'Poltergeist' Flings Boxes from Tavern Shelf in York, England

The boxes flew from a shelf just off camera. (York Mix / YouTube) — The boxes flew from a shelf just off camera. *(York Mix / YouTube)*

Bartender Luke Smithson was surprised the morning of July 1st when something tossed all of the boxes from a shelf behind him across the bar, reported the York Mix.

Smithson had come in to work early to clean the beer lines at Ye Old Shambles Tavern in York, England, where he is the supervisor, when at around 7:20 a.m. the event occurred.

"I was just about to do my second line clean. I walked around the bar and suddenly everything just flew from the shelves," Smithson said. "All the boxes flew all over the bar. A couple of glasses came off as well. There was proper force behind it—even the speaker on the top shelf was knocked down."

Smithson reacted calmly to the situation.

“To be honest, I was more annoyed that I would have to clean it up!” he said.

He told the news source that he is a "firm believer" in ghosts, and that he thinks a poltergeist could be to blame. The bartender explained that the phenomenon couldn't have been caused by a gust of wind, because “the doors were all shut. I was the only one in the building."

This isn't the first paranormal occurrence that staff have had in the tavern. Smithson and other employees have heard mysterious sounds—including footsteps—and psychics have claimed to sense a 'presence'.

“There was a butcher’s family here that went in the early 1900s that we have always thought were still here,” said Smithson. “I’ve had different experiences. But never seen anything like that before.”

Skeptics pointed out that the video was a little shaky, and wondered if it wasn’t shot with a cell phone camera rather than the tavern’s CCTV camera as claimed, but it seems likelier that Smithson used his phone to record the footage off of the CCTV tape; a common act when trying to share footage captured that way.

“It’s impossible to say for sure what the cause was without seeing the storage behind the subject in the video, but it does seem like the boxes were propelled forward,” said investigator and video analyst Emily Wayland.

"They are lightweight boxes that seem to have been carelessly thrown," she continued. "If an HVAC unit or fan had just turned on, that might be an explanation—but we would still see some residual blowing most likely.”

“It is interesting that a couple of glasses fell as well. It's pretty easy for lightweight boxes to fall from a shelf; it doesn't take much air current to push cardboard. But glasses have more weight to them than cardboard, and are a little more stable. Now, it could be assumed that the glasses weren't particularly well-balanced on the shelf when they were pushed, but we don't know that. All we can be sure of is that whatever force was exerted to push the boxes off was also enough to push the glasses," she explained. “I'm no physicist but that does seem odd.”

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