Poltergeist

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

Poltergeist (help·info) (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). Stories featuring poltergeists typically focus heavily on raps, thumps, knocks, footsteps, and bed-shaking, all without a discernible point of origin or physical reason for occurrence. Many accounts of poltergeist activity detail objects being thrown about the room, furniture being moved, and even people being levitated. A few poltergeists have even been known to speak (The Bell Witch, 1817; Gef the Talking Mongoose, 1931). Most classic poltergeist stories originate in England, though the word itself is German. Forteans sometimes will informally refer to poltergeists as "polts".

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[edit] Research

Poltergeist phenomena are a focus of study within parapsychology. Parapsychologists define poltergeist activity as a type of uncontrolled psychokinesis. Recurrent Spontaneous Psychokinesis (RSPK) is a phrase suggested by parapsychologist William G. Roll to denote poltergeist phenomena. 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.

[edit] Major Hypotheses

These are the major theories for poltergeist phenomena.

[edit] Poltergeist activity originates with agents

Poltergeist activity tends to occur around a single person called an agent or a focus. 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.

[edit] Separate existences

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.

See also:

[edit] Caused by physical forces

Some scientists propose that all poltergeist activity that they cannot trace to fraud has an explained physical explanation such as static electricity, electromagnetic fields, ultra- and infrasound and/or ionised 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 neither 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 if 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.

See also:

[edit] Self-delusion and hoaxes

Skeptics think 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.

Skeptics maintain that parapsychologists are especially easy to fool when they think that many occurrences are real and discount the hoax hypothesis from the start. Even after witnessing firsthand 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 excuse 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, which the agents believe makes them look foolish.

[edit] Examples

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 the firm, including disruption of electricity and telephone lines, the rotation of a picture and 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 never 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".

[edit] Famous alleged poltergeist infestations

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.

  • An "evil spirit" threw stones and made the walls shake in a small farmhouse, this was the first recorded poltergeist case. (858)
  • The "Wizard", Livingston, West Virginia (1797)
  • The Haunting of The Fox sisters (1848) - arguably one of the most famous, as it started the Spiritualism movement.
  • Eleonore Zugun - The 'Poltergeist Girl' (1926)
  • The Rosenheim Poltergeist (1967) [2] (German, but most extensive)

[3] [4]

  • 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 his two helpers over the course of several years.
  • The case of Tina Resch, widely reported in the media in 1984

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 cases where the activity was seen by objective parties and even skeptics however.

[edit] Poltergeists in fiction

Both the name and concept of the poltergeist became famous to modern audiences by 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.

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, as 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.

On Tuesday, November 15th, 2005, Supernatural aired a show 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, but never actually saw them, only heard scratching and rustling noises. The poltergeist in the house flung knives, opened baby cribs and fridges, and claims the hand of a repairman trying to fix the garbage disposal.

Some Castlevania games feature a few poltergeist phenomena. For example, certain furnitures may suddenly spring to life and attack (some of these furnitures 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 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.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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