Poltergeist: from the German words “poltern” and “geist,” meaning noisy ghost. Sometimes poltergeist phenomenon will occur along with a haunting, if things are stirred up, but the two are not the same.
Famously haunted, the Maritime Museum in England.
More than anything, I believe ghosts want to get your attention and communicate (unlike Spirits, who know if you don’t get it now, you’ll get it eventually so they aren’t really worried.)
One of their favorite ways to do this (if they have the energy for it) is to move things around, make noises, open and close doors, manifest smells or odors, play with water faucets and electricity and make your stuff disappear and reappear. Happens all the time in classic hauntings and spirit visitations; sure happens at my house.
I also think that because ghosts and spirits are zipping around as a stream of energy, which can fluctuate depending on how much current they are pulling, it creates something like a wake trailing out behind a boat. This wake can knock things askew or slosh up against physical objects, creating sounds — like when water slaps up against a bulkhead.
One of the men featured in my story “The Dwelling” (on the True Stories page of this blog) let me know last month that his recent move to New Orleans started out peacefully enough, but it didn’t take long for the unseen world to locate him. Keys inexplicably disappearing and reappearing have been his particular bane in the new apartment; but knowing him and his ghost-magnet vibe, I think this is some frisky spirit delighted to make his acquaintance more than a problem in the making. Annoying, though not mean spirited.
But when the supernatural activity in a location is unvaried in its disruptive, abusive, aggressive and /or negative nature, it might not be a ghost at all.
It might be personal.
An Appearance of Poltergeists…
The first noted report of a poltergeist shows up about four hundred years ago, and the catalogue of poltergeist behavior is remarkably consistent in the cases from then to present day: scratching, gnawing sounds, biting, noises, movement, physical attacks, rains of dirt or stones, voices, theft of items.
One nineteenth century family plagued by a poltergeist famously came home to find their clothing stuffed with material and arranged, like store mannequins, in the parlor. One figure for each family member, silently waiting for them to come home and discover this display.
The founder of the Methodist church, John Wesley, made no secret of the poltergeist
Epworth Rectory, where the Wesley family dealt with a poltergeist.
attacks of his youth, when his family was completely disrupted by a rash of unwanted and ferociously aggressive activity. And the most famous poltergeist case of all, that of the Bell Witch in Tennessee (in 1817) lasted for years – until John Bell was dead in his grave.
Prosperous farmer John Bell and his family suffered greatly under the phenomenon and were so desperate for help that they made their ordeal very public. Tennessee resident Andrew Jackson reportedly visited and had an encounter with the poltergeist, and the story eventually gained national attention. Afterward, it was seized upon by many who wanted to profit from the tale, and so much of what is recounted as fact about The Bell Witch is fiction.
Drawing of the Bell house, as publicized widely in newspaper accounts at the time.
But the agreed upon elements are these – John Bell encountered a strange animal he could not identify on his property, and it rattled him. Shortly thereafter the family was kept awake at night by gnawing noises like rats, which escalated to reports from the children that they were being stuck with unseen pins and having their covers yanked off them at night. Daughter Betsey seemed to get the brunt of it, having her hair pulled and frequently being slapped across the face.
Oddly, mother Lucy Bell was treated with respect and gentleness by the poltergeist.
Once the physical attacks were in place, the voices started; murmuring that eventually became a clear voice, which claimed to speak for a itself and also a group of other spirits. The voice taunted, harassed, threatened and drunkenly sang awful tavern ditties. Then, just to keep everybody off guard, the voice would quote scripture and sing hymns.
Reportedly, the voice specifically begged Betsey Bell not to marry her suitor Josh Gardner and launched into tirades against the match when pleading, begging and whining didn’t seem to work. Betsey ended up marrying her school teacher, Richard Powell.
John Bell, the poltergeist stated bluntly, was a dead man. And in 1820, he took to his bed with a severe illness (now thought to be possibly Bell’s Palsy) and died. The poltergeist immediately claimed credit, promised to return, and vanished from the household.
Parapsychology, Not Paranormal, At Work
So. It certainly seems like the workings of a hateful, vicious spirit with a personal grudge, until you really look at the mechanism of poltergeist type hauntings. There are clear patterns that repeat in case after case, and usually a defined beginning, middle and end. (Classic hauntings with real ghosts are much harder to pin down.)
Two well regarded scientists, Nandor Fodor and William Roll, have developed theories that most ghost investigators accept as the basis of poltergeist hauntings. (I do not agree with the current trend in amateur ghost hunting to blame absolutely everything paranormal on demons.)
Extraordinary emotional stress or tension, concluded Fodor, was the fuel of poltergeist activity. Psychokinesis, determined Roll, was the mechanism by which the physical events manifested.
If you aren’t familiar with Psychokinesis, a good example of it is when someone appears on television, and bends cutlery in half with some mental power. One minute the spoon or fork is whole, then the neck of the utensil goes positively boneless and the business end flops over backward on itself.
What’s found in poltergeist cases? Family disruption, very often. Teenagers, almost always. Some parapsychologists think the adolescent brain, with that crazy hormone surge, gives kids an extra emotional oomph. In the Wesley household, there were several kids, as in the Bell house, ranging in all ages.
Kids or other household members who feel they have no voice, for whatever reason, may unconsciously vent their frustration and anger in ways for which they can’t be blamed or get in trouble. Once things start flying around and the adults find themselves scratched by unseen hands, it’s impossible to ignore the unhappiness or discord in the house. It reaches an apex and the situation is dealt with one way or another. That might be with positive or negative remedies – but bottom line, things change. And then the activity, no longer required to get some action, dies down.
England's Enfield poltergeist case of the 1970s is still hotly debated.
Probably the majority of poltergeist cases are hoaxes, and over the years a number of famous ones have been found out to be just that. The school teacher Betsey Bell married, after breaking up with Josh Gardner, has been pointed to by some as the real force behind the Bell Witch poltergeist, for example (to the outrage of the Bell and Powell descendants.) But I do believe that poltergeist phenomenon is legitimate when no trickery is involved.
First, because the pattern is there. If poltergeist cases were the work of unseen malevolent spirits, I would think they’d show a whole lot more imagination. But instead we see this clear pattern and limited catalogue of the same behaviors over and over again. It’s an easy template to copy and it gets results.
Since we only use ten percent of our brain capacity, we also have one massive reservoir of unconscious intelligence to draw upon. The idea that our untapped brains have the capacity to influence the physical world doesn’t seem outlandish to me; especially when you consider other mysterious or miraculous human phenomenon that seem to defy logic. A good hypnotist, in lab conditions, can tell a hypnotized subject that they are being burned with a cigarette while touching them with a pencil, and a welt will appear. It’s amazing, what we don’t know.
In my own years of collecting true stories, I once had a woman volunteer her experiences of scary events, frightened children, and a household tormented by a really mean ghost. Something didn’t sit right, though, and before scheduling an interview with her, I sought out a trusted mutual friend to see if I could learn more about the circumstances. Sure enough, my instincts were right; the woman was unfortunately in an extremely unhappy personal situation that soon after fell apart.
Poltergeist events can be real, and they are fascinating, but they are not ghost stories.
Pat Fitzhugh’s site, www.bellwitch.org, has a wealth of information on the case, the family, and the region. Very good work in the midst of so much misinformation.
The Dead To The Worlds series continues! Next week, Part Four: Classically Haunted.
