Poltergeist

6th

Having done a search in this forum I'm surprised not to see a thread with this title before so here it goes

My take on Poltergeists is that it is a description of the activity as opposed to a type of spirit/entity/energy.

Heres some bits from the wiki on Poltergeists:

Poltergeist (German for noisy ghost) is a term for a supposed spirit or ghost that manifests by moving and influencing inanimate objects (rather than through visible presence or vocalization).

Poltergeist activity tends to occur around a single person called an agent or a focus. Focuses are often, but not limited to, pubescent children. Almost seventy years of research by the Rhine Research Center (Raleigh-Durham, NC USA) has led to the hypothesis among parapsychologists that the "poltergeist effect" is a form of psychokinesis generated by a living human mind (that of the agent). According to researchers at the Rhine Center, the "poltergeist effect" is the outward manifestation of psychological trauma. Skeptics believe that the phenomena are hoaxes perpetrated by the agent. Indeed, many poltergeist agents have been caught by investigators in the act of throwing objects. A few of them later confessed to faking. However, parapsychologists investigating poltergeists think that most occurrences are real, and the agents cheat only when they are subsequently caught cheating. The longevity and consistency between poltergeist stories (the earliest one details the raining of stones and bed shaking in ancient Egypt) has left the matter open for debate within the parapsychology community.

Another version of the poltergeist is the "wrath version." When a person dies in a powerful rage at the time of death, that person is believed by some to come back to fulfill that vengeance. In some cases, the vengeance is too strong to let go or forgive, and the metaphysical ghost becomes a poltergeist, in which the newly formed ghost can affect solid objects, and in some cases are deadly. According to yet another opinion, ghosts and poltergeists are "recordings." When there is a powerful emotion, sometimes at death and sometimes not, a recording is believed to be embedded into the fabric of time, and this recording will continue to play over and over again until the energy embedded disperses.

Some scientists propose that all poltergeist activity that they cannot trace to fraud has an explained physical explanation such as static magnetic/electric fields, ultra and infra sound, static electric charging and ionised air.

my_house

i had an experience a few years back that doesnt follow the 'agent' theory. there were 5 of us in a house and all of us witnessed the effects almost individually - sometimes two might witness something when the rest werent in the house, sometimes one of us would be on our own and witness thigns, sometimes we all witnessed the same thing. there was never one common demoninator who was a witness to all activity.

6th

my_house wrote:

i had an experience a few years back that doesnt follow the 'agent' theory. there were 5 of us in a house and all of us witnessed the effects almost individually - sometimes two might witness something when the rest werent in the house, sometimes one of us would be on our own and witness thigns, sometimes we all witnessed the same thing. there was never one common demoninator who was a witness to all activity.

As i said, I think the term "Poltergeist" suits better to discription of the activity than anything else. There is no reason why only one type of "ghost" could be responsible for such phenomenon as moving objects and the likes. People are just as capable of causing these happenings as any spirit, though there is not much to back that up. Telekenisis, is i'm sure, at the root of alot of "Poltergeist" cases.

my_house

i would agree. personally I think a lot of things we term ' ghosts ' have a more natural explaination - though probably as outlandish and as weird as the strangest paranormal explaination

Zillah

I'm rather fond of the "Poltergeist is stress induced psychokinesis" theory. I don't have access to the statistics, but I remember hearing that poltergeist encounters are often associated with the presence of troubled teen agers. The end to the activity seems to coincide with those teens getting older.

stevenmu

I've seen that explanation a lot. Another factor in it is that activity tends to follow families that move house.

6th

stevenmu wrote:

I've seen that explanation a lot. Another factor in it is that activity tends to follow families that move house.

That has been the situation in alot of the cases that get media attention.

My thing is thought that once a "haunting" has a incident of objects moving/being thrown it becomes a poltergeist case.

6th

Twenty-seven years ago, in Thornton Heath, England, a family was tormented by poltergeist phenomena that started one August night when they were woken in the middle of the night by a blaring bedside radio that had somehow turned itself on – tuned to a foreign-language station. This was the beginning of a string of events that lasted nearly four years. A lampshade repeatedly was knocked to the floor by unaided hands. During the Christmas season of 1972, an ornament was hurled across the room, smashing into the husband’s forehead. “As he flopped into an armchair,” reports Haunted Croydon [link no longer works], “the Christmas tree began to shake violently. Come the New Year and there were footsteps in the bedroom when there was no one there, and one night the couple’s son awoke to find a man in old fashioned dress staring threateningly at him. The family’s fear grew when, as they entertained friends one night, there was a loud knocking at the front door, the living room door was then flung open and all the house’s lights came on.”

Having the house blessed failed to rid the house of the phenomena. “Objects flew through the air, loud noises were heard and the family would sometimes hear a noise which suggested some large piece of furniture... had crashed to floor. When they went to investigate, nothing would be disturbed.”

A medium who was consulted told the family that the house was haunted by a farmer of the name Chatterton, who considered the family trespassers on his property. An investigation bore out the fact that had indeed lived in the house in the mid-18th century. “Chatterton’s wife now joined in in causing mayhem, and often the tenant’s wife would be followed up the stairs at night by an elderly gray-haired woman wearing a pinafore and with her hair tied back in a bun. If looked at, she would disappear back into the shadows. The family even reported seeing the farmer appear on their television screens, wearing a black jacket with wide, pointed lapels, high-necked shirt and black cravat.”

After the family moved out of the house, the poltergeist activity ceased, and none have been reported by subsequent residents.

From http://www.paranormal.about.com

6th

Another English ghost – this one in Enfield in North London – made headlines in 1977. The strange activity seemed to center around the daughter of Peggy Harper, a divorcee in her mid-40s. Again, it started on an August night. “Late at night,” An Urban Ghost Story relates, “Janet, aged 11 and her brother Pete, aged 10, complained that their beds were ‘jolting up and down and going all funny.’ As soon as Mrs. Harper got to the room, the movements had stopped – as far as she was concerned her kids were making it all up.”

But things got progressively more bizarre from there. Shuffling noises and knocks on the wall were followed by a heavy chest of drawers sliding by itself across the floor. Mrs. Harper promptly got her children out of the house and sought the assistance of a neighbor. “The neighbors searched the house and garden but found no one. Soon they also heard the knocks on the walls which continued at spaced out intervals. At 11 p.m. they called the police, who heard the knocks, one officer even saw a chair inexplicably move across the floor, and later signed a written statement to confirm the events.”

Several people were witness to the events that occurred in the following days: Lego bricks and marbles were thrown around the house, and were often hot to the touch. In September of that year, Maurice Grosse of the Society for Psychical Research came to investigate. “Grosse claims that he experienced the strange happenings – first a marble was thrown at him from an unseen hand, he saw doors open and close by themselves, and claimed to feel a sudden breeze that seemed to move up from his feet to his head.”

Grosse was later joined in the investigation by writer Guy Lyon Playfair, and together they studied the case for two years. “The knocking on walls and floors became an almost nightly occurrence, furniture slid across the floor and was thrown down the stairs, drawers were wrenched out of dressing tables. Toys and other objects would fly across the room, bedclothes would be pulled off, water was found in mysterious puddles on the floors, there were outbreaks of fire followed by their inexplicable extinguishing.”

The case became decidedly unnerving when the spirits revealed themselves – through Janet. Speaking in a deep, gravely voice through Janet, the spirit announced that his name was Bill and had died in the house – a fact that has been verified. The voices and the phenomenon have been recorded on tape and film, and Playfair has written a book about the case called This House is Haunted. Despite the documentation, however, much controversy surrounds the case. Skeptics claim that the case is nothing more than the work of a very clever and mischievous girl – Janet. The poltergeist activity always stopped when she was watched closely, and when she was taken to a hospital for several days to be tested for physical or mental abnormality, the phenomena ceased in the house. Some researchers believe that Janet taught herself to speak in the strange male voice, and that photos of her levitating in her bedroom merely caught her jumping off her bed. Was this poltergeist case just the result of an attention-seeking 11-year-old?

From http://www.paranormal.about.com

6th

In 1998, Jane Fishman, a reporter for the Savannah Morning News, began a series of articles about a possibly haunted antique bed in the home of Al Cobb of Savannah, Georgia. Cobb bought the vintage late-1800s bed at an auction as a Christmas present for his 14-year-old son, Jason – a purchase he later regretted.

“Three nights later,” Fishman reported, “Jason told his parents he felt as if someone had planted elbows on his pillow and was watching him and breathing cold air down the back of his neck. He felt sick. The next night he noticed the photo of his deceased grandparents on his wicker nightstand flipped down. So he righted it. The next day, the photo was facing down again. Later that morning, after leaving his room for breakfast, he returned and found in the middle of his bed two Beanie Babies – the zebra and the tiger – next to a conch shell, a dinosaur made of shells and a plaster toucan bird. That got his parents’ – and his twin brother, Lee’s – attention. Trying to make sense of the irrational, Al called out, ‘Do we have a Casper here? Tell me your name and how old you are.’ Then he left some lined composition paper and crayons and, with his family, walked out of the room. In 15 minutes they returned and found written vertically in large block childlike letters, ‘Danny, 7.’”

With his family out of the house, Al Cobb decided to continue trying to communicate with the spirit of Danny. With the same kind of notes, Danny indicated that his mother had died in that bed in 1899, and that he wanted to stay with the bed. He also made it clear that he didn’t want anyone else sleeping in it. “The same day they found a note reading, ‘No one sleep in bed,’ Jason, who had moved out of the room, decided to stretch out and pretend to take a nap. That, says Al, was a mistake. ‘I doubled back in the room to pick up my clothes,’ remembers Jason, ‘when this terra cotta head that had been hanging on the wall came flying through the room, just missing me before it smashed on the closet door.’”

“No one really knows,” Fishman writes in her second installment, “who – or what – is leaving the copious notes, moving the furniture, opening the kitchen drawers, setting the dining room table, flipping over the chairs, lighting the candles, arranging the posters to spell out a person’s name, Jill, then hanging the finished product on a bedroom wall. Jason also spoke of other spirits: ‘Uncle Sam,’ who had come to reclaim his daughter he said was buried under the house; ‘Gracie,’ a young girl whose sculpture sits in Bonaventure Cemetery; and ‘Jill,’ a young woman who left a number of handwritten messages, among them one inviting the Cobbs to a party in their living room.”

Parapsychologist Andrew Nichols, head of the Florida Society for Parapsychological Research, investigated the case. “What happened at the Cobbs,” he told Fishman, “– more specifically to Jason – would have happened without ‘Danny,’ or the bed. It was the electromagnetic energy of the wall – that Jason started sleeping next to when they moved the bed there – that charged a psychic ability that the boy already had.”

From http://www.paranormal.about.com

my_house

“What happened at the Cobbs,” he told Fishman, “– more specifically to Jason – would have happened without ‘Danny,’ or the bed. It was the electromagnetic energy of the wall – that Jason started sleeping next to when they moved the bed there – that charged a psychic ability that the boy already had.”

that doesnt make sense. everything has an electronmagnetic charge, but charging a psychic ability with it?

6th

They basically mean that it gave him a boost. I know after a long meditation I can be exhausted, I'm also sure i'll I had the reserves to go further with it I could increase my ability - if that makes any sense.

GuanYin

Zillah wrote:

I'm rather fond of the "Poltergeist is stress induced psychokinesis" theory. I don't have access to the statistics, but I remember hearing that poltergeist encounters are often associated with the presence of troubled teen agers. The end to the activity seems to coincide with those teens getting older.

I find it interesting that you would take one paranormal phenomenon over another?

I'm not having a pop, but given your stance in threads such as the ISS one, it seems an odd post. Although I may be imprinting WK's views on to you unintentionally.

6th

Ah Zillah is open to paranormal experiences, he just wants to have some and then figure them out. Sure wasnt he on the first trip to Charleville? (retorical).

Some people are alot more open to the idea of the potential of the human mind but laugh at the idea of spirits, each to their own I say.

Plums

I had an experience that someone described as poltergeist activity in a house that I moved into. I rented a place, moved all my stuff in one day and moved in the next. When I woke in the morning, the house key, which was attached to my car keys etc. has 2 full twists from the circlular handle right to the tip (it was one of those brass coloured union type keys). There were no tools in the house that could possibly do that. I took the key to a friend who worked in the shop where the key was cut, he could not believe what he was seeing and told me that if he tried that with a key, even heating it, it would snap before a quarter twist. My key was still as strong as any other key.

I got the local priest down to bless the house. He looked freaked out the whole time, did a wee prayer in the living room and left quite quickly and abrubtly after saying he wasnt happy and would have to come back. I tried to approach him a couple of times after that in a local shop and he ignored me like I was the fukin antichrist.

I never went back to the house except to collect my stuff and give a stunned landlord a wacky key.

Definately strange happenings and the hairs stand on the back of my neck each time I think about it.

What yees think of that?

imprezza

I've heard a lot of stories about poltergeists too and only some of them are about houses where teenagers live. Theres lots of poltergeist stories I've read about in places that older people live and empty places too. so my guess is sometimes it's connected with teenagers and other humans but not always. I've read loads of articles where thing happen in empty houses so in my opinion that proves it's not always to do with peoples stress or age. I'm not sure I believe spirits exist but I've a lot of experiences that I can't find logical explanation for.

Zillah

psi wrote:

I find it interesting that you would take one paranormal phenomenon over another?

I'm not having a pop, but given your stance in threads such as the ISS one, it seems an odd post. Although I may be imprinting WK's views on to you unintentionally.

I missed this post. Basically what 6th said. I'm open to ideas, and there does appear to be a trend showing a connection as I described above.

But anyway, I didn't say "I believe" or even "I think it likely", I said "im a fan of", as in "I think its interested and it'd be cool if that was the case".