Classification: Unverified account

The Flying Stones of Capão da Imbuia

In January 1974, stones broke the windows of a house in Curitiba while police, neighbors, and clergy searched for an explanation. Contemporary coverage documents the investigation and shows how a single witness's account grew into a legend.

Curitiba, Paraná, Brasil · See stories from this place and nearby

Stones at the wooden house

In early January 1974, stones began striking a wooden house in Capão da Imbuia, a neighborhood in eastern Curitiba. Windows shattered and roof tiles were damaged. Residents Ildefonso and Irene Till watched their home become a gathering place for police, reporters, and onlookers. A historical reconstruction by the Curitiba City Council dates the first night of attacks to January 2 and draws on Diário do Paraná reports published from January 5 onward. The stones reaching the house were real enough to damage it. Their origin was never conclusively established.

The police search

Police searched neighboring lots and the woods of what was then the Institute for the Defense of Natural Heritage, now associated with the Capão da Imbuia Natural History Museum. According to reports at the time, some stones weighed as much as 300 grams and appeared to follow a horizontal path. That is the witnesses' and newspaper's description, not a surviving measurement that rules out a human thrower. The same coverage says officers fired into the trees after days of fruitless searching. Each impact drew a crowd, making it harder to separate firsthand observation from rumor and interpretation.

The neighbourhood’s response

On Sunday, January 6, the neighborhood also turned to São Benedito parish. At three morning Masses, the priest blessed house keys and branches. For some residents this meant protection; for others the central question remained who was throwing the stones. Parapsychologists proposed telekinesis, while religious figures offered different explanations. None established what caused the attacks. The fact that the Masses preceded the end of the stone throwing does not, by itself, prove a causal connection.

The story of the cutlery

The story of the cutlery shows how an account acquires extra layers. On January 8, Diário do Paraná repeated a police officer's claim that utensils had moved and even flown. The following day's report narrowed it down: only one officer said he had seen a spoon flying. Ildefonso Till denied having seen objects levitate. Without independent evidence, the spoon remains an isolated witness account, not a demonstrated phenomenon.

Suspicions without a conclusion

Till suspected retaliation connected to a neighborhood dispute. A threatening note, reportedly found by a forest guard, appeared in the newspaper as a possible clue. The material consulted does not establish where it came from, and it offers no basis to identify the people named in contemporary rumors as the perpetrators. Even the police accounts conflicted: one patrolman told a reporter that three people had been detained, while a sergeant and a lieutenant denied that the stone throwers had been identified. When the paper reported on January 9 that the attacks had stopped after four nights, no culprit had been established.

The separate 1962 case

An earlier episode can mislead anyone researching this one. In 1962, a different house in Capão da Imbuia was also described as haunted. In that separate case, according to the press accounts cited by the City Council, police uncovered a hoax. The 1962 finding does not solve what happened to the Till family in 1974. Merging the two stories supplies an ending that the later records do not contain.

What the inquiry left behind

The family eventually left, and the house was demolished. In interviews conducted by the City Council almost five decades later, one neighbor still remembered the commotion; that late recollection helps show the event's impact but cannot replace contemporary reporting. Another resident said she lived in the house after the Tills left and saw nothing unusual. Ildefonso himself complained in 1974 that public exposure and mockery weighed on him more than replacing glass and tiles. That may be the case's most enduring lesson: an investigation without an identified perpetrator became a haunting story, while the people who lived there bore the everyday cost.

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