Monthly Archives: June 2007

Poltergeist is German for ‘noisy ghost’. The word is therefore used to describe inexplicable noises that don’t accompany apparitions. In so far as there are any explanations for ghost phenomena (um, the apparition is, um, some kind of recording, um, which is, um, embedded in something and, um, you, um, read it like a tape recorder and, um, that’s why you see the ghost) poltergeists have the most credible explanation because they seem to happen (frequently or possibly always) around adolescent children.

Apart from noises, poltergeists are supposed to move things around, make objects appear and disappear and, in extremis, arrange objects or even furniture in odd ways. The adolescent children theory is really good until you ask yourself the question, “How many kids do you know that can move objects about using nothing more than their minds?”

That would be none, then.

A recent widely known poltergeisting occurred in Enfield for about a year from August 1977. A woman and four children, including a 12 year old girl, went through some kind of hell with noises, objects moving and the full range of poltergeist phenomena. It was regular enough for researchers to get involved, but they failed to get ‘solid evidence’ even though they experienced a great deal of weirdness. For example, a toy brick materialised out of thin air and flew across the room, hitting a photographer on the head. Some things caught fire spontaneously. Metal objects would suddenly twist out of shape. And 12 year old Janet would suddenly speak in a deep gruff voice indicating that, perhaps, she’d watched The Exorcist. She didn’t manage any projectile vomiting though, indicating perhaps that she was hiding beneath her seat at that part of the movie.

There was a similar case in Long Island in the US in 1958 although it only went on for a month or so. The phenomena seemed to center around James Hermann, son of James M. Herrmann. The usual noises and moving objects were observed. This case attracted the attention of the famous parapsychologist Dr Rhine from Duke University. Unfortunately the media became very interested and gave the Herrmanns no peace. Again nothing that counts as incontrovertible evidence of anything was gathered. However, it is pretty hard to imagine what could be gathered that counts as indisputable evidence in such a case. Noise on tape isn’t it, even video of objects in flight isn’t it. What is?

It was at this point in the Safari that I began to run into antigravity, which to be honest is only thinly connected to poltergeist activity (if you Google the two words together you get 9000 hits—most of which are about the fact that poltergeist phenomena often involve objects being levitated, and perhaps the force that make this happen is the same as the force that makes antigravity happen.

Antigravity? That’s for another day.

I then went looking for malevolent poltergeists and found one. This is the case of 11-year old Maria José Ferreira. It began in the home of a respectable Catholic family, with pieces of brick appearing and falling inside the house. For a while the poltergeist seemed to shower Maria with gifts (a brooch, fruit, a flower) but then it got nasty, started smashing objects and finally turned on Maria, indicating I guess that Maria wasn’t the source of this phenomenon.

The poltergeist bit her, slapped her, threw chairs at her, and even seemed to attempt to kill her by suffocation while she was asleep, by forcing cups or glasses over her mouth. The phenomena persisted around Maria for years and she committed suicide four years later. How very sad.