Even experts have not been able to shed light on the peculiar experience of these residents, who live on the mountain slopes in Chongqing municipality's Meiwan village, Chongqing Evening News reported.

Villager Peng Xianyu, 56, first observed the queer happening one day in the summer of 1972, when clothes hung out to dry were later found with holes of varying sizes on them.

'My mother thought her grandson was mischievous and had used a pair of scissors to cut the holes, and she gave him a good beating. But the same thing kept happening, and it even spread to three of our neighbours,' she said.

'We tried all sorts of things, hid the clothes in the cupboard, put them at the head of the bed, but the holes kept appearing for no reason,' she recalled.

Besides clothing, all other fabrics such as curtains and the cloth of umbrellas also had holes on them.

However, the people soon noticed that clothing that was worn on the body did not get unexplained holes appearing in them, according to Madam Peng.

Panic soon spread among the people in the small village, some of whom then decided to pack up and leave.

One of them, Mr Pan Yongsheng, 35, who moved to a town at the foot of the mountain, said: 'I didn't want to go on wearing clothes with holes in them.'

Mostly illiterate, the villagers at that time thought evil spirits were at work and called in a medium to exorcise the spirits.

But the medium was spooked when holes appeared on his own clothes that he had taken off and left in the courtyard, and he left hurriedly after the rites.

District officials later sent in investigators to carry out checks but they could find no explanation for the phenomenon.

An expert believed the mysterious holes were probably the result of movements in the earth's magnetic field that were caused by environmental changes, the report said.