Of course, the movie Poltergeist is pure fiction; but the type of phenomenon that the film shows is fairly typical of poltergeist activity. That said, poltergeists are perhaps the most misunderstood of all types of paranormal phenomenon. The word poltergeist is a combination of two German words which mean ‘noisy ghost’. But there’s more to poltergeist activity than just a lot of noise. The things that people experience in poltergeist cases are not just curious little incidents. They are bizarre, often violent outbursts of activity, and they often center around an adolescent.
Poltergeist activity is characterized by, among other things, the levitation of objects; loud bangs and rapping sounds which can be heard moving around a room, or even going from room to room; the materialization of small objects such as coins and jewelry that seem to fall from the ceiling; the hurling of objects such as pots and pans; stones raining down upon the roof of the house; and doors and windows rapidly and violently opening and closing on their own. Other activity includes blankets being quickly pulled off of people at night, and fires being set. The fires are sometimes found in unusual places such as inside of closets, under blankets, or in unoccupied rooms.
“A study of 500 poltergeist cases by Alan Gauld and Tony Cornell shows that the effects most commonly reported are the movement of small objects (64%), rapping sounds (48%), large object movements, for example chairs and tables (36%), the appearance of a human phantasm (29%) and the presence of a voice or groaning sound (26%). Phenomena reported less often are the mysterious appearance of small objects, sometimes in mid-air, small animals seen or heard, various luminous effects, incendiary effects and inundations of water.” (https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/poltergeists-overview)
History is ripe with cases of poltergeist activity. Because some of the reports are so old, it’s impossible to check the facts of these cases. But it’s interesting that the phenomenon that is reported is consistent with modern day cases. Here are just a few famous poltergeist cases.
The Glenluce Poltergeist
In 1685, Scottish minister and mathematician George Sinclair wrote a book called “Satan’s Invisible Works Discovered”. Although the book was primarily about witchcraft, it also included an account of the “Glenluce Devil”, the first published account of a poltergeist case. The incident took place in 1654 at the home of a weaver named Gilbert Campbell in the small Scottish village of Glenluce. As the story goes, in October of that year, a beggar named Alexander Agnew, was refused a handout by Campbell. In retaliation, Agnew put a curse on the family. Over the next two years the Campbell household was plagued by strange phenomenon.
It all started when Campbell’s daughter Jennet was at a well and she heard a shrill whistling sound. Other women who were at the well also heard the sound. Then a threatening voice was heard saying, “I’ll cast ye Jennet into the well”. A witness described it as sounding like a woman’s voice.
In November, the “foul fiend”, as he is described in the book, started throwing stones at the doors and windows, and down the chimney of the family home. Other activity followed. Campbell found that the family’s clothing had been cut with scissors while they were wearing them. Coats, bonnets and shoes were all mysteriously cut. At night, their blankets would be pulled off of them. Chests and trunks would open on their own, and items would be found hidden around the house.
The activity got so bad that Campbell moved the majority of their belonging to a neighbor’s house to protect it from being cut or hidden. He also conducted an experiment, perhaps the first paranormal experiment of its kind. He moved his children away to different places to see if the trouble followed a particular person. After a while, they came home one at a time. All was well until his son Thomas came home. The following day, the house mysteriously caught fire and was put out by neighbors. A week later, the house caught fire again and was extinguished.
A local minister agreed to let Thomas stay with him, but he too started to experience the same phenomenon of clothing being cut and items going missing. Thomas returned to his home, but after a few days of being there, he claimed that he was being abused by an unseen force.
Soon after Thomas’ arrival, the entire family began to hear a voice who they believed to be the devil, and they had conversations with it. Then things got really strange. They not only had conversations with this voice; they stopped speaking to one another and would only speak with him. When the minister heard of this, he went to the house and told the Devil he wasn’t welcome. The Devil made threats against Thomas and threatened to set fire to the house if he wouldn’t leave. Things got so bad that the family was starving because all of their food would be hidden from them. It seems that Alexander Agnew’s curse had worked. They had given him no food, and now they were starving.
The story ends abruptly, and there is no follow-up information about whether or not the activity eventually stopped. And although this story sounds a little like a sermon with a moral -- You reap what you sow -- it does have all of the classic signs of poltergeist activity.
The Great Amherst Mystery
One of the most frightening and widely publicized poltergeist cases occurred in Amherst, Nova Scotia. In 1878, an unseen entity tormented a girl and her family for a full year. The intense paranormal activity was witnessed by neighbors, scientists, clergymen, doctors and investigators.
As mentioned earlier, poltergeist activity often centers around an adolescent. In the Glenluce case, it was the son, Thomas. In the Amherst case, it was 19 year old Esther Cox. Esther lived in a cottage house with her family and a number of other relatives. One day, Esther claimed that she was sexually assaulted by a family acquaintance. After the traumatic assault, Esther’s behavior changed. She seemed depressed, and her sisters said the she often cried herself to sleep.
Shortly after the molestation, strange things began happening in the house. Esther and her sister Jane began to hear strange rustling sounds in the room they shared. The sounds seemed to be coming from under the bed. After this, Esther became physically ill.
For several nights, her body swelled up to such a size that she felt as if she would explode. Her body temperature would change from sweltering hot one minute, to freezing cold the next. The girl’s body went into spasms, and she would sometimes fall into what looked like a trance. During this state, she would say things that she would later be unable to recall.
In addition to the strange sounds and Esther’s illness, physical manifestations began to occur around the girl. The pillows and blankets flew off of her bed repeatedly, often immediately after they were replaced by family members. Then writing began to appear on the wall above Esther’s bed. One message said, “Esther Cox, you are mine to kill”. The rustling sounds under the bed were now replaced by loud sounds that some described as sounding like claps of thunder. These deafening sounds were also hear on the roof.
After a while, the activity followed Esther outside of the house. Once when she was attending a church service, loud rapping and knocking noises were heard in the church. Although Esther sat toward the back of the church, the loud banging sounds were coming from the front pew. The knocking sounds were so loud that it became impossible for anyone to hear the service, and the congregation became alarmed at the unexplained racket. Finally, Esther left the church and the knocking immediately stopped.
Esther was eager to find the source of the problem, so she consulted a number of different mediums, but none were successful in contacting any spirits. Then she tried automatic writing. Automatic writing involves holding a pen or pencil, and allowing it to move across a piece of paper on its own. It was by this method that Esther contacted a spirit who claimed to be Maggie Fisher, a girl who attended the same school as Esther, but who had died in 1867. Esther had not known Maggie Fisher, but she was aware that they had gone to school together.
Through automatic writing, other ghosts came forward. One was a 60 year old shoemaker named Bob Nickle. Another was Mary Fisher, the sister of Maggie Fisher. Other ghosts included Peter Teed, John Nickle, and Eliza MacNeal. The number of ghosts, and the coincidences of some of the names make some doubt the believability of this part of the story. But I know from experience that spirits contacted through the Ouija board are known to lie about just about everything. Since using automatic writing to contact spirits is similar to using a Ouija board, I believe that they were purposely lying to Esther in order to confuse her, and to make people doubt her story.
The family called in a doctor to see if he could help. Dr. Carritte became the next witness of the poltergeist activity. He heard the loud claps of thunder coming from under the bed. He saw the mysterious writing on the wall, and he heard the loud knocks that responded to questions that were asked of the ‘ghost’. He also heard the thunderous sounds on the roof that he described as ‘sounding as if someone was banging on the roof with a sledgehammer’.
Soon, the neighborhood residents became aware that something odd was going on in the Cox home. The noises had become so loud that they could be heard as far as 200 yards from the house. Word about the strange activity began to spread, and soon the whole town was aware of it.
One of the most common occurrences in poltergeist cases is the movement of objects by unseen hands. There was no shortage of this type of activity in the Cox household. Objects moved by themselves, flew through the air, or materialized out of thin air. Some household items would disappear from one location, and reappear in another. Later, fires began to erupt without warning in the house. Esther began to hear voices, and she claimed that she could actually see the entities that were tormenting her.
Because the activity was so frequent and so terrifying, the family decided to move Esther out of the house. She was taken in by a local family, but unfortunately this didn’t put an end to the frightening activity. The hauntings followed her. Esther worked in the family’s dining saloon and patrons witnessed many amazing and frightening things. One of the most horrifying was a knife that flew through the air straight at Esther. The knife stabbed her. After it was pulled out it flew back again into the exact same wound.
The Amherst haunting was investigated by scientists, doctors, and clergymen, and many witnessed the strange happenings first-hand. One well known reverend witnessed a bucket of cold water that was sitting on the kitchen table begin to boil. In later years, Dr. Edwin Clad, a baptist clergyman, gave lectures saying that the case was authentic, and that Esther was not causing the manifestations herself.
In June of 1879, investigator and author Walter Hubbell spent six full weeks in the home in order to document the case. He witnessed many alarming paranormal events that occurred around Esther, many of which were violent. In his book, ‘The Great Amherst Mystery’, Hubbell included the affidavits of thirteen witnesses who swore that they witnessed the paranormal events outlined in the book firsthand.
In June, Esther tried to turn her misfortunes to her advantage by going on tour. She hoped that by telling her story to large audiences, she could make back some of the money her family had lost during the ordeal, and to possibly make a living from the income. She was assisted by Walter Hubble, the author who documented the case. Although the first few performances were well attended, the crowds were skeptical. One evening a rival theater owner began heckling Miss Cox from the audience. The crowd joined in and a riot broke out. As can be imagined, it was the last time that Esther Cox was on stage, and the tour came to an abrupt end.
Esther returned home, but the activity followed her everywhere she went. While she was working for Arthur Davison, his barn burnt down. He accused Esther of arson, and she spent a month in prison. Soon after this, the paranormal events slowly began to fade away until they stopped altogether.
The Enfield Poltergeist
The Enfield Poltergeist case is perhaps the most famous of all such cases. The events took place in Enfield, England between 1977 and 1979. Recently divorced, Peggy Hodgson lived in a rented house with her four children - Peggy, thirteen: Janet, eleven; Johnny, ten; and Billy, seven. In August 1977, Peggy called the police to the home after two of her four children said that knocking sounds were heard on the walls, and that furniture was moving by itself. When they arrived, a police constable said that she saw a chair wobble and slide across the floor, but she could not determine the cause of the movement. By the next morning, it was claimed that marbles and Lego pieces began to “zoom out of thin air and bounce off the walls.” Janet seemed to be the epicenter of the incidents.
The activity in the house continued and included disembodied voices, loud noises, toys and rocks thrown about, overturned chairs, and levitating children. Janet began speaking in a strange, deep voice. “Just before I died, I went blind,” the gravelly, evil sounding voice once said, “And then I had a haemorrhage and I fell asleep and I died in the chair in the corner downstairs.” Paranormal investigators theorized that the spirit was that of 72 year old Bill Wilkins, a man who had lived and died at the house decades earlier.
Janet’s trances soon became more violent. The gravelly male voice began to curse at reporters during interviews, and one time Mrs. Hodgson rescued Janet after she wrapped herself in a curtain and the fabric became tightly tangled around her throat.
Over a period of 18 months, a series of strange phenomenon was witnessed by more than 30 people. These included psychic researchers, journalists, and the Hodgson’s neighbors. The neighbors claimed that they saw heavy furniture moving by itself, objects being thrown across the room by unseen hands, and the daughters were seen levitating several feet off the ground. Many also heard and tape recorded loud, unexplained knocking sounds, as well as a gruff, male voice. The activity attracted a huge amount of press, but by 1979 the Enfield poltergeist had left the Hodgson home except for an occasional isolated incident. It is thought that the motivating force of the poltergeist activity, the parents’ divorce, had run its course.
Some believe that the haunting was genuine. These included two members of the Society for Psychical Research, inventor Maurice Grosse, and author Guy Lyon Playfair. Others were unconvinced,. They found evidence that the girls had faked incidents for the benefit of the reporters who were constantly at their home.
It’s hard to ignore the fact that the bulk of the activity occurred when investigators and reporters had just left a room. “It’s smarter than we are,” said one investigator. “Look at its timing. The moment you go out of a room, something happens. You stay in the room for hours, and nothing moves. It knows what we’re up to.”
Evidence of the girls’ trickery is pretty obvious. A video camera that had been left on in a room caught Janet bending spoons and attempting to bend a thin iron bar. One investigator observed her banging a broom handle on the ceiling, and hiding his tape-recorder. Ironically, the investigator who observed this trickery, Maurice Grosse, was one of the people who continued to believe that the haunting was genuine.
Even after admitting that some of the phenomenon was probably staged by the children to impress the reporters who were visiting the house, members of the Society for Psychical research brushed it aside. “It did not bother us very much,” Said Playfair. “We had already seen incidents with our own eyes that the children could not possibly have done deliberately.”
In a recent interview, Janet, now in her 50s, claims that only 2% of the phenomenon was staged. She maintains that every other detail of the haunting, from the demonic sounding voice to her spontaneous levitation, was totally genuine.
Poltergeists, Hauntings and the Demonic
Because poltergeist activity often mirrors the type of phenomenon that occurs in cases of hauntings, it is often difficult to label a case as being poltergeist related. Let’s take moving objects, for example. Objects are known to move in hauntings. I’ve personally witnessed things moving around during my own investigations. And objects also move in poltergeist cases. So what’s the difference? It’s the violent way that objects move that differentiate them from regular hauntings. In poltergeist cases things are hurled around rooms either randomly or directly at people. In addition, objects levitate in full view of witnesses, and heavy pieces of furniture bounce up and down on the floor making loud banging sounds.
In hauntings, objects often disappear and are later found in odd places. The same goes for poltergeist cases. And in both hauntings and poltergeist cases, voices are often heard. The difference is, in poltergeist cases the voices often say threatening things, and are aimed directly at individual family members. In hauntings, someone may hear a voice, but it rarely addresses them directly.
To make matters more confusing, all of the phenomenon that occurs in poltergeist cases occur in demonic cases. Threatening voices, objects hurled around rooms and at people, hidden objects, writing on walls -- all of it occurs in both types of cases. The difference, again, has to do with the level of violence attached to the activity. In demonic cases, the voices threaten death, they swear, they growl or grunt, and they speak against God. In addition, the intent of the force at work is different in demonic cases. Demons are determined to ruin peoples lives, wear their will down, and eventually possess them. Poltergeists are often childish in their anger, and much of what they do often seems more like a juvenile prank than a destructive act.
The key to poltergeist cases appears to be the presence of an adolescent. Although there are many cases of poltergeists that involve adolescent boys, the majority involve girls. Poltergeist activity literally explodes around adolescent girls. When a poltergeist is experienced, it almost always centers on someone who is going through some sort of emotional turmoil. This can be as traumatic as sexual abuse, such as Esther Cox’s abuse in the Amherst case, or it can be something less traumatic such as a divorce. Or, it can just be the tumultuous physical and emotional changes that occur during adolescence.
It is generally agreed that poltergeists most likely have nothing at all to do with spirits. Some theorize that the activity is caused by Recurrent Spontaneous Psychokinesis, or RSPK for short. Psychokinesis is the ability to move objects through non-physical means. In RSPK, the movement is unintentional and unpredictable.
While I agree that poltergeist cases have something to do with uncontrolled adolescent energy, I believe that poltergeist cases are actually a combination of psychokinesis and spirit communication. Here’s why. Spirits need energy to manifest, and they seem to get this energy from two sources -- electricity, and human emotion. In haunted houses, electronic devices often malfunction or behave in strange ways. Lights suddenly flare up or flicker, TVs and lamps turn on by themselves, smoke and CO2 detectors go off for no reason, and batteries are drained of power.
In his article, “Brain Battery”, author Ryan T. Jones writes:
“The human brain is a battery, or rather, a collection of approximately 80 billion batteries. Each of the approximately 80 billion neurons in the brain possesses the ability to accumulate a charge across its cell membrane, which results in a small but meaningful voltage. I think it’s safe to say that humans really are batteries, and the brain contains more than 80 billion of them. Even crazier is that each of these batteries contains four times the electrostatic force that normally results in lightning during a thunderstorm!” (https://knowingneurons.com/2012/12/14/brain-battery/)
I feel that because the energy in adolescent bodies is still forming, these 80 billion neurons create a mini electrical storm that is literally swirling around them. If spirits need energy to manifest, what better source is there than the adolescent body? Once this energy settles down, the poltergeist activity subsides because the energy is no longer available to spirits.
Poltergeist activity is rare, but it is a fascinating area of paranormal study. Scientists are constantly discovering new sources of energy. As we begin to expand our exploration outward into space, we are also beginning to explore inward. And when science finally realizes and understands the interconnectedness of body, mind, and spirit -- poltergeists will finally be taken off the list of unexplained phenomenon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENyW68ALuUw (Poltergeist activity caught on film)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sls6pszMGfk (Enfield Poltergeist)