion.

Walton himself seems to have believed in the witchcraft explanation. He reportedly attempted various counter-measures recommended by folk tradition, including heating and marking some of the thrown stones in the belief that the witch who had sent them would bear corresponding burns or marks. Whether any such evidence was discovered is not recorded, though the practice reflects the deep entanglement of folk magic and Christian theology that characterized colonial New England’s approach to the supernatural.

Interestingly, no formal charges of witchcraft were ever filed against Hannah Jones in connection with the Lithobolia events. This restraint may have been influenced by the political complexities of the colony, the lack of clear evidence, or a pragmatic recognition that witch trials created more problems than they solved. By the time the Salem trials erupted in 1692, New England had already developed a cautious ambivalence toward witchcraft prosecution that would ultimately contribute to the trials’ eventual collapse.

The Phenomena in Context

The Lithobolia case did not occur in isolation. Stone-throwing phenomena had been documented throughout European history and would continue to be reported well into the modern era. The poltergeist literature is filled with cases of stones, dirt, and other objects being thrown by unseen forces, from the Drummer of Tedworth in 1661 to the Enfield case in 1977 and beyond. What makes the Lithobolia case distinctive is the quality of its documentation and its position at the intersection of medieval supernaturalism and Enlightenment rationalism.

Chamberlain’s account reveals a mind caught between two ways of understanding the world. He was educated enough to recognize the importance of careful observation and precise documentation, yet he inhabited a cultural framework that accepted the reality of witchcraft and demonic intervention. His pamphlet describes the phenomena in factual, almost journalistic terms while interpreting them through a lens of supernatural causation. This tension makes his account both valuable and frustrating for modern researchers, who must disentangle observation from interpretation.

The case also illuminates the social dynamics of colonial New England in ways that transcend the paranormal question. The land dispute between Walton and Jones, the role of community reputation and gossip, the anxiety about frontier life, and the complex interplay of legal authority and folk belief all emerge from the Lithobolia narrative. Whatever was throwing stones at George Walton’s house, the case provides a window into a society grappling with forces—natural, social, and supernatural—that it could not fully control or understand.

Modern Interpretations

Contemporary poltergeist researchers have revisited the Lithobolia case with the tools and theories of modern parapsychology. Several aspects of the phenomena align closely with patterns identified in later poltergeist cases, suggesting either a genuine phenomenon with consistent characteristics or a cultural template that shapes how people experience and report such events.

The psychokinetic theory, which proposes that poltergeist activity is generated unconsciously by a living person under psychological stress, finds some support in the Walton case. George Walton was clearly under considerable stress from the land dispute with Hannah Jones, and the phenomena centered on him and his household. Some researchers have suggested that Walton himself—or perhaps a younger member of his household, as poltergeist agents are often adolescents—may have been the unconscious source of the disturbances.

Against this theory stands the sheer volume and variety of the phenomena. The sustained bombardment over months, the apparent intelligence behind some of the stone-throwing, the anomalous temperatures, and the seeming teleportation of objects would require an extraordinary explanation even within the framework of psychokinetic theory. Skeptics counter that Chamberlain’s account, written years after the events and intended for a London audience hungry for sensational tales from the New World, may have been embellished or exaggerated.

The fraud hypothesis has also been examined. In any stone-throwing case, the possibility of human agency must be considered. George Walton had enemies in the community, and it is not impossible that someone was physically throwing stones at his property, using the cover of darkness and the community’s superstitious expectations to avoid detection. However, this explanation struggles to account for the indoor phenomena, the objects that appeared in sealed rooms, and the attacks that occurred in broad daylight with multiple witnesses present.

Some modern researchers have attempted to connect the Lithobolia case with geological or environmental factors. New Hampshire’s seacoast region is not known for significant seismic activity, but minor geological disturbances might explain some of the sounds and vibrations reported by the Walton household. This theory, however, cannot account for the directed stone-throwing or the apparent intelligence behind the phenomena.

The Aftermath

The stone-throwing at the Walton household eventually diminished and ceased, though the exact timeline of its conclusion is unclear from Chamberlain’s account. The disturbances apparently wound down gradually rather than stopping abruptly, with the intervals between attacks growing longer until they simply stopped occurring. This pattern of gradual cessation is common in poltergeist cases and is consistent with both the psychokinetic theory (the stress that generated the activity may have resolved) and the haunting theory (the spirit or entity may have exhausted its energy or lost interest).

George Walton himself did not long survive the events. He died in 1689, seven years after the bombardment began, though there is no evidence that his death was connected to the phenomena. Hannah Jones’s fate is less well documented, and the land dispute that many believed had triggered the supernatural attack was apparently never fully resolved during Walton’s lifetime.

Richard Chamberlain returned to England, where he eventually published his account of the events. “Lithobolia” was printed in London in 1698, sixteen years after the events it described. The pamphlet circulated among a readership already fascinated by accounts of supernatural phenomena in the New World, and it contributed to the growing body of literature that would eventually give rise to the systematic study of paranormal phenomena.

The publication timing is noteworthy. By 1698, the Salem witch trials of 1692 had occurred and been widely condemned, creating a more cautious attitude toward supernatural claims in New England. Chamberlain’s decision to publish in London rather than Boston may reflect an awareness that his account would receive a more receptive audience in England, where tales of American wonders were popular and where the immediate political consequences of witchcraft accusations were less acute.

Legacy and Significance

The Lithobolia case holds a unique position in the history of paranormal research. It is one of the earliest well-documented poltergeist cases in the Americas, predating other famous American cases by decades or centuries. Its documentation by a literate, high-ranking official gives it a credibility that many colonial supernatural accounts lack, and the detail of Chamberlain’s observations allows modern researchers to analyze the phenomena using contemporary frameworks.

The case also demonstrates the remarkable consistency of poltergeist phenomena across time and cultures. The stone-throwing, object displacement, anomalous sounds, temperature anomalies, and apparent targeting of specific individuals that characterized the Walton case have been reported in hundreds of subsequent cases around the world. This consistency is either evidence of a genuine phenomenon with identifiable characteristics or evidence of a deeply rooted human tendency to experience and report stress-related disturbances in specific, culturally determined patterns.

For historians of colonial America, the Lithobolia case offers insights into the mental world of seventeenth-century New Englanders. Their readiness to attribute the stone-throwing to witchcraft, their attempts to counter the attacks with folk magic, and their ultimate restraint in not pursuing formal witch trial proceedings all reveal the complex dynamics of a society struggling to maintain order in an uncertain and threatening environment.

The stones that fell on George Walton’s house in the summer of 1682 have long since been lost, and the house itself has vanished beneath the tide of subsequent development. But the questions they raised—about the nature of reality, the boundaries between the physical and the spiritual, and the relationship between human conflict and inexplicable phenomena—remain as unanswered today as they were when Richard Chamberlain sat in that besieged tavern, watching rocks materialize from empty air and wondering what forces, human or otherwise, could be responsible.

The Stone-Throwing Devil of New Hampshire, whatever its true nature, stands as a reminder that the paranormal has been part of the American experience since the earliest days of European settlement. Before there was a nation, before there was a revolution, before there was an identity called “American,” there were stones falling from clear skies and invisible hands reaching through the veil between the seen and the unseen. The Lithobolia case is where American poltergeist history begins, and its echoes can be heard in every unexplained knock, every displaced object, and every stone that falls from nowhere in the centuries that followed.

Sources

• Wikipedia search: “The Stone-Throwing Devil of New Hampshire”
• Historic England — Listed Buildings — Register of historic sites