Evidence
AFTERLIFE SCIENCES
Different Areas of Evidence for the Afterlife
Science
.

.

<< Return to Evidence Index

Poltergeists

The word 'poltergeist' is from German and 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 shows that poltergeists really exist and behave in the same way.

Tens of thousands of cases

There have been tens of thousands of poltergeist incidents recorded. Many people have seen solid objects flying in the air, huge kitchen cabinets levitating, plates, glasses and clothing set on fire. Often stones are thrown to break windows. Sometimes human voices are heard shouting obscenities. In the most extreme cases scratches, cuts and bite marks can appear on people and human forms can be seen. Usually they stop after a few months.

Michael Gross, a British writer, has written a 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. It is called Poltergeist-A Classic Study in Destructive Hauntings (Wilson 2009). Guy Playfair's book This House is Haunted is an excellent description of the Enfield poltergeist case.

In Britain

One of Britain's most amazing poltergeist activities was at the Harper home in Enfield. It lasted for more than sixteen months. It started in August 1977 and ended 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 were witnessed by a number of different people with different backgrounds including skeptics: police, politicians, psychologists, psychiatrists, journalists and social workers all reported the poltergeist activities.

Two leading investigators were a writer, Guy Lyon Playfair, who had experience with poltergeist activities in Brazil and Maurice Grosse, a member of the English Society for Psychical Research (SPR). Playfair and Grosse estimated that over 2,000 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
• 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.

The voice of the poltergeist was heard. He said his name was 'Joe Watson.' Voices were heard saying 'F--- off you', 'I was sleeping here', and, 'I like annoying you.’

Video- The Enfield Poltergeist.

 
Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7


In the United States

Thousands of poltergeist cases have been reported in the United States. In one 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. The police had ignored the complaint but when they went into the house they saw it for themselves. An invisible force was smashing dishes, wooden chairs and other household items. 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 an 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 all saw the poltergeist phenomena. Professor Bender, a parapsychologist who investigated this special poltergeist, stated that it centered around Annmarie. When Annmarie left to work somewhere else, the poltergeist phenomenon stopped suddenly.


Video- the Rosenheim poltergeist (in German)

Elsewhere, in 1969 in Nicklheim Germany scientists investigated apports— solid objects moving 'by themselves' from one place to a different place. They asked the poltergeist to move perfume bottles from one room to outside the house. Soon afterwards these bottles were seen falling from the sky.

The materialists explanation is PSI

Beginning with Frank Podmore's book "On Poltergeists" in 1887 materialists have consistently argued that they are caused either by fraud or by unconscious energy of the person at the center of the disturbance.

Professor William Roll, in his book "The Poltergeist" (1972) claimed that the cause was a psychologically disturbed individual, usually a child at the time of puberty. The person is called "the focus". He called this “recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis” (RSPK) and claimed it had nothing to do with spirits.

While this "exteriorization of energy" is part of the cause it is clearly not the whole story. Otherwise there would be poltergeist activity in every house with a disturbed teenager. And it does not account for the cases where there are no disturbed teenagers. And the experimental evidence for psychokinesis only produces raps and very small movements.

A kind of physical mediumship?

It seems to us that poltergeists have a great deal in common with uncontrolled physical mediumship. We do know that many physical mediums were at the center of poltergeist activity when they were in the early stages of developing their mediumship:

* Daniel Dunglas Home was thrown out of his home by his aunt at age 17 when furniture started moving on its own near him.

* Florence Cook at age 15 was sacked from her position as an assistant school teacher because in her presence books and pencils flew around, chairs kept following her and tables were moving on their own.

* Brazilian medium Mirabelli was sacked from his job as a shoe salesman at age 23 because the shoes kept jumping off the racks

* Matthew Manning from the age of 11 was at the center of poltergeist activity- various items were moved or disappeared, there were loud knocking and creaking sounds and objects flew violently around the house and signatures of dead writers appeared on his bedroom wall. Matthew later learned to channel his energies into healing and the phenomena stopped.

We also know from physical mediumship that some people have an abundance of ectoplasm- a substance taken from the bodily fluids which on examination turns back into water. And we know that small puddles of water are a very common feature of poltergeist activity.

Modern investigators who believe that poltergeists are spirits

Ian Stevenson in his paper ‘Are Poltergeists Living or are they Dead?’ (1972) presents three cases to show that sometimes poltergeists are caused by spirits of the dead.

Some of the points which he suggests a spirit is the cause 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 spirit personalities
• the phenomena ceases upon intercession, placation or exorcism.
Professor Roll did admit that in some poltergeist cases the spirit explanation has to be accepted.

When Colin Wilson wrote the first version of his book Poltergeist in 1980 he still followed the "accepted" theory of parapsychologists that poltergeists were caused only by living human beings.

In the introduction to the most recent edition of his book Poltergeist: A Classic Study in Destructive Hauntings he explains that he has since changed his mind.

He says that he was influenced first by Guy Lyon Playfair who told him that poltergeists caused by:

" A football of energy. When people get into conditions of tension, they exude a kind of energy, the kind of thing that happens to teenagers at puberty. Along come a couple of spirits, and they do what any group of schoolboys would do: they begin to kick it around, smashing windows and generally creating havoc. Then they get tired and leave it. In fact the football often explodes and turns into a puddle of water."

Wilson claims that soon after he talked with a German professor of Parapsychology who told him that the Germans who had investigated the Rosenheim Poltergeist under Professor Hans Bender had come to the same conclusion.

Soon after this Colin Wilson met British psychic investigator Montague Keen who told him he had shared his house with two poltergeists. The first in December 2001 was identified by two mediums as Mrs Joyce, the previous owner of the house and the second was a man named "Alfie House" who had drowned in the river two years before. Both were persuaded to move on.

Wilson also claims that following the sudden death of 300,000 people from the tsunami in Thailand in 2004 poltergeist phenomena were in "plague" proportions- a clear indication of spirits not able to move on. Read more...

Alan Kardec's explanation

The name “Allan Kardec” was the pen name of H. Leon Denizard Rivail, a French educator and philosopher.
In 1854, he made a list of hundreds of questions on the afterlife. He sent them to the best direct writing mediums who seemed to be getting information from high level spirits. He was absolutely stunned to find that the answers which came back were all consistent. The answers were compared, analyzed and published in The Spirits Book and a number of others including The Book on Mediums (1874).

In Chapter 5 of the Mediums book which is on "Spontaneous Physical Manifestations" he gives an explanation of poltergeists.

* He says that physical manifestations are caused by low level spirits who always use the power of someone who is a real medium but does not know it.

* there are cases in which the spirit appears to act alone but then it draws the "animalized fluid" from elsewhere and not from a person present.

* this explains why spirits who surround us constantly do not at every moment produce disturbances.

* the spirit must have a motive- usually either to draw attention to something or to amuse themselves. Sometimes they set upon an individual who they want to annoy and laugh at the fears they create. Sometimes revenge is the motive. Sometimes they just want the person to leave their house.

How to cope with a poltergeist.

Kardec advises to make sure first of all that there is no human or physical cause. Then try to talk to the spirit to find out what it wants- bring in a medium if needed. "If they ask for something, it is certain that their visits will cease as soon as their desire is satisfied".

If it turns out that the spirit is "an idle jester" he suggests you give it as little attention as possible. Emotion feeds the disturbance.

If it turns out that the spirit is malevolent , "we can pray to God to make him better. In every case prayer will always have a good result. But the gravity of the forms of exorcism make them laugh, and they care nothing about them."


On the internet


  


<< Return to Evidence Index


 


.