A poltergeist is an entity from the realms of the paranormal, some describe them as angry restless spirits of those deceased while others are described as dangerous inhuman demons while other people believe it is accidently caused by people with limited telekinesis/psychokinesis. All in all, the poltergeist is an alleged entity that is able to easily interact with its surroundings, moving things, throwing things, breaking things, opening doors and cupboards, turning lights and appliances on and off, disrupts electrical equipment and often acts in a violent or mischievous nature, some also attack their victims, such as by scratching them, these kind of poltergeists, that physically attack people are often seen as particularly dark and sinister..
I have talked about the poltergeist quite thoroughly on the Enfield Haunting blog I wrote about a year or so ago. The Enfield Haunting is one of the most infamous cases of an alleged poltergeist but as I have already made an in-depth blogpost on that previously, on this post I will be going over some different reports and cases.
In many cases it seems a poltergeist is attached to a person rather than a building or home and so even when trying to move away from them they have been documented as likely to follow their victims. It has also been documented that many poltergeist attachments happen to young children going through puberty, for whatever reason. Some speculate that this is due to the event of puberty releasing lots of energy that the entities are able to harvest, others though claim that it is unrelated and have suggested instead that children going through puberty can sometimes get the ability of telekinesis temporarily, and effect things around them without realizing that it is them doing it.
Others more skeptical simply say that puberty can be a stressful and life-changing moment for a child and can cause them to act out on purpose, for attention while others say children can simply have a tenant for mischief. Not all cases of a poltergeist are though just attached to children and it has also been documented that some poltergeists are instead attached to a building.
Unfortunately, the poltergeist phenomena are also one of the easiest to fake and numerous videos of alleged phenomena can be found on places such as Youtube, more so than other types of unexplained videos, with much of it likely being false. Common ways of faking poltergeist activity include using magnets under a surface, thin near-invisible strings pulled to manipulate objects, clever editing tricks as well as people themselves hiding behind areas, such as a door and causing the disturbances themselves. It doesn’t require any kind of expensive budget, complex equipment or skillful visual editing to fake poltergeist activity.
Many can also easily be tricked by friends and family members in their house, specially by children, into thinking they are being haunted by a poltergeist, as well as that others may just fake it all for publicity. A genuine unsolvable poltergeist case is almost impossible to confirm due to the ease of trickery and foolery, even house cats have been known to accidentally fool people into thinking they are haunted.
Nonetheless I will go over a number of cases that have been reported and you can make up your own mind on what you think on each individual case.
Glenluce Devil
One case is that of the Glenluce Devil in Scotland, documented in a book by George Sinclair called Satan’s Invisible Works Discovered in 1685. The incident affected the Campbell family from 1654 after a beggar called Alexander Agnew threatened harm to the family after he had been refused handouts by Gilbert Campbell. Agnew was later hanged for blasphemy. For the next two years the family begun experiencing strange and terrifying activity in their house.
It all started with disembodied whistling inside the house and on its surrounding grounds, described as sounding like that of children whistling. Campbell’s daughter, Jennet, later heard a voice whisper to her when she went out to collect water from a well, it happened after she felt a presence and said, “I would fain hear thee speake, as well as Whistle,” and a disembodied voice replied in a shrill manner, “I’le cast thee Iennet into the Well.”
The middle of November is when the poltergeist activity truly begun, including throwing stones at doors and windows and even down the chimney, many thrown at great force. Campbell soon let some neighbors as well as the minister of the parish know of the disturbances. Again, though the activity picked up, Campbell who was a weaver found his work being disrupted, with the unexplained cutting of warp and thread, soon the occupants of the house even found their clothes and shoes being cut open.
Eventually the Campbell’s also found sleep being taken from them as unknown forces pulled off their bedsheets in the night, chests and trunks around the house inexplicably opened by themselves and had their contents strewn about, working-instruments went missing and were found hidden in strange places about the property. Soon Campbell begun moving stuff into his neighbor’s house, to stop them being tampered with and moved about. Soon Campbell was counselled to send his children out from the house, saying that the activity was most likely against one person in the house rather than all, interestingly this worked, for 4-5 days there was no activity while Campbell was alone in his house.
Campbell eventually brought some of his children back to the home where still everything seemed to be normal again, until his son Thomas was returned to the home. Two unexplained fires followed in the house, both quickly put out with the help of neighbors and no widespread damage or loss. The son Thomas was sent by Campbell to live with the Minister and there was a burst of activity at the house before more calm. Thomas claimed to hear a voice at the Minister’s house that forbid him to return to his home, upon trying to return he was so badly abused by unknown forces that he returned to the Minister’s home again.
After this point it turns into more of a battle between Campbell and Minister praying in the house and speaking with the devil, of which I will not be recording in full here. All in all, there was some religious intervention that apparently calmed the Devil down, but it returned several times, but eventually the author claims that Campbell had a peaceful existence after 2-years of the disturbances.
Many skeptics have claimed this incident was exaggerated by the books author and others have blamed the children for the mischievous behavior.
Rosenheim Case
A case in Rosenheim, Southern Bavaria was investigated by a parapsychologist called Hans Bender, a known ghost hunter and pursuer of poltergeists who had took part in nearly 40 investigations at the time. In this account a place called Adam’s law offices were inflicted with unexplained poltergeist-like activity during the week. The phenomena included electrical and physical disturbances.
In a newspaper article Hans described the phenomena including lightbulbs exploding with enough force to bury glass splinters in the walls, neon tubes unscrewing themselves from sockets, hanging light fixtures swinging wildly back and forth as well as hundreds of office calls, that costed the company, which all the staff had denied making.
To get to the bottom of the activity the company installed instruments to monitor all electrical equipment and the telephone company put in a device that recorded all outgoing calls. This only deepened the mystery though with the monitoring equipment detecting severe electrical malfunctions that could not be traced and the phone recorder logged 60 calls within an hour, all denied to have been made by the office workers, all of the calls were also to the same number at the same time.
Hans arrived on the scene later on in December and physicists were called to conduct tests of which confirmed some unknown form of energy was at work. He noted that the activity only happened during the working days and not at the weekends when the workers were gone.
Eventually Hans came to the conclusion that the activity was being caused by a 19-year-old employee called Annemarie Schaberl, a girl who explained to Hans that she was very unhappy due to feeling hemmed in by an overly strict father and a job she didn’t like. Hans said she was a typical poltergeist, believing that poltergeist activity is actually caused by emotional disorders rather than malicious entities.
Hans claimed that the phenomena stopped after Annemarie married. He also said she has affected other electrical equipment elsewhere before, such as on trips to a bowling alley with her formerly engaged where the electrical equipment commonly malfunctioned, which eventually led to the boyfriend dumping her, which Hans believes was the intention. We have covered this in a recent blogpost where people can interfere with electrical equipment.
To me personally it all sounds like one of those incidents you’d expect on an episode of the X-Files.
Amherst Poltergeist
This account begun in Canada, Amherst, Nova Scotia beginning in 1878. 18-year-old Esther Cox who was the main subject of the entity lived in a rented house with her sister, Olive Teed who was also living there with her husband, Daniel Teed and two children, Esther also had another sister and brother, Jennie and William living there as well as John the sister of Daniel Teed. Yes, it sounds like a squeeze.
Soon after a terrible event where Esther was nearly raped by a local shoemaker called Bob MacNeal, but had managed to escape, strange events begun. It could either be coincidence or not but for some reason after that is when this attachment/haunting kicked off.
The first events of paranormal phenomena, witnessed by Esther and her other unmarried sister Jennie were recorded down by a boarder currently staying at the house, Walter Hubbell, which later became a book on the events called The Great Amherst Mystery. It started with screams piercing the house after Esther and Jennie, who were sharing a bed, witnessed an unknown force moving under the bed covers as they were about to sleep. The screams attracted the other inhabitants of the house into the room and a search turned up nothing, Esther assumed it to be a mouse. After that calm returned.
The next night screams from Esther and Jennie once again woke the household, the girls claimed to hear unusual noises emanating from a box of leather scraps kept under their bed. They also said when they brought the box out from under the bed, it inexplicably leapt into the air and landed on its side, the box jumped a second time when they attempted to turn it back over, which is when they screamed.
During this time the evidence of a haunting had only been witnessed by the two girls while the rest had it from word-of-mouth from them soon afterwards and so the events were mostly brushed off as a trick of the imagination, as well as the possible anxious mind of Esther after the attack from MacNeal.
On the third night a far more terrifying incident occurred, happening soon after Esther had retired to bed early after feeling unwell. Later on, Jennie joined her in bed where Esther then suddenly jumped up out of bed in sheer panic, yanking at her clothes and screaming, asking what was happening to her and believing that she was dying. On closer inspection it was found that Esther’s skin was reddening and swelling at a terrifying rate and she was hot to the touch, she also begun choking and struggling to breath as the adults who had rushed in looked on in disbelief. Eventually several loud bangs emanated from under the bed, after which Esther’s swelling subsided and she fell asleep.
Four nights on and the same terrifying event happened to Esther again and only stopped after banging under the bed, leading a to a doctor called Carritte to be called in to examine Esther to see if she had an illness of some kind. During the doctor’s visit he witnessed numerous scary events around Esther such as the pillow under her head by itself, more loud banging under the bed, bedclothes thrown across the room. After this a scratching noise could be heard and on the wall above Esther’s bed the doctor witnessed words etching themselves into it, which ended up reading, “Esther Cox you are mine to kill”. Finally, a clump of plaster flew off the wall and landed next to the doctor, and soon after calm returned.
But this still wasn’t the end of it, the doctor returned the next day and witnessed yet more events, such as objects being thrown. Ultimately the doctor was unable to help Esther and the haunting continued and became more threatening and violent, such as small fires starting, knives and forks thrown with such force that they stuck into walls, lit matches appearing out of nowhere and falling onto flammable places such as beds, moving furniture, Esther was slapped by an unknown force multiple occasions leaving marks, sewing pins appearing from thin air and jabbing Esther.
In the time following Esther attempted numerous times to escape the attachment of the poltergeist, but wherever she went it seemed to follow, to churches, different homes, each place she was forced out as to not burden people with the things happening around her, and at a job on a farm the barn mysteriously burned down, which ended up landing Esther with a 4-month jail sentence for arson, which she served one month of. After coming out of jail the activity seemed to decrease more and more until it ended.
So, there you have it, several cases of poltergeists, as can be seen they seem to be of different severities, some demonic, others nuisances while some are outright terrifying and life-ruining. That is if you choose to believe in them.
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