Poltergeist: A Classic Study in Destructive Haunting

by Colin Wilson

  The Principles of Nature became something of a bestseller, and the story of its composition undoubtedly prepared the American public for the revelations that were to come from Hydesville in 1849. Davis was, as we have seen, one of the witnesses of the Phelps poltergeist case (see chapter 3), and made the interesting comment that the raps were due to “discharges of vital electricity” from the organisms of the children concerned; but he also said that the disturbances were caused by spirits—five in number.

  This same epoch also saw the emergence of the most remarkable of all spirit mediums—Daniel Dunglas Home, whose experience of “spirits” began in 1846, when he was thirteen (that is to say, three years before the Hydesville rappings). Home was a Scottish highlander—a race with a reputation for “second sight”—and claimed to be the grandson of the Earl of Home (pronounced Hume) by a natural son. At the age of nine, he traveled to America to live with his aunt, a Mrs. Cook. And in 1846 he had a vision of a friend named Edwin, who stood at the foot of his bed and made three circles in the air; Home took this to mean he had died three days earlier, and this later proved to be correct. In 1850, Home’s mother died, and the Cooks were alarmed by various poltergeist effects in their home—furniture sliding around, strange bangs and raps, which led his aunt to accuse him of bringing the devil into her house. When the local minister began praying for Daniel’s soul, loud raps sounded from his chair. When the news of these events spread around the area, neighbors began calling at the house to ask about long-lost relatives or mislaid jewelry. At the end of the week, Mrs. Cook threw him out, and threw his best suit after him.

  Home was lucky; he could hardly have timed his debut more perfectly. Leading Spiritualists invited him to their homes, and he had no trouble making a name for himself as a medium. And his powers were certainly extraordinary. He had no objection to performing in a well-lit room and, within minutes, the table was usually resounding to loud knocks and floating free of the ground. Shocks would make the floor vibrate like artillery fire. Spirits of the dead spoke from his mouth, and his body would often float into the air—a phenomenon which had once been regarded as a sure sign of demoniacal possession

  Home was a good-looking young man with pleasing manners and a tenor voice; he became the favorite of any society he moved into, and a number of affectionate elderly people wanted to adopt him as a son. But, like many spirit mediums, he seems to have been in many ways a rather weak and neurotic character. (A modern psychic, Robert Cracknell, has pointed out that a large number of mediums have had disturbed childhoods, and that many are homosexual; a certain emotional instability seems essential to clairvoyance.) He was something of a snob, and was fond of society. In 1856, the spirits became so exasperated with him that they told him he would lose his powers for one year. It happened as they predicted, and his powers returned precisely one year later to the day.

  Throughout his life, Home performed spectacular feats. It was nothing for a heavy table to rise into the air when he was in trance, and float up to the ceiling. At séances, trumpets sounded, tambourines played, raps sounded from all over the room, birds sang, ducks squawked, water splashed and spirit voices sang and spoke. Heavy articles of furniture—like grand pianos—floated around like thistledown. Meanwhile, Home sat in full view of everybody, separated from the main circle, often tied hand and foot to his chair. Hundreds of unimpeachable witnesses testified to these phenomena. In the 1860s he became a friend of a young man called Lord Adare, an Irish peer with no interest in Spiritualism, and Adare subsequently wrote a book about the phenomena he saw during this period of friendship. Dead people materialized in the room and held conversations, looking as solid as the living. Home would take live coals from the fireplace, blow them to red heat, and hand them to other people who would find them quite cold—so long as they held them. On one occasion, he floated out of a third-story window which was open only about a foot—and floated in by another. When Adare asked him to repeat it, Home floated off the floor, became horizontal, and popped in and out of the open window like a shuttle. Standing against a wall, his legs and waist tightly held, he could increase his height by eight inches.

  Home was responsible for the “conversion” of a young physicist, William Crookes, to an interest in psychic phenomena. Crookes investigated Home, expecting to discover fraud, and was amazed by what he witnessed. Fellow scientists were scandalized and contemptuous when Crookes published his reports on Home, and Darwin said he could not disbelieve Crookes’ statements or believe his results. Crookes was one of the many scientists—Sir William Barrett and Sir Oliver Lodge were others—who studied “spirit” phenomena objectively, and arrived at the conclusion that there was no basic deception. Home made an admirable subject for such study. There was never the slightest breath of suspicion of fraud (Browning’s poem “Mr. Sludge the Medium”—about Home—was an outright slander), and the phenomena were all so amazing and clear-cut that there could be little dispute about interpretation. In fact, anyone who reads Crookes’ papers on Home[1] will find it incomprehensible how any scientific researcher can still regard the basic facts of “spirit manifestation” as unproved; either Crookes was lying, or they are proved as unambiguously as the existence of the planets. In Home’s case, it may be the sheer variety of the phenomena that caused a kind

  of bewilderment.

  Studying Home’s life—he retired at the age of thirty-nine, and died fourteen years later—also makes it clear that most of the “telepathic” and “psychokinetic” explanations of the phenomena are simply inadequate. Home himself had no doubt whatsoever that everything he did was due to Spirits who “used” him. His first experience was the vision of his dead friend Edwin. His second was sudden knowledge of his mother’s death; and from then on, “spirits of the dead” played a constant part in his career. When Home attended a lecture on Cagliostro, the great charlatan himself materialized in his bedroom later, and sat on the bed talking to Home and his wife Sacha. After Sacha’s death, she materialized in the room when Adare was present, looking quite solid and kissed Home. When the famous actress Adah Mencken died, she took possession of Home, and had a long talk with Adare (who had known her). At Adare Manor, Home saw a ghost wandering around and went and engaged it in conversation; his companions could see both Home and the ghost quite clearly in the moonlight. When Home left the ghost, he floated toward them at a height of two feet from the ground. In an Italian villa in Florence, Home raised the spirit of an Italian monk named Giannana, who had committed murder; the old man had been wandering restlessly around the house ever since his death, and Home persuaded him to go away. The monk’s hands were materialized for inspection; they had skinny yellow fingers and were cold to the touch. In another villa, rented by Mr. and Mrs. Hiram Powers, there were poltergeist disturbances, and a spirit explained that these were caused by no less than twenty-seven dead monks “who must have been very improper persons in their lifetime, judging by the indecorousness of their behavior.” They tugged Mrs. Powers’ skirt hard enough to break the cotton where it held “gathers.” These monks also agreed to leave quietly after making the sign of the cross “in a way that conveyed the sense of something devilish and spiteful”—a fair description of most poltergeists. (It is interesting to speculate why so many monks are involved in hauntings; possibly the general unsatisfactoriness of their lives, and the frustration of sexual energies may provide the basis for an explanation.)

  In short, Home himself never had the slightest doubt that his powers came from spirits; there was no question of unconscious psychokinesis; and reading the many detailed accounts of his manifestations it is hard to reject his explanation.

  When the Society for Psychical Research was formed in 1882—by men like Sir William Barrett, F. W. H. Myers, Henry Sidgwick and Edmund Gurney—its founders entertained a hope that now strikes us as absurdly optimistic. They felt that psychic science was now about to take its place among the respectable sciences and that, within a decade or so, man would know as much about the soul an
d life after death as he knows about stars and atoms. The phenomena seemed real enough, which meant that the “facts” behind them must be equally real and solid; so it was simply a matter of discovering these facts and verifying them by scientific testing.

  And why did this hope come to nothing? The answer that has suggested itself throughout the course of this book is that studying spirits is not quite as straightforward as studying, say, Australian or African aborigines. Kardec seems to have been lucky in his choice of mediums, and to have obtained sensible and consistent answers to his questions. His “system” remains the most impressive that has so far emerged in the history of Spiritualism. But even Kardec came to realize that many spirits—apparently the majority who hang around the earth—have no desire whatever to cooperate with human beings in discovering the truth about “the other side.” In short, as Chesterton says, spirits tell lies. They also do their best to confuse the earnest investigator. They seldom manifest themselves when expected to, and when they do choose to make their presence felt, their aim often seems to be to create confusion and bewilderment. To judge by poltergeist phenomena, most of the accessible spirit world seems to be made up of bloody-minded anarchists with a slightly sadistic sense of humor.

  Where the early ghost-hunters were concerned, these problems were sometimes accentuated by a certain naivete of approach. Robert Dale Owen, son of the famous socialist pioneer Robert Owen, began as a determined skeptic who deplored his father’s conversion to Spiritualism; but when he became American Charge d’Affaires in Naples, he encountered Daniel Dunglas Home, and—understandably—became totally convinced. Owen made a vow that he would not rest until he had proved survival after death either a certainty or a delusion. His conclusions appeared in a work called Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World, which appeared in 1860. It is an admirable work, full of interesting stories, and it became immensely popular. In his second “inquiry,” The Debatable Land Between this World and the Next (1874), Owen shows his hand: “In the following pages I seek to show that Religion, such as Christ taught, though sure to prevail in the end, is yet, for the time, hard pressed.” And accordingly, the Spirit World is to be called to its defense. But why should life after death prove the truth of religion, any more than life before death does? It may “prove” that man is a spirit, but even an agnostic can believe that by deciding that he is more than a mere machine.

  In short, by mixing up their psychical investigations with their religious convictions, men like Owen brought the “spirit world” into disrepute with the scientists. Catherine Crowe—author of The Night Side of Nature—kept her religion and her “facts” in separate compartments; few later writers show the same restraint. This is a pity, for what they have to say is often important. In 1924, an American doctor named Carl Wickland brought out a book called Thirty Years Among the Dead, describing his wife’s experiences of mediumship. A series of spirits speak through the medium, and are instructed and sermonized by Dr. Wickland. On June 6, 1907, the spirit was a criminal called Charles the Fighter, who seems to be under the influence of drink, and threatens to have everybody shot. When told that he is using the body of a medium, and ordered to look at her hands, he shrinks in terror, and explains that he once cut off a woman’s hand to get her diamond ring. He looks around and gasps: “Have I killed all those people? Have they all come to accuse me?” And finally, he tells his life story, his “hideous career of crime,” how he stole to buy whiskey and drank to drown his conscience. Killed in a brawl in 1870, he did not even realize he was dead, and went on trying to commit crimes—when he hit a policeman, he was puzzled that the club went through his head. After being lectured on the “law of cause and effect,” Charles the Fighter sees his mother standing beside him, and

  the hardened criminal cowered in his seat and wept piteously . . . Crushed by guilt and remorse he cried abjectly: “I cannot go with you! Dear mother, don’t ask me to go with you! You must go back to heaven, and I must go to hell, where I belong . . .” But maternal love prevailed and the spirit, humble and penitent, followed his mother.

  But immediately after this scene from a Victorian melodrama, there is an account of a séance with a man called Harry Hayward, who had his girlfriend murdered and was himself hanged in 1894; it carries the ring of truth. A female invalid with psychic abilities began to develop a craving for ice cream, but felt herself choking when she tried to eat it. She flung open a window and ordered any “spirit entities” to leave the place. That evening, at Wickland’s séance, a spirit identified itself as Harry Hayward, and said that he had a craving for ice cream, and had tried to get some earlier that day, but had been “chased away by a woman.” He talked about his trial and execution, mentioning a guard with whom he spent a great deal of time playing cards. Wickland said he thought this man was dead; the spirit replied “No, he’s not dead. I see him playing cards at his son’s home in Minneapolis.” This, says Wickland, later proved to be true.

  What Hayward says about his craving for ice cream brings to mind Guy Playfair’s comment that earth-bound spirits long for the things they enjoyed while alive. And the experience of the invalid lady—the sudden desire for ice cream, and the choking sensation when she tried to eat it—would be explained by Kardec as an example of the type of minor “possession” that occurs all the time. Kardec, it will be recalled, said that our thoughts and actions are constantly influenced by spirits. People who can be fully “possessed” are called mediums; most of us, fortunately, have only feeble mediumistic powers. But spirits can still wander in and out of our bodies at will. So the Spiritist explanation of what happened to the invalid is that she was a natural medium—the text makes it clear that she was aware of this—and Hayward managed to “possess” her to the extent of making her long for ice cream. But in order to enjoy the ice cream vicariously, he had to “take over” her body. As he tried to do this, the lady began to choke—presumably because Hayward had been hanged—and she realized what was happening and threw him out.

  Anita Gregory, an eminent psychical investigator, discusses Wickland’s Thirty Years Among the Dead in her introduction to Oesterreich’s book on possession, and dismisses it as an example of self-deception. The cases cited above suggest that it is not as simple as this. Mrs. Wickland was a genuine medium, and no doubt most of the phenomena were genuine. But Wickland is simply imposing his own preconceptions on every thing he witnesses. And séances are fairly easy to influence in this way. In The Occult, I have quoted the case of Louis Singer, who deliberately experimented with suggestion and telepathy at a séance.

  One of the sitters announced she could see lights, I too giving my consent as I was too polite to disagree. Another said she could feel a wind. Again agreement, to which I assented. Then for a while, nothing. At last I felt it was my turn, so I remarked it was getting lighter. This met with concurrence. Indeed, one went so far as to remark upon the beautiful lights that played around me. I then suggested I felt a wind. So did everybody present. Later the trumpet miraculously floated into the air, the voice recognized by one sitter as a relative spoke. They were all certain it was not the medium’s voice, and not too cleverly disguised.

  So Singer decided to try to influence the séance by telepathy. A dog basket made him think of a coracle, and he visualized one. By accident, one chair too many had been put in the circle, and the medium suggested that they leave it for a spirit to occupy.

  Sure enough, a spirit invisible to us occupied it. It was, the medium said, a drowned sailor. After this, I tried on more than one occasion to dictate what spirit should come through, using the method of visual projection. I was largely successful . . .

  All this seems to suggest that séances are entirely a matter of self-deception: that is, of some unexplored power of the human mind, directed by our own preconceptions. But in that case, how did the trumpet float into the air? How did Daniel Dunglas Home make tables float up to the ceiling? We have to fall back on the idea of “spontaneous psychokinesis,” and we have already see
n that this is simply inadequate to cover the facts of poltergeist hauntings. So the sensible position would seem to be somewhere midway between the two: that is, that spirits do exist, but that the phenomena they cause is very easily influenced by the human mind. We have seen that poltergeists are frequently influenced by what people say; in the Enfield case, one investigator visiting the house mentioned that he had just come from a case where the poltergeist caused fires; the Enfield poltergeist immediately acted upon the suggestion. The Dagg poltergeist did not seem to be sure whether it was supposed to be a devil or an angel; it seemed quite prepared to be whatever people wanted it to be. And this is the basic cause of the failure of psychical research. If we know as little about “the spirit world” now as we did a century ago, it is because we keep on imposing our own preconceptions and prejudices, and the “facts” become hopelessly muddled with our interpretation of them. The early investigators insisted on mixing religion with psychical research; the result, predictably, was that Spiritualism seemed to confirm the Christian faith.

  But within twenty years of the founding of Spiritualism (around 1850) there was already a strong reaction against this tendency. In Ireland, a professor of physics called William Barrett used to stay with a friend in the country, and became interested in his friends experiments in mesmerism with the village children. One little girl became strongly telepathic as soon as she was placed in a trance. If the experimenter held his hand over a lighted lamp, the girl—who was facing the other way—instantly snatched her own hand away as if it was burnt. If he tasted sugar, she looked pleased, while salt made her grimace. In France, the psychologist Pierre Janet investigated a case in which a peasant woman could be put into a hypnotic trance when the hypnotist simply thought about it—even at a distance. Another investigator, Dr. Julian Ochorowicz, studied a “somnambule” called Madame Lucille, who, when in a trance, was able to tell him what he was doing behind her back. A boy investigated by Ochorowicz could even repeat aloud the words that Ochorowicz was reading in a book. All this seemed to prove beyond all doubt that the human mind has some curious unknown power to influence other minds. Janet pointed out that if his hypnotist tried to hypnotize the peasant woman without concentrating on what he was doing, she remained unhypnotized. Yet when he concentrated hard, he could even hypnotize her at a distance. Obviously, the mind itself has some peculiar power, a kind of radar beam of will. (In Mysteries, I have described a simple experiment by which any group of people can verify this; it was first shown to me by the theater historian John Kennedy Melling. Two or three people stand around the person who has been selected as the subject, and the subject closes his eyes. The others then press their fingertips lightly against the subject’s body, at shoulder level, then withdraw them so they are a few inches away. The whole group now concentrates on forcing the subject to sway in a definite direction, chosen at random by one of the group. When I first tried the experiment, acting as subject, I was astonished to feel a curious force pushing me in a certain direction—the direction chosen by those standing around me. If the subject tries to resist, the result is usually a feeling of dizziness. An interesting extension of this experiment is to try to move a paper roundabout, balanced on a needle, by will-power. The roundabout is made by taking a small square of paper, about an inch square, folding it four times—like the crosses on a Union Jack—and then pinching the four folds to make a paper dart, which is then balanced on a needle stuck in a cork. The hands should then be gently cupped around the “roundabout.” Most people will try making tremendous efforts of will and produce no effect—as I did myself the first time I tried it. The trick seems to be visualizing the roundabout turning one way or the other as you exert the will. With a little practice, most people can make the roundabout turn clockwise, then stop, then turn counter-clockwise.)