Laura Wright 
In December 1938, newspapers across the country began reporting a bizarre story from the mountains of Southwest Virginia.
The Sybert family lived in a small, three-room cabin along Wallen’s Creek in Powell Mountain, Lee County, Virginia. Nothing about the family or their isolated mountain home would ordinarily have attracted national attention.
Then nine-year-old **Bertha Sybert’s bed began to move.
Not slightly.
According to witnesses, it bounced so violently that people could stand across the room and watch it shake.
Before long, spectators were traveling to the Sybert home simply to see the phenomenon for themselves.
Even two psychologists from the University of Tennessee became involved.
No one seemed able to agree on what was happening.
Scratching in the Night
The disturbances had begun the previous month.
At first, the Sybert family heard scratching noises.
The sounds gradually intensified until scratching was accompanied by mysterious bumps from somewhere inside the house.
Then the activity centered upon Bertha.
At night, her bed began bouncing violently.
Bertha shared the bed with her 71-year-old grandmother, who initially believed someone from the surrounding community was playing a cruel joke on them.
Eventually, she began describing the disturbances differently.
She called them ghosts.
And sometimes, witchery.
Bertha’s “Ghost Language”
The moving bed wasn’t the only strange phenomenon associated with Bertha.
The girl sometimes erupted into what her father described as “ghost language.”
No one could understand what she was saying.
One phrase sounded something like:
“Sake-sake big.”
Even stranger, speaking the phrase sometimes seemed to cause the bed to begin moving.
Whatever the words meant, if they meant anything at all, no one could decipher them.
Every Bed Began to Bounce
The Syberts naturally wondered whether something was wrong with the bed itself.
They moved Bertha.
It didn’t help.
The girl was placed in different beds throughout the house. Whichever bed she entered eventually began moving.
Her father, Robert Sybert, tried something more drastic.
He moved the family to a neighbor’s house for the night.
The disturbances followed them.
Bertha got into bed.
And once again, the bouncing began.
The problem apparently wasn’t the Sybert house.
And it wasn’t one particular bed.
Whatever was happening seemed to follow Bertha.
A Bible Beneath the Bed
The family tried different methods of stopping the activity.
One night, Robert placed a Bible beneath Bertha’s bed.
For that night, the house was peaceful.
Everyone slept soundly.
The family also attempted to calm or appease whatever was responsible by playing music.
That produced less impressive results.
As the original accounts rather wonderfully observed, the bed seemed to have no particular musical preference.
It bounced as much to gospel music as it did to ragtime.
Four Coal Miners Try to Stop the Bed
Bertha was a small child.
At the time of the disturbances, she weighed approximately 60 pounds.
Her ordinary bed had a wooden frame and a thin mattress.
Yet witnesses claimed the movement could become remarkably violent.
Eventually, four sizable coal miners decided to put the phenomenon to a straightforward physical test.
Each man took one corner of the bed.
They attempted to hold it down.
According to the account, even the four miners could not stop the bed from moving.
By then, the Sybert haunting was attracting considerable attention.
And with attention came explanations.
Psychologists Investigate Bertha
Professionals investigating the case eventually proposed a decidedly non-supernatural explanation.
Bertha herself was making the bed move.
The theory held that the nine-year-old girl was flexing muscles in her stomach and thighs, producing enough movement to shake the bed.
The scratching noises were attributed to the bedsprings.
Investigators also became suspicious because Bertha sometimes popped her chewing gum while the bed was bouncing.
The case was increasingly interpreted as a performance rather than a haunting.
But questions remained.
If Bertha alone produced the movement, witnesses still had to explain how a 60-pound child generated enough force to create the dramatic movement they described, particularly when adults attempted to restrain the bed.
The Small White Animal
There was another curious detail.
Before the disturbances began, Bertha reported seeing a small white animal.
When she noticed the creature, it disappeared.
The incident bore an interesting resemblance to another famous Appalachian haunting.
According to Bell Witch tradition, members of the Bell family also reported encounters with strange animals shortly before the more dramatic disturbances began.
Whether Bertha’s experience had any relationship to what followed is impossible to know.
But it became another peculiar detail in an already peculiar case.
Public Opinion Turns Against Bertha
As the story spread, public attitudes toward the little girl changed.
Initially, the Syberts were treated as a frightened family experiencing something they could not explain.
Before long, suspicion centered upon Bertha herself.
Perhaps she was spoiled.
Perhaps she wanted attention.
Perhaps the entire affair was an elaborate performance.
Other theories attempted to connect the activity with puberty or psychological and sexual explanations.
By the end of 1938, newspapers and magazines across the country were reporting that Bertha had simply been “putting on” the entire performance.
The Sybert Witch had apparently been solved.
Or at least explained to the satisfaction of the press.
Then the Bouncing Stopped
Eventually, the strange activity simply ceased.
The scratching ended.
The noises disappeared.
The beds stopped bouncing.
Bertha grew up and went on to live a normal life.
But not everyone who witnessed the disturbances became comfortable with the official explanations.
According to the account, some people who had been present remained sufficiently unsettled by what they witnessed that they refused to discuss it afterward.
What Made Bertha Sybert’s Bed Bounce?
Perhaps Bertha really did cause the movement herself.
Children have certainly perpetrated elaborate hoaxes, and poltergeist cases throughout history have frequently involved adolescents or young people.
But the explanation leaves some intriguing questions.
Why did the disturbances apparently follow Bertha into different beds?
Why did they continue when the family spent a night in another house?
How much movement could a 60-pound child realistically produce without witnesses noticing what she was doing?
And what happened when four adult coal miners supposedly attempted to restrain the bed?
Those questions don’t prove anything supernatural occurred.
They simply explain why the case remained interesting after the newspapers declared it solved.
Something strange happened in that little three-room cabin along Wallen’s Creek in 1938.
For several months, people came to watch a nine-year-old girl’s bed bounce violently across the floor.
Psychologists investigated.
Coal miners tried to hold it still.
A Bible apparently stopped it for one night.
Music didn’t.
Then, as mysteriously as the disturbances began, they disappeared.
What really caused Bertha Sybert’s bouncing bed?
We will probably never know.
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