Difference between revisions of "poltergeist"

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For the film series, see Poltergeist (film series). For the first in the film series, see Poltergeist (1982 film). For the TV series, see: Poltergeist: The Legacy

Template:Infobox Paranormalcreatures

• (German for noisy ghost) is a term used to describe a supposed spirit or ghost that manifests itself by moving and influencing inanimate objects.

Reports of poltergeist activity typically feature raps, bumps, thumps, knocks, footsteps, and bed shaking, all without a discernible point of origin or physical reason for occurrence. Many accounts also report objects being thrown about the room, furniture being moved, and even people being levitated. Though rare, a few reported poltergeists have been purported to speak, including the The Bell Witch in 1817 and Gef the Talking Mongoose in 1931.

Research[edit]

Template:original research Poltergeists are a special type of ghost. They're active in the physical world and can be malicious; they shake furniture, break dishes, set fires, and throw people and objects.

Many researchers believe that poltergeists are actually formed from the psyche of a living being who is undergoing stress (for example a teenager that just had a big argument with thier parents). A poltergeists' main target is usually an adolescent, most commonly a female (because of all the physical changes females go through, rather than the emotional changes males do, which causes for more stress). Even though the target may not consciously be feeling upset toward the person/people (usually an authority figure), they are subconsciously upset and that is where the poltergeist comes in.

Major Hypotheses[edit]

These are the major theories for poltergeist phenomeena.

Mischievous spirits[edit]

A pamphlet printed in London in 1698 by Mr. Ricard Chamberlain provides an account of a poltergeist-type haunting that had occurred some years before. Two copies of the pamphlet exist in the British Museum called: "Lithobolia, or stone throwing Devil. Being an Exact and True account (by way of Journal) of the various actions of infernal Spirits or (Devils Incarnate) Witches or both: and the great Disturbance and Amazement they gave to George Walton's family at a place called Great Island in the province of New Hampshire in New England, chiefly in throwing about (by an Invisible hand) Stones, Bricks, and Brick-Bats of all sizes, with several other things, as Hammers, Mauls, Iron-Crows, Spits, and other Utensils, as came into their Hellish minds, and this for space of a quarter of a year...."

Poltergeist activity originates with agents[edit]

Poltergeist activity tends to occur around a single person called an agent or a focus.^[1] Foci are often, but not limited to, pubescent children. Almost seventy years of research by the Rhine Research Center in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, 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. ^[unverified]

Separate existences[edit]

Poltergeists might simply exist, like the "elementals" described by occultists.

Another version posits that poltergeists originate after a person dies in a powerful rage at the time of death. 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" in a place or, somehow, in the "fabric of time" itself. This recording will continue to play over and over again until the energy embedded disperses.

However some poltergeists have had the ability to articulate themselves and to have distinct personalities, which suggests some sort of self-awareness and intent. Practitioners of astral projection have reported the existence of unfriendly astral life forms, which Robert Bruce called "negs" (whom we might also identify with elementals). If they exist, these may well have the ability to affect the physical world. ^[unverified]

See also:

• Mischievous fairies
• Undead

Caused by physical forces[edit]

Some scientists propose that all poltergeist activity that they can't trace to fraud has a physical explanation such as static electricity, electromagnetic fields, ultra-, and infrasound and/or ionized air. In some cases, such as the Rosenheim poltergeist case, the physicist F. Karger from the Max-Planck-Institut für Plasmaphysik and G. Zicha from the Technical University of Munich found none of these effects present and psi proponents claim that no evidence of fraud was ever found, even after a sustained investigation from the police force and CID, though criminologist Herbert Schäfer quotes an unnamed detective watching the agent pushing a lamp when she thought nobody was looking. However, whether this is true or not, police officers did sign statements that they had witnessed the phenomena. John Hutchinson has claimed that he has created poltergeist effects in the lab. Also worth noting is that some scientists now propose that poltergeists and ball lightning may be linked phenomena. Some scientists go as far as calling them pseudo-psychic phenomena and claim that under some circumstances they are caused by obscure physical effects. And parapsychologists William G. Roll and Dean Radin, physicist Hal puthoff and head of electrical engineering at Duke University who specializes in electromagnetic field phenomena, claim that poltergeist phenomena [the movement of objects at least] could be caused by anomalies in the zero-point field, http://www.scientificexploration.org/jse/articles/pdf/17.1_roll.pdf, this is outlined in the above article and in Roll's book "unleashed" and mention is made of it in a chapter of Dean Radin's book "entangled mind." The basic theory is that poltergeist movements are repulsive versions of the casimir effect that can put pressures on objects. Thus, anomalies in this field could conceivably move objects. This theory has also been mentioned in the current book on paranormal phenomena "science" by Marie D. Jones http://www.amazon.com/PSIence-Discoveries-Existence-Paranormal-Phenomena/dp/1564148955 The theory is not complete, however, because it accounts for the movement of objects but not for the strange voices, seeming personality, and strange electrical effects displayed in some cases.

See also:

• Hutchinson effect

Self-delusion and hoaxes[edit]

Skeptics think that the phenomena are hoaxes perpetrated by the agent. Indeed, some poltergeist agents have been caught by investigators in the act of throwing objects. A few of them later confessed to faking. ^[unverified]

Skeptics maintain that parapsychologists are especially easy to fool when they think that many occurrences are real and discount the hoax hypothesis from the outset. Even after witnessing first hand an agent throwing objects, psi-believing parapsychologists rationalize the fact away by assuming that the agents are only cheating when caught cheating, and when you do not catch them, the phenomenon is genuine. One reason given is that the agents often fake phenomena when the investigation coincides with a period of time where there appears to be little or no 'genuine' phenomena occurring. ^[unverified]

Examples[edit]

William Roll, Hans Bender, and Harry Price are perhaps three of the most famous poltergeist investigators in the annals of parapsychology. Harry Price investigated Borley Rectory which is widely regarded as "the most haunted house in England."

In the Rosenheim case, Dr. Friedbert Karger was one of two physicists from the Max Planck Institute who helped to investigate perhaps the most validated poltergeist case in recorded history. A 19-year-old secretary in a law firm in Rosenheim, a small town in southern Germany, was seemingly the unwitting cause of much chaos in the firm, including disruption of electricity and telephone lines, the rotation of a picture, swinging lamps which were captured on video (which was one of the first times any poltergeist activity has been captured on film), and strange sounds that sounded electrical in origin were recorded. Fraud was not proven despite intensive investigation by the physicists, journalists, and the police. The effects moved with the young woman when she changed jobs until they finally faded out and Friedbert Karger's whole perspective on physics changed. "These experiments were really a challenge to physics," Karger says today. "What we saw in the Rosenheim case could be 100 per cent shown not to be explainable by known physics." [1]. The phenomena were witnessed by Hans Bender, the police force, the CID, reporters, and the physicists. The claims were aired in a documentary in 1975 in a series called "Leap in the Dark."

Famous poltergeist infestations[edit]

Although poltergeist stories date back to the first century, most evidence to support the existence of poltergeists is anecdotal. Indeed, many of the stories below have several versions and/or inconsistencies; however there are a few that do not, for example, the Miami poltergeist has event records signed by all witnesses as to the way things happened. These witnesses include police officers, a skeptical magician, and workers at the warehouse.

• An "evil spirit" threw stones and made the walls shake in a small farmhouse. This was the first recorded poltergeist case. (858)

• Demon drummer of Tedworth (1661).
• The "Wizard", Livingston, West Virginia (1797).
• The Bell Witch (1817).
• The Haunting of The Fox sisters (1848) - arguably one of the most famous, because it started the Spiritualism movement.
• Hopfgarten near Weimar (1921).
• Eleonore Zugun - The 'Poltergeist Girl' (1926).
• The Borley Rectory phenomena (1929).
• The Rosenheim Poltergeist (1967). [2] (German and most extensive).

[3] [4]

• The Enfield Poltergeist (1977).
• The Miami Poltergeist, a poltegeist witnessed by police and a skeptical magician who did not believe it was a ghost, but admitted he witnessed phenomena he could not explain. Many others witnessed phenomena including reporters, parapsychologists, and workers at the warehouse.
• The Mackenzie Poltergeist (fairly recent) - Famed for haunting Greyfriars church yard, Edinburgh, UK.
• The Canneto di Caronia fires poltergeist (fairly recent (2004-2005)) - Famed for defying all attempts at a scientific explanation, Sicily, Italy [5].
• The Entity Case allegedly involved a single mother of three named Carla Moran who was being repeatedly raped by an invisible entity and her two helpers over the course of several years.
• The case of Tina Resch, widely reported in the media in 1984.
• A recent case in Barnsley near Sheffield in England, where poltergeist effects were witnessed by the police force. [6]

Although some parapsychologists suggest that poltergeists could be a form of recurrent PK, there is very little evidence for PK recorded on film or witnessed by objective parties. There are famous poltergeist cases where the activity was seen by objective parties and even skeptics.

Poltergeists in fiction[edit]

Both the name and concept of the poltergeist became famous to modern audiences in the Poltergeist movies and the subsequent TV series Poltergeist: The Legacy. The first poltergeist movie actually gave an excellent depiction (during the first half of the film) of a "typical" poltergeist infestation, right down to the depiction of the focus as a prepubescent girl.

Poltergeist is Monster in My Pocket #117. It resembles the long-limbed, yellow creature outside the hall door glimpsed briefly in the 1982 film.

Dean Koontz's Odd Thomas encounters many poltergeists in his adventures. Most notably, the ghost of a killer, Odd, was tracking and a nameless ghost with a buzz cut who wrecks the Panamint Casino when Datura verbally abuses and belittles the ghost of an Indian waitress.

There is a poltergeist named Peeves in the Harry Potter books. Peeves, however, does not conform to the classic definition of a poltergeist. The fact that he manifests visually would seem to indicate that he is something similar to a ghost, though J.K. Rowling has stated that a poltergeist is not the ghost of any person who has ever lived. Perhaps she intended Peeves to be more of a literal translation of the word poltergeist, because Peeves is quite noisy and mischievous. However, it is also possible that Harry and other students can perceive Peeves because they are wizards, and that he would be still invisible to muggles. It is also interesting to note that Peeves appears in color, where the other ghosts at the school appear as white, misty figures.

The Terry Pratchett Discworld novel A Hat Full of Sky features an "ondageist" named Oswald. This is the opposite of a poltergeist: a spirit obsessed with cleaning and tidying.

On October 20, 1942, the old-time radio show Lights Out featured a story called "Poltergeist" in which a trio of girls experience horrific, unexplained assaults from flying stones after one walks over a grave.

In the board game Atmosfear, a playable character is Hellin the poltergeist.

On Tuesday, November 15th, 2005, Supernatural aired a episode involving a multiple haunting in the old house of Dean and Sam. The owner of the house would claim there were rats in the house. He only heard scratching and rustling noises, but didn't actually see them. The poltergeist in the house threw knives, opened baby cribs and refrigerators, and claims the hand of a repairman trying to fix the garbage disposal. Also, in another episode, Phantom Traveler, a person mentions that Dean rescued him and his family from a poltergeist by himself.

Some Castlevania games feature a few poltergeist phenomena. For example, certain furniture may suddenly spring to life and attack (some of the furniture are named Ouija Table). Another case is the enemy Alastor, where a giant sword floats around in the air, wielded by an occasionally visible, invulnerable spirit. In some disputed game canon, it is said that a yet-unseen character called the Poltergeist King takes charge of the Belmont family weapons between quests.

The popular Ju-on series of horror films in Japan and the Americanized version The Grudge, feature poltergeist elements including the replaying of the tragedy and the violent nature of the ghosts.

The comic Fetus-X includes a fork-throwing poltergeist cheerleader and attempts to bring her back from the dead.

The 2002 novel, The Bishop in the West Wing, written by Catholic priest and author Andrew M. Greeley, includes a poltergeist as a central feature of the story.

See also[edit]

• Ghost
• Ghost hunting
• Ghost tour
• Haunting
• Intelligent haunting
• Stigmatized property

References[edit]

External links[edit]

• Andrew Lang, The Poltergeist and his explainers, The Making of Religion, (Appendix B), Longmans, Green, and C°, London, New York and Bombay, 1900, pp. 324-339.
• Haunted Ontario - Founded in 1996 by Bob Milne, Haunted Ontario chronicles the ghosts, spirits, spooks, and poltergeists said to haunt Canada's most populated province.
• Poltergeist: The Legacy Website
• Dehaunting Techniques
• International Journal of Parapsychology
• Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research
• Skeptic's Dictionary
• [7] The Entity Case