The Book 4th Edition

<< Previous Chapter : Book Index : Next Chapter >>

23. Poltergeists

“Minds are like parachutes. They only function when they are open”
Lord Thomas Dewar

The word 'poltergeist' is from German and literally means 'noisy spirit.' Research into this area from the United States, Brazil, England, Scotland, Ireland, Canada, Finland, Germany, France, Italy, Malta, India and Russia and other countries is quite objective and conclusive. The behavior of poltergeists ranges from the very gentle to the very destructive.

Tens of thousands of cases

There have been tens of thousands of poltergeist incidents recorded from around the world, with solid objects flying in the air, huge kitchen cabinets levitating, plates, glasses and clothing set on fire, human voices being heard from unknown sources, vases being smashed on floor and walls, matches being lit in the eyes of witnesses—as if some invisible person was lighting a box of matches, stones being thrown and other material things being moved and at times eliciting terror in those who happen to be present.

Michael Gross, a British writer, has written a very scholarly annotated bibliography of 1,111 sources about poltergeist cases from different countries (Gross 1979). Colin Wilson has produced a very easy to read and comprehensive 382-page book packed with cases (Wilson 1981). Guy Playfair's This House is Haunted is an excellent account of the Enfield poltergeist case.

Sometimes hardened police officers have witnessed and testified to this poltergeist phenomenon that cannot be explained other than by a disturbed intelligence from the afterlife. Many times professional mediums were able to contact the poltergeist who was able to explain why it was disturbed.

In Britain

One of Britain's most amazing poltergeist activities was at the Harper home in Enfield and lasted for more than sixteen months in 1977, starting in August 1977 and ending in October 1978. Mrs. Harper, a divorcee, lived there with her four children, two boys and two girls, aged from seven to thirteen.

The disturbances which did not come from physical-human origin were witnessed by a number of different people with different backgrounds and different religious beliefs, including skeptics: police, politicians, psychologists, psychiatrists, journalists and social workers all reported the poltergeist activities.

Two consistent and longitudinal investigators were a writer, Guy Lyon Playfair?a highly experienced observer of poltergeist activities in Brazil?and Maurice Grosse, a highly motivated member of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR). Playfair and Grosse estimated that over 2,000 inexplicable incidents were observed by at least 30 witnesses.

Some of the activities of this particular poltergeist included:

• throwing household items around; chairs were smashed, children's toys were seen flying in the air thrown from an invisible source
• lighting fires which extinguished themselves
• draining the power out of the journalists' camera and other electronic batteries immediately after the batteries had been charged
• throwing an iron grille from the bottom of the fireplace across the room narrowly missing Jimmy, one of the Harper boys
• ripping a heavy gas fire out of the wall.

Answering an investigator, one of the poltergeists stated he was 'Joe Watson.' Asked the reason for the activity the poltergeist answered: 'I was sleeping here,'—implying everybody else was a trespasser!
An indentation appeared on one of the pillows—as if an invisible head was resting there; this was witnessed by the investigator Guy Playfair. Voices saying 'F--- off you', 'I was sleeping here', and, 'I like annoying you’ were heard directed towards investigator Playfair.

In the United States

Thousands of poltergeist cases have been reported in the United States. In one well-attested case the police arrived on the 19th December 1976 at the home of Mrs. Beulah Wilson of Pearisburg, Virginia after she complained of regular poltergeist activities. Previously skeptical, the police had ignored the complaint but when they went into the house it is reported that they witnessed the destructive behavior of some invisible intruder who was smashing dishes, wooden chairs and other household items. In this particular incident the police witnessed the amazing sight of a 200 pound kitchen cabinet floating in the air without any means of support.

In Germany

A most powerful poltergeist activity occurred in a lawyer's office in the Bavarian town of Rosenheim in 1967.

The poltergeist activity centered around a young eighteen year old secretary Annemarie Schneider. One morning when she first got the job at the office, she walked down the entrance hall. Witnesses stated that:

• the hanging lamp started to swing,
• the lamp in the cloakroom started to swing too,
• a bulb directly above her exploded,
• the fluorescent lighting went out in the next room,

At other times:

• loud bangs were heard
• all the lights in the office went out at the same time
• electrical fuses would blow without any cause
• cartridges fuses ejected themselves from the sockets
• all four telephones would ring simultaneously with no one on the line
• calls were frequently cut or interrupted for short periods
• telephone bills suddenly soared to very high levels
• developing fluid in the photostatic copiers would often spill out without any disturbance
• investigating technicians captured swinging lamps and frames on cameras
• physicists F. Karger and G. Zicha could not find anything wrong with the electrical and other material things in the office
• drawers were witnessed opening by themselves
• twice a 400 pound cabinet was seem to move by itself.

Professors, journalists, police and other witnesses testified to the poltergeist phenomenon. Professor Bender, a parapsychologist who also investigated this special poltergeist, stated that the poltergeist phenomenon was centered around Annmarie. When Annmarie had to leave to work somewhere else, the poltergeist phenomenon stopped abruptly. No investigator raised any issue of cheating by Annmarie or by anybody else.

Elsewhere, in 1969 in Nicklheim Germany, it was reported that parascientists investigated apportations—the moving of solid objects 'by themselves' from one place to a different place. Parascientists communicated with this particular poltergeist and instructed it to remove perfume bottles from one room to be taken outside. Soon afterwards, in the presence of many witnesses, these bottles were seen falling from the sky.

What do the materialists and the closed-minded skeptics say?

The materialists have failed to give a credible, coherent and logical alternative explanation for all poltergeist phenomena. Beginning with Podmore in 1987 they have consistently argued for two explanations: fraud and the psychic force of the the agent at the center of the disturbance (Stevenson 1972:233).

They claim that in many instances it is caused by a young female teenager in a household being 'naughty'. This is unacceptable, unreasonable, untestable for reasons which will be outlined below.

Professor William Roll, a director of the Psychical Research Foundation in Durham, North Carolina has suggested that poltergeist activity is due to the extreme sexual frustration and anger of a teenager during the years around puberty. And it is the suppressed energy that 'externalizes' all the poltergeist phenomena. In some poltergeist patterns, this Professor says, the behavior relates to the female menstrual cycle.

While this "exteriorisation of energy" is undoubtedly a factor in some poltegeist activity it does not explain all aspects of the phenomena including:

• apparitions
• the voices of mature aged persons being heard
• verbal or code responses by the poltergeist to questions and commands
• some poltergeist activities being very vindictive and harmful
• some poltergeist utterings being disgustingly filthy and obscene
• some poltergeists exhibiting personalities of vicious older males
• some poltergeists being gentle and even playful
• no poltergeist activity occurring in the overwhelming majority of houses inhabited by adolescents reaching puberty
• poltergeist activity occurring where no adolescents reside
• poltergeist activity immediately ceasing once the entity is contacted through a gifted medium and persuaded to move on.

We are informed that in the final analysis Professor Roll reluctantly did admit that in some poltergeist cases the spirit explanation has to be accepted.

The claim by the skeptics and the materialists in the Enfield case was that the girls in the Harper family had excess energy associated with puberty that caused the poltergeist problem. But this does not explain the specific incidents as explained above and the hundreds of other poltergeist cases. If the energy by young girls at puberty is the cause of poltergeist activity then more than half of Britain and the United States and the whole world where early teenagers reside would be pestered by poltergeist activity.

Ian Stevenson in his paper ‘Are Poltergeists Living or are they Dead?’ (1972) presents three cases to illustrate the possibility that parapsychologists should again consider discarnate agencies in poltergeist phenomena. He goes on to present in a table 13 factors which may be used to discriminate cases generated by a living agent and those of discarnate origin. Some of the points which he suggests favor a discarnate origin hypothesis include cases where:

• objects seem to be carried and deposited gently
• the subject is disadvantaged or injured by the phenomena
• meaningful responses are obtained from raps
• apparitional and visual phenomena occur early and abundantly
• communications come through mediums from apparent discarnate personalities
• the phenomena ceases upon intercession, placation or exorcism.

Thousands of poltergeist cases have been reported from nearly every country in the world. Those materialists and other negative observers who continue to deny the existence of poltergeists or who claim that the disturbances are caused by an unknown force have not so far given a logical, rational and scientifically objective alternative explanation to the claim that some poltergeists are disturbed entities who for a period of time cause people to notice him or her.

They don’t know they are dead

In some cases poltergeist activity is consistent with the information transmitted from the afterlife from hundreds of different sources, including of course, the higher source Silver Birch, that there are people who physically die and who, upon finding themselves conscious in an apparently solid body in a new dimension refuse to believe they are physically dead—some become confused and cause a lot of mischief for a time.

Information transmitted from the afterlife tells that just because we enter into a different dimension at the point of death it does not mean that our personality changes. The state of mind at the point of death is crucially important. The mind, character and personality immediately after death do not change, not one iota. And if a person is extremely disturbed at the time of death, there is a likelihood that the person will continue to be disturbed in the next world—for an indefinite period of time.

We are told that sometimes people get caught between the physical world and the afterlife. They think that they are still alive and continue to live in the same house.

Occasionally, one of the living people occupying the same house may be mediumsistic, a developing psychic sensitive. In the presence of this person the entity is able to make its presence felt.

In his book The Strangers Matthew Manning writes of his poltergeist experiences when he was a teenager which, he claims, were triggered by a deceased previous occupant of his family home, a Robert Webbe, who unaware that it was a different century was complaining of other people living in his house.

Matthew Manning has since gone on to become an internationally-known psychic and healer. At the time he was experiencing the poltergeist phenomena he was thoroughly investigated by Professor George Owen of Cambridge, a world expert on poltergeists. Later he was investigated by a number of other scientists including Charles Tart and Nobel Prize winning physicist Brian Josephson. These scientists with the highest credibility and with international reputations confirmed that Matthew Manning’s psychic experiences were genuine.

Unfinished business

In many instances, the motivation for poltergeist's activity is directly related to some serious unfinished business. Sometimes serious crimes such as murder, rape, torture and some other form injustice motivates the afterlife intelligence to seek justice or revenge.

While each case needs to be investigates thoroughly to rule out fraud and other natural explanations there is no doubt that some of the objective evidence available about poltergeist activity can only be explained by the existence of the afterlife.

<< Previous Chapter : Book Index : Next Chapter >>