by Colin Wilson
About the Author
Colin Wilson lives in Cornwall, England, and has written over fifty books on crime, philosophy, and the occult, including the best-selling The Outsider, The Occult, and Mysteries.
Llewellyn Publications
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Poltergeist: A Classic Study in Destructive Haunting © 1981, 1983, 1993, 1995, and 2009 by Colin Wilson.
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Contents
Prefatory Note
Acknowledgments
Introduction
one Professor Lombroso Investigates
two Possession Is Nine Points of the Law
three Cases Ancient and Modern
four The Black Monk of Pontefract
five Fairies, Elementals, and Dead Monks
six The Black Magic Connection
seven Ghost Hunters and Ghost Seers
eight Speculations and Conclusions
Bibliography
This Book Is Dedicated to
Guy Playfair
Prefatory Note
In 1978, I was asked by Professor Richard Gregory (of the Brain and Perception Laboratory at Bristol University) to write an article for The Oxford Companion to the Mind on “Paranormal Phenomena and the Unconscious.” I began the article by citing the case of “Philip, the invented ghost” (which is discussed in chapter 6 of the present book), and then went on to argue that poltergeists are probably a creation of the unconscious mind. When Professor Gregory asked me where I thought they got their energy and how they used it, I had to admit I had no idea.
I am now in the embarrassing position of having to admit that I now no longer agree with what I wrote there. I suspect I do now know where poltergeists get their energy, and even have some ideas about how they use it. This I owe largely to Guy Playfair (and I have explained how it came about in the chapter on the Black Monk of Pontefract). That is why I have dedicated this book to him.
Acknowledgments
Many people have provided me with invaluable assistance and information for this book. Nick Clark-Lowes, the librarian of the Society for Psychical Research, went to immense trouble to find for me information about the Bingen poltergeist, contacting Michael Goss on my behalf; he in turn went to considerable inconvenience to find the relevant passage in Fulda’s Annales and to have it translated for me by Mrs. M. Duffield. Fr. Brocard Sewell, O. Carm, also translated for me some relevant passages from Grimm’s German Mythology. Guy Playfair provided me with dozens of invaluable references. Joe Cooper kindly lent me the typescript of his book on the Cottingley fairies and has given me permission to quote from it. Dennis Stacey and Stephen Spickard have sent me quantities of interesting material from America, including the Chua case. Tony Britton pointed out to me the relevance of A True Fairy Story by Daphne Charters. Robert Cracknell provided me with invaluable assistance and advice in looking into the Croydon case, and Maurice Grosse’s speculations and suggestions were most helpful. Leonard Boucher and Harold Phelps wrote down, at my request, personal experiences that I have used in the book. Stephen Jenkins always responded promptly and generously to queries about ley lines. My sister Susan provided me with material on the Billingham case and the Humber Stone. Mr. Thomas Cunniff provided invaluable material and advice during the compilation of this book. Finally, my thanks to Brian Marriner, an invaluable research assistant.
Introduction
When I wrote this book in 1980, there was still a consensus of opinion that poltergeists were somehow caused by the human mind, with sexually disturbed adolescents as the chief suspect. That was the view I was inclined to accept when I worked for the BBC as presenter of a television series called A Leap in the Dark in the mid-1970s. It included the well-known Rosenheim case, in which a series of extraordinary poltergeist disturbances took place in the office of a lawyer in Bavaria. Professor Hans Bender of Freiburg went to investigate, and soon noticed that the disturbances (see the final chapter of this book) only took place when a young girl called Anne-Marie was present. She had an unhappy home life, and he soon concluded that she was the unconscious cause of the exploding light tubes and other irritating problems. This was the view I presented on the programme.
In 1980, I went with my wife Joy to look into the case of poltergeist haunting in Pontefract (see chapter 4 of this book), and on the way there met the investigator Guy Lyon Playfair. And it was he who staggered me by remarking casually that most poltergeists were spirits. I have told in chapter 4 how, when I arrived at the site of the haunting, I soon came to agree with him. I expressed this view in the present book, expecting to be violently attacked by reviewers and scientists, but nobody paid much attention, since I was a freelance writer.
But around 1990, I noticed the climate of opinion beginning to change. Some time in the nineties I took part in a television programme hosted by David Frost, and a fellow guest was a German professor of parapsychology (whose name, to my shame, I have forgotten). When sharing a drink with him in the “hospitality room” after the programme, I confided to him my view that poltergeists were spirits, expecting him to shrug dismissively; but without batting an eyelid he replied “But of course!” It seemed that he, and fellow German investigators, had reached this opinion some time ago.
So, I discovered, had another eminent investigator from the Society for Psychical Research, Montague Keen. In 1997, he found himself sharing his house in Totteridge, north London, with no less than two poltergeists.
It started in December 2001, a few months after Monty and his new wife Veronica had moved into a house in Totteridge, north London. When he went into his locked garage one day he was met by a strong smell of alcohol and the sight of several smashed bottles lying on the concrete floor. Several unbroken bottles were also lying nearby. For a moment he thought that the wine rack must have torn loose from the wall. But it was still firmly fixed. The puzzling thing was that the broken bottles were five or six feet from the rack. Now he came to think about it, he realised
some odd things had been going on for some time. The radio in their bedroom would suddenly turn itself on in the middle of the night. The kitchen smoke alarm would go off even when the stove was not on. The bathroom would flood without apparent cause, leaking through the ceiling and damaging walls below.
Veronica, who was mildly psychic, had told Monty she thought something strange was going on. For weeks, she had been feeling oddly tense. Normally a good tempered, cheerful person, she had one day startled Monty by exploding at him and telling him she felt trapped. Monty naturally knew several mediums. When two of them came over one day, they went into meditation, then told him that the problem was the earth-bound spirit of the previous owner, a Mrs. Joyce, who strongly disapproved of alcohol. They then established communication with the lady, and when she told them that she felt “trapped,” Veronica realised it explained her outburst at Monty. Mrs. Joyce must have got inside her head. After a two hour conversation, the mediums persuaded Mrs. Joyce it was time leave the Keens alone and move on.
That seemed to work; for a while, all was peaceful. Then it started up again. This time the televisions and a tape recorder stopped working, although repair men could find nothing wrong with them. One morning during breakfast, a bunch of grapes rose up in the air off a bowl of fruit and scattered on the floor. Then a long crack suddenly appeared on the tiles of the bathroom, the kind of crack that would have needed a hammer and chisel to make. Something went wrong with the perfume sprays in Veronica’s bedroom, twisting the plastic tubes inside so they stopped working.
After several weeks, Monty asked their medium friends to come back again. After walking all round the house, they said that it was no longer Mrs. Joyce causing the trouble, but some male spirit. Then one of them went into a semi-trance, and a cockney voice issued from his mouth. It said its name was Alfie House, and that he had died about two years before, when he fell into a weed-choked river. He knew he was dead, and had been drawn to their house by a desire to help them. But, he explained, he had found it impossible to attract their attention, and had finally done this by “making a bloody nuisance of himself.”
Once again, the two mediums persuaded him to “move on,” and the problems ceased. A month later, a medium they did not know contacted them to say that someone called Alfie wanted to thank them, and that he was now very happy.
The next step was obviously to track down Alfie House. But that proved harder than expected. The Public Registrar had not yet brought their records up to date beyond 2000. And while Monty was busy pursuing enquiries into police and coroner’s records, he himself died of a heart attack, leaving the case incomplete. But at least we know the identity of the two ghosts: the teetotal Mrs. Joyce, and the well-meaning Alfie House, who moved into their house because he wanted to be helpful, and who ended by getting annoyed because he could not attract their attention.
This, or something like it, is probably the story of most poltergeists. They are ordinary people who find themselves dead and may or may not know how it came about. If they were lucky enough to die surrounded by those they loved, then they died happy. There is strong evidence that when most people die, dead relatives are also present, and show them what to do next and how to “move on” (which seems to be with involved with finding a “tunnel” described in so many “near-death experiences”). But many people do not seem to have that advantage, having died (like Alfie) under less propitious circumstances, and they become “earth-bound spirits,” wandering around until they can find someone who can tell them what to do next.
In cases of large-scale disaster, such as the tsunami that struck Thailand on December 26, 2004, and killed three hundred thousand people, the after-effects amounted to a plague of hauntings that went on for months. It was, in fact, just as things were getting back to normal that the reports of ghosts began: of half-naked people seen wandering among wrecked buildings, and voices calling in distress from empty beaches. One beach guard in Patong, on Phuket Island, quit his job after hearing a woman’s voice crying all night “Help me!” from a badly damaged and now-deserted hotel. And volunteer body searchers who went to investigate sounds of laughter and singing coming out of the darkness found only an expanse of bare sand. The aftermath of the disaster demonstrates clearly that “ghosts” are simply dead people who do not know they are dead. Oddly enough, this view would now be endorsed by most Western experts on parapsychology, including members of the Society for Psychical Research and the College of Psychic Studies.
The key to the discovery was an observation made decades ago by an obstetric surgeon in a London maternity hospital. Her name was Florence Barrett, and she was the wife of Sir William Barrett, a professor of physics. On the evening of January 12, 1924, she came home with a strange story to tell. One of her patients had suffered a heart attack after giving birth, and as Lady Barrett held her hand, she said: “Don’t let it get dark, it’s getting darker and darker.” Then she looked across the room and said: “Oh, lovely, lovely!”
“What’s lovely?”
“Lovely brightness, wonderful beings.” She suddenly exclaimed: “Why, it’s father. He’s so glad I’m coming.” Then she started with surprise. “There’s Vida!”
Vida was her younger sister, who had died two weeks earlier, but the patient had not been told in case it upset her. She died an hour later, continuing to hold normal conversation with the people around her bed, but still continuing to see her dead father and sister, and the “lovely light.”
Sir William Barrett, who had been the original founder of the Society for Psychical Research, was so fascinated by the story that he began making enquiries in hospitals, and soon found that most doctors and nurses could tell similar stories about dying patients being met by dead relatives. He went on to write a book about it called Death Bed Visions.
In the 1940s, one of his admirers, Latvian researcher Dr. Karlis Osis, had the sensible idea of sending out a questionnaire to hundreds of doctors and nurses asking for their observations on dying patients. He learned that a huge percentage saw dead relatives. Dying children often saw angels, and were puzzled to discover that they had no wings.
A Norwegian researcher, Erlendur Haraldsson, went to India to find out whether people from a different culture would have the same kind of death bed visions. The answer was yes, there was a remarkable similiarity between the visions of Indians and Americans. And in the 1960s, Professor Douglas Dean continued this research, and discovered that people of all religions—Moslems, Jews, Buddhists, even Aborigines—have the same experiences.
In other words, it seemed that a vast percentage of people who die quietly in their beds are “guided” from this world to “the next”—whatever that is—by people they have loved and who have preceded them. But for people who die violently, or under strange circumstances (like Alfie), it seems things can be more difficult, and in their confusion, they become “earth bound,” unaware of where to go next.
The classic book on the subject was by a Chicago doctor named Carl Wickland. It is called Thirty Years Among the Dead. He begins by explaining how, when he was a medical student, he married a nurse who was psychic. And one day when he came back home after dissecting a corpse, he found his wife feeling dizzy. Suddenly, a masculine voice spoke from her mouth: “Why are you cutting my leg?” And since Wickland had just been dissecting the cadaver’s leg, he realised that the voice must belong to its owner. What had happened, Wickland realised, was that the ghost had followed him back from the hospital. And because he had died suddenly, he had no idea he was dead. It took a lot of argument to persuade the ghost that, since his body was now in the dissecting room, he must really be dead, and to send him off in search of some kind of light that would show him the way.
This light seemed to be a kind of portal between this world and the next, and Wickland came to realise that in the confusion of sudden death, it is easy to miss. So the dead person goes on living in a kind of bad dream from which it is impossible to wake up. He has to be encouraged to see the portal.
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Wickland’s discoveries caused a revolution among psychical investigators, and led to the formation of dozens of “rescue” circles. These all used the same methods as Carl Wickland: that is, they talked to “earth-bound spirits” via a medium, and tried to convince them they were dead. Sometimes, spirits who had already been rescued joined in and became helpers. Even so, “spirit rescue” was slow work. A rescue circle might devote a whole evening to helping just one spirit.
Then, in the late 1970s, a young psychic named Terry O’Sullivan began to wonder whether there was not some quicker and more efficient method. Terry’s great grandmother had been a Romany gypsy, who had passed on her powers to her daughter, who in turn passed them on to Terry. When he went to London in his early twenties, he joined a rescue circle in Richmond and spent the next few years developing. It was hard and sometimes frightening work. On one occasion, he was attacked by a poltergeist which clung to his back, glued to his powerful human aura like a nail to a magnet, only to let go when they were both exhausted.
On another occasion, standing outside a gallery in Richmond that was exhibiting some gloomy and depressing pictures, he found himself talking to a disembodied spirit that realised he could see it, and asked him for help. This man explained he had killed several women, and was convinced he was possessed by the Devil. Finally, Terry was able to take him back to the rescue circle and help him find release.
After reading this story in Terry’s book, I asked him the name of the murderer, and was told it was Jack the Ripper. Since this is a subject I have often written about, I immediately plied him with questions. But Terry, who does not share my interest in criminology, had not even bothered to ask him his name.
It was towards 1980, Terry said, that he stumbled on the “more efficient method” he had been looking for. The root of the problem of ghosts is that they are living in a world that seems unreal. Not realising they are dead, they may go on hanging round the same place as when they were alive and be baffled and irritated that other people are now living there people they feel to be intruders. Terry has often been asked to investigate a haunting and found the puzzled and unhappy spirit of the last tenant, who believes that squatters have moved in. He then has to explain what has happened, and persuade it to “move on.” Living in this unreal world, “earth bounds” see no clear distinction between thoughts and objects. And this, Terry realised, could provide him with the basis of a better method of helping them.