Poltergeist: A Classic Study in Destructive Haunting

by Colin Wilson

At Guy Playfair’s suggestion, Rose asked why it didn’t go away. “I don’t believe in that.” “Why? What’s so different about being up there?” asked Rose, and received the wistful reply: “I’m not a heaven man.” It went on to say in a jerky manner: “I am Bill Haylock and I come from Durant’s Park and I am seventy-two years old and I have come here to see my family but they are not here now.”

  On the tape, the words come out one by one, as if the speaker is so breathless that he can only get out one at a time. (The voice is so obviously that of an old man that the notion of Janet producing it by ventriloquism is absurd.) Rose’s next question is interrupted by a furious outburst: “You fucking old bitch, shut up. I want some jazz music. Now go and get me some, else I’ll go barmy.”

  Maurice Grosse’s son Richard paid a visit to the house and succeeded in holding a lengthy conversation with the voice. When he asked it what it had done with thirty pence that had vanished it said it had hidden the money in the radio—which is where it was found. Asked how he had died, “Bill” replied that he went blind and had a hemorrhage—he fell asleep and died in a chair downstairs.

  Richard Grosse found that if he looked at Janet’s face while the voice was speaking, it would stop. If he thought of looking around, the voice would also stop, as if reading his mind.

  Another researcher named David Robertson had no difficulty getting the voice to talk, although the main thing it wanted to discuss was girls’ periods. Then the ghost was asked to levitate Janet, and then draw a line round the light on the ceiling. Robertson withdrew outside, and heard Janet being bounced up and down on the bed. Suddenly there was a gasp and silence. He tried to open the door and found that it was jammed tight. When it opened again, Janet was on the bed and there was a red line around the light. Janet claimed that she had floated through the wall, into the bedroom of the next house—belonging to Peggy Nottingham (who was with David Robertson at the time). She described it as “all white”—a fairly accurate description of the light wallpaper. Peggy asked her to try doing it again, and went next door to see what happened. Janet was not there. But on the floor, there was the book Fun and Games for Children, which had been on the mantelpiece in Janet’s bedroom a few minutes earlier.

  Robertson handed a red plastic cushion to Janet and said: “See what you can do with that.” “All right, David boy,” said the invisible entity—which seemed to like Robertson—“I’ll make it disappear.” Robertson went out of the room, and there was a cry from Janet. When he went back, the cushion had vanished; the window was tightly shut. But a neighbor who was passing the house at that moment suddenly saw a red cushion appear on the roof. Another neighbor later testified that she had also seen the cushion as she walked past. And looking at Janet’s bedroom window, she had seen books and cushions striking the window, and Janet rising into the air—in a horizontal position—and descending again, as if being bounced on a trampoline. “She was definitely lying horizontal, coming up and down.” Guy Playfair tried bouncing on Janet’s bed, and found that no matter how hard he bounced, it was impossible to get up into the air.

  Playfair was struck by Janet’s comment that when she had floated through the wall into Peggy’s bedroom, it was “all white” and there were no colors. He arrived at the conclusion that what had happened was that Janet had had an “out of the body” experience—other astral travelers have observed the lack of color during “OOBs.” But this fails to explain how the book also passed through the wall.

  Was there, Playfair asked himself at this point, any more the poltergeist could do to demonstrate its versatility? In fact, it went on to produce a whole variety of new phenomena. It became rather more violent with Janet, making an attempt to suffocate her with the curtains, and making a knife follow her around in the air. (The voice claimed that this was the doing of another entity called Tommy.) It produced a biscuit out of nowhere and stuck it into Janet’s mouth. It put butter and cheese on a piece of bread. (When Guy Playfair tried to touch it the voice rasped, “Leave it alone.” ) It smeared ordure around the place. It began causing fires in closed drawers—fires which, fortunately, extinguished themselves. It produced some appalling stinks, like rotten cabbages. After a visit from the psychic Matthew Manning, it began scrawling obscene messages on the kitchen walls. When the two pet goldfish died, the “voice” claimed it had electrocuted them by accident (which, if true, seems to confirm that poltergeists use some form of electrical energy).

  A medium called Gerry Sherrick told the Harpers that they had all been together in a previous existence and that the girls had dabbled in witchcraft. He also told them he felt that a nasty old woman was connected with the “haunting” and that she had lived near Spitalfields market. Had there been any smells like rotten vegetables? After this, he went into a trance and an old woman’s voice announced: “I come here when I like . . . I’m not bleedin’ dead and I’m not going to go away.” Sherrick performed “psychic healing” on the family—to heal the “leaks” that were causing the trouble. After his visit, the Enfield house became quiet for several weeks, as it had after the two previous visits by mediums.

  The case was beginning to create something more like a normal haunting. Mrs. Harper saw an apparition of a pair of legs in blue trousers going upstairs and also saw a child. The children continued to see old men. A neighbor who was looking after the house when the Harpers went to the seaside saw a man in his shirtsleeves sitting at the table. Another neighbor knocked on the front door, and through the window saw Maurice Grosse in the hall, then watched him go upstairs. When finally admitted, she discovered that Maurice Grosse had been in the upper part of the house for the past half hour or so. The poltergeist was “imitating” him.

  In mid-1978, Janet went into the Maudsley Hospital for observation and testing. Playfair expected the disturbances in Enfield to cease while she was away; in fact they continued, although on a smaller scale. And Janet claimed that a number of small poltergeist incidents happened to her while in hospital. But Janet’s spell in the Maudsley—which made her healthier and stronger—was the beginning of the end of the Enfield case.

  The haunting seems to have been brought to an end by a Dutch clairvoyant named Dono Gmelig-Meyling, who was brought to the house by a Dutch journalist who wanted to study the case. The day before their first visit had been eventful—overturned furniture, knocks, footsteps, sounds of breathing and excrement smeared on the floor. Dono spent some time in the house, then returned to his hotel. There, he later told Playfair, he went on an “astral trip,” and met a twenty-four-year-old girl who was somehow involved with the case. This was an interesting new departure. Later, Dono met Maurice Grosse, and again had a strong sense that he was somehow connected with the haunting—and not purely as an investigator. When Grosse mentioned that his own daughter had been killed in a motorcycle accident two years before—she would have been twenty-four if still alive—Dono said: “Well that’s it. It’s your daughter . . .” There was no suggestion that she was responsible for any of the poltergeist activity, only that she was somehow connected. In the final chapter of his account of the Enfield case, This House Is Haunted, Playfair tries to draw together his speculations about the disturbances. His suggestion is that Maurice Grosse’s daughter—whose name was also Janet—was involved indirectly. It was she who had drawn her father’s attention to the case. Janet had died after a motorcycle crash in 1976—and Grosse had been impressed by a series of odd events and coincidences. A birthday card she had sent to her brother just before the accident showed someone

  with her head swathed in bandages, and an inscription about falling on it. Janet had died of head injuries. Grosse found himself wondering if Janet was somehow still alive, and thought that a suitable sign would be some rain—there had been a drought for months. The next morning, the kitchen roof below Janet’s bedroom window was wet, although everywhere else was dry. It had been because of Janet’s death that Grosse had thought about engaging in active psychical research, and his first case had been the
Enfield haunting.

  Playfair speculates that it was Janet who had somehow put it into the neighbor’s head to ring the Daily Mirror, and who put it into the journalist’s head to ring the SPR. So her father became involved in investigating a case that centered around another Janet. (Kardec claims that spirits often influence our thoughts.)

  As to how the poltergeist haunting came about in the first place, Playfair’s speculation is as follows:

  When Mr. and Mrs. Harper were divorced, an atmosphere of tension built up among the children and their mother, just at the time when the two girls were approaching physical maturity. They were a very energetic pair to start with, both of them school sports champions, but even they could not use up the tremendous energy they were generating. So a number of entities came in and helped themselves to it.

  As to the identity of the “entities”: “it looks as if we had half the local graveyard at one time or another.” These included Joe Watson, husband of the woman who had died of a cancer of the throat and Bill Haylock, later identified as a former local resident. There could well have been a dozen entities altogether, and they were able to take energy from practically everyone in the house. (Mrs. Harper experienced premonitory headaches before things happened, and while Janet was in hospital, the youngest boy, Jimmy, began having trances.) The Dutch clairvoyant Dono Gmelig-Meyling stated confidently that he would be able to put an end to the haunting (by some kind of intervention “on the astral plane”), and it is a fact that his visits marked the end of the Enfield case.

  And why did so many entities invade the Harper residence? The answer, Playfair believes, may be provided by Kardec, who states that many dead people are quite unaware that they are dead. In The Flying Cow he cites the interesting Ruytemberg Rocha case in support of this view. In November 1961, a spiritist group in São Paulo found themselves listening to a voice—coming through the medium—which identified itself as Ruytemberg Rocha, a pupil in the second year of the Officers’ School of the São Paulo State Police. The voice gave details of its family and date of birth, and added that it was wounded by shrapnel in the revolution in 1932. When Dr. Carvalho—in charge of the session—said that this was now 1961 the spirit was astonished, and said that that was impossible. Carvalho assured him that he was dead, and that they would do all they could to help him.

  It was an excellent case for verification, since the spirit had given so many details about himself and his family. A little research revealed that it all checked out—the family, the officer school, the battle in which he had died. One minor discrepancy was that Rocha had been killed by a bullet through the head, while the spirit spoke only about a shrapnel wound in the chest. But a bullet in the brain could have stimulated the chest area, giving him the impression that this is where he was wounded. According to Kardec, the state of confusion happens mostly in cases of sudden death, and may last for anything from hours to years. In the Enfield case, we have seen how angry the “entity” became when Playfair declared that it was dead, and how the quarrelsome old woman asserted “I’m not bleedin’ dead.”

  Yet, as usual in poltergeist cases, it is practically impossible to get at the truth. The spirits themselves seldom seem to have any interest in the truth. In the present case, there are intriguing hints about a man called Gozer or Gober who practiced black magic, and about the involvement of Janet and Rose in witchcraft in a previous existence. There was a former resident in the house called Joe Watson, who did die in the house much as described by Janet’s bass voice and whose wife did die of throat cancer, and there was a former neighbor called Bill Haylock. All of which adds at least a semblance of logic and reason to one of the best-authenticated poltergeist cases on record.

  Perhaps the last word should go to a medium—and police commissioner—called Dr. Rafael Ranieri, quoted by Playfair in The Flying Cow:

  A medium is an open door to the invisible world. What comes through that door depends to a large extent upon the personality of the medium, and it is quite wrong to suppose that the spirit world consists entirely of angelic beings devoted to our welfare. There are plenty of evil spirits around, also others who seem to have nothing better to do than fool about and amuse themselves at our expense by such elementary . . . parlor tricks as lifting up tables and throwing things around the room. This would seem to be the level of spirit most often to be found at some of the widely publicized séances, and those who find spirit communications trivial, as many are, should blame the mediums, not the spirits.

  If Janet and other members of the Harper family are unconscious mediums, perhaps it is hardly surprising that the entities who make use of their energies should belong to a fairly low level of the spirit hierarchy.

  seven

  Ghost Hunters

  and Ghost Seers

  If the history of ghost-hunting has to have a starting point, then the year 1829 is probably as good as any. It saw the publication of a book called The Seeress of Prevorst, which became one of the bestsellers of the nineteenth century, and familiarized the general public with the idea that we may be surrounded by invisible spirits. It was written by Dr. Justinus A. C. Kerner, a rich and eccentric doctor who was also a well-known poet and songwriter. In 1826, the forty-year-old Kerner was practicing in Weinsberg, near Heilbronn, when he was consulted by the relatives of a woman called Friederike Hauffe, who was dying of a wasting disease. She had lost all her teeth and looked like a walking skeleton.

  It seemed that marriage was responsible for her sad condition. Ever since childhood she had fallen into trances, seen visions, and conversed with invisible spirits. She could also accurately predict the future. When she was nineteen, she had married a cousin, and gone into depression; at twenty, her first child was born, and she began to develop hysterical symptoms. Every evening, she fell into a trance in which she saw spirits of the dead.

  Kerner was at first inclined to be skeptical about her visions and spirits—he put them down to hysteria. Yet he found Friederike Hauffe a fascinating case for study. She claimed to be able to see into the human body, and certainly had a remarkably precise knowledge of the nervous system. She could read with her stomach—Kerner tested her by making her lie down with her eyes closed, and laid documents on her bare midriff; she read them perfectly. She could make geometrical drawings at great speed, even in the dark, and could draw perfect circles that looked as if they had been drawn by compasses. She claimed that her spirit often left her body and hovered above it.

  Kerner tried ordinary medicines on her, but they had no effect. Friederike told him that if he placed her in a “magnetic trance” the spirits would instruct him on how to treat her, but he was reluctant to accept this advice. Eventually, he decided that he might as well try the effects

  of mesmerism.

  This, it should be explained, is not another name for hypnotism. Franz Anton Mesmer believed that the human body is permeated with a vital fluid, which needs to move around freely if we are to remain healthy. If this fluid becomes “blocked,” the result is illness. (Modern acupuncture holds roughly the same belief.) According to Mesmer, this vital fluid could be moved around the body by stroking it with magnets—a technique that sometimes produced the “magnetic trance.” (It was his pupil, the Marquis de Puysegur, who accidentally discovered the parallel technique of hypnosis.)

  Friederike reacted well to “magnetism,” passing easily into a trance. But Kerner remained skeptical about the things she said in this condition. Then, one day, a remarkable experience changed his mind. Friederike declared that she was being haunted by an unpleasant man with a squint. From her description, Kerner recognized him as a man who had died a few years earlier. It seemed, according to Friederike, that the man was suffering from a guilty conscience. He had been involved in embezzlement and, after his death, another man had been blamed. Now he wanted to clear the man’s name, for the sake of his widow. This could be done by means of a certain document, which would be found in a chest. The spirit “showed” Friederike the room where the do
cument was to be found, and a man who was working there. Her description was so good that Kerner was able to identify him as a certain Judge Heyd. In her “vision,” Friederike had seen Judge Heyd sitting in a certain place in this room, and the chest containing the document on the table. The document was apparently not in its proper numerical order, which is why it had not been found.

  When Kerner told him about his patient’s vision, Judge Heyd was astounded; he had been sitting in the position described on that particular day (Christmas Day), and the chest, contrary to regulations, had been left open on the table. When they searched, the document turned up where Friederike had said it would. The widow of the man who had been wrongly accused was able to obtain redress.

  From now on, Kerner believed in Friederike’s supernatural powers, and took whatever she said seriously. She told him that we are surrounded by spirits all the time, and that she was able to see them. These spirits often try to attract our attention in various ways: knocking, movement of objects, throwing of sand. And by way of convincing him, Friederike persuaded one of the spirits to make rapping noises, to make gravel and ash fall from the air, and to make a stool float up into the air. Kerner watched with amazement as the stool rose gently, then floated down again.

  Friederike provided him with further proof of the accuracy of her visions when she succeeded in putting an end to a haunting. Kerner heard about a house where the ghost of an old man was frightening the inhabitants. He brought one of them, a woman, along to see Friederike; the seeress went into a trance and explained that the ghost was that of a man called Bellon, who was an “earth-bound spirit” as a result of defrauding two orphans. Kerner made inquiries, but no one had ever heard of a man called Bellon. But since the ghost claimed that he had been Burgomeister, it seemed probable that some record existed. He claimed he had been Burgomeister in the year 1700, and had died at the age of seventy-nine. Armed with this information, Kerner asked the present mayor to check the legal documents; they soon found that in the year 1700, a man called Bellon had been Burgomeister and director of the local orphanage. He had died in 1740 at the age of seventy-nine. After “confessing,” the spirit took its departure.