I remember asking him during my research into local history why the house was haunted. He replied he did not believe in ghosts – and, in any case, there were none in the house!
PROFESSOR JOHN HASTED had worked all his life in Atomic and Molecular Physics, but in the 1970s when he was Head of Experimental Physics at Birkbeck College in London became fascinated by the case of Uri Geller. Already the extraordinary Israeli-British performer had become a celebrity with demonstrations of his psychic powers, in particular his ability to bend spoons, describe hidden drawings and affect the working of watches. His appearances on television intrigued Professor Hasted whose subsequent enquiries inspired him to unite The Metal-Benders in 1981. In this article written in 1976, he describes how he invited Geller to his home – and a poltergeist came, too.
URI GELLER’S UNEXPECTED GUEST
Location and date:
Sunningdale, Berkshire, UK, 1974
In the autumn of 1974, I was studying the physics of Uri Geller’s metal bending and invited him to my home. During the time he was with us we had a couple of unforgettable teleportations – objects would appear in one room having disappeared from a different place.
Geller was talking to my wife, Lyn, in the kitchen and I was standing in the kitchen doorway when the first occurred. Lyn offered Geller a drink and said, “It’s very nice to have you here, but I must tell you I’m a great sceptic and don’t believe in any of these things.”
Well, at that moment a small ivory statue appeared and fell on the floor. The statue had been in the living room. Geller didn’t throw it. His hands were in full view of me the entire time.
While we were photographing the statue, the large key of our clock suddenly appeared in the air and dropped to the floor in front of us. Again there was no way in which Geller could have been responsible for this incident.
After he left us that night, Uri Geller went off to record a television show which was screened the following Monday. I was at work at the time. My wife watched the show with a neighbour and phoned me afterwards. She was very agitated. She said that the clock key had “flown” again – not once, but twice.
When I got home I found the key on the floor. I picked it up – and the clock, which had not gone since the days of the Second World War with its hands standing at ten past six, suddenly struck five.
Lyn and I found that each time we picked the key up, the clock would chime. We subsequently repeated this eighty times for psychical and scientific researchers with exactly the same result. It baffled everyone.
We discovered, though, that as long as we were playing with the clock, we got fewer other things flying about the house. But still in the subsequent months about fifty other objects flew about the house – including the Christmas turkey liver, which “escaped” from a security plastic bag, wired shut. We became convinced we were being haunted by a poltergeist.
To have a poltergeist means you must have strong emotional or psychological problems. My wife had lost her job and was quite upset that winter. She also had events happen in the car, several miles from the house. I had occasional teleportations in my office, too. I think this was all triggered off by Uri Geller’s visit to our home.
The clock ritual would quieten things down for long periods, but we finally got rid of our “visitor” after three months by simply not talking about it. We have never had anything like it since.
PROFESSOR ARCHIE ROY of the University of Glasgow is one of the world’s leading astronomers – he has an asteroid named after him – and combines a passion for interplanetary worlds with psychic studies. A former President of the SPR, founder-president of the Scottish Society for Psychical Research and a patron of the Churches Fellowship for Psychical and Spiritual Studies, he has conducted numerous enquiries into modern haunting and written more that seventy scientific papers and articles. One of the most interesting and authentic cases Professor Roy investigated concerned a family living not far away from the university which he reported in the News of the World in June 1978.
THE COUNCIL HOUSE ROWDY
Location and date:
Balornock, Glasgow, Scotland, 1975
What became known as “The Case of the Council House Rowdy” began when David Grieve, his wife, Elizabeth, their two sons, Derek (14) and Jeffrey (11) and their 80-year-old grandmother, Ann Anderson, claimed they were under attack by a poltergeist at Balornock, Glasgow.
These attacks had been going on for three years when Rev. Max Magee of the Church of Scotland and I became involved. We were called into the case after the family, neighbours, nurses and police had all heard typical poltergeist phenomena.
There had been bangs, raps and what we came to call the sledgehammer sound. The whole house shook.
There had been movement of furniture, pictures falling off walls, bedclothes stripped off beds, and toys stuffed down the lavatory.
At one stage the family fled to a relative’s house about a mile away. The phenomena went with them and started up in the relative’s house.
When the family went back to their own house, it started up there and continued in the relative’s house. It was as if the relative’s place had been psychically infected.
There were two teenage boys in this family and this was typical of poltergeist cases.
Very often there is a teenager who seems to be the focus. The teenager always seems to be around when the phenomena occurs.
He or she is not manipulating the furniture or the pictures or anything like that – but is present and is as scared as anyone else.
There was some trouble in this household, too. They were having a disagreement with the family downstairs.
I didn’t see any objects move, but Max and I heard the phenomena under conditions where we had to rule out fraud.
We would have the family together in one room and the other rooms would be sealed when we heard the noises.
In a way, we could even turn it on and off. Max would say, “We are going to beat this thing,” whereupon there would immediately be a rattle of raps and bangs as if to say, “Oh, no you won’t.”
The evidence seemed to point to the older boy as the focus.
He was sent to his grandparents, north of Inverness, whereupon the strange happenings ceased in the family home and started up on a minor scale in his grandparents’ home.
We left him there for several weeks. The phenomena began to die out up there and we allowed him to come back.
They did not begin again in the family house, except that about a year later they restarted in the sense that small electrical fires kept breaking out all over.
Then they died away and up to the present there have been no more.
There was no certain event that we could point to as heralding the end of the happenings.
In many cases, it’s as if the focus, in this case the adolescent, having grown a little, has changed the status of the whole thing and therefore there is no longer any trigger to start off the phenomena.
Several things convinced us of the genuineness of this case.
First of all there were the reports of the police, the family doctor and the relatives to whom the family fled and who were themselves infested by the poltergeist.
Then there was the total dependence of the family on us, plus our observation of their state of health.
They had lost weight and were in a state of nervous exhaustion.
They congregated and slept in the same room and never had the light out at night for months on end.
Also, we got the sound of the phenomena on tape several times.
DOCTOR ALAN GAULD and TONY CORNELL working together have earned a reputation of being among the most erudite ghost hunters of the late twentieth century. Gauld, a senior lecturer in psychology at Nottingham University and Cornell, president of the Cambridge University Society for Psychical Research, built their reputation on scrupulously detailed enquiry and being the most “hi-tech” of researchers – having designed a sophisticated “ghostbusting” apparat
us complete with video camera and computer which they employ at haunts. Gauld and Cornell have written numerous articles and a major survey of hauntings, Poltergeists, published in 1979. In this they recount the very curious case of which they themselves may have been the cause . . .
WERE WE THE GHOSTS?
Location and date:
Wisbech, Cambridge, UK, 1957
The case in question took place at Hannath Hall, an attractive but dilapidated Tudor house in Tydd St Mary near Wisbech, Cambridgeshire. The tenants of the house at that time were the family of Mr Derek Page, now Lord Whaddon, then Labour candidate, later MP, for the constituency of Wisbech and the Isle of Ely. Mr Page’s family consisted of himself and his wife; two children, aged at that time three and five; and Mrs Page’s mother. They had moved into Hannath Hall in August 1957, and during the next few months were frequently disturbed by inexplicable happenings – mostly thumps on doors and raps, but occasionally footsteps and groans, and once a violent jolt imparted to a bed. A local journalist learned of these strange happenings, and contacted the SPR. In consequence of his action, ADC and AG visited Hannath Hall on the evening of 16 November 1957. We were accompanied by Mr D. J. Murray, secretary of the Cambridge University SPR, and Mr (now the Rev.) J. M. Brotherton, a member of the same society; and also by the journalist and two of his friends, who met us at Wisbech to guide us to the house.
We arrived about 10.30 p.m., and during the next hour and a quarter we interviewed the members of the family (apart of course from the children), and carefully examined both the outside and the inside of the house. Hannath Hall has only two floors, and all the rooms on the upper floor open from a single large gallery. The phenomena reported had all taken place on the upper floor, though they were not confined to any particular part of it. The bedroom at the northern end of the gallery had been christened “the haunted room”, but seemingly for no better reason than that a nineteenth-century owner of the house was reputed to have left the body of his deceased wife lying there for several weeks, and to have had meals sent up to her.
At about 11.45 p.m. ADC organized a ouija board (i.e. glass and alphabet) séance in the living room downstairs, chiefly to ensure that all the hands in the house were in plain view; whilst AG stationed himself in the gallery upstairs, which was somewhat dimly lit by a single bulb. At 12.08 a.m. he heard a sharp snap from the haunted room; he set this down to a drop in temperature, and did not investigate. At 12.10 he thought he heard quiet footsteps on the stairs. The steps ceased before they reached the gallery. AG went to the head of the staircase and found there was no one on the stairs. He concluded he had probably misinterpreted some noises from below. At 12.32 he was driven downstairs by the cold; during his vigil the temperature in the gallery had dropped from 60°F to 52°F.
At 1.25 a.m., whilst the others continued the séance downstairs, ADC and AG went into the haunted room upstairs with a view to settling down there for the night. The room had no electricity, and we searched it again by the light of our torches. It was used as a storeroom for unwanted furniture and oddments. Across the floor lay two mattresses end to end, and on these we settled down feet to feet, with one blanket over our legs. The thermometer had by now sunk to 49°F, at which it remained during the ensuing events. We extinguished our torches.
A few minutes later we heard gentle taps coming from the floor on AG’s left and ADC’s right at a point roughly equidistant from both of us and about three feet from the mattresses. Our torches showed nothing but bare boards in the region concerned. We found that we could get specific numbers of raps at request. The raps became louder and moved nearer to the wall of the room. This meant that they came from a position about three feet from ADC’s right shoulder. We questioned them by means of a simple code, and found that they would answer leading questions readily, but could not spell out coherent messages. The rapper claimed to be a woman who had been murdered in the house in 1906 – a claim which we have not been able to substantiate. After a while we heard a series of six or seven knocks, growing in loudness, from the position in which the rappings had begun. The last one was of such intensity that AG flashed his torch in its direction. The raps ceased instantly, and there was nothing but bare floor in the place from which they had seemed to come.
Meanwhile the séance downstairs had broken up, and the reporter and his two friends had departed. Messrs Murray and Brotherton came up to the gallery, and heard the rappings. Mr Brotherton ran downstairs, leaving Mr Murray outside the door of the haunted room. He found the Page family sitting round the table in the living room, and then rejoined Mr Murray, who informed him that the raps had continued throughout his absence. Both then at once went downstairs and searched the room immediately below the haunted bedroom.
These activities caused a certain amount of noise, and we decided to leave the haunted room to ask the others to keep quieter. AG went to the door and ADC followed. As AG was passing through the doorway we heard a noise behind us, and found that a wooden dining-room chair, which had been stacked about five feet from the mattresses, was now lying on top of them. AG then left the room whilst ADC replaced the chair. He turned to follow AG and heard the chair drop behind him again. This time it had simply fallen down. He replaced it more firmly and left the room.
We returned to the haunted room about ten minutes later. Mr Murray went with Mrs Page into the room underneath it, and Mr Brotherton and Mr Page stood in the gallery. This left Mrs Page’s mother on her own in the living room. We soon heard loud raps, but this time from a position on the other side of the mattresses and about three feet from them; that is, on AG’s right and ADC’s left, and again about equidistant from us. Mr Murray and Mrs Page in the room below could also hear the raps, and noted down some of the sequences. The raps confirmed, though still in reply to leading questions, some of the information previously given. We then asked the month of the supposed communicator’s death, and heard eleven raps. We asked the day of the month. There commenced a series of raps which moved along the floor towards ADC’s head. The sixteenth rap seemed to him to come from the air behind his head. He switched on his torch, and the raps ceased immediately. He put out his torch, and we asked the rapper to begin again after ten. The raps were much fainter, and continued up to eighteen. We then made some not very successful attempts to ascertain the rapper’s age at death. The raps quite soon died away altogether, and after a few minutes we returned downstairs. It was then quarter to three.
Meanwhile, not long after we returned to the haunted room, the journalist and his two friends had come back to the house. They said that their car had broken down. Mr Page took them to Wisbech in his own car, and did not return until 2.50 a.m.
We returned to the haunted room at 3.34 a.m., this time with Mr Murray. AG walked into the room first, Mr Murray second and ADC last. ADC slammed the door, and we heard a sharp rattle. We turned, and saw by the light of our torches that a brass toasting fork with three prongs had been thrust behind the metal plate to which the door bolt was attached. One of its prongs was inserted through the staple into which the bolt normally ran, thus “bolting” us into the room from the inside.
There were no subsequent phenomena of much interest. On our second visit (21–22 November 1957) we heard some further rappings, faint and distant-sounding, but under conditions of good “control”. Altogether we paid between us some twenty visits to the house. On 25–26 April 1959 we brought a non-professional medium to the house, and held a séance in the haunted bedroom. A lady calling herself Eliza Cullen or Culler came through and said she had made the raps. She said she had buried her baby in the garden. But we could not trace any person of that name.
On 22 April 1959, and again in July 1959, Mrs Page, in the living room, twice thought she saw the figure of a small, fair-haired boy peering at her round the boxroom door when she was certain that there was no one there.
It is worth asking how an out-and-out sceptic might set about demolishing this case. He could hardly claim that the memories of the inves
tigators present had retrospectively magnified the events of the evening, because all four of us wrote preliminary notes on the phenomena within a few minutes of their occurrence. These notes were shortly amplified into fuller statements (copies of all relevant documents have been deposited with the SPR). A sceptic could, however, point to various discrepancies between the statements of the different witnesses. In particular, the times of events, despite the fact that we synchronized our watches at the start of the investigation, are very imperfectly recorded, and different witnesses’ guesses sometimes conflict with each other. This makes it, of course, very difficult to say with certainty whether the journalist and his friends were or were not under observation during any given set of phenomena, which is obviously an important flaw in the evidence.
Can these discrepancies be said to invalidate the case for the paranormality of the raps? We think not. It seems quite certain that the journalist and his friends left and also returned to the house while the rappings were still in progress, and so were actually observed at a critical period. In any case there are arguments against the possibility of fraud which do not depend upon showing that any given persons were under observation at a particular time.
Let us consider the hypothesis that there was a practical joker concealed somewhere in the house. Of course we measured the whole house inside and out and could detect no place where a trickster could have lurked; but even if there had been such a person, he would still have needed to install rapping machinery under the floor of the haunted bedroom. Accordingly we removed all furniture from the room and examined every inch of the floorboards with a magnifying glass. The boards were tongue-and-grooved together. We could detect no tool marks or splintering, and are convinced that no floorboards had ever been taken up. We removed a board that ran through the positions where we had first heard the rappings, but could see nothing suspicious under it or under the neighbouring boards. We then likewise examined the ceiling of the room below, which was also made of boards tongue-and-grooved together, and reached a similar conclusion. After examining the structure of the floor we were convinced that rapping machinery could have been installed under the floor only by removing boards from the floor of the haunted bedroom or from the ceiling of the room below; and that no boards had been removed from either of those places. It therefore does not seem that the case for the paranormality of the raps leans very heavily on proving that certain persons were under observation at given times.
The Mammoth Book of True Hauntings Page 30